Studies on the learning and development of pragmatic markers (PMs) in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning contexts have attracted increasing interests of researchers. Little, however, is known about the dynamic development of learner PMs in alignment with EFL classroom learning contexts. Given the gap, this article, based on the Alignment theory and the Complexity theory, investigates how learner PMs develop and how aligning with two types of film-situated role relationships influences development by tracking 28 EFL learners for one year and a half. Analysis of eight times’ conversational transcriptions revealed that a) the learners’ employment of PM functions fluctuated but their PM functions developed from singular to multiple ones, with the interpersonal function use being regressive and the structural and the cognitive, progressive; b) the learners' PM development manifested a significant difference in aligning with the two types of role relationships, with the equal (but not the unequal) role relationships subject to more PM priming; and c) the high score subgroup’ s deployment of less frequent PM functions outperformed the low score subgroup's. These findings corroborate the view of context-dependent dynamic development and provide strong evidence for aligning EFL learning with role relationships in classroom interactions.

Hao-Zhang Xiao is professor and PhD supervisor at South China Agricultural University; BA, Jiangxi Normal University; PGDELT, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; PhD, Sun Yatsen University; visiting scholar (including postdoctoral research) at the University of Sydney, and Hawaii University. He has been awarded the Outstanding Teacher in Guangdong, two Provincial Outstanding Teaching Achievement Prizes, the Provincial Middle-aged Key Teacher, and Provincial Outstanding Class Teacher. Having completed more than 10 provincial and national scientific research projects, he has proposed such theories and approaches as ‘Sound-Meaning Mapping Prioritizing Hypothesis’, ‘Ecological Context’, ‘Interactive Context Model’, ‘Ecolinguistic Continuum’, ‘the Multi-dimensional Alignment Continuum Model’, ‘Role-based Interaction Analysis for FLL’ and more, in refereed journals such as Pragmatics, English Teaching Forum, Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Modern Foreign Languages, Foreign Language Teaching, Foreign Language World, etc. His publications also include 4 books. He serves as the evaluation expert of National Philosophy and Social Science Projects, Humanities and Social Science Fund Projects of the Ministry of Education, Humanities and Social Science Base of the Ministry of Education, etc., and is the founding member of National Society of Ecolinguistics and Ecolinguistics PhD program in China. His main research interests include second language studies, ecolinguistics, interlanguage pragmatics, and contextology.