Deconstructing Pragmatic Fossilization: A Re-Examination of Interlanguage Stability and Variability in Late-Stage L2 Acquisition

Abstract

Pragmatic fossilization—the cessation of developmental change in second-language pragmatic competence—has long been theorized within static, deficit-oriented frameworks that inadequately account for the dynamic interplay between sociocognitive factors and target-language input. This study re-examines the theoretical construct of pragmatic fossilization by integrating Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) with cross-linguistic pragmatic transfer analysis across three typologically distinct language pairs. Drawing on longitudinal oral corpus data from 187 advanced L2 speakers over 36 months, we demonstrate that purportedly fossilized pragmatic features exhibit measurable micro-variability under specific interactional conditions. Our findings challenge the terminological and conceptual validity of "fossilization" as a stable end-state, proposing instead a model of constrained pragmatic adaptability. These results carry significant implications for instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) pedagogy and computational pragmatics.