In this episode, Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta interviews Dr Jiayi Wang, about those "unwritten" rules of language use, which are known as "pragmatics". What's really interesting about pragmatics is that they aren't really reflected in textbooks the way we originally learn a language. Dr Wang discusses research into English learners and their use of language in emails.

To find out more behind-the-scenes information about this topic or about our podcast, please visit our webpage, languagescientists.dmu.ac.uk. This is where you can go to ask questions, leave comments, or even participate in our current research! We'd love to hear from YOU.

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Link to Dr Wang's webpage

Dr Wang's research:

Wang, Jiayi and Halenko, Nicola (2022a). “Mind your language”: L2 English emails during study abroad. In Halenko, Nicola and Wang, Jiayi (eds.) Pragmatics in English Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 29-56.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

If you have a connection to languages, this is the podcast for you. Whether you're a language learner, a language teacher, a language researcher, or anyone who's interested in languages. I'm Dr. Kaitlyn Zavaleta and alongside Dr. Marie-Josee Bisson. We are the language scientists and this is our podcast. We are senior lecturers in psychology at De Montfort University, and we conduct research into the area of language learning. Throughout this series, we hope to translate the science behind language learning into informative and useful practical advice. So sit back and enjoy. Today we are joined by Dr. Jiayi Wang from here at De Montfort University, who will be discussing with us the topic of pragmatics in language learning. So welcome.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Oh, thank you. Hi, Kaitlyn. Good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Of course. We're really excited to have you. So Dr. Jiayi Wang is an associate professor at De Montfort University. Now, she's not in psychology with myself and Marie. And this really kind of speaks to how often you see people studying language learning who are coming from different areas or different disciplines. So that's why we say it's usually a really interdisciplinary topic.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Absolutely.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Jiaya works in a different faculty altogether, so she's in the School of Humanities from the Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities. Jiayi holds her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Warwick. Her B.A. is in English language and literature from Beijing East International Studies University, and her M.A. is in Applied Linguistics, focusing on simultaneous interpreting from Beijing Foreign Studies Universities University, and her research is on pragmatics, which she's going to tell us a little what that means. Intercultural communication, language, education and corpus based discourse analysis. So I'm really excited to hear from her. And thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, thank you for the very comprehensive introduction.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Well, here's the thing, is that we like to hear everybody's background. We like to know kind of how you got here. And and that's the cool thing. Everyone's coming from a different view and a different perspective, right?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Absolutely. Totally agree.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So one of the things that we start with is we ask our guest to tell us a little bit about your language background. So could you tell us a little bit about your language, experiences, languages you speak?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, sure. So as you can tell properly, so English is not my mother tongue. And my mother tongue is Mandarin. And I studied English as a second language in school. So I think I haven't I had never spoken to a native speaker of English language until I went to university.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Wow.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Wow, yeah. That's so I was 100 percent a language learner. And then in my university years, I studied French as well and Japanese. The things I didn't use to use these languages very much in my work. So I almost I think they were very rusty. I almost completely forgot almost all of them, if not most of them, if not all of them. So that's why language is all about language use. And it's very important to use a language. And of course, for simultaneous interpreting. That's very interesting because I was a English language teacher at university and I was given very restricted teaching plans to stick to and the textbooks. Intuitively, I thought that might not be a very good way of teaching. However, I wasn't that experienced at that time. And then of course, I did a Masters in applied linguistics, but focusing on simultaneous interpreting because I was always interested in language use in real life, real world language. So it was simultaneous interpreting. That's fascinating because you are supposed to speak and listen at the same time and people are saying that's against human nature. So that's why when you are doing that, you are really you have to expand your working memory to for you to be able to capture as many things as possible in a short term. So that's fascinating. And then, of course, I worked as a conference interpreter and translator for a number of organisations and a multinational corporations, and then I became a international project manager at a government ministry. So very miscellaneous. And at that time the main area I was responsible for was the United States.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Ta-da!

Dr Jiayi Wang

Ta-da! Yeah, so what a coincidence. So then of course, in work, a lot of the senior officials and including professionals and business people came to me to ask, Oh, Jiayi, what does that mean when they when they said that? Or what do they mean when they did that? And most of the time I couldn't fully answer the questions, to be honest with you. And I went back to look for some cultural guidebooks, but I couldn't have found the I couldn't find the answer. So that's why I was saying to myself,Oh, I'm so fascinated by this topic, so I need to explore it further. So that's why I did my Ph.D. intercultural communication. And of course, pragmatics is quite important part of it. And because pragmatics is about language use in context, so is quite closely connected to the real world.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Okay. So you're coming at it from you developed your fluency as a learner, and then you realised as an interpreter that there were additional questions that needed to be answered and they weren't really easily answered. Am I getting that right?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

So then you did your, your like your PhD, which is applied linguistics.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Mm hmm.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

And you were focusing on intercultural communication. First of all, what do we mean by intercultural communication?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah. It just means communication between people from different cultural backgrounds. To put it simply, and sometimes it can be people speaking different languages. Sometimes they can be people speaking the same language like you Kaitlyn. Coming to the UK and thinking, Oh, why people don't use how they do, just like I did when I came here. When I spoke to my British colleagues, I was saying, Oh, that's the end period. And they were all looking confused. Then I said, Oh, maybe full stop. So that's the thing.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yep, I ran into that one. So it's learning these kind of rules or expectations, right?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yes, absolutely. That's a very nice way of saying rules. So pragmatics is about language use in context. So for pragmatics, it's what is important is not just about the language use itself, but also about like what you said, the rules, the social cultural constraints in relation to the language you use. So, for example, you are writing the email to a friend. Maybe you are using different language compared to the email you sent to your boss. Just a quick example. So there are a lot of things involved. Power relations, power status or things like that. So I think these things are really important in that on many occasions they are not really being taught in a very systematic way in textbooks. So this why I, I still remember very clearly one of my master's students came to me probably more than seven or eight years ago, did ask me the question, and she was a proficient English language user. I think she was studying a degree in tehsil related area. I can't remember the detail, but she was definitely a good English language user and very proficient. But she arrived in the UK and found out nobody was using how do you do. She was confused because she came to me saying that, you know, since I was in school in English textbooks, we were, we were told the most important English greeting. Even the British English greetings is How do you do? Why, when I came here, nobody said that. Why? Oh, I couldn't answer that question. Of course, I was talking to my British colleagues as well about this and they were laughing, saying probably I only use use that when I meet the queen. So it's very rare they would never use it in daily life. So that kind of things, they are subtle, but they are quite important. And I think that's the gap in the language textbooks because for a very long time, language learning and language teaching have stressed grammar and vocabulary. However, even with the knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, the students or language learners in general can still struggle. And that has to do with pragmatics, because some research, prior research has found that if the language learners, they have committed a pragmatic failure, which means that just something wrong with the language use in context and the consequences are much more severe than grammatical mistakes. So because those pragmatic failure may reflect on that language learner, on that person very badly. So the maybe the interlocutors may think, oh, the language, the language user is a bad person because they are saying it in a very rude way, or they may be offended. So that's why there is a emerging consensus that the consequences of making pragmatic mistakes could be more severe. However, in our language, teaching and learning pragmatics are not incorporated very systematically into our teaching materials or learning materials. So there is a huge gap there that needs to be filled. So that's why I think more and more researchers are calling for more research as well as pedagogical interventions into these areas.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah, I think that's a really excellent point, as you were. Describing, you know, the importance of teaching pragmatics and teaching these roles to learners. I was thinking through, so I had French as a minor, so I took all the same classes that the majors did. So I should have been just as well-educated, just with less hours. I mean, I took two courses in conversation. But I don't know that we really discussed pragmatics very much.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Mm hmm.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

And I know we took a phonetics class and phonology classes in French and and tons of history and literature, but nothing in pragmatics. And now I'm thinking that's absolutely bonkers. No, no, you're absolutely right, though. I mean, and even the conversation in the same language, but like two different dialects. Right? So the how do you do example? So here, especially in the Midlands, like you are, right? Yeah, as Hello. Yep. Now, in the U.S. we say, Oh, hi, how are you? Now, of course, I mean, like, oh yeah, I'm fine. And, and you go from there and that's the unspoken rule. But the you are right. Do you know how many Americans that takes like, takes by surprise? Because we say, like, you immediately assume like you don't look all right and you're like, No, I think I'm okay.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah. What's wrong with me?

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Like, I don't know. No, I'm not all right.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, absolutely. That's the thing. I think that's the fascinating aspect of linguistics and of pragmatics, of languages in context, because it's linked to the real world.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah.

Dr Jiayi Wang

And I think the thing about textbooks, there are many reasons why the pragmatics are not covered comprehensively in textbooks. The pragmatics are not fixed so they can change. Like what you said, there are regional variations and they may change with time as well. So sometimes and there subtle rules, it's quite hard to pin them down as well in terms of how just write down the top top ten rules for using language in the UK is quite hard. Is not that easy. However, they can be integrated with language teaching in a way. For example, you probably know that we have some conventionaled formulae that can be used in certain contexts quite regularly, and it'd be good to let the language users or language learners know what the patterns are and in what context, what are there relationships that they can use those kind of things. So they are not just sticking to the textbook and keep remembering, Oh, I need to use how to do, how to do, how to do, how to do where I'm fine, thank you. And do that kind of thing. So it needs to be more flexible, I would say.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Okay. So I think what we've established so far is that it's really important to be learning these rules for pragmatics and that it's not something that's naturally kind of embedded into the learning process for learning a new language. So then one of the things that you were going to tell us about today was some of the research that you're doing on emails, which is really an interesting thing. I mean, I know even just I've said this before, but the switch from US American woman sending an email which has lots of exclamation points, apologies to everybody to what is perhaps a more standard UK acceptable email with less exclamation points for everything. And that was a rule that, you know, I had to absorb. Now you have done research for emails, but specifically looking at L2 speakers or learners, could you tell us a little bit more about where this research started and what you've learned and what you studied and what you found out at the end?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, sure. So yeah, like what you said, emails are very interesting and they're increasingly important in today's academic life or professional life or even everyday life. So the reason why I started this research with my colleagues is simply because we were approached by a number of students who say that they were struggling with writing the proper emails because like the example I gave earlier. So one of my master's students came to me showing the email reply she received from one of the academics, asking the student to mind her language. And she was really shocked because she was a very proficient user of English language and she didn't know what she did wrong. And also she was too embarrassed to ask that academic for feedback. So of course I've I've said, okay, just share the emails with me and then we can talk through the things. And obviously I realise that it's very quick example. At that time the academic was giving out free concert tickets to students across the whole school, and so basically any student, even those who are not taught by that academic could go there and collect a ticket. So my master student emailed him and saying that I'm whom from which program, a master's student and I want one ticket. And can I come to your office to collect this afternoon? And quite straight forward and a little bit direct. So that's why the academic was quite offended. And normally I think academics are very tolerant. In most cases, probably they won't say that, Oh, that's very rude and you shouldn't say that. And with international students, it's quite hard for them to receive some feedback because normally the academics won't go back to them saying that all the language you use is not really appropriate. And people are people are really offended. And the funny thing is, even research has found that many academics are quite disturbed or upset by inappropriate language use in e-mails from students. So the reason I mention these students, but also our academic colleagues complained about students emails, too. And so we think, okay, that's something that these students haven't really learned because for many international students, they rarely used an email before they came to the UK. So there's a lot of things involved in that. So what we did over a year, we've collected some authentic emails was a lot of consent, of course, ethics consent from international students and they're all real emails. And we also collected real, authentic emails from native speakers. So they are all from students to academic staff. So the power relations were the same. So the status was not equal. And then of course, we built to corpora and compare them to see the patterns, whether there were any noticeable differences. And of course we found notice, but with differences and like what I've described to you, and there are just different ways of talking to their professors in the emails and for especially for our for example, our students from Asia, including our Japanese, Korean and Chinese students. They all tend to believe that the longer the email, the more polite you are. Okay. So that's why they on certain occasions, they realise that their British classmates or their British British professors wrote much shorter emails. However, they felt is quite a hard hurdle for them to overcome psychologically and also in terms of terms address. For example, they will keep calling me or my colleague saying, for example. Dr. Wang or Professor Wang when I said, Just call me Jiayi, they said, okay, Dr. Jiayi or Professor Jiayi. Okay. So it's not just about awkward language use. There are a lot of underlying reasons why they make those decisions. So after collecting these two corpora, we of course, we also asked the language users and native speakers to compare them because we anonymize all the emails. They couldn't distinguish between whether it's from L2 language user or whether it's from native speaker. So it mix them together and ask our participants, different participants, to evaluate these emails, because at the end of the day, I think the important aspects of language use, it's evaluation. So really, whether it's good or not, it's polite or impolite, whether they take offence or not. It's always important to take evaluation into account, not just evaluation by the researchers ourselves, but evaluation by real language users, native speakers or non-native speakers. So we've got these data sets evaluated by both students and staff, and we can clearly see that there are some patterns, cultural patterns in relation to the email language you use. So very different, but also in relation to the rationale behind those different cultural patterning. So for example, I've mentioned earlier that for our Chinese, Korean, Japanese student, they all believe that the shorter the email, the ruder you are. I would say, however, when you ask them why that was the reason for international students and then they will be able to begin to unpack the underlying assumptions that they hold about those linguistic behaviours or those cultural patternings. And for example, they thought it is very rude to start with a request that's too direct. And so they would like to start with some small talk with some yeah, some communication. So they will build rapport with the academic who was their professor in the email. So when the request was made, the the professor won't be that upset because you've already built some relationship before the requests it's coming. So that's very interesting. And when you ask them to think about the different structure or the different sequencing, comparing L2 emails and L1 emails, and they said, Oh yes, we realised the differences. Some of them, not all of them, some of them, especially those who are very attentive language users, they said we did realise some differences in the emails we wrote compared with those written by our British classmates. However, there are some psychological hurdles and some some some work that they need to do internally, but also interactively. And I think that's very important to remember. Second language users, they're not just a user of a second language. They are inherently intercultural. So they have the L1 system and the L2 system. So when the two systems, when the conflicts arise, there are some internal works that they need to do. And also sometimes it has to do with their identities too. For example, we realised and we found that for some of our participants, the reason why and this they really insisted on using the wrong I mean, not really wrong, wrong from the standard way of doing things, the wrong ways of making a request or making an apology in the in the English language is simply because they want to maintain their identity and identity of what? Identity of showing respect to their professors.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Because they never felt they are really equal to their professors and they don't really feel comfortable to call their professors by their first name. So this way, even though they were told by the professors, just call me by my first name, they will still use the first name, plus a professional title to show respect. So I think is very important for language learners as well as for academics as well, to realise that on many occasions maybe you were offended by certain awkward language use, but maybe there is a reason behind. And the students, they have a different considerations when they were drafting those emails. So that's why we found these we found these studies are very interesting and very meaningful. And also when I was talking to a colleague from the English Language Centre the other day and he was saying, Oh yeah, the Nigerian students were really asking us how should we write our emails to our professors? So people really struggle and now we think, Oh really? Something not just study the differences but also with pedagogical interventions and also some advice to students would be really helpful and nevertheless have noted that on many university websites, not for second language users but for everyone, they've started to pull together some guidelines about email etiquette.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Oh good.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah. If you read through those lines. Oh, is fascinating. So it's not just about language use, it's about a lot of things relationship, rapport, respect, and so distance, social distance. So this is fascinating. So that's all related to language use in context.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

That's really cool. I mean, the fact that you're able to see this pattern and to say, okay, so this is something we're seeing, quote on quote, in the wild, right, in the real world. And this is something that I mean, I completely agree students and professors, I think are lecturers. We don't necessarily have that same alignment with emails and what we expect in emails and things like that. And it is about education for either a native speaker even or for an L2 learner, but they have more that they're overcoming, right? So to to have that politeness or have that making sure you're following those rules, pragmatics, while you're being grammatically correct and worrying about all of that, there's just so much that they're putting out into that email.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, absolutely. And I think to remember, it's worth mentioning that these rules are not fixed. So what make things even worse, right? So this why a lot of nuances have to be negotiated in context. And so that's why we said those are the patternings, the cultural patterns. And that does not mean that you will be the same all the time is sort of like the same in the epidemic. So it doesn't mean everybody will have the symptoms to the same degree exactly the same. So culture is quite a controversial concept, I must say, because there are there are like a hundreds of definitions that have been made in relation to culture. And it has been very controversial in that for saying really, what is culture? There are national culture and organisational culture, group culture so all from layers. They all come into play in the interaction. So that's why I fully sympathise with the language learners. It's not easy to write the appropriate email to their professors. The thing is, to date, as far as I'm aware, when my colleague and I we did our studies, there were no real textbooks or any clear guidelines for our language users. So that's why most of the time the second language users, they are left to their own devices. And that's why they were reports about people feeling offended or upset or disturbed by those emails. On the other hand, the language users rarely receive the feedback. Yeah, because it's quite sensitive and most of the time maybe the professors or academics, they're focusing on the academic matters. So they wouldn't go back to the international students saying that, okay, unlike the example I gave earlier where the student was told to mind their language, but most of cases the students wouldn't know.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Yeah. So then do you have a recommendation for a language learner and how they can make sure they're learning these rules? Or how would they absorb these rules?

Dr Jiayi Wang

Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I think it's worth mentioning so whenever we set rules, maybe I'm oversimplifying it. Hopefully I'm not really making some very controversial comments. So when it comes to pragmatics and language use in context, so it's worth mentioning that it's not just about language per say about expression, but it's also about these social cultural constraints around those language use or the phrases, for example. So when students are memorising a word or a phrase, it's not just on the textbook. They really need to remember what is important is the language you use in the real world. So textbooks are not their Bible because so far I've encountered so many language users keep saying, Oh, but that's not what was being said in the textbook. But so what? So textbook doesn't mean that textbooks are always right. And how do you do is such a good example because even though it was written down as the most important British English greeting, but it's no longer used that commonly in today's, in today's communication in the UK. So this why is important. Number one, top tip number one so it's never regarding textbooks as the Bible. What is important is the language use in the real world. And of course, the second point I would really like to mention is that always observe the real language use that's happening around you, especially for those students who are studying abroad. So you are in an immersive environment. You just need to pay attention to the language use. And in I think in language acquisition, there is a quite important hypothesis, the notice hypothesis. So in order to be able to acquire a particular phrase or a particular function, you need to really notice it first. So that's why I said to my students all the time, really pay attention to the language use around you. So for example, just read the emails you've received from your professors or read the emails you receive from your British classmates. So not just looking at the textbooks all the time. So that's the second tip. I think the third tip is for everyone. I think I'm trying as well is just don't be afraid of making mistakes. It's quite hard for language learners. I know, because we can be overly critical of ourselves, but we just need to keep reminding ourselves. Language use at the end of day is about communication. So as long as the other side can understand you and the communication is successful, that's great. It's not about grammatical correctness. So if you couldn't find these words, if you can use an alternative word, that's fine. So I would say, yeah, definitely. Remember that language use is all about real life, and it's all about making sure your communication is successful. It's not just about getting a very high grade in your English language test or about writing the right answer your textbooks. So remember, real world language use is what is really matters.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Those are fantastic tips. They're so thorough. I appreciate it. Thank you. And thank you for joining us today. I appreciate you taking the time to tell us about what I think is a really cool research study in research area and really emphasising the need for pragmatics and for noticing and for absorbing what what's around you, essentially. So thank you.

Dr Jiayi Wang

Thank you. Kaitlyn. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta

Of course, we're so excited to hear about it. So in the next podcast we will be with Professor Neil Kenny, the lead fellow for Languages in the British Academy. He works with language policy. So we'll be discussing one of the central themes of the podcast, which is about reviving language learning in the UK. To find out more behind the scenes information about this topic or about our podcast in general, please visit our web page languagescientists.dmu.ac.uk. This is where you can go to ask questions, leave comments, or even participate in our current research. We would love to hear from you. So thank you for listening and thank you to De Montfort University for funding this series of the podcast. I'm Dr. Kaitlyn Zavaleta and you've been listening to the Language Scientist Podcast.