37.1877, Reviews: Second Language Pragmatics and Young Language Learners: Gila A. Schauer, Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, Milica Savić and Anders Myrset (eds.) (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1877. Fri May 22 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1877, Reviews: Second Language Pragmatics and Young Language Learners: Gila A. Schauer, Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, Milica Savić and Anders Myrset (eds.) (2025)

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Date: 22-May-2026
From: Xuan Li [jxaa069851 at hotmail.com]
Subject: Applied Linguistics: Gila A. Schauer, Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, Milica Savić and Anders Myrset (eds.) (2025)

Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-3241

Title: Second Language Pragmatics and Young Language Learners
Subtitle: EFL Primary School Contexts in Europe
Series Title: Early Language Learning in School Contexts
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Multilingual Matters
           http://www.multilingual-matters.com/
Book URL:
https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781836681687

Editor(s): Gila A. Schauer, Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, Milica Savić
and Anders Myrset

Reviewer: Xuan Li

SUMMARY
This book focuses on second language pragmatics, specifically
targeting young learners. It brings together nine studies that examine
two dimensions: young learners’ pragmatic production, perception, and
development, as well as materials and pedagogical considerations. The
volume opens with an introductory chapter in which the authors
highlight the importance of childhood in second language pragmatics
and provide a brief overview of each part of the book.
The first part, entitled Young EFL learners’ development of discourse
marker use, reports a longitudinal study. Eva and Jelena examine
performance differences in thirteen Croatian EFL learners’ use of
discourse markers (DMs) at two time points (ages 9–10 and 11–12),
using picture-based narrative tasks. The findings indicate that, with
increasing age, participants produced a wider range of discourse
markers and used them more frequently than at the earlier stage.
However, these differences did not reach statistical significance.
While Eva and Jelena’s study focuses primarily on the frequency of
discourse marker (DM) use, Sánchez-Hernández et al. (2024) demonstrate
that, with increasing age, developmental differences are more evident
in the complexity and pragmatic appropriateness of discourse marker
use rather than in frequency alone. Additionally, Eva and Jelena
acknowledge several limitations of their research design, including
the non-face-to-face nature of the experiment, the small sample size,
and the impact of COVID-19. Nevertheless, further consideration should
be given to the potential influence of the pictorial stimuli
themselves.
The second section is a cross-sectional study, examining 88 young
Greek Cypriot EFL learners’ development of request perceptions and
metapragmatic awareness of requestive behaviour. By analyzing the data
from the video-promoted oral discourse completion task and the
emoticon task, the researchers found clear developmental trends in
these young learners’ pragmatic awareness. Additionally, young
learners tend to rely heavily on salient linguistic markers such as
“please” and favour more direct request forms, but older learners are
more sensitive about contextual variables (e.g. the interlocutor’s
social role, familiarity, and the size of imposition).
This progression across different age groups highlights a shift from a
form-based understanding of politeness to a more contextually grounded
interpretation of the appropriateness of making requests.
Additionally, the results regarding hints indicate that they are the
most challenging form of request for L2 learners to interpret and
evaluate.
While this research offers valuable pedagogical implications for L2
request instruction, it also has several limitations, such as the
limited range of linguistic variation resulting from the exclusive use
of learner-generated requests in the appraisal task.
The third section titled: Giving young language learners a Voice:
Learner feedback on Pragmatics Instruction examines how 46 young
Norwegian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) perceive a
large-scale pragmatic teaching project on requests through the four
dimensions of space, voice, audience, and influence proposed in
Lundy’s (2007) model. A three-month intervention, incorporating
various instructional and data elicitation activities was implemented
in the classroom.
The findings indicate that young language learners generally respond
positively to L2 pragmatics instruction, particularly when it involves
interactive, multimodal, and collaborative activities. Additionally,
the author suggests that future research should place greater emphasis
on student-centred approaches, where young learners are given more
opportunities to express their voice and agency.
In the fourth section, Alicia focuses on in-service primary school
teachers’ perceptions of pragmatics teaching. The study involved 20
Spanish EFL teachers who participated in a questionnaire and a
follow-up semi-structured interview. Through the questionnaire, the
researcher systematically examined teachers’ views across eight
aspects of pragmatics, including the importance of pragmatics,
pragmatic transfer, learners’ identity and agency, pragmatics in
teaching, pragmatics in the curriculum, as well as pragmatics in
textbooks and exams.
The findings show that teachers recognise pragmatics as essential for
developing learners’ communicative competence, particularly in
relation to politeness, everyday routines, and sociocultural
appropriateness. Furthermore, teachers reported that pragmatics is
mainly addressed through classroom activities rather than explicit
instruction, largely due to considerations of learners’ age, cognitive
maturity, and linguistic proficiency. Additionally, the study
highlights that assessing pragmatics and correcting pragmatic errors
remain challenging. Teachers expressed difficulties in identifying and
evaluating pragmatic infelicities compared to more objective
linguistic errors.
While this study sheds light on how teachers perceive pragmatics in
English teaching, it also has some limitations, including the small
sample size and the reliance on self-reported data without
triangulation with actual classroom practices.
>From the fifth section, the focus switches from young learners to
materials and pedagogical issues. The fifth section presents a study
in a public primary school in the Netherlands on pragmatic phenomena
related to the teaching materials and teachers’ talk in the class. By
analysing the data from the textbook Look 2, supplementary materials
and five class recordings, the researchers found that, while speech
acts dominate across both input sources, discourse markers and deixis
are underrepresented in textbooks but play a more prominent role in
classroom interaction. This contrast highlights the complementary
nature of different input sources and reinforces the importance of
authentic classroom discourse in providing learners with richer
pragmatic exposure. Additionally, the results also demonstrate that
limitations exist in textbook-based input as they decontextualise
speech acts and only provide a restricted range of pragmatic
realisations. However, teachers applied a wider variety of pragmatic
strategies, including combinations of direct and indirect forms to
enhance pragmatic instruction in their classes.
Although this study offers valuable insight into the distribution of
pragmatic features in classes, it cannot address how learners perceive
these pragmatic features. In addition, as this study only focuses on a
single textbook, further studies could enlarge the number of materials
to increase its representativeness.
Usó-Juan, in the sixth section, adopts four animated films (i.e.,
Ralph Breaks the Internet, Soul, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Turning
Red) to construct a corpus for analysing the use of requests,
including the frequency of different request types, their modifiers,
and corresponding response strategies. The four films were
systematically transcribed and coded for a detailed examination of
pragmalinguistic features (e.g. direct, conventionally indirect, and
hint-based requests), as well as a wide range of internal and external
modification devices. This analysis  offers valuable insights into
animated films as a source of pragmatic input for young language
learners, exploring the potential of their rich contextualisation and
multimodal nature, including visual and interactional cues.
The findings reveal a strong predominance of direct request
strategies, particularly imperatives, alongside a moderate presence of
conventionally indirect forms and a minimal use of hints. In addition,
the data show a relatively frequent use of modification devices and a
dominance of granting responses, suggesting that animated films
provide learners with accessible and interactionally meaningful
patterns of communication. The multimodal features of film input, such
as gestures and facial expressions, further enhance learners’ ability
to interpret pragmatic meaning beyond linguistic forms, thereby
supporting both comprehension and production of requests.
While the author highlights the suitability and reliability of
animated films as a pedagogical resource, Chaume (2020) argues that
unlike real conversation, film dialogue is a prefabricated orality and
its language is carefully structured to simulate spontaneous speech.
Specifically, the overrepresentation of direct strategies (e.g.
imperatives) and relatively simplified refusal patterns in these films
may not fully reflect real-world pragmatic norms. Overall, careful
selection and critical use of film materials are essential, as they
can enhance pedagogical mediation and support the development of young
learners’ pragmatic competence while avoiding potential input bias.
The seventh section synthesises insights from second language
acquisition (SLA) and pragmatics research to propose a structured
methodological framework for teaching greetings. In this study,
Limberg emphasises that young learners possess the cognitive capacity
to acquire pragmatic knowledge but require developmentally appropriate
input and structured support due to their limited linguistic resources
and attention span. Accordingly, Limberg formulates a cyclical
framework consisting of three interconnected stages: input,
awareness-raising, and practice/production, drawing on four key
conditions in second language pragmatics (i.e. input, noticing,
practice, and feedback). Within this framework, Limberg highlights
that pragmatic development is not achieved merely through repeated
exposure, but requires systematic practice, guided attention, and
feedback.
Furthermore, the range of teaching materials can be expanded from
written resources (i.e. textbooks and worksheets) to multimodal input
(e.g. audio dialogues, video scenes, and role-play activities), which
supports the development of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic
competence in greetings. Overall, the section presents a comprehensive
and practical framework that bridges theory and classroom application,
making it a valuable resource for teachers seeking to incorporate
pragmatics into language instruction for young learners.
In the eighth section, Glaser adopts a Design-Based Research (DBR)
framework to investigate the implementation of pragmatics units,
specifically the speech act of greetings, in two classes of primary
school students (aged 8–9) in Germany. The findings demonstrate that
even young learners are capable of developing metapragmatic awareness
when instruction is appropriately scaffolded. Additionally, this study
offers a fine-grained conceptualisation of greetings as
multi-component pragmatic routines. It includes elements such as
greetings, How-are-you (HAY) sequences, introductions, and expressions
of pleasure.
However, the study also reveals several limitations that are
theoretically and pedagogically informative. Although the study
acknowledges the impact of COVID-19 on instructional conditions,
further consideration could be given to the influence of
teacher-related factors, particularly the role of the trainee teacher
and classroom-specific practices, on student outcomes. While such
contextual influences are inherent in DBR, they may also limit the
extent to which the findings can be transferred to other instructional
contexts. Additionally, future research could extend the scope of
instruction (e.g., incorporating HAY counter-questions and their
corresponding interactional patterns) and include larger and more
diverse participant groups to enhance the generalisability of the
findings. Nevertheless, this study sheds light on the teachability of
pragmatics in primary education and offers valuable insights into the
application of DBR in practical language teaching contexts.
The final section talks about an arts-based pragmatic teaching
experiment on young EFL learners in Germany. Instead of using
conventional textbooks, Shauer and Beecroft integrated graphic novels
(i.e. Baloney and Friends), drama, and drawing into classroom
activities to teach19 third-grade primary school students. Within 6
weeks teaching intervention, all the students attended 6 lessons with
a focus on basic speech acts including greetings, invitations, and
invitation responses.
By analysing the learners’ drawings and speech bubbles, as well as
teacher reflection, the study  demonstrates that even beginner-level
learners are capable of producing a range of pragmatically appropriate
expressions when provided with structured input and scaffolding.
Moreover, the variation in learners’ output suggests that the
arts-based approach encourages flexibility and the development of a
small but meaningful repertoire of speech act realisations. At the
same time, the study highlights challenges related to learners’
limited literacy skills, particularly in writing and spelling, and
points to the need for additional scaffolding to support the
transition from awareness to independent production.
While the study offers important pedagogical insights and demonstrates
the potential of arts-based approaches to create engaging, inclusive,
and context-sensitive learning environments for developing pragmatic
competence in young language learners, some limitations should be
acknowledged. To be specific, the small sample size and the absence of
a control group limit the generalisability of the findings, and the
reliance on teacher reflection raises questions about objectivity.
EVALUATION
Overall, the edited volume is well organised, bringing together
studies on a range of topics with a clear focus on pragmatics in young
learners. It not only offers insights into diverse methodologies used
in second language pragmatics research but also provides practical
guidance for language instructors on incorporating pragmatic elements
into language education. As such, it will be of particular interest to
both researchers and language instructors concerned with the teaching
and learning of pragmatics among young second language learners. In
addition, the volume may contribute to the design of language learning
materials, as it offers insights and practical suggestions grounded in
both teachers’ and students’ experiences.
Despite their valuable contributions to the field of pragmatics, these
studies also raise several issues for further discussion. First, in
the process of language development, young learners’ participation in
experiments, particularly in interviews, raises concerns about whether
they are able to fully and clearly express their views. Although many
of these studies involve a second researcher in data analysis to
reduce bias, the interpretation is still largely conducted through an
adult lens.
Second, research (e.g.,Cardenal et al, 2023;Garay Abad & Hattie,2025)
has shown teachers' instructional preferences, such as their choice of
materials and methods of lesson delivery can significantly influence
how students engage with and acquire knowledge. Therefore, future
research should take into account the influence of teachers’
personalities and teaching styles.
REFERENCES
Cardenal, M. E., Díaz-Santana, O., & González-Betancor, S. M. (2023).
Teacher-student relationship and teaching styles in primary education:
A model of analysis. Journal of Professional Capital and Community,
8(3), 165-183.
Chaume, F. (2020). Audiovisual translation: dubbing. Routledge.
Garay Abad, L., & Hattie, J. (2025). The impact of teaching materials
on instructional design and teacher development. Frontiers in
Education, 10, 1-12
Lundy, L. (2007). ‘Voice’is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. British
educational research journal, 33(6), 927-942.
Sánchez-Hernández, A., Barón, J., & Llanes, À. (2024). The Development
of Pragmatic Markers in English as a Second Language: Do Age and
Learning Context Matter? Languages, 9(4), 115.
https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9040115
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Xuan Li is a Senior Research Associate in the School of Education at
University of Bristol. He is currently working on a postdoctoral
project on teaching online sarcasm, which is jointly funded by the
British Academy and University of Bristol. He holds a PhD in
Linguistics and an MA in TESOL. He has particular research interests
in Internet pragmatics and second language education.

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