INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS IN TURKISH

This study aims to investigate interlanguage pragmatics in Turkish. For this purpose, a discourse completion questionnaire including four request situations was given to 33 learners of Turkish at a university in Istanbul, Turkey as well as 45 Turkish native speakers in two different programs at the same institution. The data were then coded into request strategies. The length of requests and the number of strategies employed were also coded. The request strategies were analyzed using the chi-square test while the length and the number of strategies were analyzed using the independent samples t-test. Results indicate that the two groups differed in head act strategies and downgrader strategies only in situation 3 while they differed in situation 2 through 4 in using supportive moves. In the length of the requests, number of supportive moves and the number of downgraders, the groups differed in only one situation. This shows that although differences are observed, there is no drastic difference between native-Turkish speaking students and learners of Turkish as a second language. This shows that even after one academic year in the target speech community, learners tend to choose strategies similar to the native speakers of the target language. The effect of sojourn in the target community could be further researched by comparing learners of Turkish in the target speech community to those that learn Turkish outside of the target speech community after the same amount of time spent learning Turkish.