Contrastive Learner Corpus Analysis of Epistemic Modality and Interlanguage Pragmatic Competence in L2 Writing

This paper reports on a preliminary study on second language (L2) learners’ interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) development in academic written discourse by examining how epistemic modality is used by non-native speaker (NNS) writers compared with NS writers in both native speaker (NS) and NNS corpus data. This study also investigates how NNS writers gradually develop interlanguage pragmatic competence in academic writing across L2 proficiency levels. The study of epistemic modality in academic writing not only provides us valuable insights on understanding the concepts of intercultural competence and L2 acquisitional pragmatics, but it also contributes to ILP and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research and the teaching of L2 pragmatics. The findings of the study thus point to a need for cultural-sensitive curricula and explicit pragmatic instructions in writing classrooms, with an aim to emphasize the importance of acquisitional process of intercultural pragmatic competence.