Application of Metapragmatics to Language-Learning Research: A Longitudinal Study of Word Learning in Language Exchange Conversations

Second language acquisition (SLA) studies have not proposed a comprehensive theoretical and epistemological framework to capture both the object-level social interactions in which language learning occurs and meta-level practices of research describing it. Therefore, this study introduces the linguistic anthropological theory of “metapragmatics” into SLA research and demonstrates how it can manage both meta-level and object-level of social practices regarding language learning, with the primary focus on the latter. After considering SLA research in terms of the metapragmatic practice articulated by specific sociocultural perspectives, this study analyzes word learning during four months of language exchange conversations between two native and two non-native Japanese speakers. The results indicate that the state in which “someone has learned something” is indexically created through the metapragmatics of interaction, that is, by fading metapragmatic frames that focus on learning objects and related acts, highlighting the nonlinear, dynamic, indexical, and contextual aspects of language learning. This study concludes that the concept of metapragmatics can open new lines of SLA research to enhance the understanding of the social nature of learning and its research.