Investigating the negative impact of pragmatic transfer on the acquisition of English pragmatic as perceived by L2 Learners: A review

Pragmatics is a basic and vital part of dialect capacity all together for L2 learners to comprehend and be comprehended in their communications with native speakers (NSs). This study aims to identify pragmatics and pragmatic transfer, and to make an overview about the relation between pragmatic transfer and language acquisition. One of the main results that are demonstrated from this study is that there are several observed factors that play a significant role in the pragmatics competency such as; grammatical competence, input factors and instructions. The study results also indicated that the negative pragmatic transfer occurs usually when the L2 learners erroneously generalized to L2 context from pragmatic knowledge of Ll. Negative transfer may prompt miscommunication but not always. This sort of transfer is called negative, not as a result of its negative impact on the success of communication, but since it includes an unjustified generalization from pragmatic knowledge of L1 to a communicative circumstance in L2. The study recommended for more investigations into this topic and specially, in non-basic viewpoints, including negative pragmatic transfer.


INTRODUCTION
Recently, linguists in general and specifically second language (L2) researchers have concerned in their analysis about the pragmatic transfer and its consequence on the second language acquisition (SLA).Since language is the main tool utilized in expressing feelings, building relations, and stamp social separation, the objective of dialect learning and teaching is never again constrained to the understanding of the L2 dictionary, phonology, language structure and syntax, yet incorporates the L2 pragmatics acquisition.Pragmatics is worried about the ability to comprehend the speakers' aim, in order to easily connect and interact with foreign language speakers utilizing the suitable shapes of language to particular contexts (Kim, 2007).The capability to utilize the linguistic pragmatic knowledge suitably in the given socio-cultural setting is a fundamental necessity.Consequently, pragmatics is a basic and vital part of dialect capacity all together for L2 learners to comprehend and be comprehended in their communications with native speakers (NSs) (Jung, 2005;Allami et al., 2011).
The absence of pragmatic awareness could be a serious cause of miscommunication or correspondence failure.Additionally, in accordance to Thomas (1983) pragmatic failure term prompts undesirable learners' judgments as having terrible behavior or bad demeanor.In other words, though learners who have syntactic and grammatical mistakes in their language appear to be viewed as inproficient language user, the individuals who misuse dialect in a culturally and socially proper way (pragmatic transfer) may seem aggressive, discourteous or even impolite (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 1991;DeKeyser, 2005).
Thus, keeping in mind the end goal to turn into a really fluent second language user, it is of essential significance to investigate the negative impacts of pragmatic transfer on the acquisition of second languages learners, so that he or she can recognize those impacts and mitigate it in a way that he /she can be a proficient second language user with grammatical competence as well as pragmatic competence.

Research objectives
In light of the requirement for more research on acquisitioned pragmatics, this paper endeavors to: (1) Identify pragmatics and pragmatic transfer.
(2) Make an overview about the relation between pragmatic transfer and language acquisition.
(3) Introduce some of the major factors that had a significant role in the language pragmatic acquisition and pragmatic competency.(4) Conceptualize the possible negative impact of pragmatic transfer on the acquisition of English pragmatic.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The importance of research methodologies lies in its ability to highlight and give essential training in the arrangement and collection of material in a way that can be recognized in an easy way (Saunders, 2011).This research is based on a descriptive methodology, in which the researcher tends to review previous studies and literature that will help in identifying negative impact of pragmatic transfer on the acquisition of English pragmatic as perceived by L2 learners.Primary data will be collected from the literature, related studies, cases and investigations which will help in identifying this impact by presenting different illustrative examples of socio-pragmatic and pragma-linguistic failures in a manner that helped the researcher to put her results and draw conclusion about it.

Pragmatics and pragmatic transfer
Pragmatics is from the Greek term "pragma" which means acting, activity and action.Pragmatics is "the study of acting by means of language, of doing things with words" (e.g., refusing, persuading, and apologizing) (Kasper, 1989: 39).Pragmatics for the most part clarifies how individuals make and comprehend implications that can be determined just by going past the strict elucidation of signs (LoCastro, 2003).A meaning of "pragmatics" has been endeavored by Crystal (1985), Mey (1993) and Levinson (1983) among others.Pragmatics was introduced by Levinson(1983) in different viewpoints on pragmatics and he discussed it in many conceivable definitions in light of context highlights, parts of importance, felicity/ appropriateness conditions, dialect understanding in context, and dialect phenomena, for example, speech structure, implicature, deixis, presupposition, discourse acts, and speech structure.(Crystal, 1985) has followed a similar method in putting his definition to pragmatics, stressing on the idea that pragmatics meaning is made in the association amongst listener and speaker, a dynamic procedure that is affected by the phonetic structures and different context's properties.He also characterizes pragmatics as the investigation of language from the perspective of users, particularly of the decisions they make, the limitations they experience in utilizing dialect in social and cultural communication and the impacts their utilization of dialect has on different members in the demonstration of correspondence.Moreover, (Mey, 1993) for the most part follows Levinson in his definition; however, he had focused in his definition on the concept of pragmatics as the investigation of language that is used for communication and interaction.At all, pragmatics from his perspective is worried about how conversationalists utilize dialect to accomplish individual objectives inside a societal structure (Kim, 2007).
As shown previously, pragmatics was characterized in different means by various linguists, however its quintessence remains the same, which is the investigation of dialect utilize and its appropriateness.So as a general meaning of it, it could be recognized as the investigation of dialect from the perspective of users, particularly of the decisions they make, the limitations they experience in utilizing dialect in social and cultural communication and the impacts their utilization of dialect has on different members in the act of correspondence.
The pragmatic transfer phenomenon that is introduced in inter-language pragmatics has gotten expanded consideration and has been researched by various connected linguists and educators of EFL/ ESL.Based on the fact that researchers differ about how to characterize the pragmatics' scope (Kasper, 1992); therefore the existing meanings of pragmatics transfer vary in accordance to analysts' posture.Starting with, Olshtain (1983) definition which alludes to pragmatics transfer as the strategy of learners in integrating based components of native language in the production of target dialect.Moreover, (Beebe et al., 1990) characterize pragmatic transfer as exchange of the first language (L1) sociocultural fitness in performing second language (L2) discourse acts or some other parts of L2 discussion where the speaker is endeavoring to accomplish a specific capacity of dialect.The definition offered by Kasper (1992) is more common as she characterizes pragmatic transfer as the impact that preceding knowledge of pragmatic has on the utilization and acquisition of L2 pragmatic learning.In accordance to this, pragmatic transfer in inter-language pragmatics should allude to the impact applied by learners' pragmatic knowledge of cultures and dialects other than L2 on their understanding, learning and production of L2 pragmatic information (Rubai'ey, 2016).
Pragmatic transfer is one of the primary subjects of researches on L2 pragmatic.L2 pragmatics is identified as "inter-language pragmatics" (ILP) in a similarity with inter-language grammar or phonology in view of SLA (Kasper, 2009).Several analyses have demonstrated that second dialect learners tend to exchange the sociolinguistic standards of their native dialect while associating with native speakers of the objective dialect.In this manner, investigations and researches on L2 learners' comprehension of target dialect discourse acts have reinforced the knowledge that pragmatic transfer is a critical origin and wellspring of diverse correspondence breakdown and cross-cultural interaction (Kim, 2007).

Pragmatic transfer and language acquisition
The order of acquisition in pragmatic transfer development is not commonly known due to an obvious absence of longitudinal researches in this field.However, some researches have guaranteed that at a full scale level, the acquisition of L2 speech form work mapping for the most part goes before the acquisition of the L2 sociocultural standards required choosing which speech form and context is more appropriate and functional in a specific situation (Jung, 2005).It was found that English learners from Cantonese-speaking individuals demonstrated little situational variety in discourse act execution, showing the priority of pragma-linguistics over socio-pragmatics in the beginning periods of pragmatic transfer development (Rose, 2000).Moreover, it was reported that the advanced learners of (Edmondson and House, 1991) could verbalize their discourse act yet at the same time were uncertain about the suitability of these structures with the context and the unique circumstance.Also, in (Scarcella's, 1979) investigation of utilization of English politeness approaches by Arabic learners', their acquisition of politeness forms went before their acquisition of the sociolinguistic principles controlling the utilization and appropriation of these structures (Jung, 2005).
This outline is equivalent to the discoveries of a few longitudinal researches that investigated early L2 pragmatic transfer and acquisition development.At first, learners depend on a couple of pre-designed routines as unanalyzed wholes, however, they progressively evaluate and utilize these routines all the more successfully after some time to meet distinctive social objectives in different settings.On the other side, (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford's, 1993) longitudinal examination reveals an alternate finding, in which they investigate rejections and suggestions utilized by elite ESL learners in scholarly guiding sessions.It was shown in their outcomes that, despite the fact that the learners all the more nearly approximated the NS standards for suitable discourse act decision after some time (i.e., less rejections and more suggestions); they were unsuccessful in utilizing fitting structures to understand the selected discourse acts such as fewer rejections with less mitigates.So, related to Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, micro level of pragmatic competence requires longer time from learners in order to be acquired, and, consequently, what they require at a later phase of advancement is calibrating or in other words fine tuning.
Moreover, it appears to be likely that learners acquire the utilization of articulations that have obscure illocutionary implications in their future pragmatic acquisition.Exceptionally circuitous, nuanced pragmatic structures, for example, those required for refusing and rejecting (Beebe et al., 1990) or when indicating to suggest negative assessment (Bouton, , 1999) require more costly processes.In this manner, such off-record discourse acts might be harder to be acquired (Jung, 2005).Indeed, Hill (1997) reported that Japanese learners of English utilized extensively less hints than what NSs did in requesting process, and demonstrated no improvement with the passage of time.It was also found by Kärkkäinen (1992) that non-routinized, certain articulations of methodology were harder to get for Finnish learners of English than routinized modular, clear articulations.This is due to the reason that such implied markings of a speaker's viewpoint have the possibility of non-understanding and acquiring, making it difficult to determine their pragmatic functions.According to this, it is obvious that the acquisition process of pragmatic for L2 learners is affected by several factors that had a significant role in the language pragmatic acquisition and pragmatic competency.

Factors affecting the language pragmatic acquisition and the pragmatic competency
There are several observed factors that play a significant role in the competency of language pragmatic acquisition; those factors are (Jung, 2005): (i) Grammatical competence: A standout amongst the most reliable discoveries in L2 pragmatic examinations is that great level of grammatical competence doesn't guarantee similarly abnormal level of pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999).However, according to Bisshop's (1996) and Eisenstein and Bodman's (1986) studies, a grammatical competence in a minimal level appears to be fundamental.The largest numbers of studies that have investigated the correlation amongst pragmatic and grammatical competence indicate higher capability learners to be commonly better at making implications utilizing discourse act techniques, and understanding illocutionary force (Koike, 1996).To sum up with, the literature shows two commonly recognized claims about the linkage between pragmatic competence and grammatical competence: (1) grammatical competence is not an adequate condition for pragmatic competence; but, (2) it is an essential condition for pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig, 2009).(ii) Input factors: Learning will never happen if there is no input.With regards to the learning of pragmatics, input turns out to be much more basic and essential.According to Kasper and Schmidt (1996), pragmatic by its definition is highly sensitive to the sociocultural highlights of a context.Consequently, it is not amazing that the most numbers of L2 pragmatic studies emphasize that the contexts of second dialect learning give wealthier contribution and input than the contexts of foreign dialect learning and according to this they are more helpful for creating pragmatic ability and competency.Takahashi and Beebe's (1987) examination shows that the measure of negative transfer was more noteworthy with Japanese EFL than ESL learners.It was demonstrated by Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) that their Hungarian EFL gather identified more grammatical blunders and supposed them to be more serious than pragmatic mistakes, while their ESL gathering recognized more pragmatic mistakes and appraised them as more serious than grammatical mistakes.At all, researches have recommended that second dialect learning contexts give both quantitatively and subjectively wealthier input than foreign dialect learning settings and that learners tend to make slow merging to NS pragmatic conduct as their length of residence increments.However, it is debatable that whether living in the objective community really prompts learner's admission of input, because of an absence of studies which take after this particular line of request.(iii) Instruction: There is empowering proof for the openness to instruction of pragmatics.Various investigations have detailed that L2 pragmatics improvement benefits from instructions in different ways: discourse acts, pragmatic fluency, conversational administration and conversational implicatures (Rose and Ng, 2001).
In general, the investigations that address educational intercessions for instructing pragmatics can be classified Meznah 21 into two general instructing approaches: implicit versus explicit instructing.Driven by Schmidt's (1993) ideas of the role of awareness and understanding of-the-gap, implicit educating includes awareness raising exercises, that is, introducing prototypical employments of the thing in significant and meaningful contexts with or without input improvement (to enable learners to see important input).The basic presumption is that if learners are urged to think about socially fitting routes to perform discourse acts, at that point these learners will turn out to be more aware about their own lay capacities for pragmatic analysis.Consequently, in this type of instructing of pragmatics, the accomplishment of instruction may rely upon how well it raises the s consciousness of learners of the tenets for proper L2 utilize.However, explicit educating, for the most part includes giving unequivocal meta-pragmatic data about L2 rules over clarifications, metacognitive dialogs and remedial feedback (LoCastro, 2001).

Negative impact of pragmatic transfer on the acquisition of English pragmatic
Linguistics worries, in general, with the static structures inside a dialect framework.Noticed from the target language (TL) grammatical standards, certain native language (NL)-based phonetic exchanges are found to agree with linguistic mistakes.Along these lines, NLbased linguistic transfers are partitioned into two wide composes, positive and negative.Those NL-based utilizations that don't prompt linguistic mistakes are marked as positive transfer, though those that prompt blunders, negative transfer.In second dialect classroom educating, a positive pragmatic transfer is not attacked in general, but rather a negative pragmatic transfer, nearly for all teachers, is absolutely not preferred for the learners, since it is mistaken (Liu, 2001).Pragmatic transfer can have negative or positive impacts on learners' utilization of L2.Positive transfer prompts fruitful correspondence, while negative transfer may prompt defective usage in L2, that is, L2 speakers' utilization of discourse acts, semantic formulations, or phonetic structures (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001).Negative type of transferring brings about mistakes, miscomprehension, underproduction and overproduction.It can make divergence between the conduct of non-native and native speakers of a dialect.However, the positive transfer gives encouraging consequences for acquisition because of the impact of cross-linguistic likenesses.Thus, it brings about a merging of practices of non-native and native speakers of a dialect.In accordance to this distinction in the literature of pragmatic transfer, Kasper (1992) characterizes two sorts of pragmatic transfer: positive and negative transfer.Positive pragmatic transfer happens when a dialect learners prevails with regards to accomplishing his/her planned message because of exchanging a dialect particular tradition of use shared by L1 and L2 (Kasper, 1992).On the other hand, negative transfer is the improper exchange of local sociolinguistic standards and traditions of discourse into the objective dialect.
Negative pragmatic transfer occurs usually when the L2 learners erroneously generalized to L2 context from pragmatic knowledge of Ll.Negative transfer may prompt miscommunication but not always.This sort of transfer is called negative, not as a result of its negative impact on the success of communication, but since it includes an unjustified generalization from pragmatic knowledge of L1 to a communicative circumstance in L2.This negative transfer in this way prompts imperfect proficiency and competence in L2, yet this imperfect capability does not really cause failure in communication.For instance, if native speakers of L2 understand that a non-native speaker's pragmatic learning of L2 is (or is probably going to be) defective, they may offer allowances, so they may expect something like: the second language speakers (nonnative) are not being impolite; they just do not realize that this kind of answer isn't fitting in natives' culture (Žegarac and Pennington, 2000).
The precarious thing about negative and positive transfer is that it isn't a given that contrasts between two dialects and societies in the region of pragmatics will prompt trouble.It relies upon various variables.The nonnative speakers (NNSs) may have been explicitly educated the pragmatics and therefore are aware of the distinctions.Moreover, while they might not have been instructed the distinctions, they may have some way or another made sense of them for themselves, regardless of whether using media or by method for extreme inspiration.There can be different reasons too for why the NNSs' pragmatic conduct does not encroach upon NS standards.What's more, the particular pragmatic conduct may encroach upon NS standards, yet the NSs permit a wide range of pragmatic impropriety given that this behavior is created by a NNS.Then again, there are the various situations where infringement of the standard are both seen and adversely gotten, bringing about pragmatic disappointment.In those cases, it is then a matter of what the NS reaction will be-regardless of whether to reject the conduct as justifiable and inconsequential, or infuriating, irritating, and a reason for social friction.The primary issue in those cases is that the NSs don't really impart their irritation to the NNSs (Wyner and Cohen, 2015).
Studies that concern about negative pragmatic transfer and pragmatic failures, for example, revealed another piece of learning troubles, as well as apparently the more troublesome part, in light of the fact that a pragmatic failure can be checked just in culturally diverse connections.In accordance to Thomas (1983), negative pragmatic transfer is highly destructive in communication.This suggests more consideration ought to be laid on the investigation of transfer along this course, and that is the reason Kasper (1992) called for more investigations into in non-basic viewpoints, including negative pragmatic transfer.

Pragma-linguistics and socio-pragmatic failure illustrative examples
Several examples on the pragma-linguistics and sociopragmatic transfer and their negative impacts on the Acquisition of L2 learners have been demonstrated in previous literature and past studies.Such an example of socio-pragmatic failure is what was demonstrated by Liu (2001) study in which he reviewed related literature about pragmatic transfer effect on L2 Chinese learners' acquisition.It was noted that Chinese learners sometimes refer to their Chinese habits in understanding a proposed meaning in an utterance or in noting the factors and rules for a TL's social situation.For an example, if a student helped the lecturer in cleaning the class board, the lecturer would usually say "thank you" to the student.But Chinese students rather than replying by the statement "My pleasure", as NSs normally say in this situation, they would frequently reply by: "It"s my duty".This shows the students" relying on the Chinese situation where it is usually all right for Chinese people to say "应 该的"(Ying gai de) which translated in English into "It's my duty".So Chinese people would often fail in realizing that the statement "It is my duty" in English, is also implying an obligation instead of a volunteer help or a making a favor for someone.Liu (2001) have demonstrated another example for pragma-linguistic failure executed by Chinese learners also, which is their use of the statement "never mind" in replying to the statement "Thanks a lot, that's a great help".This reply is due to their language in which they usually say "没关系"(Mei guan xi) or "不用谢"(Bu yong xie) in reply to "Thank you" which is translated into "never mind" in English.However, the expressions "you are welcome" and "Not at all" are the most proper status to be replied by, which is expressed by "没关系"(Mei guan xi) in Chinese.But Chinese learners cannot differentiate and do not have a full understanding about the proper acquisition of English pragmatics, due to their mothertongue influence, which leads to their misuse and failing in pragmatically transferring these expressions interchangeably.
Another case for negative pragma-linguistic transfer have been displayed by Richards & Sukwiwat (1983: 116), in which they mention that Japanese learners (JE) also face the same failures in English pragmatic transfer , mentioning the situation that they need to express their gratitude to a NS (E) in English so they may usually go as in the following: E: Look what I've got for you! (Maybe a gift) JE: Oh! I'm sorry (Japanese get used to say this referring to their language as long as the expression thank you does not sound sincere enough for them) E: why sorry?
According to this situation, English NSs would not understand what Japanese language thoughts and practices and they would think that he/she is apologizing for something causing failure in pragma linguistic transfer.
However, Bou et al. (1995) observed that in three gathering interviews between English NSs and two Spanish students of English at a middle level, the 20 learners never utilized the speech markers (I mean, so and you know), despite the fact that the NSs usually utilized them.However, students had no trouble in deciphering them and even code changed to their L1 to show a portion of the function they express.In any case, , in spite of the fact that their level of English ought to have enabled them to utilize them in English , it is unclear that this instance of avoidance is an outcome of L1 impact , since no investigation was directed on students' observations, preparing or different elements that could have repressed their utilization.On the other hand, students had no trouble in utilizing (But& and) as discussion markers.Because of the functional and formal equivalence of these structures in Spanish and English (Bou et al., 1995) noted that this could be because of positive transfer or facilitative.But, for the negative impact of the pragmatic transfer, Garcés (1995) noted that Spanish learners of English (SE) could make a linguistic failure in acquisition of invitation to a party mad by a NSs of English (E) as shown in the following interaction: E: will you be coming to my party on Saturday?SE: Well E: Well What?Also as another example of negative pragma linguistic transfer, Wolfson (1981) has indicated that some of her nonnative informants had difficulties in utilizing correctly and recognizing between some specific expressions such as "we must have lunch together some time" or "let's do lunch" which are belonged to native American's list of leave-taking expressions alongside with "take care", "so on" and "see you".Instead of understanding these expressions as invitations for lunch by those nonnative informants, they would feel annoyed due to the obvious dishonesty of their American colleagues who never really invite them.
Along these lines, it seems clear that most studies investigate the negative acquisition of pragmatic transfer since it is firmly connected and contributed to the presentation of self, to the picture of people that they would like to impart it to others and be shown probably in it.As Thomas (1983: 111) argues "pragmatic failure ... often passes unchecked by the teacher or, worse, it is attributed to some other cause, such as rudeness, and the student is criticized accordingly".

RESULTS
Based on the previous reviewed studies and literature it was strongly shown that the capability to utilize the linguistic pragmatic knowledge suitably in the given socio-cultural setting is a fundamental necessity.Also, the absence of pragmatic knowledge could be a serious cause of miscommunication or correspondence failure.Additionally, in accordance to Thomas (1983) pragmatic failure term prompts undesirable learners' judgments as having terrible behavior or bad demeanor.As Thomas (1983) pointed out, a pragmatic failure is more destructive in communication.This suggests that more consideration ought to be laid on the investigation of pragmatic transfer along this direction, and that is the reason Kasper (1992) called for more researches on the acquisition of nonnative speakers pragmatic transfer aspects, including negative pragmatic transfer.

Conclusion
The competence to utilize the linguistic pragmatic knowledge suitably in the given socio-cultural setting is a fundamental necessity.Consequently, pragmatics is a basic and vital part of dialect capacity all together for L2 learners to comprehend and be comprehended in their communications with native speakers (NSs).Pragmatics is worried about the ability to comprehend the speakers' aim, in order to easily connect and interact with foreign language speakers utilizing the suitable shapes of language to particular contexts.So, this paper has reviewed different aspects of pragmatic and pragmatic transfer, make an overview about the relation between pragmatic transfer and language acquisition and finally introduce some of literature review and illustrative cases about negative impact of pragmatic transfer on the acquisition of English pragmatic which was agreed that the most prominent effects of this pragmatic transfer are destructive linguistic mistakes, miscomprehension, miscommunication, underproduction and overproduction.

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
The author has not declared any conflict of interests.

pragmatics:
A research agenda for