Pragmatic Meanings Comprehension in Non-Native Argentinian Spanish Speakers

Abstract

The objective of this research is to make a comprehensive description of the understanding of pragmatic meanings by speakers of Spanish as a second and foreign language. Our hypothesis is that the performance in the understanding of pragmatic contents improves if these are conveyed through a lexical or contextual item, and not grammatical one, or through a non-directive type of speech. The study is carried out through an online survey to 49 non-native Spanish speakers, which consist of 19 scenes that require a mandatory pragmatic interpretation. The statistically analyzed results confirm that performance in non-directive speech acts is better than in directive ones. However, there are no performance differences according to the level (grammatical, contextual or semantic-lexical) at which the pragmatic contents are conveyed. Furthermore, it is observed that Brazilian Portuguese speakers better understand the pragmatics of utterances as a whole and show less difficulties with directive speech acts. Other variables, such as instruction or residence time, do not contribute significantly to improving performance in understanding these statements.