Difficulties Found in Low-Proficiency Learners

This section focuses on difficulties low-proficiency learners had encountered in the process of implicature comprehension. From the analysis of interview protocols, it was found that low-proficiency learners systematically reported difficulties in the following three aspects: (1) language proficiency, (2) speaker intention, and (3) specific types of Formulaic-based implicature. It is essential to include a separate section to discuss difficulties that exclusively arise among low-proficiency learners because these difficulties can lead us to better understanding concerning the marked disparity between high proficiency and low proficiency learners.

Language proficiency. The interview protocols revealed that low-proficiency learners’ difficulties arouse mainly from inadequate language proficiency. Most of the

learners interviewed reported that their processing speed was not fast enough to follow the dialogue.

(34) L-1earner 55: My processing speed is very slow. When I heard the girl’s question and tried to process it, the other person had already spoken. So, I could not listen very clearly what he said.

In addition to low processing speed, learners’ inadequate language proficiency also led to wrong interpretation of the word, which was clearly demonstrated in the discourse marker “well”. Consider the following two excerpts.

(35) Item 19 (Brenda asks Sam how he thinks of her new dress and Sam responds, “Well, this year there really are a lot of women wearing that dress.”)

L-Learner 43: I heard the word “well”, which meant “good”. Also, he spoke in a quite “merry” tone. I don’t think he didn’t like the dress.

L-learner 55: The man didn’t sound like “He didn’t like it!”, and I heard the word “well”, which meant a positive reply—he liked that dress.

In example (35), learners misinterpreted “well” as literal meaning rather than a dispreferred marker, indicateing that the speaker is saving the listener’s face because the intended meaning of the following utterance contains negative information (Jucker, 1993). Dispreferred markers, such as “well”, are used to mitigate such face-threatening effect (Holtigraves, 1992).

Speaker intention. In the analysis of protocols, another learners’ difficulty existed

in the failure to recognize speaker intention (i.e., the purpose for which the speaker employs an implicature). Speaker intention varies, which may include making an excuse, avoiding embarrassment, minimizing the threat, etc. To successfully understand the implicature, it is essential for learners to recognize speaker intention underlying an implicature (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). All the low-proficiency learners interviewed failed to recognize speaker intention, as shown in the following excerpts.

(36) Item 12 (Evelyn had heard that Dennis was recently divorced and Evelyn asked Dennis if this was true and Dennis responded, “We married too young.”)

L-learner 52: He replied with a sigh, like he could do nothing about it.

He regretted getting married too young!

Researcher: Did you hear the girl’s question?

L-learner 52: Yes.

Researcher: Did he answer her question.

L-learner 52: Um… no. All he said was he married too young, but he didn’t specify whether he was divorced or not. I think he is about to divorce. He already had this thought.

(37) Item 15 (Bob likes his classmate, Paula and he decides to ask her out.

Ken asks Bob whether Paula has agreed to go out with him and Bob responds, “She is not really my type!”)

L-learner 57: He may have already gone out with her and found out she was not his type.

Researcher: Did you hear what Ken asked?

L-learner 57: He asked whether Paula has agreed to go out with him.

Researcher: Um.

L-learner 57: I really don’t know. Maybe she has, or she has not.

Anyway, he found out she was not his type after they got alone with each other.

The above two examples can probably explain the reasons learners fail to interpret the implicature: First, learners failed to recognize that the interlocutors were following the adjacency pair rule principle during the conversation, that is, the speaker’s utterance was actually responding to the previous question. Second, learners could not recognize speaker intention behind these two implicatures: The speaker in example (36) was making an excuse to imply that they married too young to know each other better and put the blame on the youth rather than on himself or his wife. Similarly, the speaker in example (37) was making another excuse to avoid saying that he was turned down by Paula. Failing to observe adjacency pair rule principle and recognize speaker intention, learners misinterpreted the implicature by comprehending literal meaning of the utterance. This result also corresponds to learners’ strategy use difference discussed previously (section 4.3) that the sharpest between-group contrast lies in the fact that high-proficiency learners could recognize speaker intention for making the implicature, while low-proficiency learners searched for the relevance at a literal-sense level.

Specific types of Formulaic-based implicature. The interview protocols systematically revealed that low-proficiency learners had great difficulties in comprehending Formulaic-based implicature, particularly in Pope Q and Understated Criticism., as shown in the following examples.

(38) Item 16— Pope Q (Mark asks Kay whether the professor will give them a test and Kay responds, “Duh, does the sun come up in the east these days?”)

L-learner 57: What’s the point of mentioning the “sun”? I don’t know why he responded like this way, suddenly popping out something irrelevant to the context.

Researcher: So, what did Kay mean by that remark?

L-learner 57: Well, probably change the topic.

(39) Item 6—Understated Criticism ((Mr. Chen asks Mrs. Liu about a student’s term paper and Mrs. Liu responds,” I thought it was well typed.”)

L-learner 55: The teacher said he typed well. It’s option “b” (She thought it was surely well typed.)

Researcher: Did you know what they were talking about?

L-learner 55: Whether she liked the student’s tern paper?

Researcher: What did she mean by saying “He typed well”?

L-learner 55: The teacher was making a compliment.

Consistent with Bouton’s findings (1994), the present study showed that Formulaic-based implicatures were found to be more difficult for learners to comprehend. In order to understand the implicature in example (38), learners were required to know the structural as well as the functional relationship between the two questions. Namely, the answer of the second question (Pope Q) is actually the same as the answer of the first question. Without knowing this relationship, learners could not find the relevance and correctly interpreted the implicature. As for example (39), the formulae was encoded in the semantics in which the speaker’s response was a compliment on an unimportant and peripheral feature of the assignment － being well-typed. If learners understand that it is the content rather than the format of the assignment matters, they will recognize that the response is actually an indirect criticism rather than a compliment. Failing to recognize the formulae encoded in the implicature, as shown in the above examples, learners turned out either finding the response at odds with the context or comprehending literally, thus misinterpreting the implicature.