Abstract
The study examines dialogic speech in Foreign Language (FL) by comparing the pragmatic strategies adopted by Italian-speaking learners of Spanish and German and native speakers of the same languages. The aim of the work is to investigate whether and to what extent the strategies employed in FL present pragmatic patterns that can be traced back to those proper to the native language (NL, Italian), proper to the target language (LT, Spanish, German) or, rather, characteristics linked to linguistic and strategic competence in LS (thus independent on either L1 or LT). We consider the articulation of the textual structure, the preferences and “dispreferences” accorded to introducing and handling discourse topics, together with a degree of fluency based on some temporal parameters. Our findings indi-cate that FL speech presents a less elaborate and more fragmented textual structure than native speech: the topic entities explored tend to be arranged linearly, not hierarchically. At the same time, conversational games, although less and less in-depth, are on average concluded by employing a greater number of moves, in the context of a general slowness in processing and difficulty in managing the interaction. This also correlates with a slower speech rate and lower general fluency.