37.2334, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language (Finland)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2334. Tue Jul 14 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2334, Confs: Panel at IPC20: Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language (Finland)

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Date: 13-Jul-2026
From: Louise Mycock [louise.mycock at ling-phil.ox.ac.uk]
Subject: Panel at IPC20: Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language


Panel at IPC20: Pragmatic Markers in Learner Language

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/IPC20Helsinki

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
Pragmatics

The key role that pragmatic markers (PMs) such as English actually,
well, you know, and I mean play in social interaction, collaborative
meaning-making, and successful communication is well known in a range
of different languages (Fischer 2006, Degand et al. 2022, inter alia).
PMs are essential to achieving communicative goals such as managing
interaction or expressing attitudes. What is far less well understood
is how language learners acquire and use PMs in an L2 or additional
language. The appropriate use of PMs has been identified as a hallmark
of higher proficiency in L2 learners (Sankoff et al. 1997), and yet
speakers often struggle to acquire PMs even after extended exposure
(Romero-Trillo 2002). Raising learners’ awareness of PMs and providing
explicit instruction have been shown to have a positive effect on
their use (for example, Sánchez-Hernández & Barón 2022), but PMs are
rarely taught explicitly, and they have not been systematically
integrated into mainstream teaching materials. The result of an
incomplete command or total absence of PMs is partial acquisition of
an L2/additional language, which risks negative consequences relating
to perceptions of naturalness and native-like competence of the target
language.
In this panel, we seek to bring together researchers working on PM use
in the language of non-native speakers in order to address fundamental
questions including, but not limited to:
- How do PMs in learner language compare with those employed by L1
speakers?
- What influence does a speaker’s L1 have (for example,
positive/negative transfer, borrowing) on the PMs that they use and
how they employ them in the target language?
- What innovations are observed in the way learners employ PMs in the
target language?
- What, if any, patterns are detectable in the order of PM acquisition
by language learners?
- How does PM use correlate with objective proficiency and/or the
subjective perception of competence?
- Which features of PM use may be language specific and which may be
universal?
- Which pedagogical interventions have a positive impact on the
acquisition of PMs by language learners and why?
- What role does prosody play in PM use by language learners?
 
References:
Degand, L., Z. Broisson, L. Crible & K. Grzech (2022).
Cross-linguistic variation in spoken discourse markers. In E.
Peterson, T. Hiltunen & J. Kern (eds.), Discourse-Pragmatic Variation
and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 83–103.
Fischer, K. (ed.) (2006). Approaches to Discourse Particles. Leiden:
Brill.
Romero-Trillo, J. (2002). The pragmatic fossilization of discourse
markers in non-native speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics 34:
769–784.
Sánchez-Hernández, A., & J. Barón (2022). Teaching second language
pragmatics in the current era of globalization: an introduction.
Language Teaching Research 26: 163–170.
Sankoff, G., P. Thibault, N. Nagy, H. Blondeau, M.-O. Fonollosa & L.
Gagnon (1997). Variation in the use of discourse markers in a language
contact situation. Language Variation and Change 9: 191–217.
Organizers:
Louise Mycock (University of Oxford, UK)
Sandra Götz-Lehmann (Philipps University Marburg, Germany)
Kathrin Kircili (Philipps University Marburg, Germany)



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