The Academic Setting: Aspects of Pragmatic Competence and Transfer in Inter-Cultural Communication.

The Academic Setting: Aspects of Pragmatic Competence and Transfer in Inter-Cultural Communication.

Starting from the principle of communicative efficiency, the present paper reviews current research on pragmatic competence and, against that background, examines nonnative students' (NNS) pragmatic competence and pragmatic transfer in academic inter-cultural communicative actions. Despite a certain universal pragmatic knowledge shared by all speakers, the present paper sustains that nonnative English students' pragmatic competence in English (L2) can be significantly improved unless culture-specific knowledge from native (L1) intra-cultural communication situations is transferred to situations of L2 intercultural communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]