Introduction to a thematic review: Pragmatics research in Chinese as a second language

Abstract As Chinese is quickly becoming the language for intercultural communication, rules and norms of interaction in Chinese – how to speak with the level of politeness and formality required in a situation, or to understand another person’s intention communicated indirectly – are critical aspects of learning Chinese. Despite this growing interest in Chinese teaching and research, most studies have focused on formal aspects of Chinese competence (e.g., grammar and character knowledge), and little research has addressed pragmatic aspects of Chinese learning (Taguchi, 2015). To fill this gap, this thematic review presents four empirical studies on pragmatics in Chinese as a second language. Four studies deal with a variety of pragmatic features in Chinese (e.g., sentence final particles, formulaic expressions, request-making forms, mitigation strategies, stance markers) to illustrate how those features can inform us about L2 Chinese learners’ pragmatic competence and development.