1990, Pragmatic competence is subdivided into ‘illocutionary competence’ and ‘sociolinguistic competence’. ‘Illocutionary competence’ can be categorized as
‘knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out’, while ‘sociolinguistic competence’ means the ability to use language appropriately
according to context. Fraser 1990 gives further explanation that sociolinguistic competence includes the ability to select communicative acts and appropriate
strategies to implement them depending on the current status of the ‘conversational contract’.
Dealing with pragmatic competence, there have been some studies conducted in the second language acquisition field. Some of them are in
producing English request done by Scarcella 1979, Cathcart 1986, Blum-Kulka and Olshtain 1986, House and Kasper 1987, Hill 1997, and Rose 2000 with
the result as it is stated by Ellis 2008: 176: “One of the strongest findings of these studies is that even advanced learners do not acquire fully native-like ways
of requesting, in particular, then to produce longer request than native speakers.” While the students’ refusals production was studied by Beebe and Takashashi
1989 and also by Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 1991, and the results are: “First, L2 learners’ pragmatic behavior is not always in accordance with stereotypical
views. Second, although advanced L2 learners have no difficulty in performing refusals, they do not always do so in the same way as native speakers.” Ellis,
2008: 189 Some other studies on pragmatic competence are also done by Pinyo,
Aksornjarung, and Laohawiriyanon 2010 Pragmatic Competence in Request: A
Case Study with Thai English Teachers , Heidi Viljama 2012 Pragmatic
Competence of Finnish learners of English which was conducted for his MA
Thesis, and Tarja Nikula 2002 Teacher Talk Reflecting Pragmatic Awareness: A Look at EFL and Concept-Based Classroom Settings.
However, most of the studies aforementioned are done not on Indonesian students and do not specifically focus on the pragmatic competence of the
students especially in the notion of implicature. Reading on their studies and realizing the Indonesian students’ pragmatic competence especially in the notion
of implicature has rarely been considered as an important pragmatic competence indication to be studied, the researcher feels intrigued to conduct the study. This is
the reason for the present study which will attempt to investigate the development of the students’ pragmatic competence of Implicature as it has already mentioned
above that pragmatic competence builds the language competence beside the organizational competence.
C. Research Question
The present of the study is aimed to answer the question: Is there any significant difference in the pragmatic competence of
Implicature in spoken English among groups of students with different length of study?
D. Limitation of the Study
Since the present study entitled The Students’ Pragmatic Competence of Implicature in Spoken English, the study belongs to the Developmental Study.
The two most common research strategies applied are longitudinal and cross- sectional
studies. The present study is conducted as a cross-sectional study basically dealing with the limited time. As Papalia mentions that “Cross-sectional
study is a Study Design in which people of different ages stages are assessed on one occasion,” Papalia, 2003: 53, so the resent study is conducted on one
occasion and the participants are the students of different semesters namely the second semester, the fourth semester and the sixth semester.
The present study will focus more on the development of the students’ pragmatic competence. The researcher will not evaluate the students’ pragmatic
competence in the sense of what level of pragmatic competence the students have already acquired to produce in communication orally or in written production. The
researcher will only investigate whether there is any significant development of the students’ pragmatic competence in the sense of their understanding on written
context by giving them multiple choice tests. The aspect of pragmatic competence being investigated in the study is the
notion of implicature – the conveyed meaning of the speaker Grice, 1975: 43. It is to find out whether the students acquire pragmatic competence of distinguishing
between “what is said” and “what is meant” by the speaker and whether the students acquire pragmatic competence to recognize the conveyed or implied
meaning of what is said. The context of the present study is the students of the English Language
Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma University as the participants. The main consideration of choosing the students of the English Language Education
Study Program as the participants is it is assumed that the students do not have significant problem on their linguistic competence, which means the result of the
study will not be affected by the linguistic competence of the participants. So the result of the study can portray merely the sociolinguistic competence, in this case
the students’ pragmatic competence in implicature in English language
E. Objective of the Study
Since this present study focuses on the students’ pragmatic competence of implicature in Spoken English, therefore the main objective of this study is to find
out the pattern of the development of the students’ pragmatic competence of implicature in spoken English.
F. Benefits of the Study
For the theoretical benefit, the result of the study will show the pattern of the development of the students’ pragmatic competence in the notion of
implicature for the scientific report that can be used as a review in the second language acquisition. It is already stated above that the study in the students’
pragmatic competence in implicature rarely done on Indonesian students, the researcher believes that this present study can more or less give a review on this
case. In practical, the result of the study can be a meaningful input for the
schools, in particular the English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University, to evaluate the content of the syllabus whether it has covered
