This chapter addresses the question of how recognition relates to production in the acquisition of second language pragmatics. It adopts a rather narrow focus to investigate how learners' recognition of formulas relates to their use of the same formulas in written production tasks.

Literature on interlanguage pragmatics often appeals to formulas. The term formula has at least three uses in interlanguage pragmatics: one which describes a stage of the acquisition process, one which describes the end point, or target, and one which describes components of a speech act, or semantic formulas (Bardovi-Harlig, 2006b). In this chapter I investigate the second type, target (or social) formulas. Most definitions of formulas describe them as multimorphemic expressions that are stored and retrieved as a single lexical unit. Definitions of social formulas predictably also include conditions of use. Coulmas (1981: 1–17) offers a classic definition of formulas as 'highly conventionalized prepatterned expressions whose occurrence is tied to more or less standardized communication situations'. Myles et al. (1998) describe formulas as being situationally dependent and community-wide in use.

House (1996: 227–228) describes the importance of formulas in second language learning: 'From a sociolinguistic point of view, it is important to learn routines at any learning stage because they embody the societal knowledge that members of a given community share ...routine formulas are thus essential in the verbal handling of everyday life'. Roever (2005) identifies the knowledge of formulas as part of pragmalinguistic knowledge, the linguistic resources to express pragmatic functions. (See also Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; for overviews of the role of formulas in acquisition more broadly, see Weinert, 1995; Wray & Perkins, 2000.)