SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC DIFFICULTIES AMONG INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS: A CONTEXT-BASED ANALYSIS

Abstract

Communicative competence in English depends not only on grammatical accuracy but also on the integrated command of semantic meaning and pragmatic appropriateness, two domains that have received comparatively limited research attention within Indonesian EFL settings. This pre-research article presents the conceptual and methodological foundation for a qualitative descriptive study designed to investigate the semantic and pragmatic difficulties experienced by undergraduate Indonesian EFL learners at Universitas Bosowa, Makassar, South Sulawesi, through a context-based analytical lens. Building on an integrated theoretical framework that draws on speech act theory, the cooperative principle, the Interface Hypothesis, Relevance Theory, Politeness Theory, Conceptual Semantics, and Schema Theory, the study is designed around three objectives: identifying the semantic difficulties learners encounter in contextual language use, examining the pragmatic difficulties learners face in interpreting and producing meaning, and analyzing how situational, social, and cultural contextual factors shape these difficulties. Data are intended to be collected through Discourse Completion Tasks, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observation, and analyzed using inductive thematic coding triangulated across instruments. Because data collection has not yet been conducted, the discussion and conclusion presented here are necessarily anticipatory. The study is expected to contribute a more integrated understanding of how semantic and pragmatic difficulties co-occur among Indonesian EFL learners, with implications for the design of more context-sensitive EFL curricula and classroom instruction.