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Teaching pragmatics

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 Teaching Pragmatics
NAOKO TAGUCHI

Pragmatics, a subject within linguistics, focuses on how people perform, interpret, and
respond to language functions in a social context. Learning a language involves more than
learning grammar and lexis. The rules of proper communication, such as how to speak
appropriately in a situation or understand another person’s intention, are critical skills to
master in order to become a fully competent speaker in another language. These objectives
of pragmatics learning are represented in the connection between pragmalinguistics and
sociopragmatics (Leech, 1983). Pragmalinguistics refers to the linguistic forms available to
perform language functions, while sociopragmatics refers to the appropriateness of the
linguistic forms in a given social context. Pragmatic competence requires both types of
knowledge, as well as processing skills that mobilize this knowledge in real time com-
munication. Learners need to have a range of linguistic forms at their disposal in order to
perform language functions (e.g., greetings), but at the same time, they need to understand
the sociocultural norms and rules that govern the usage of these forms (e.g., what to say
to greet a certain person). Hence, in second language (L2) learning, grammar (forms), and
pragmatics (rules of communication) deserve distinct attention but should be learned
conjointly, because the object of pragmatics learning is form-function–context mappings—
knowledge of forms and their functional possibilities, as well as contextual requirements
that determine the form-function mappings.
The significance of pragmatic competence in L2 learning has been articulated in theory,
pedagogy, and assessment. Theoretical models of communicative competence born in
the 1980s and 1990s situated pragmatic competence as an indispensable component of
L2 proficiency, apart from grammatical, discourse, and strategic competencies (Canale &
Swain, 1980; Bachman & Palmer, 1996). Since then, the models have served as a guiding
framework for the empirical investigation of pragmatic competence, defined as speakers’
ability to perform language functions and knowledge of socially appropriate language use. Pragmatic
competence has thus been operationalized as a measurable construct, and tasks and
instruments have been developed to elicit and examine it in pedagogy and assessment.
Correspondingly, these models of communicative competence have been applied to
pedagogy and assessment. For instance, communicative language teaching and the notional-
functional approach have included pragmatics as important objectives of instruction.
Standardized assessment measures such as ACTFL (American Council of Teachers of
Foreign Languages, 1999) and the common European framework (Council of Europe, 2001)
have also designated pragmatic competence as part of the target construct of measurement.
These trends have fortified the claim that pragmatic competence should be taught and
assessed.
Having recognized the prominence of pragmatics in the field, this entry will review three
central issues in the teaching of pragmatic competence: targets of pragmatic instruction,
instructional practice and materials, and current challenges in pragmatics teaching.

Instructional Targets: What Pragmatics Can Be Taught?

The selection of focal pragmatic features for instruction clearly reflects disciplinary histories.
Following the first appearance of the term “pragmatics” in Charles Morris’s (1938) Theory
of Signs, a number of influential pragmatics theories were born in the field. Austin’s (1962)
speech act theory, Searle’s (1969) taxonomy of speech acts and the distinction between
direct and indirect speech acts, Brown and Levinson’s (1978) politeness theories (see

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 2 teaching pragmatics

also Leech, 1983), Grice’s (1975) cooperative principles and conversational implicature,
and Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) relevance theory all served as a common framework for
examining pragmatic phenomena across languages and language users. The concepts and
terminologies stemmed from these theories have provided a platform for organizing units
of instruction in pragmatics.
By far, speech acts (e.g., requests, refusals, apologies, compliments, and compliment
responses) have been the most popular goals of instruction because of their clear connec-
tions among linguistic forms, language functions, and social context. Typically, syntactic
forms and strategies used to realize speech acts are taught in conjunction with situational
variables that determine the degree of politeness and indirectness of the forms (i.e., power
relationship, social distance between the interlocutors, and the degree of imposition).
For example, Rose and Ng (2001) used film segments containing compliment exchanges
to teach common syntactic formulas of compliment speech act in English:

NP {is, looks} (really) ADJ (e.g., That dress is really nice.)

I (really) {like, love} NP (e.g., I really love that dress.)
PRO is (really) (a) (ADJ) NP (e.g., That’s really a nice dress.)

In conjunction with the compliments, learners were taught a range of compliment response
types (i.e., acceptance, deflections, and rejection), and were also made aware that deflection
is a preferred strategy.
Other instructional studies have dealt with the comprehension of implicature, namely
the ability to comprehend speakers’ intentions conveyed in an indirect, nonliteral manner
(e.g., Bouton, 1999). In those studies, learners were exposed to dialogues that contained
implicature and were explicitly taught how to interpret them. Examples include the Pope-
question implicature (e.g., Saying “Is the Pope Catholic?” in response to a question whose
answer is obviously affirmative) and implicature based on Grice’s maxim of relevance
(e.g., responding to the question “Did you like the movie?” by saying “I was glad when
it was over”).
Other more recent pragmatics approaches and their neighboring fields have also informed
the choice of instructional goals in pragmatics. Studies have incorporated sociolinguistic
notions of register variation and speech styles such as address terms, for example, formal
V-form and informal T-form in German (Belz & Kinginger, 2003) and formal versus
informal speech styles encoded in grammar (Ishida, 2009). Research in discourse functional
linguistics and conversation analysis have led researchers to conclude that interactional
devices such as discourse markers, pragmatic routines, patterns of small talk, and deixis
are important pragmatic features to teach. For example, the learning target in Liddicoat
and Clozet’s study was an appropriate response to the French question, T’as passé un bon
week-end? (‘Did you have a good weekend?’). Students learned the logistics of how to
respond to this question and project attentive listener behavior.
A target area that has received far less attention is fluency when performing these
pragmatic functions. Pragmatic fluency, like other areas of fluency, has recently received
empirical attention as an aspect of pragmatic competence that characterizes speedy and
efficient processing of pragmatic knowledge. Research has shown that accuracy and fluency
are distinct components of pragmatic performance: they do not develop in parallel and
are affected differently by contextual and individual factors (e.g., Taguchi, 2008, in press).
There are only two instructional studies that are targeted at improving pragmatic fluency.
House (1996) examined speech rate, pause length, and repairs in learners’ production of
conversation routines, discourse strategies, and speech acts (e.g., greeting and leave-taking)
in L2 English. Li (in press), on the other hand, investigated whether or not different amounts
of practice could yield differential effects in the development of accurate and speedy

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 teaching pragmatics 3

recognition and production of request-making forms in L2 Chinese. Because empirical

findings are limited, future research in the role of instruction on fluency development is
promising.

Instructional Practice and Materials:

How Can Pragmatics Be Taught?

Given the complexities of pragmatics that involves the connections among forms, functions,
and contexts, one would naturally wonder whether pragmatic competence is indeed teach-
able. A bulk of studies in the 1990s showed that most aspects of pragmatics are amenable
to instruction, meaning that instruction is better than no instruction for pragmatic develop-
ment. Having established the benefit of instruction, the field has evolved around a question
of efficacy: What instructional methods could best enhance pragmatics learning? This
question has been taken up by a line of instructional intervention studies that implemented
a planned pedagogical action directed toward the acquisition of select pragmatic features.
These studies compared the effect of one teaching method over another by measuring the
degree of learning from pre- to post-instruction. One popular distinction used to categorize
and compare instructional methods is explicit versus implicit teaching. The former typically
involves explicit explanation of target pragmatic features followed by focused practice,
while the latter withholds explanation but provides ample input and practice opportun-
ities in which learners develop implicit understandings of the target pragmatic forms and
their uses.
Alcón’s (2007) study is an example of an intervention study that compared explicit and
implicit treatment on Spanish learners of English in their acquisition of request forms
in English. The explicit group received metapragmatic information regarding requests.
Then they were asked to identify examples of requests in provided scripts and to justify
their choices. The implicit group was given awareness-raising tasks which featured input
enhancement (i.e., requests and related sociopragmatic factors placed in bold type or
capitalization) but received no metapragmatic explanation. In the posttest, both groups
outperformed the control group, while no significant group differences were detected
in pragmatic awareness; however, only the explicit group maintained learning up to the
delayed posttest given three weeks after the treatment.
Previous studies have generally confirmed the superiority of explicit over implicit instruc-
tion in teaching pragmatics, particularly when the length of instruction is short (see Jeon
& Kaya, 2006, for review). However, there is evidence that teaching methods also interact
with pragmatic targets. Rose and Ng (2001) found that an inductive approach was more
effective for teaching pragmalinguistic forms of complimenting, whereas a deductive
approach was more advantageous for teaching the sociopragmatic rules of compliment
responses (how to respond to a compliment).
Although these intervention studies have long centered around the “methods debates”—
implicit versus explicit, deductive versus inductive, and production versus comprehension
based instruction—the by-product of this bulk of research is a variety of teaching materials
generated to teach pragmatics in the classroom. Because pragmatics entails linguistic
resources for performing communicative acts and social perceptions of the acts, teaching
materials inevitably reflect several key elements: social context, functional language use,
and interaction. Activities and tasks have been designed to incorporate these components.
For example, consciousness-raising tasks have learners listen to naturalistic or scripted
conversations either live or through video or audio, with attention directed to the target
pragmatic features and sociolinguistic variables of the speech events, for example, setting,
participant relationships, and the level of formality (e.g., Ishida, 2009). Similarly, receptive-
skills tasks expose learners to pragmatic input but have them act on them by evaluating

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 4 teaching pragmatics

the appropriateness of the target pragmatic forms on a rating scale or by selecting appro-
priate forms from a list of expressions (e.g., Takimoto, 2009). Productive-skills tasks have
taken a variety of formats, including role plays, structured conversations, and discourse
completion test. In role plays, students assume certain roles in hypothetical scenarios and
interact with peers to practice speech acts (e.g., Pearson, 2006).
More recently, technology has brought exciting new options for the format of pragmatics
teaching. There are several websites dedicated to L2 pragmatics (see Cohen, 2008, for
review). These websites provide interactive multimedia modules where learners can watch
video clips of conversations involving speech acts, read explanations of the speech acts
and cultural tips, and complete exercises. Computer-assisted language learning (CALL)
has also expanded our options of pragmatics instruction. Ward, Escalante, Al Bayyari, and
Solorio (2007), for example, developed a computer program in which learners of Arabic
practice backchannels by producing them in response to prerecorded utterances. A com-
puter then analyzes the timing and frequency of the backchannels and provides corrective
feedback. Synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) and
telecollaboration are other available instructional tools within CALL. A series of studies
by Belz and her colleagues demonstrated the effectiveness of CMC in teaching speech acts,
address forms, and modal particles (e.g., Belz & Kinginger, 2003). CMC offers learners an
authentic context for communication by having them engage in online dialogues with native
speakers during telecollaboration. Target pragmatic features appear in a contextualized
manner, and the input is still, which makes it easier for learners to notice the targets. Another
promising new technology is a virtual environment that simulates the computer game
Second Life. Sykes (2009) created a virtual online space simulating a Spanish study-abroad
environment. Learners of Spanish were able to move their avatars throughout the environ-
ment and interact with built-in content by practicing speech acts of requests, apologies,
greetings, and service encounter interactions. This type of instructional practice brings
together the key elements of pragmatic teaching—context, functional language use, and
interaction—with added values of authenticity, self-discovery, and experiential-type learning.
Teacher-arranged materials have been the mainstream in pragmatics teaching, as reviewed
thus far. Nevertheless, previous studies have provided evidence that learners can learn
pragmatic features through classroom use of the target language even when pragmatics
is not an intended learning target. These studies take a language socialization approach
by adapting rich, qualitative analyses of classroom input and interaction to unveil oppor-
tunities and resources for pragmatics learning. A good example is Ohta’s (2001) study on
the acquisition of acknowledgement and alignment expressions in L2 Japanese. In this
study, acknowledgment is identified as a feedback signal used to show attentiveness
in conversations (e.g., soo desu ka meaning “oh really”), while alignment is an emphatic
feedback signal (e.g., ii desu ne, meaning “That’s great, isn’t it?”). Naturalistic recordings
of classroom interactions revealed learners’ gradual development of frequent, appropriate
use of these signals through recycled use of them in peer talk. Collaborative peer–peer
interaction created a range of opportunities for students to use the targets that were not
available in teacher-fronted exchanges. These findings indicate the potential of opportunities
for and outcomes of incidental pragmatics learning in different classroom practices and
activities.
Another emerging venue of instructional practice for pragmatics is strategy training.
Learning strategies has been a topic of L2 learning since the 1970s, owing to a seminal
work by Rubin (1975) that defined learning strategies as conscious or semi-conscious learn-
ing behaviors that learners deploy to enhance their L2 knowledge and abilities. Elaborate
taxonomies of strategies (i.e., cognitive, metacognitive, and affective) have been developed
and applied to teach the four language skills as well as vocabulary and grammar. Applying
the concept to pragmatics, Cohen (2005) recently developed taxonomies of speech act

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 teaching pragmatics 5

strategies that could be used in strategy-based instruction. The taxonomies have three
main categories: strategies for the initial learning of speech acts (e.g., identifying the target
speech acts and gathering information about them), strategies for using the speech act
material that has already been learned (e.g., using a memory aid to remember the speech
act expressions), and strategies for learners’ metapragmatic considerations (e.g., monitoring
their own speech acts for appropriateness). These taxonomies, in part, echo the earlier
claim made about the importance of autonomous learning where learners act as amateur
ethnographers and collect information about pragmatic rules (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig,
1992), however, it advances this claim in a more systematic manner. Whether strategy
training proves to be a useful option for pragmatics teaching remains for future empirical
investigation.

Challenges of Pragmatics Teaching

Previous sections discussed the “what” and “how” in pragmatics teaching and presented
a range of options for goals and instructional practice. This entry concludes with three
challenges in teaching pragmatics. These challenges come from the nature of pragmatics
that involves language use affected by considerations of language users, social context,
and norms of interaction. First, teachers should be concerned about which norms to teach.
For a long time, the native speaker model has been the norm of pragmatics pedagogy. In
most classrooms, pragmatic behaviors by native speakers, typically inferred from native
speaker intuition or through data collected from a group of native-speaking participants,
are presented as optimal models for learners to emulate. However, with the rapid spread
of globalization and transculturalism, the assumption of uniform native-speakerness has
been increasingly challenged (Davies, 2003). In reality, there are a variety of native speakers
in a given language and culture. They come from different regional, educational, and
professional backgrounds, which inevitably influence the manner in which they project
politeness, the criteria they use to judge appropriateness of language behaviors, and the
range of linguistic repertoires they possess to perform interpersonal functions. Because it
is virtually impossible to teach all varieties, one challenge of pragmatics teaching is to
choose a target model that serves the purpose of instruction, but at the same time to afford
students opportunities to be aware of a range of pragmatic options.
Related to the selection of a target pragmatic norm, another challenge of pragmatics
teaching is in the area of needs analysis. It is important to assess who the students are in
class and what their individual needs are for their own language study. These analyses of
needs will inform our choice of pragmatic variety to focus on in class, but at the same
time, they will help us consider individuals’ subjectivity when making pragmatic choices
in interaction. Some learners may want to conform to the pragmatic norms and forms of
the given culture, but others may elect not to use the forms, perhaps signaling a desire to
maintain their identity. Empirical evidence supporting this comes from Ishihara and Tarone
(2009), who reported cases in which learners of Japanese resisted pragmatic use of higher-
level honorifics or gendered language based on their subjectivity, beliefs, and experiences.
Pragmatics deals with situation-appropriate sociolinguistic behavior, and learners should
be informed of the consequences that accompany their choice of behavior. Yet, the choice
should be left to the learners themselves, and their own learning needs and goals.
The last challenging area in pragmatics teaching relates to the goal of instruction.
Traditionally, teachers and researchers preselected one or two pragmatic features and
taught them in a structured, fixed discourse context. This approach assumes a static view
of pragmatic competence in which pragmatic competence is a constellation of bits of
pragmatic resources that have a stable property and do not change across discourse

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 6 teaching pragmatics

contexts and participants. However, this traditional view has been challenged by the recent
poststructuralist perspective that holds pragmatic acts are dynamic in nature, constructed,
and negotiated through interaction among participants (Kasper, 2006). The challenge of
future pragmatics teaching, then, is to reconceptualize the goal of instruction to reflect this
new epistemology. Pragmatic competence, signified by one’s ability to perform language
functions and one’s knowledge of socially appropriate language use, should be practiced
and promoted in more authentic, less structured dialogic activities where learners have
choices to adapt their pragmatic resources to ongoing interactions.

SEE ALSO: Input-Based Instructional Approaches; Instructed Second Language Acquisition;

Measuring the Effectiveness of Second Language Instruction in Research; Output-Based
Instructional Approaches; Teaching Culture and Intercultural Competence; Teaching
Language Learning Strategies; Technology-Supported Materials for Language Teaching

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Suggested Readings

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1996). Pragmatics and language teaching: Bringing pragmatics and pedagogy
together. In L. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning (Vol. 7, pp. 21–39). Urbana:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign.
Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Mahan-Taylor, R. (2003). Teaching pragmatics. Washington, DC: US
Department of State.
Belz, J. (2008). The role of computer mediation in the instruction and development of L2
pragmatic competence. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27, 45–75.
Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. (2009). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture
meet. Harlow, England: Pearson.
Judd, E. (1999). Some issues in the teaching of pragmatic competence. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture
in second language teaching and learning (pp. 152–66). Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic development in a second language. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Rose, K. (2005). On the effects of instruction in second language pragmatics. System, 22, 385–99.
Rose, K., & Kasper, G. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Tatsuki, D., & Houck, N. (2009). TESOL classroom practice series: Pragmatics volume. Alexandria,
VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

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