The aim of this study is twofold: to analyze politeness strategies in the online conversations of Thai students, and to suggest how this analysis can be applicable to pedagogical practice. A corpus of a 21-month instant online conversation among students and teachers has been analyzed. Throughout the time of data collection, the teachers…

The use of specific speech acts have been found to vary with culture, thus to perform a speech act successfully in a second language requires not only linguistic competence but also pragmatic competence of the L2 community. Though previous studies have shown dissimilarities in invitational conversations and general refusal strategies (c.f.…

Examines the cross-linguistic influence of native language topic-prominence in shaping and accenting the written English discourse produced by Chinese learners. The article endeavors to demonstrate that this interlingual discourse does not meet the criteria for adequate coherence in written English discourse. (22 references) (Author/CK)