A01 cohe4573 01 se fm. Qxd

2
the appropriateness of the selected term of address (e.g., referring 
in the L2 to Dr Felicia Bloom as “Doc,” “Felicia,” or “you”);
3
the appropriateness of the timing for a speech act in the given
situation (e.g., whether to attempt to apologize to a colleague for a
work-related incident during a social encounter);
4
the acceptability of how the discourse is organized (e.g., conveying
the bottom-line message right from the start of the communication,
gradually building up to it, or saving it for the last possible
moment); and
5
the cultural appropriateness of the selected strategies and the
appropriateness of the language structures used to represent them

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S T R A T E G I E S F O R L E A R N I N G A N D P E R F O R M I N G S P E E C H A C T S
2 3 5
(e.g., whether it is appropriate for a college student to give an
outright refusal to the department chair’s invitation to dinner and
whether the refusal could include – even in jest – an informal phrase
such as “No way!”).
As indicated above, this constitutes a preliminary effort to provide a 
taxonomy of strategies that might play a role in the learning of speech acts,
as well as in the subsequent comprehension and production of the speech
acts afterwards.
Now that we have looked at a taxonomy of strategies for L2 speech acts,
let us consider how learner, task, and contextual factors can influence 
strategic performance of speech acts.
Factors influencing successful use of speech act 
strategies
The relative success that L2 users have in deploying a given strategy for
learning or performing speech acts may depend on various factors, such as
the characteristics of the learners, the nature of the task, and the context for
language use.
Learner characteristics
The following are learner characteristics that may have an impact on the use
of strategies for learning and performance of L2 pragmatics:
■
Age: a 25-year-old learner may have an easier time remembering the set
of strategies specific to apologizing in the L2 than a 55-year-old learner.
Also, young learners can strategize effectively. Some learners can do so
as of second grade. Others gain this awareness a bit later. The point is
that a teacher could talk up pragmatics strategies with young learners,
and these learners may find it fun to strategize in this area, especially 
if silly visuals are included in the effort – created, if possible, by the
learners themselves.
■
Gender: women may be expected to use a different set of politeness
strategies from those that men use in a given society or subgroup of
that society.
■
Language aptitude: learners with a predisposition to noticing and
dealing with inflections for, say, gender could have an easier time with
Romance languages than learners who have difficulty making such
distinctions.

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