Your English is fucked up, man. A study of classroom breaches of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence in Norwegian, upper secondary learners of L2 English

Abstract

The present text presents an investigation of the pragmatic and sociolinguistic transgressions made by three groups of Norwegian, upper secondary level 2 (VG2) EFL learners, along with their teachers’ responses to said breaches. The younger generations’ tendency towards having their out-of-school experiences with English taint their language output in what are supposed to be more professional arenas, like school, is well known. People in general, and educators especially, are well aware of the fact that our modern, digital media society has influenced the way we all perceive what proper English is, and that many young people, who have multiple sources of their English L2 acquisition in addition to school, struggle with realizing that not all input automatically becomes appropriate output. This is creating great challenges in English language education in Norway today.