IU WEBPAGE FOR PERFORMING L2 PRAGMATICS
The IU Website on Pragmatics & Discourse https://pragmatics.indiana.edu/about/Contact%20Us.html is adding a webpage focusing on the performance of L2 pragmatic. This is a team effort between Andrew Cohen (Prof. Emeritus, University of Minnesota) and Cesar Felix-Brasdefer (IU). For our purposes, pragmatics is defined as the ability to deal with meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader) and to interpret people's intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (e.g., making a request) that they are performing when they speak or write (Yule, 1996, pp. 3-4).
Pragmatics includes among other things politeness/impoliteness, speech acts (greetings, thanks, requests, compliments, apologies, complaints, criticism, and cursing), conversational style, humor, sarcasm, teasing, discourse markers, conversational implicature (i.e., the implied meaning as interpreted by listeners based on the context of an utterance and their knowledge of how conversation works), and deixis (i.e., words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information - e.g., nominal pronouns like “she” and demonstrative pronouns like “this”).
The webpage is intended to serve as a source of information about links to teaching materials in a variety of target languages (TLs). TL instruction may constitute more a second-language (L2) experience with the language is spoken extensively in the learners’ immediate community or may reflect more a foreign-language (FL) experience if the language is not spoken extensively in the learners’ immediate community. All the while, there is the realization that this traditional dichotomy is giving way to a more hybrid reality in an increasingly globalized world. So, it is fair to say that there is less of a hard and fast distinction between L2 and FL, and more of a continuum. Not only would this be the case as it applies to globalized English, but also as it applies to other languages that have an international presence, such as Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, to name just a few. Language users are drawing on the Internet, and especially on social media, in new and engaging ways. The consequence is that traditional means of interpreting pragmatic intention across languages may not work as well as they used to. It is no longer possible to make assumptions as to how FL pragmatics is disadvantaged by virtue of the distance from the TL speech community, nor to assume that users of the TL as an L2 are automatically likely to use pragmatics that are more in step with the TL speech community.
This webpage is intended to address a felt need in the L2/FL pragmatics community and will provide accessible teaching resources for those interested in further incorporating the instruction of pragmatics into their various teaching contexts. Both language teachers and researchers will be invited to contribute links to information about their experiences derived from research and the teaching of L2 pragmatics. As our goal is to create a collection of teachable items, these contributions are intended to be practical and aimed at classroom instruction.
We welcome contributions that address (but are not limited to) the following topics:
Links to materials that can be readily used in classroom teaching of TL pragmatics, such as:
- Videos or recordings of natural discourse (e.g. holiday dinner table conversations)
- Examples of speech acts and/or how to teach them (e.g. criticism, advice, apologies, compliments, persuasion, nonverbal responses, small talk, humor, cursing, greetings and closings, etc.)
- Perception or production of sarcasm/dealing with tone of voice
- Examples of conversational management/mismanagement by learners
- Sharing anecdotal accounts of pragmatic failure, especially sociocultural goofs (e.g. a nonnative American English-speaker asking an American how much s/he makes a month or how much their new house or car cost)
- Using inappropriate linguistic forms for a given situation (e.g. In English, using veryin an apology for inflicting bodily harm: “I am very sorry for smashing into you”)
- The pragmatic consequences of using words which have multiple meanings or other connotations that could be misinterpreted by native speakers
Questions or advice regarding the teaching of TL pragmatics
- Incorporating technology in lessons (e.g., the creation of video clips, or where and how to download videos online)
- How to differentiate between lack of pragmatic knowledge and resistance to accommodate on the student’s part (e.g., with an e-mail communication: "Hello, teacher. Please give my paper another read. I deserve a better grade.” The instructor in this case needs to determine whether the lack of mitigation is due to a lack of knowledge or a conscious choice to be a bit rude.
- How to determine which speech act norms are most appropriate for their classroom, since the norms may vary according to the particular speech community where the language is spoken (as in the case of the different World Englishes)
- How to assess pragmatic performance.
IN BRIEF:
- Use of the webpage as a source of information on the performance of L2 pragmatics.
- Blurbs on major pragmatics websites, detailing their contents and the best way to navigate them.
- Links to websites with sample pragmatics lessons in different L2s.
- Links to significant databases on pragmatics (e.g. intonational patterns or gestures in a given L2).
- Announcements about workshops and conferences.
- Abstracts of academic articles and books – hot topics.