This study aims to investigate the effect that studying abroad may have on pragmatic transfer in requests, refusals, and expressions of gratitude, produced by Japanese learners of English. Twenty-two Japanese college students completed a multimedia elicitation task (MET) before and after studying in the US for one semester, together with twenty-two L1 English speakers and twenty L1 Japanese speakers as baseline data. The MET is a computer-based instrument for eliciting oral data. Unlike previous studies on pragmatic transfer, which often lack statistical evidence, this study includes statistical analysis. The analysis revealed that negative pragmatic transfer occurs within a limited range. The identified transfer includes pragmalinguistic transfer, whereby, assuming that their politeness levels are equal, learners directly translate L1 expressions into L2; and sociopragmatic transfer, whereby learners transfer L1 discourse patterns and functions. Resistance to L2 norms and increased fluency can be influencing factors. The results indicated that the effect of study-abroad is limited because most of the negative transfer which was identified before studying abroad remained after studying abroad. Thus, the necessity of explicit pragmatic instruction was proposed.

中文翻译：

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留学对语用迁移的影响

这项研究的目的是调查留学对日本英语学习者提出的要求，拒绝和感激表达可能对语用迁移产生的影响。22名日本大学生在美国学习一个学期之前和之后完成了多媒体启发任务（MET），同时还有22名母语为L1的英语使用者和20名母语为L1的日语使用者。MET是用于获取口头数据的基于计算机的工具。与以前缺乏实用证据的关于语用迁移的研究不同，本研究包括统计分析。分析表明，负面的语用迁移发生在有限的范围内。所识别的转移包括实用语言转移，因此，假设其礼貌水平相同，学习者将L1表达式直接转换为L2；和社会语用迁移，从而使学习者迁移L1话语模式和功能。抵制L2规范和提高流畅度可能是影响因素。结果表明，出国留学的效果是有限的，因为出国留学之前发现的大部分负迁移都留在了出国留学之后。因此，提出了明确实用主义教学的必要性。