Exploring the Cooperative Principle in Cross-Cultural Contexts: A Corpus-Based Pragmatic Study of International Students Learning Romanian

Abstract

This study examines how international students learning Romanian interpret and apply the Cooperative Principle in everyday and academic interaction. The research is grounded in the observation that pragmatic competence often develops unevenly in second-language learning, particularly in multilingual environments where learners rely on norms carried over from their first language. To investigate these dynamics, a small spoken and written corpus was compiled from classroom activities, recorded peer interactions, and informal conversations with students enrolled in Romanian language courses. The data were annotated for instances of maxim observance, weakening, and flouting, as well as for implicatures that required contextual inference. The analysis shows recurring patterns of pragmatic transfer, especially in the interpretation of relevance and quantity, and highlights areas where learners systematically misinterpret or underproduce implicatures. Several examples also reveal successful adaptation to Romanian communicative expectations, suggesting that exposure to diverse interactional settings supports the refinement of pragmatic cues. The findings contribute to a clearer understanding of how the Cooperative Principle operates in cross-cultural learning contexts and point to practical implications for teaching Romanian as a foreign language.

1. Introduction

Research on intercultural pragmatic competence has consistently shown that second-language learners face difficulties that extend beyond grammar and lexis, particularly when navigating the implicit norms that organize everyday communication. These norms, rooted in culturally shaped expectations about appropriateness, politeness, and communicative alignment, strongly influence how speakers select strategies, interpret implicatures, and negotiate interpersonal meaning (Kecskes, 2014; Spencer-Oatey, 2008). Grice’s Cooperative Principle was proposed to account for the fact that interlocutors routinely communicate meanings that go beyond what is explicitly expressed, relying on shared assumptions about rational and cooperative behaviour in conversation (Grice, 1975). The principle is formulated as a general expectation that conversational contributions will be appropriate to the purposes of the exchange and is operationalised through four maxims. The maxim of quantity concerns the provision of an adequate amount of information, the maxim of quality relates to truthfulness and evidential support, the maxim of relation captures expectations of contextual relevance, and the maxim of manner addresses clarity, orderliness, and the avoidance of ambiguity. These maxims do not function as rigid rules but as interpretive guidelines that enable hearers to derive implicatures when a contribution appears to be weakened or flouted. The Cooperative Principle has remained influential in pragmatic research because it offers a systematic account of inferential meaning. For this reason, it has been widely applied in studies of indirectness, politeness, and pragmatic development, particularly in second-language and intercultural contexts where learners must interpret meaning under conditions of incomplete linguistic and cultural knowledge. Research in this area has shown that learners often orient to Gricean expectations intuitively, even when their linguistic resources or sociocultural familiarity remain limited. At the same time, the Gricean framework has been subject to sustained critique. Scholars have argued that the maxims reflect culturally specific conversational norms rather than universal principles and that they insufficiently account for the role of social relations, power, and politeness in interaction (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993; Spencer-Oatey, 2008). In intercultural settings, conversational behaviour may diverge from Gricean expectations without necessarily generating implicature, raising questions about the scope and limits of the model when applied across cultures. Despite these critiques, the Cooperative Principle remains a useful descriptive tool when applied as an analytical reference rather than a prescriptive norm. In the present study, the maxims are used to examine how learners of Romanian orient to expectations of informativeness, relevance, clarity, and epistemic responsibility, and how these expectations are reshaped through cross-cultural experience and developing pragmatic competence. This approach allows for a systematic analysis of learner behaviour without assuming native-speaker interaction as the sole benchmark, while retaining a coherent framework for investigating pragmatic alignment and misalignment in an underexplored L2 context. Although originally proposed for monolingual, culturally homogeneous contexts, the Cooperative Principle has since become integral to second-language pragmatics, where it has been used to examine learners’ interpretation and production of implicature as well as their sensitivity to maxim-based expectations (Taguchi, 2011; Yamanaka, 2003; House, 2008). In languages with substantial international learner populations, such as English or Japanese, the application of Gricean pragmatics in L2 research is extensive. By contrast, Romanian remains underexplored from a pragmatic perspective. Studies on Romanian as a foreign language have tended to emphasize grammatical acquisition, lexical development, or sociolinguistic integration, with far less attention to the pragmatic procedures learners use when engaging in authentic interaction. Yet international students entering Romanian-speaking academic environments encounter communicative expectations that may diverge significantly from those of their first language(s). In such settings, learners frequently rely on familiar pragmatic routines to interpret utterances and manage interaction, a process that can lead to pragmatic transfer, over- or under-explicitness, unexpected indirectness, or unintended maxim flouting—patterns well attested in L2 pragmatics across diverse language pairs (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993; Barron, 2003; Barron & Warga, 2007).

Corpus-based approaches provide an empirically grounded means of documenting these phenomena. Research using learner corpora has demonstrated that pragmatic features such as implicature, mitigation strategies, turn-taking cues, and relevance management can be systematically traced across interactional contexts, enabling fine-grained comparisons between cultural groups or developmental stages (Trosborg, 2010; Jucker & Taavitsainen, 2014). Through corpus evidence, it becomes possible to observe how learners orient to maxims in real time, how they adapt pragmatic strategies to new environments, and where breakdowns or reinterpretations of the Cooperative Principle arise. Despite these methodological advantages, no corpus-driven investigation has yet focused on how international learners of Romanian apply or negotiate the Cooperative Principle in classroom discourse or informal communication. This study addresses that gap by analysing a small, purpose-built corpus of spoken and written interactions produced by international students enrolled in Romanian language programs. The analysis investigates how learners attend to, weaken, or flout Gricean maxims, and how these behaviours reflect underlying cross-cultural influences, emerging pragmatic competence, and situational demands. By examining maxim use in an intercultural learning environment, the study offers insight into how pragmatic expectations are negotiated when interlocutors do not share the same communicative background.

The article makes three contributions. First, it provides empirical evidence on L2 Romanian pragmatics, an area with limited existing research. Second, it identifies specific intercultural patterns that shape maxim interpretation and implicature production, contributing to broader debates in intercultural pragmatics. Third, it outlines pedagogical implications for teaching Romanian as a foreign language, particularly in multilingual and multicultural educational settings.

2. Materials and Methods

The study adopts a corpus-based qualitative–quantitative design aimed at documenting how international students learning Romanian deploy or reinterpret the Cooperative Principle in naturalistic interaction. The methodological choices reflect the need to capture pragmatic behaviour as it unfolds in authentic communicative settings, while allowing for systematic comparison across learners with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The section below details the corpus design, participant profile, data collection procedures, annotation system, and analytical framework used in the study.

In the analysis, the distinction between maxim flouting and maxim violation is based on recoverability of implicature and interactional evidence of speaker intention. An instance is coded as maxim flouting when an apparent departure from a maxim can reasonably be interpreted as intentional and meaningful, that is, when the utterance invites the hearer to infer an additional or indirect meaning and the interaction remains coherent without repair. Typical indicators include contextual appropriateness of the inferred meaning, absence of clarification requests from interlocutors, and pragmatic plausibility of the inferred intention.

By contrast, an instance is coded as maxim violation when the departure from a maxim appears unintentional and results in misunderstanding, communicative breakdown, or explicit requests for clarification. Such cases are characterised by limited linguistic resources, processing difficulty, or lack of sociopragmatic knowledge, and they do not reliably generate an interpretable implicature. In these instances, the deviation is treated as pragmatic misalignment rather than strategic meaning-making.

Criteria for identifying possible cultural influence.

Possible cultural influence is identified through a converging set of contextual indicators, rather than inferred from a single utterance. An interpretation is considered to involve cultural influence when (a) similar pragmatic patterns recur across participants sharing comparable linguistic or cultural backgrounds, (b) the behaviour aligns with interactional routines documented in prior intercultural pragmatics research, and (c) the behaviour cannot be adequately explained by proficiency level alone. Additional support comes from contrasts between learners with similar proficiency but different cultural backgrounds, as well as from differences observed between learners with shorter and longer residence in Romania.

Importantly, references to cultural influence are treated as interpretive hypotheses, grounded in corpus patterns and existing literature, rather than as categorical attributions. The analysis therefore avoids assigning individual behaviour to culture in a deterministic manner and instead considers cultural background as one factor interacting with proficiency, exposure, and situational context.

The research was conducted with students enrolled in introductory and intermediate Romanian language courses at a Romanian university. Participants came from a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, including European, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries, and were selected on the basis of voluntary participation. All participants had lived in Romania for fewer than two academic years and were still developing functional communicative competence in Romanian. Their proficiency levels ranged from A1 to B1 according to the CEFR classification, which allowed the study to observe pragmatic behaviour at stages where learners rely heavily on transfer from their first language and on the strategic simplification of communicative routines. Written consent was obtained from all participants, and the study followed institutional ethical guidelines for research involving human subjects.

The study involved twelve international students enrolled in Romanian as a foreign language courses at a Romanian university during one academic semester. Participants were selected through voluntary participation and represented a range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. At the time of data collection, seven participants were at A1 level and five at B1 level, according to institutional placement procedures aligned with the CEFR.

All A1 learners had begun studying Romanian at the host university and had no prior formal instruction in the language before enrolment. The B1 learners, by contrast, represented a more heterogeneous group. Three of them had completed one or two prior semesters of Romanian at the same university, while two entered the programme with previous exposure to Romanian acquired either through short-term language courses or informal learning in Romania. This distinction was taken into account in the interpretation of the results, particularly with respect to pragmatic awareness and maxim orientation.

At the time of data collection, participants had lived in Romania for periods ranging from four to twenty-one months. A1 learners had resided in Romania between four and nine months, whereas B1 learners had lived in the country between twelve and twenty-one months. All participants were multilingual. Romanian was learned either as a second language (n = 5) or as a third language (n = 7), depending on individual linguistic backgrounds. Participants’ first languages included French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Mandarin Chinese, and Korean, reflecting diverse pragmatic and cultural traditions.

To ensure transparency, key biographical variables were documented for each participant, including proficiency level, length of residence in Romania, length of Romanian language study, prior exposure to Romanian, number of previously acquired languages, and country of origin. These variables were considered in the qualitative interpretation of the corpus data, particularly when recurring pragmatic patterns appeared to align with proficiency level or length of residence.

The corpus analysed in this study consists of approximately 40,000 words of spoken data and 25,000 words of written data. The spoken corpus was compiled from audio-recorded classroom interactions, including role-play activities, problem-solving tasks, group discussions, and informal peer interactions occurring before and after class sessions. These interaction types were selected to capture both task-oriented and socially oriented communication. The written corpus includes short reflective texts, peer email exchanges, and task-based written assignments produced by the same participants during the same period. All spoken data were transcribed orthographically and anonymised prior to analysis. The spoken and written datasets were analysed both separately and comparatively in order to account for modality-related differences in pragmatic performance.

Data collection took place over one academic semester and involved both spoken and written interactions. Spoken data were recorded during institutional tasks such as role-play activities, problem-solving exercises, group discussions, and informal peer interactions that occurred before and after class sessions. These interactions were chosen because they provided a natural mix of task-oriented and socially oriented communication, enabling an investigation of maxim use across different pragmatic functions. Written data consisted of short reflective texts, email exchanges with peers, and task-based assignments produced during the same period. All recordings were transcribed orthographically and anonymised. The resulting corpus contains approximately 40,000 words of spoken language and 25,000 words of written texts, forming a dataset sufficiently large to capture recurring pragmatic patterns without losing the qualitative detail necessary for fine-grained interpretation.

The analytical framework is grounded in Gricean pragmatics. Each transcript was examined for instances where learners either adhered to, weakened, or appeared to flout the maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. To avoid overgeneralization, the analysis distinguished between maxim flouting, which generates implicature intentionally, and maxim violation, where pragmatic misalignment stems from limited proficiency or cross-cultural misunderstanding. The coding scheme was developed through an iterative process informed by prior studies in L2 pragmatics and intercultural communication, including Taguchi’s categorisation of implicature comprehension (Taguchi, 2011) and Spencer-Oatey’s work on rapport management (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). Each suspected maxim-related phenomenon was coded for type, interactional context, inferred intention, and possible cultural influence. When utterances showed overlapping characteristics, coding emphasized the communicative function rather than the surface form.

To enhance reliability, a second trained annotator independently coded a subset of the data. Inter-rater agreement was calculated using Cohen’s kappa and reached a value above 0.80, indicating substantial agreement. Discrepancies were resolved through discussion, and the coding manual was adjusted accordingly. The quantitative component included frequency counts of maxim-related phenomena and their distribution across learners’ linguistic backgrounds, proficiency levels, and interaction types. These quantitative patterns served as a guide for the qualitative analysis, which focused on close examination of representative excerpts, pragmatic inferences produced by the learners, and instances of cultural framing or misalignment.

The study also considered the broader sociocultural environment in which communication took place. Romanian academic and social interaction often relies on contextual cues and inferential processes that may be unfamiliar to learners whose linguistic backgrounds favour greater explicitness or different conventions of politeness. Observing how learners orient themselves to these expectations within the corpus allowed the analysis to trace what aspects of the Cooperative Principle learners acquire more readily and where difficulties persist. Written texts provided further evidence of how learners negotiate relevance, informativeness, and modality when they have more processing time and less immediate interactional pressure.

All data were stored securely and analysed using qualitative coding software, which supported systematic annotation and cross-referencing of pragmatic features. No generative AI tools were used for coding, interpretation, or corpus construction. Any potential restrictions on the availability of the corpus, such as the presence of identifiable audio markers, are specified in the Data Availability Statement. The methodological approach therefore combines corpus-based analysis with interpretive pragmatics, allowing the study to capture both recurring tendencies and the situated reasoning underlying learners’ communicative choices. This combination provides a robust basis for understanding how international students learning Romanian orient to the Cooperative Principle and how cross-cultural influences shape their pragmatic behaviour.

3. Results

This section presents the main findings of the study and is organised around patterns of learner orientation to the Cooperative Principle across different dimensions. Section 3.1 examines differences related to proficiency level (A1 vs. B1). Section 3.2 focuses on the role of length of residence in Romania and its impact on relevance management. Section 3.3 addresses modality-related effects, comparing spoken and written production with respect to the maxim of manner. Section 3.4 analyses issues related to the maxim of quality and learners’ epistemic stance. Section 3.5 provides a summary of the main correlations between biographical variables and observed pragmatic patterns.

3.1. General Patterns of Maxim Orientation

Analysis of the corpus indicates that learners oriented to the Cooperative Principle in systematic but uneven ways. Maxim-related phenomena appeared in 42 percent of all annotated turns, with the maxim of quantity showing the highest frequency. Learners demonstrated an intuitive understanding of informativeness and relevance, though their interpretations of what constituted a sufficient or appropriate contribution often differed from Romanian norms. For instance, one learner responded to a simple classroom question about weekend plans with a detailed chronological description of activities, concluding with “Și apoi, am mâncat paste, dar nu erau foarte bune, red că erau expirate,” [lit. And then I ate pasta, but it wasn’t very good, I think it was expired], a remark unrelated to the pedagogical aim of the exchange. This pattern suggests that learners often treat over-elaboration as a resource for securing comprehension or rapport, even when it disrupts task focus. The spoken corpus revealed stronger fluctuations in maxim orientation than the written corpus. Learners at lower proficiency levels frequently paused, reformulated, or reassessed their contributions mid-utterance, which occasionally resulted in weakened maxims. Yet even A1-level participants demonstrated a clear intention to maintain informational and relational coherence within the interaction.

3.2. Quantity Maxim: Over- and Under-Informing in Practice

As presented in Appendix A and Appendix B, over-informativeness was the most recurrent pattern linked to the maxim of quantity. In a group problem-solving task, a learner was asked to describe the route from the university to the city centre. Instead of providing a concise explanation such as “Mergi drept și iei autobuzul 5,” [lit. Go straight ahead and take bus number 5]. the student delivered a prolonged narrative about previous experiences with crowded buses, concluding with “Dacă este duminică, nu recomand autobuzul, pentru că odată am așteptat 40 de minute.” [lit. If it’s Sunday, I don’t recommend taking the bus, because once I waited 40 min]. While the contribution was coherent, it exceeded the informational needs of the task and introduced experiential commentary irrelevant to the immediate goal.

Under-informativeness appeared in contexts that presupposed cultural or situational knowledge. When asked “Cum ai sărbătorit Paștele aici?” [lit. “How did you celebrate Easter here?”] several learners responded with brief statements such as “A fost bine” [lit. “It was good”] or “Am stat acasă,” [lit. “I stayed at home”] without recognizing that Romanian cultural expectations often favour contextually rich descriptions of holiday traditions. The minimal answers lacked the elaboration the interlocutor anticipated, causing follow-up clarifications and a temporary breakdown in conversational flow. These findings indicate that learners modulate their contributions according to perceived communicative risk. They expand their utterances when uncertain about clarity and reduce them when unsure of cultural expectations, creating asymmetries in maxim adherence.

3.3. Relation Maxim: Navigating Relevance and Topic Boundaries

Instances related to the maxim of relation frequently involved cross-cultural routines that Romanian interlocutors interpreted differently from learners’ intentions. In one interaction, the instructor asked a student, “Poți descrie fotografia?” [lit. “Can you describe the photo?”] The student replied with, “Da, dar întâi vreau să spun că azi dimineață am uitat să iau mic dejun și sunt puțin obosită.” [lit. “Yes, but first I want to say that I forgot to have breakfast and I am a little tired”]. The student’s comment was intended as interpersonal framing and an explanation for potential hesitations, but it temporarily diverted the interaction away from the task. This reflects pragmatic transfer from cultures where personal disclosure serves as rapport building. Conversely, some learners demonstrated strong sensitivity to relevance by providing responses that directly aligned with interactional goals. In peer work, when asked “Ce părere ai despre soluția colegului?,” [lit. “What do you think about your colleague’s solution?’] learners frequently produced focused evaluations such as “Cred că funcționează, pentru că este logic și clar.” [lit. ”I think it works as it is logical and clear”]. These responses indicate successful orientation to the maxim of relation, demonstrating that pragmatic competence can emerge rapidly in structured tasks. In written assignments, relevance issues appeared when learners integrated associative but tangential content. For example, in a task requiring a short description of their home country, one learner added an extended section on international football teams, a topic personally meaningful but misaligned with the task’s intended scope.

3.4. Manner Maxim: Clarity, Ambiguity, and Processing Constraints

Adherence to the maxim of manner varied with cognitive load and linguistic resources. Ambiguity often resulted from lexical substitution or structural simplification. In one classroom exchange, a learner attempting to describe a malfunctioning appliance stated, “Mașina de spălat este… nu bine… face sunete ca… ceva nu în regulă.” [lit. “The washing machine is… not good… it makes sounds like… something is not right.”]. Although the intended meaning was recoverable, the utterance lacked precision, leading another student to ask, “Nu bine în ce sens?” [lit. “Not good in what sense?”]. Processing constraints also influenced clarity. During spontaneous discussion, hesitation markers such as “cum să zic…,” “ăăă…,” and “poate…” [lit. “how should I put it…,” “uh…,” and “maybe”] were frequent, producing temporary ambiguity. These markers reflect processing difficulty rather than deliberate vagueness. However, when asked to give procedural instructions, for example, how to prepare a simple recipe—unclear sequencing occasionally led to misunderstandings, prompting instructors to intervene for clarification. Written texts displayed substantially higher clarity. When given time to plan, learners produced coherent and logically ordered sequences even when vocabulary was limited. For instance, a written description of a morning routine included the structured line: “După ce mă trezesc, fac duș, apoi pregătesc micul dejun și citesc știrile.” [lit. “After I wake up, I take a shower, then I prepare breakfast and read the news.”]. The difference across modalities underscores the role of processing time in learners’ capacity to satisfy the maxim of manner.

3.5. Quality Maxim: Assertions and Evidentiality in L2 Romanian

Although less frequent than other maxim-related patterns, issues tied to the maxim of quality revealed important aspects of learners’ epistemic stance. Some learners provided information they believed to be correct but expressed with greater certainty than appropriate. In a discussion about Romanian geography, one student confidently stated, “Cluj este în sud, aproape de București,” [lit. Cluj (a Romanian city) is in the South, close to Bucharest (the capital of Romania)] which was an incorrect assertion that the learner later attributed to confusion between Romanian city names. This type of maxim violation arose not from intent to mislead but from limited knowledge combined with strong assertive phrasing. Other learners signalled uncertainty explicitly, using expressions such as “cred că,” “nu sunt sigur,” or “posibil,” [lit. “I think that…”, “I am not sure” or “maybe”], even in tasks where full confidence was expected. For example, in a role-play involving giving directions, a learner stated, “Cred că mergi la stânga,” [lit. “I think you go to the left”], weakening the instructional speech act. These patterns suggest an emerging awareness of the maxim of quality as learners attempt to balance assertiveness with epistemic caution.

3.6. Integrated Interpretation of Maxim Use

The corpus shows that learners orient meaningfully to the Cooperative Principle but must negotiate linguistic constraints, cultural expectations, and situational demands simultaneously. The examples above illustrate how cross-cultural pragmatic transfer, processing pressure, and incomplete sociolinguistic knowledge shape maxim adherence. Over-informativeness serves as a compensatory strategy; relevance misalignment arises from differing cultural conventions; ambiguity appears primarily in spontaneous interaction; and quality violations reflect uncertainties masked by assertive phrasing. These findings demonstrate that maxim use among international students learning Romanian is neither random nor solely proficiency-based. Instead, it reflects a complex interplay of adaptation, inference, and culturally shaped reasoning. The patterns observed highlight the communicative effort learners invest in maintaining coherence, and they underline the importance of targeted pragmatic instruction to support more nuanced interpretations of communicative expectations in Romanian.

4. Discussion

The results of this study provide a detailed picture of how international students learning Romanian orient to the Cooperative Principle in both spoken and written interaction. While several of the observed patterns align with established findings in intercultural and second-language pragmatics, the present analysis moves beyond simple confirmation by demonstrating how pragmatic behaviour varies systematically according to proficiency level, length of residence in Romania, and prior exposure to the language. In doing so, the study grounds broader theoretical claims in corpus-based evidence drawn from an underexplored L2 context.

A central finding concerns learners’ tendency toward over-informativeness, particularly in spoken interaction. Previous research has associated such behaviour with compensatory strategies in L2 communication, where learners elaborate in order to reduce the risk of misunderstanding (Barron, 2003; Kecskes, 2014). The present corpus analysis refines this view by showing that over-informativeness is not evenly distributed across participants. It occurs most frequently among A1 learners and among those with shorter residence in Romania, suggesting that it functions as a transitional strategy linked to limited linguistic resources and reduced familiarity with local pragmatic norms. As learners gain experience in the target environment, this tendency diminishes, indicating increased sensitivity to task-specific expectations of informativeness.

Patterns related to the maxim of relation further highlight the role of cultural pragmatic transfer. Instances in which learners introduced personal disclosures or associative remarks before addressing the task echo earlier observations that relevance judgments are culturally mediated (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993; Spencer-Oatey, 2008). However, the results show that such relevance shifts are not random deviations but reflect interactional routines aimed at managing interpersonal alignment. Importantly, learners with longer residence in Romania displayed greater alignment with local relevance expectations, even when grammatical accuracy remained variable. This supports the view that pragmatic accommodation can develop independently of formal linguistic proficiency and is strongly shaped by exposure to authentic interaction.

The analysis of the maxim of manner underscores the importance of considering modality and processing constraints in the interpretation of pragmatic behaviour. Ambiguity, hesitation, and disordered sequencing were characteristic of spoken interaction, especially among lower-proficiency learners, but were largely absent from written production. This contrast suggests that apparent violations of the maxim of manner in speech often result from real-time processing demands rather than from a lack of pragmatic awareness. Similar modality effects have been noted in previous corpus-based work (Barron, 2003; Jucker & Taavitsainen, 2014), and the present findings reinforce the need to interpret spoken pragmatic performance in light of cognitive and interactional pressures. With respect to the maxim of quality, the relatively limited number of violations indicates that learners generally orient to epistemic responsibility even at early stages of acquisition. When deviations did occur, they were more common among A1 learners, who occasionally produced categorical assertions despite uncertain knowledge. By contrast, B1 learners more frequently employed epistemic markers, signalling emerging control over evidential stance. This pattern aligns with earlier work on pragmatic development showing that sensitivity to epistemic marking evolves gradually and unevenly across pragmatic domains (Taguchi, 2007, 2011).

Taken together, these findings support dynamic models of pragmatic competence that emphasise adaptation, inference, and context-sensitive reasoning rather than linear progression toward native-speaker norms (Kecskes, 2014). The results also resonate with House’s account of intercultural communication as a site of negotiated meaning, while providing concrete corpus-based evidence of how such negotiation unfolds in Romanian as a foreign language. Rather than treating divergences from Gricean expectations as pragmatic failure, the study shows that they often represent strategic responses to linguistic, cultural, and situational constraints.

The Cooperative Principle thus remains a useful analytical framework in this context, provided it is applied descriptively and in conjunction with detailed participant information. By treating the maxims as reference points rather than prescriptive standards, the present study demonstrates how learner behaviour can be interpreted as meaningful, adaptive, and developmentally situated. In this way, the analysis contributes to ongoing discussions in intercultural pragmatics and extends them to a linguistic context that has so far received limited empirical attention.

5. Conclusions

The present study has shown that pragmatic competence is a multifaceted component of communicative ability, shaped not only by grammatical knowledge but also by learners’ orientation to norms of relevance, informativeness, clarity, and epistemic responsibility. The findings underscore the importance of examining pragmatic behaviour through detailed profile data, including proficiency level, length of residence, and prior exposure to Romanian, rather than assuming uniform development across learners. This approach provides insight into how pragmatic strategies emerge, stabilise, or remain contextually contingent within an L2 setting.

An important implication of these results is the potential pedagogical value of integrating explicit pragmatic instruction within foreign language curricula. Recent research on pragmatics instruction demonstrates that targeted teaching can significantly enhance learners’ pragmatic competence. A meta-analysis of 29 primary studies found strong overall effects of instruction on L2 pragmatic development, with particularly robust gains in foreign language settings and longer instructional treatments yielding larger effects. Explicit instruction, i.e., drawing learners’ attention to sociopragmatic norms and contextually appropriate language use, has been shown to be effective in promoting both comprehension and production of pragmatic functions such as speech acts and implicatures.

In practice, this implies that teaching Romanian as a foreign language would benefit from a deliberate focus on pragmatics alongside grammar and vocabulary. Pedagogical activities might include awareness-raising tasks that highlight differences in pragmatic norms, role-plays that simulate authentic speech acts, and reflective exercises that make learners conscious of variability in relevance and politeness expectations. Research also emphasises that integrating pragmatic instruction with authentic communicative interaction—whether through role-plays, multimedia input, or technology-enhanced tasks—supports deeper internalisation of pragmatic knowledge and confidence in real-world communication.

These instructional implications align with broader trends in applied linguistics that advocate the inclusion of pragmatics in teacher education and curriculum design. State-of-the-art research highlights the need for professional development that equips language instructors with tools to teach pragmatic awareness and assessment, and for materials that embed pragmatic features within communicative contexts rather than treating them as peripheral add-ons. Such developments can help bridge the gap between receptive knowledge of pragmatic norms and their productive use in interaction.

In conclusion, the present study contributes to the growing recognition that pragmatic competence is both teachable and essential for effective intercultural communication. Future research could explore the specific forms of instruction and task design that are most effective for learners of Romanian, as well as longitudinal outcomes of pragmatic training across proficiency levels. By incorporating pragmatic instruction more systematically into foreign language programmes, educators can support learners not only in acquiring formal linguistic structures but also in navigating the social and cultural nuances of real communication.

Appendix A.1. Quantity Maxim

An utterance was coded as related to the maxim of quantity when it met one of the following criteria:

• Provided substantially more information than required by the immediate communicative goal.
• Example:
• Student A: “Ce ai făcut în weekend?”
• Student B: “Am fost la supermarket. Era aglomerat, cred că oamenii cumpărau pentru sărbători, și apoi m-am întâlnit cu prietena mea care…”
• Provided insufficient information, resulting in a need for clarification.
• Example:
• Instructor: “Cum ai sărbătorit Paștele aici?”
• Student: “A fost ok.”

Appendix A.2. Relation Maxim

Behaviour was coded under the maxim of relation when contributions appeared tangential or unexpectedly shifted topics.

• Example:
• Instructor: “Poți descrie fotografia?”
• Student: “Da, dar mai întâi vreau să spun că sunt foarte obosită azi.”

Appendix A.3. Manner Maxim

Utterances were categorised here when they displayed ambiguity, lack of clarity, or disordered sequencing not attributable to content complexity.

• Example:
• Student: “Mașina de spălat este… nu bine… face sunete ca ceva nu în regulă.”

Appendix A.4. Quality Maxim

Instances involving inaccurate assertions, overconfident statements, or evidential mismatch were included here.

• Example:
• Student: “Cluj este în sud, aproape de București.”

Appendix B.1. Over-Informing (Quantity Maxim)

Student D: “Am fost ieri la bibliotecă să returnez o carte. Dar era închis, cred că pentru că doamna de la recepție era bolnavă. Așa mi-a spus cineva. Și atunci am mers la cafenea…”

Despite a simple question—“Ce ai făcut ieri după cursuri?”—the learner volunteers additional contextual details that exceed the informational need of the interlocutor.

Appendix B.2. Task-Irrelevant Personal Disclosure (Relation Maxim)

Instructor: “Puteți descrie imaginea pentru colegi?”

Student E: “Da, dar vreau să spun întâi că nu dorm bine în ultima perioadă…”

The student’s attempt at rapport building results in temporary topic divergence.

Appendix B.3. Ambiguous Sequencing (Manner Maxim)

Student F: “Prima dată faci aluatul… și după… nu știu… pui something… apoi cuptorul…”

The unclear order of steps prompts peer correction and instructor intervention.

Appendix B.4. Overconfident but Incorrect Statement (Quality Maxim)

Student G: “Românii întotdeauna mănâncă supă la cină.”

This sweeping claim demonstrates categorical phrasing unsupported by cultural knowledge.