How do learners use a second language? How do they acquire the conventions of use of the target language (L2)? And how may pragmatic competence in an L2 be taught? Such have been the questions guiding interlanguage pragmatic research in the roughly thirty years of its existence. Succinctly put, research in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) is, and has been, concerned with, as Kasper & Rose (Reference Kasper and Rose1999: 81) put it, ‘. . .the study of non-native speakers’ use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge. . .’.

The present timeline is historical. It traces the path which ILP has taken on its way to tackling these questions by focusing on the key research and benchmark publications which have advanced the field. While the timeline therefore necessarily includes many less recent publications that have shaped the field, it also highlights the position in which ILP finds itself today (cf. also Kasper Reference Kasper2007, Reference Kasper, Ritchie and Bhatia2009, Reference Kasper and Cummings2010a, Reference Kasper, Fried, Östman and Veschuerenb; Alcón Soler & Martínez-Flor Reference Alcón Soler, Martínez-Flor, Alcón Soler and Martínez-Flor2008; Bardovi-Harlig Reference Bardovi-Harlig and Trosborg2010; Taguchi Reference Taguchi and Trosborg2010 for recent overviews). The following four themes dictate the structure of the overview:

A Use and acquisition

1. 1 Operationalisation of pragmatic competence: Focus on production

2. 2 Development of pragmatic competence: Focus on production

3. 3 Transfer

4. 4 Relationship between grammatical and pragmatic competence

5. 5 Role of routines in use and acquisition

6. 6 Influence of context

B Pedagogy

1. 1 Pragmatic instruction

2. 2 Testing

3. 3 Teaching materials

C Social-affective factors

D Appropriateness of an L2 pragmatic norm for learners

The rightmost column in the timeline shows which themes are referenced in each particular study.

The first theme (A) is use and acquisition, the core of ILP. The six sub-topics listed are the issues that have dominated and continue to dominate the discussion. A prominent feature of ILP research has, for instance, been the almost routine operationalisation of pragmatic competence on the level of the speech act, and primarily on the level of the individual speech act in isolation. The publications chosen for the sub-theme A1 are those which have showed new directions in operationalisation, via, for instance, a focus on the pragmalinguistic resources for realising illocutions, on speech act sequences or on discourse structure. The second sub-theme (A2), the development of pragmatic competence, traces the sluggish beginnings of research on acquisition in ILP. Indeed, ILP was long characterised by a focus on use rather than acquisition, but recent years have seen progress in this area. Both of these initial sub-themes (A1 and A2) focus on learner production only, given the constraints of the present overview and the fact that the focus of ILP research has been primarily on production rather than on comprehension (see, for example, Kasper Reference Kasper2007, Reference Kasper, Fried, Östman and Veschueren2010b: 141–143 for a brief overview of pragmatic comprehension focusing on both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic issues).

The second theme (B) is dedicated to pedagogy, reflecting recent advances in how learners can be taught to ‘do things with words’ in an L2 (Austin Reference Austin1962) and how such knowledge can, in turn, be tested. The final two topics trace the research on issues which have been gaining in importance, namely the effect of social-affective factors on the use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic competence (C) and the appropriateness of proposing and employing an L2 native speaker pragmatic norm for learners. While the issue of norms has been discussed in the literature to some degree since the mid-1990s, research on the effect of individual factors is currently in its infancy, despite its firm place in research in second language acquisition (SLA). However, judging from the recent and recurring calls for such research and also the initial awakenings in the area, it would seem to be a research area with much potential.