The number of studies of interlanguage pragmatics has dwindled over the past decade—a result of the shift from a focus on production of elicited utterances to studies of naturally occurring sequences. However, there is always room for a thoughtful study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Walkinshaw’s book examines the development of intermediate-level Japanese English learners’ receptive and productive acquisition of appropriate disagreement strategies over a 3-month stay in New Zealand. Building on Rees-Miller’s (Reference Rees-Miller2000) definition, Walkinshaw views disagreement as a responsive act that treats a proposition by an interlocutor as untrue. Disagreements may be communicated verbally or paralinguistically, indirectly or directly, with or without mitigation.
The study, which is based on Walkinshaw’s dissertation, was conducted using two groups of learners: 12 intermediate-proficiency Japanese learners of English (JLE) who had just arrived in New Zealand, and 2 intermediate-proficiency JLEs who had resided in New Zealand for over 3 months. Ten native speakers of English served as a control group for all the tasks. Using 18 video clips (5–10 s each) from local television programs, Walkinshaw examined how well participants were able to identify disagreements at various levels of directness. Participants also identified nonverbal disagreeing devices, disagreement seriousness, and disagreement politeness level. Additionally, Walkinshaw used discourse completion tasks and, for the 2 JLEs who had been in residence for a longer period of time, role-plays with the researcher to evaluate learners’ ability to produce disagreements. Learners’ length of utterance (written or spoken) and directness of disagreement strategy were contrasted with data from the control group. Level of directness of disagreement strategies was determined using Brown and Levinson’s (Reference Brown, Levinson and Goody1978) strategies for performing face-threatening acts, supplemented by Scott’s (Reference Scott2002) patterns of disagreement, which resulted in a rather broad interpretation of disagreement. This interpretation encompassed responses to statements of fact and assessments or expressions of personal taste as well as rejections of criticisms and accusations in which the disputable was implied or implicated.
After 10 weeks, using the same tasks, Walkinshaw assessed how much the two groups’ receptive and productive abilities had changed. Examination of changes in learner judgment, length of written or oral response, and directness of strategy over a 3-month period revealed slight improvements in learners’ ability to identify disagreements, with the greatest improvement in recognition of implied disagreements and some improvement in assessment of situational severity. However, although learners’ assessments of politeness in situations of high social distance or power equality shifted, they did not approach those of native-speaker controls. Walkinshaw also identified a tendency for participants to apply new speech act strategies to interactions with strangers but a disinclination to attempt them with people they knew.
Walkinshaw was diligent in working to eliminate as many sources of bias as possible. However, as with any study of this scope, problems arose. Some were inherent in, or at least unfortunate consequences of, the design (e.g., loss of almost half the original participants by the time of the posttest, repetition of the same tasks as pretest and posttest, and deletion of two of the judgment tasks). These were acknowledged by Walkinshaw. At the same time, even though Walkinshaw discussed the reasons for including data on role-plays by 2 students of comparable proficiency from a different population, the question arises as to whether the newly arrived learners were insufficiently fluent to participate in the role-play, leaving the reader to speculate on the validity of the instrument used to assess proficiency. A more serious concern stems from the lack of mention of interrater verification of the coding of the production data, or the inclusion of representative coded examples. A final, less critical, but irritating concern is the book’s index, which is unnuanced and essentially unhelpful.
Despite these concerns, Walkinshaw’s study, with its focus on lower level learners and scrupulous attention to task design, provides a significant contribution to the literature on learner development of pragmatic ability. Researchers interested in studies of speech acts, in general, and disagreement, in particular, will find it a welcome addition to their library.
