11 Context and L2 Users’ Pragmatic Development Jean-Marc Dewaele Birkbeck, University of London Introduction The immigrant starting a new life in a new language is usually prepared for a culture shock. However, the shock may come from an unexpected corner. Linguistic skills in the new language may have been learnt at school in the home country, and the immigrant may have been the best student in the language class, and may therefore be quietly confident in his/her capacity to communicate, but the brutal immersion in authentic interactions in that second language (L2) may suddenly reveal unexpected problems. Jemma, a 22-year-old student who filled out our questionnaire on bilingualism and emotions (Dewaele and Pavlenko 2001) wrote the following comment con- cerning her study abroad experience and her gradual acquisition of pragmatic competence in German through social interaction: Jemma (English L1, French L2, German L3): During my year in Germany I felt for the first few months that I had completely lost my identity. I was slow to understand, I could not express precisely what I meant and could not shape my verbal persona nor could I make jokes or entertaining remarks as I had no shared frame of context. I felt alienated and painfully frustrated and became very depressed. By the time I had finished my year however, I had sufficient command of the language to express myself and my character, to make jokes and even use comic catchphrases. Crystal defines pragmatics as ‘the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication’ (1997: 301). Jemma provides us with exactly that point of view of the L2 user (cf. Cook 2002a). Her feeling of rage arose from the lack of choices offered to her in her new language, her lack of ability to control the effect of her language on others, and the false projection of self because of this pragmatic handicap. She April 3, 2007 14:45 MAC/LLTS Page-163 0230_517005_14_cha11 163