Abstract
According to previous studies on L1 Italian and Spanish, speakers prefer different pragmatic strategies and adopt specific pragmatic patterns to express their attention to the interlocutor. This study deals with communicative strategies used in dialogic speech in L1 and L2 Spanish considering both textual structure and interaction between the two interlocutors. More in detail, the aim of this research is to analyse how speakers introduce and manage Discourse Topics in order to compare the behaviour of native and non-native Spanish speakers. The study examines two corpora of task-oriented dialogues, the corpus DiESPA, of Peninsular Spanish L1 ?collected in different geographic areas? and the corpus DiELE-(I), of Spanish L2 –collected in the University of Salerno with Italian learners of a CEFR level B2-C1. The analysis of Discourse Topics introduction and management allows defining crucial textual characteristics and defining speakers’ attitudes towards interlocutors. From a qualitative and a quantitative analysis, which examines the percentage of occurrences of pragmatic moves used by native and non-native speakers, it emerges that differences in native speakers and L2 learners’ strategic choices used to complete the task are due to their limited linguistic competence, especially grammatical and lexical, rather than to pragmatic and cultural factors.