'That movie was so hilarious ne!' the development of Japanese interactional particles ne, yo, and yone in L2 classroom instruction

摘要

The present study examines the development of L2 interactional competence (Hall, 1999; He & Young, 1998) by JFL learners in an explicitly instructed setting as evidenced by their metapragmatic development and use of Japanese interactional particles ne, yo, and yone in unscripted conversations with NSs and peer learners. More specifically, the study aims to investigate the role of pragmatics-focused instruction in the learners' ability to participate in a range of assessment activities (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992) using the particles ne, yo, and yone as resources to co-construct stance and achieve intersubjectivity (e.g., Du Bois & Karkkainen, 2012; Karkkainen, 2006) between participants in an ongoing interaction.;To bridge the gap between the paucity of instructional treatment and the highly frequent use of the interactional particles in mundane Japanese conversation, an instructional approach that incorporated awareness-raising and conversational activities was proposed and implemented in a third semester JFL course for one semester. In order to examine the effects of instruction on the development of interactional competence as evidenced by the learners' use of particles ne, yo, and yone in the conversation sessions, the study focuses on the following perspectives: 1) learners' metapragmatic understanding of the variability in particle function and in the meanings that the particles can index; 2) learners' use of the particles in ways that are consistent with what they were taught, and that potentially extend beyond their instructed learning in terms of form, function, and activity-relevant participation; and 3) the learners' demonstration of ability to deploy these particles as resources for joint stance taking in the conversations with NS partners and peer learners in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways.;Findings from the experimental group learners' performance from the pre- and post-tests provide evidence that they have demonstrated metalinguistic development of the discourse functions of the particles in the described discourse situations. The conversation data revealed that the learners' development of interactional competence is evidenced by their increasing ability to attend to, and design their own talk in a way for it to be understood and responded to by the recipient (Pekarek Doehler & Berger, 2016) through the use of the particles ne, yo, and yone for achieving joint construction of stance and intersubjectivity with their conversational partners. Moreover, the learners' greater understanding and use of the particles through the instruction facilitate the emergence of learners' agency, which provides the learners with an increased capacity to actively pick up linguistic affordances to develop their personal voice (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013) to interact more creatively and meaningfully with their conversational partners.