Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See my report attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1: 

I suggest that the author explains at more length what is ‘Grice’s Cooperative Principle’ about, why it remains important in the first place, and then explains also at more length what its maxims entail. Critiques of Grice’s principle also need to be mentioned and discussed briefly. The author can then explain perhaps more convincingly why they still used Grice’s principle as an analytical tool to explore learners of Romanian’s understanding of cultural pragmatic knowledge and its application.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore we have met your suggestions. You can find the modifications we have made at pages 1-2, paragraph 1, lines 32-64, marked in red.

Comment 2: 

More precise information needs to be provided regarding the participants. How many of them? How long had eachparticipant been studied Romanian as a foreign language?  Had the intermediate learners started learning thelanguage at the same university or had they come into the program with previous knowledge of it? How long eachparticipant had lived in Romania exactly (i.e. ‘…fewer than two academic years…’ is very vague). Were they learning Romanian as a second or third language? What were the country of origin for each one of them? This kind of biographicaldata needs to be provided and summarize in a table, as well as correlated with the results of the study, as relevant. This section also needs to mention how many students for each level (A1 and B1 only?)participated in the study. More information also needs to be provided regarding the corpus of40,000 and 25,000 words. Where did these come from, which sets of the collected data?

Response2: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore we have met your suggestions. You can find the modifications we have made at pages 3-4, paragraph 3, lines 134-162, marked in red.

Comment 3: 

Here I suggest that the author includes an introductory sentence announcing all the sub-sections under Results.The quotes from the participants provided in Romanian need to be translated in English in the text or in footnotes. As areader it was impossible to assess the quality of the analysis of the results without access to the meaning of thesequotes. It would also be useful to indicate from which set of data the quotes come from, including learners’ levels. Results as currently presented remain very generaland hence not convincing enough.

Response 3: Thank you for this suggestion. I have added the introductory sentence that you suggest. You can find it 5, lines 215-224, marked in red. We have also provided the translation for the examples. All these are marked in red.

Comment 4: 

I suggest a revision of the discussion after revisiting the results’ analysis and their presentation. As the discussion stands,the results appear to have provided only a confirmation of previous research, notably by Kecskes and House, whichcould be fine if better supported by a more thorough analysis of the results to back-up this claim.

Response 4: Thank you for this valuable suggestion. The Discussion section has been fully revised to strengthen its analytical grounding in the Results. Rather than presenting the findings as a general confirmation of previous work, the revised Discussion now explicitly links individual result patterns to specific learner variables, including proficiency level, length of residence, and prior exposure to Romanian. References to Kecskes and House have been retained but are now used as comparative frameworks, with the discussion showing how the present corpus-based findings refine and contextualise their claims in the underexplored setting of Romanian as a foreign language. This revision emphasises the contribution of the study beyond replication by demonstrating how pragmatic behaviour varies systematically across learner profiles and interactional conditions. You can find all these at pages 7-8, lines 322-382, marked in red

Comment 5: 

The conclusions will need to be reviewed considering the above comments, should they be endorsed by the author. It isgood to mention the potential pedagogical implications of the study conducted. However, some more up-to-date literaturecould be provided on the usefulness of pragmatic instruction in foreign language teaching.

Response 5: Thank you for this suggestion. The Conclusions section has been revised to align with the updated Results and Discussion, to highlight the pedagogical implications of the findings, and to incorporate recent literature on the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction in foreign language teaching. All these are marked in red, lines 384-426.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The choice of the Cooperation Principle as the theoretical basis for conducting this cross-cultural study should be justified. As is well known, this theory focuses on rational communication. This has led to criticism of its explanatory capacity in terms of pragmatical appropriateness and, especially, in sociocultural aspects, such as politeness. The present study correctly asserts that it is essential to take into account the pragmatic principles and sociocultural norms of the community under study, then it should be made clear why Grice's theory has been chosen to cover these aspects. 

In this regard, the statement in line 42 must be supported by bibliographic references. 

What criteria does the researcher use to determine whether certain cases constitute maxim flouting and others maxim violation? (Lines 110-113) And to determine that there is a possible cultural influence? (line 118)

The examples in Romanian should be translated into English.

Author Response

Comment 1: 

The choice of the Cooperation Principle as the theoretical basis for conducting this cross-cultural study should be justified. As is well known, this theory focuses on rational communication. This has led to criticism of its explanatory capacity in terms of pragmatical appropriateness and, especially, in sociocultural aspects, such as politeness. The present study correctly asserts that it is essential to take into account the pragmatic principles and sociocultural norms of the community under study, then it should be made clear why Grice's theory has been chosen to cover these aspects. In this regard, the statement in line 42 must be supported by bibliographic references

Response 1: I have thoroughly rewritten certain sections, I hope that these modifications comply with your suggestions now

Comment 2: What criteria does the researcher use to determine whether certain cases constitute maxim flouting and others maxim violation? (Lines 110-113) And to determine that there is a possible cultural influence? (line 118)

Response 2: Thank you for this comment. The manuscript now clarifies that maxim flouting is identified when an apparent maxim departure supports interpretable implicature without communicative breakdown, whereas maxim violation is coded when the departure appears unintentional and results in misunderstanding or repair; references to cultural influence are based on recurring patterns across participants and supported by prior intercultural pragmatics research rather than isolated cases. You can find this in lines 113-142, marked in blue.

Comment 3: The examples in Romanian should be translated into English.

Response 3: I have translated all the examples in Romanian.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf