Multilingual pragmatics: comparison of implicature comprehension between trilingual and bilingual speakers of English

Abstract Given the growing population of multilinguals in the current transcultural society, understanding the impact of multilingualism on linguistic development has important theoretical and practical implications. This study examined this impact in the area of pragmatics by comparing sequential trilingual and bilingual speakers in their abilities to comprehend implied meaning in their non-dominant language, English. Participants were 73 L1 Chinese speakers studying L2 English in a university in China. Of 73, 37 were studying Spanish as L3 in the university (trilingual group), while the remaining 36 had no L3 in their repertoire (bilingual group). These two groups were equal in their English proficiency and reported amount of daily English use. They completed a listening test ( k = 36) assessing comprehension of non-ironic implicature and irony in L2 English. The trilingual group showed significantly better comprehension of irony than the bilingual group, but no group difference was found in the comprehension of non-ironic implicature. A post-hoc interview data revealed that the trilingual group attended to paralinguistic cues (e.g., intonation) more often than the bilingual group when comprehending irony.