ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how speech acts can be analyzed in L2 interaction. It focuses on two areas of speech acts where findings are currently concentrated: directives (requests and direction-giving) and dispreferred responses (disagreements and refusals). Request is the most examined speech act in L2 pragmatics research. A number of studies have examined this speech act, ranging from single-moment studies using a cross-sectional design to developmental studies using a longitudinal design. Although the majority of studies have focused on the analysis of the request head act, recent studies have analyzed how learners and native speakers negotiate request sequences at the discourse level. Several studies analyzed the sequential structure of dispreferred responses in L2. A dispreferred response is generally signaled by hesitations, delays, mitigations, and various preliminary moves to preface the dispreferred social act. Using a face-to-face direction-giving task, Lee examined the sequential structure of direction-giving interactions.
