The DOI matches its Crossref record, with a small difference in title or year; 32 of the 34 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
“I’m sorry I don’t agree with you”: Can we teach nonnative students pragmatic competence when expressing disagreement?
Abstract
Disagreement has been relatively less studied than other speech acts such as requests or compliments, especially as produced by nonnative speakers of English. The present study aims to analyze the production of disagreement by an international group of Master students who use English as lingua franca in an online collaborative project. More specifically, the study tries to answer the following research questions: (1) does linguistic proficiency entail pragmatic competence? and (2), what is the effect of explicit instruction on pragmatic competence? To this purpose, two subcorpora (prior to and post instruction) were gathered by means of two online collaborative activities, rendering a total of 25,347 words. The analysis of the data reveals that high linguistic proficiency plays a crucial role in pragmatic competence. On the other hand, explicit instruction seems to benefit students to different extents, with intermediate B1 students improving their expression of disagreement and lower level students still remaining far from pragmatic and linguistic competence.
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“This observation supports Maíz-Arévalo's (2014) claim that since the verb is introduced in the early stages of the L2 learning process, it is far more frequently adopted by L2 learners than other hedges, such as modal verbs, whose appropriate usage is relatively unfamiliar or (more) challenging.”
From 'Sorry, I don't good English': Japanese L2 students' written peer feedback in the face-to-face and anonymous review modes (2023) · cites this paper as Maíz-Arévalo's (2014)
Citations
Cites
Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage
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Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes
Pomerantz, A. (1985) · Structures of Social Action · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511665868.008 · Cited by 2,905
Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts
Lakoff, G. (1973) · Journal of Philosophical Logic · doi:10.1007/bf00262952 · Cited by 1,443
Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics
Rasmussen, G. (1997) · Journal of Pragmatics · doi:10.1016/s0378-2166(97)84203-8 · Cited by 1,008
Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures
Spencer‐Oatey, H. (2004) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 768
Bardovi‐Harlig, K. (1999) · Language Learning · doi:10.1111/0023-8333.00105 · Cited by 434
Politeness Phenomena in England And Greece
Sifianou, M. (1992) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198239727.001.0001 · Cited by 365
Power and Politeness in Action: Disagreements in Oral Communication
Locher, M. A. (2004) · Mouton eBooks · doi:10.1515/9783110926552 · Cited by 344
Disagreement and concession in disputes: On the context sensitivity of preference structures
Kotthoff, H. (1993) · Language in Society · doi:10.1017/s0047404500017103 · Cited by 342
(2008) · Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language--TESL-EJ · Cited by 256
Research works printed but not linked: 10
- Al Khatib, 2006, The pragmatics of invitation making and acceptance in Jordanian society, Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5, 272
- Bardovi-Harlig, 2004, The organization of turns in the disagreements of L2 learners: A longitudinal perspective, 199
- Bond, 2000, Culture as an explanatory variable: Problems and possibilities, 293
- Díaz Pérez, 2003, La cortesía verbal en inglés y en español: Actos de habla y pragmática intercultural
- Grimshaw, 1990, Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations in conversations
- Kakavá, 1993, Negotiation of disagreement by Greeks in conversations and classroom discourse
- Lawson, 2009, From the classroom to the bar-room: Expressions of disagreement by Japanese speakers of English
- Liang, 2005, A contrastive study on disagreement strategies for politeness between American English & Mandarin Chinese, Asian EFL Journal, 7, 1
- Santamaría-García, 2006, La negociación de acuerdo en la conversación coloquial: Estudio contrastivo español-inglés
- Tannen, 1994, The relativity of linguistic strategies: Rethinking power and solidarity in gender and dominance, 19
Cited by
Kim, S. (2023) · Journal of Writing Research · doi:10.17239/jowr-2023.15.02.02 · Cited by 6
Cultural meaning-making in challenging interactions in L2 Spanish: language teachers’ perceptions
Czerwionka, L., & Mugford, G. E. (2020) · Journal of Spanish Language Teaching · doi:10.1080/23247797.2020.1847409 · Cited by 5
Rahmani, P., Ebadi, S., & Eslami, Z. R. (2025) · Computer Assisted Language Learning · doi:10.1080/09588221.2025.2472062 · Cited by 4
Halenko, N., & Flores-Salgado, E. (2020) · CLOK (University of Central Lancashire) · Cited by 2
Metadata
- Authors
- Maíz-Arévalo, C.
- Affiliations
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
- ORCID
- Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
- Venue
- Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
- Publisher
- John Benjamins Publishing Company
- Published
- 2014-12-08
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 433-453
- ISSN
- 0213-2028 (ISSN-L)
- 2254-6774
- OpenAlex
- W2041829750
- Cited by
- 3
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistics and Language Analysis
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Keywords
- disagreement, speech acts, pragmatic competence, language proficiency, English as a lingua franca, explicit instruction, non-native English speakers, online collaborative writing, international students, B1 level
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: “I’m sorry I don’t agree with you”: Can we teach nonnative students pragmatic competence when expressing disagreement? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1075/resla.27.2.09mai
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- Maíz-Arévalo, C. (2014). “I’m sorry I don’t agree with you”: Can we teach nonnative students pragmatic competence when expressing disagreement? Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.27.2.09mai
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
