Un’indagine sulla consapevolezza metapragmatica di parlanti plurilingui

In this paper we present the results of a small-scale study which is part of a larger cross-cultural pragmatics research project on the speech act of refusal. The present work aims at investigating whether, and to what extent, plurilingual speakers develop metapragmatic awareness as a consequence of being in contact with more than one pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic environment. Sixty-one plurilingual speakers were administered a Discourse Completion Task on refusals. Immediately after, they were interviewed to elicit their perceptions about differences and similarities in the refusing behaviour among the languages of their repertoire. They were then assessed in terms of metapragmatic awareness on the basis of a three-point scale, and the results were analysed in relation to each informant’s length of residence in a country other than theirs.