Is pragmatics teachable?

Nowadays, intercultural competence has become an increasingly important component in the English as a Foreign Language area. In dealing with such a thing, it is to be considered taking into account the obvious multicultural use of English and the view of language that integrates a wider social and cultural perspective. If language and culture are inseparable, then when a person is acquiring a new language, he or she is acquiring a new culture at the same time. This involves the language learner in objective and subjective reflection of first culture and foreign culture where meanings are to be chosen depending on personal perspectives. 

Pragmatics is generally linked with culture and that means that the pragmatics knowledge indicates that English native and non-native speakers need to have a broader focuses in their English interactions, including the focuses of grammar structure and vocabulary accuracy, the considerations of speech appropriateness, and the different cultural issues.

Since the idea pragmatics was introduced into language education, it has received more and more attention in language learning. Studies have been done to investigate the relationship between language education and pragmatic development, for example, whether grammatical development guarantees a corresponding level of pragmatic development. The results of these studies differ. Some studies showed that high language proficiency participants had better performance in tests of pragmatics than low language proficiency participants in English as foreign language context. On the other hand, other studies showed disparities between learners’ grammatical development and pragmatic development. They reported that even learners who exhibit high levels of grammatical competence may exhibit a wide range of pragmatic competence when compared with native speakers in conversations and elicited conditions (Liu, 2007).

Two major areas of pragmatics to be concerned are speech acts and intercultural interaction.

a.    Speech Acts
If the point of view we take is from a perspective of functions in languages, communications for various particular purposes are categorized into many specific “speech acts”. According to Kasper and Rose (1999), communication action includes not only using speech acts such as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and requesting, but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity. They implied that dissimilar types of functional languages can be created by concerning the language complexities from aspects of grammatical accuracy, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic communication competence. Therefore, for facing the challenges in the intercultural communications, English speakers need to learn techniques and strategies in speech acts in order to accomplish goals of establishing closer interpersonal relations and completing tasks efficiently through suitable languages.

b.    Intercultural Interaction
One of the advantages in learning pragmatics is that the learners can interpret the meanings of language from a broader intercultural aspect. Through established pragmatics foundation in mind, EFL speakers will be more sensitive to people’s intentional meanings embedded in international interaction. They can also learn to be proficient in reacting to the EFL speakers’ interlocutions in an effective and comprehensive fashion.

Perspective of EFL interaction sees that there is not a cultural or a language which are better than the others. Lin (2007) pointed out that the non-native English speakers, and even native speakers should learn pragmatics by describing and explaining interlanguage communication from a universal and intercultural perspective, rather than stereotype the native-like English as a standard form of communication.

It can be inferred that when learning pragmatics, there is no limitation of how many foreign cultures a learner should learn though the more cultural learned the better, if a learner can absorb sufficient intercultural knowledge. One significant issue of pragmatics is that there are no classical and standard patterns in each speech act of English. Therefore, the EFL/EIL speakers have to raise their consciousness about various types of speech acts which are based on a structure and convention paragon of another different culture.

Rose (2001) argues that pragmatics consciousness raising is basically an inductive approach to develop a general awareness of how language forms are used appropriately in context.  Accordingly, the goal of pragmatic learning that that English speakers must be familiar with different suitable forms based on intercultural knowledge, but not transform the speaking into a certain standard type of language. In other words, Rose (2001) reveals that pragmatics is a study, which makes the learners comprehend that language varieties do exist in various speech acts of EIL/EFL communications, and which makes the learners accommodate to diverse kinds of flexible colloquies in EFL/EIL communication.

The necessity and importance of teaching pragmatics have also been recognized but still language teachers hesitate to teach pragmatics in their classrooms. Matsuda (1999) lists two reasons for this reluctance in pragmatics teaching. First, teaching pragmatics is a difficult and sensitive issue due to the high degree of ‘face threat’ it often involves and, second, the number of available pedagogical resources is limited. And the second one is that there are no valid methods for pragmatics assessment.

Is Pragmatics teachable?

Because pragmatics is a significant field of language learning, many researchers have provided language teachers and learners’ different approaches, methods, and strategies for pragmatics education. In fact, some teachers already cover it in teaching without realizing like demonstrating the culture differences through dialogue examples, comparing and contrasting the different strategies that different cultures apply, and learning with scenarios and role play, and those are effective approaches of teaching pragmatics.

Additionally, pragmatics training should start at the beginning of a learner’s English learning, because pragmatics education is a significant factor why a person can apply English in cross-culture communication in a polite attitude, even though the learner can only interact and communicate in a basic level of English proficiency.

Lin (2007) proposed the following methods as alternatives in teaching pragmatics in EFL classroom.

1. Demonstrating through examples

Firstly, learning from the examples is a method that teachers and students can apply to learn the intercultural differences, and various strategies of speech acts. Actually, everyone is able to provide misunderstanding examples of pragmatics that indicate the politeness and appropriateness issues in communication of his/her original cultures. Since cultural contradictions do exist in different countries, everyone is an expert of his/her own language and culture. Everyone who works with a second or foreign language, whether learners, teachers, or researchers, knows some interesting stories of miscommunication and misunderstanding in cross-cultural situations. Therefore, through referring to the examples of miscommunication aroused by cultural difference, English speakers might be able to avoid the rude or ineffective languages from perspectives of the other cultures. Furthermore, many examples that demonstrate the cross cultural miscommunication are actually very interesting, which attributes to stimulating the learner’s motivation for learning pragmatics.

2. Hint strategy of request speech act

Pragmatics can be taught through speech act strategies in different cultures. For example, for teaching “request” speech act in pragmatics, the “hint” strategy needs to be introduced to the learners. The reason is that, the “hint” strategy is applied in many counties as a conventional method, for example, countries in Asia. Hence, English speakers need to be informed for learning different strategies of request speech acts of the other cultures and learn to raise their awareness of the hidden request functions in the languages. In other words, if the speakers do not previously learn the pragmatics, some request speech act might sound like gossips to them. That is to say, without learning pragmatics, people might refuse the others without knowing they just reject to offer people who need their aid. As a matter of fact, traditional forms of request speech act in another country cannot be easily distinguished without pragmatics education. For that reason, the strategies of speech act need to be taught with examples that demonstrate various types of request forms in order to raise students’ awareness of intentional request meanings produced by the speakers.

3. Demonstrating through comparison and contrast

Many teachers and researchers agreed that the successful pragmatics teaching and learning can be achieved by comparing and contrasting examples of different cultures. Through comparing the similarities and contrasting the differences between target language speakers’ and non-native speakers’ speech acts and language productions, the non-native speakers can be very clear about what are the native-like forms and what are the intercultural forms. In his study, Rose (2001) reveals that Hong Kong English bilinguals often misunderstand in using request, especially in direct request contexts that would be inappropriate to people in the United States. It was later found out that most of the misunderstandings are caused by lack of pragmatics education. So it is strongly suggested that the language trainers or teachers have to develop the learners’ pragmatic knowledge, and clarify for them what is appropriate and inappropriate in request speech through contrasting the differences between the target language forms and the intercultural language forms in different speech acts.

4. Demonstrating speeches created by people from different background

Inspired by the comparing and contrasting methods, the different types of speech forms based on different social status and different speaker and hearer orientations in request speech act can be learned. For example, the appropriate language used by people in their high or low social statuses can be displayed. The input offered by teachers to contrast the two statuses should be taught. Teacher might tell the student that the indirect form, such as “Could you please …?” is for low status people to request the higher status people. And, the direct form, such as “Can you …?” is for high status people to request the lower status people. Additionally, the different perspectives used to make requests form can be displayed and contrasted as well. For example, the teacher might show the different orientations of speakers and learners and tell the students that saying “Can I…?” is from the perspective of the speaker and “Can you…?” is from the perspective of the hearer.

5. Teaching through role play

Teaching pragmatics through scenarios and role-plays is also an applicable technique. A Japanese researcher displayed several situations that the students can use to discuss the appropriate speech act languages. They are request situations like making an appointment with professor, extending the paper submit due date, makeup exam for a course, and requesting the professor to revise papers. He believed that through the situational variables, the request dialogues can be written according to students’ selected roles. In the role-play with scenarios, students can practice to use the appropriate language that conveys their intended meanings and expressions of request. Besides gaining an opportunity of practicing what had been learned in class, the role play is a relaxing way of learning that stimulates students’ learning motivations for pragmatics.

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