This investigation's goal was to add to the small body of research on pragmalinguistic acquisition of L2 Spanish. Specifically, it centered on the production of complaints in Spanish. Data was collected via a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) of a complaint-provoking situation presented in a website voiceboard to two non-native speaker (NNS) students groups of different proficiency levels and to a native speaker (NS) control group. The lower proficiency group was comprised of 11 NNS enrolled in a 200 level beginning/intermediate Spanish grammar class and the advanced proficiency group of 11 NNS enrolled in a 400 level advanced Spanish conversation and composition class. Neither group contained any participants who had studied abroad or lived in a Spanish-speaking country for more than 3 months. The control group consisted of 10 NSs of Spanish who were all natives or current residents of Northern Mexico. Data from the DCT was categorized into strategies which were organized into Head Acts and Supporting Moves, Deference and Solidarity Politeness systems, according to the frameworks of Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989) and Scollon and Scollon (1983), respectively. The results of the analysis revealed that all three groups of participants have overarching similarities in the use of multiple Head Acts, some used several times throughout a response, to realize a complaint and used some Supporting Moves to mitigate these Head Acts. The lower proficiency group diverged from the advanced proficiency group and NS control group in that lower proficiency students not only used a fewer total strategies and strategy types, but also preferred Head Acts and Supporting Moves that expressed discomfort or dislike over strategies that expressed criticism, or requested a solution from the listener, these being the primary strategies preferred by the advanced proficiency and control group participants. It was also found that the percentage of Supporting Moves decreased with the raise in proficiency level, also. After a discussion of the results, pedagogical implications are given based on these results to help students notice and acquire pragmalinguistcally appropriate responses to complaint-provoking situations.

Although pragmatic analyses based on empirical data have been conducted throughout most of the Spanish-speaking world, Central America remains the most underrepresented region. This study examines the pragmatic strategies used by female Spanish speakers of Nicaragua and Panama in an advice-giving context. The data consists of eighteen role-plays recorded in Masaya, Nicaragua and Panama City, Panama in June and July of 2011. In the role-play situation, the interlocutor (fixed-role) requests advice from the participant, her best friend, regarding a serious issue in her marriage. The participant's advice-giving strategies are classified according to a categorization adapted from Blum-Kulka's request strategy taxonomy. This allows for a statistical analysis of how these strategies correspond to the three elements of Spencer Oatey's rapport management approach: behavioral expectations, face sensitivities and interactional wants. The results indicate strong similarities between participants from Nicaragua and Panama, both electing to respect all components of the association principle and to violate the equity principle, especially its autonomy control component. These results suggest that, at least in this advice-giving context between intimates, both Nicaraguan and Panamanian Spanish speakers prefer to impose their opinions and suggestions rather than respect the person's right to be treated fairly (i.e. equity principle) as well as to maintain a rapport-enhancing orientation rather than preserve their right to associate with others (i.e. association principle). The results of the pragmatic analysis show similarities with other research on directives in the Spanish-speaking world, including empirical studies in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela and Spain. Specifically, these cultures are all associated with direct strategies and less mitigation, positive politeness, conventional indirectness and high involvement.

Using Spencer-Oatey's rapport management approach, the present study evaluates the interlanguage pragmatic development of 17 native English-speaking American learners over the course of a semester in Spain, specifically in terms of the strategies they used in their second language (L2) to manage rapport in an advice-giving, oral role-play situation at semester start and semester end. To allow for a more in-depth analysis of the effect that a semester abroad has on Spanish L2 advice-giving behaviors, the learners were grouped into two distinct proficiency levels. Group 1 (n=9) represents learners who entered the semester abroad with a beginning to intermediate-low proficiency level and group 2 (n=8) represents learners who entered the semester abroad with an intermediate-high proficiency level. The results indicate that both learner groups had similar overarching behavioral expectations in this context. Specifically, both sets of learners expressed empathy, involvement, and respect for the interlocutor, while at the same time they used advice-giving strategies of varied illocutionary force to claim authority in addressing the interlocutor's dilemma. Both groups also balanced face sensitivities through strategies that both enhanced and challenged the interlocutor's identity face. However, it is argued that in this context claiming authority and challenging the interlocutor's identity face were permitted behaviors that emphasized the relational goals of the participants. Additionally, when developmental differences between the two proficiency levels were analyzed, the results showed that learner proficiency had an impact on specific strategy choices.

This study examines the effect that the modality (volition, doubt, emotion, belief, knowledge, etc.) of matrix noun clauses has on the ability of intermediate (second-year) Spanish L2 students (n=56) to properly produce the subjunctive and indicative moods, the relative order in which students tend to most accurately produce the subjunctive in response to the modalities of volition, doubt, and emotion, and students' level of syntactic ability and mood development. Each participant took a test consisting of twenty questions containing various modalities intended to elicit either the subjunctive or indicative mood. Participants also filled out a questionnaire that was designed to ascertain the participants' level of formal and informal experience with Spanish. The results of this study show that a) when the subjunctive was the target response most participants favored the unmarked indicative mood significantly more than the marked subjunctive mood, b) students most accurately produced the subjunctive to the modality of volition (VL), followed by doubt (DT), and emotion (EM), which is consistent with Collentine's study, and c) students were able to process complex syntax when producing the unmarked indicative mood but not when they were prompted to produce the marked subjunctive mood. The results of this study show that pedagogical expectations regarding the acquisition of the subjunctive mood by second-year Spanish students may be unrealistic as these students were operating somewhere between the pre-syntactic and syntactic stages.