Premium Essay

Pragmatic Competence

Submitted By
Words 1026
Pages 5
Successful communication entails knowledge of grammar and text organization as well as pragmatic aspects of a second language (L2). Pragmatic competence is specifically defined by Koike (1989) as "the speaker's knowledge and use of rules of appropriateness and politeness which dictate the way the speaker will understand and formulate speech acts" (p. 279).
Austin (1962) defines speech acts as acts performed by utterances such as giving order, making promises, complaining, requesting, among others. When we utter a sentence or a phrase, we are performing an act to which we expect our listeners to react with verbal or nonverbal behavior (p. 65). According to Kasper (1984), what L2 learners must know for successful speech act performance has been …show more content…
Considering Searle's (1969) classification of illocutionary acts (i.e., representatives, directives, expressives, commissives, and declarations), L2 researchers let requests fall under the second category, that of directives, which have been regarded as "an attempt to get hearer to do an act which speaker wants hearer to do, and which it is not obvious that hearer will do in the normal course of events or of hearer's own accord" (p. 66).
Based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory, requests are Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) since a speaker is imposing her/his will on the hearer (p. 65). Brown and Levinson (1987) propose that when confronted with the need to perform a FTA, the individual must choose between performing the FTA in the most direct and efficient manner or attempting to mitigate the effect of the FTA on the hearer's face. The strategy an individual chooses to employ depends upon the weightiness or seriousness of FTA. Weightiness is an assessment of the social situation calculated by the speaker (p. 76).
The speaker considers three variables when assessing weightiness. First, the speaker appraises the degree …show more content…
Blum-Kulka et al. (1989 cited in Francis, 1997, p. 28) summarize a combination of level of directness and strategy types in Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) as follows:
a. Direct level
1. Mood derivable: Utterances in which the grammatical mood of the verb signals illocutionary force (e.g., "Leave me alone.").
2. Performatives: Utterances in which the illocutionary force is explicitly named (e.g., "I tell you to leave me alone.").
3. Hedged performatives: Utterances in which naming of the illocutionary force is modified by hedging expressions (e.g., "I would like to ask you to leave me alone.").
4. Obligation statements: Utterances which state the obligation of the hearer to carry out the act (e.g., "Sir, you'll have to move your car.").
5. Want statements: Utterances which state the speaker's desire that the hearer carries out the act (e.g., "I want you to move your car.").
b. Conventionally indirect level
6. Suggestory formulae: Utterances which contain a suggestion to do something (e.g., "How about cleaning

Similar Documents

Free Essay

An Analysis of English Pragmatic Failure from the Perspective of Culture

...[pic] Undergraduate Thesis An analysis of English pragmatic failure from the perspective of culture Luo Qing Supervisor: Prof. Gan Chengying Major:English Student Number:20065805 School of Foreign Languages and Cultures Southwest University of Science and Technology June, 2010 [pic] 本科生毕业论文 从文化角度分析英语语用失误 罗情 指导教师:甘成英 专业名称:英语语言文学 学 号:20065805 西南科技大学外国语学院 2010年6月 Acknowledgement I want to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor professor Gan Chengying, who accompanied me through all the processes of choosing the topic, selecting useful materials and finally finishing my draft. Without her help, this research paper can not be achieved. Also I want to extend many thanks to my teacher Tu Chao who gave me a lot of precious tips on how to achieve standard language in paper as well as how to avoid mistakes in delivering information. Apart from my teachers I still own much gratitude to my fellow friends. You helped me rectify grammatical mistakes that appeared in my paper and gave me a lot of encouragement in finishing this paper. Abstract According to the current situation of English teaching, the cultivation of the students’ cultural understanding is not paid so much attention to as the basic English knowledge teaching. Due to this fact, many foreign language students nowadays have a good command...

Words: 3781 - Pages: 16

Premium Essay

Pragmatics

...ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 682-684, September 2010 © 2010 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.1.5.682-684 Interlanguage Pragmatics Theory and Its Implications for Foreign Language Qian Huang Foreign Language Teaching Department, Dezhou University, Dezhou 253023, China Email:qqh@dzu.edu.cn Abstract—The major purpose of college English teaching is to cultivate and develop student’s pragmatic competence. Interlanguage pragmatics is a new interdisciplinary branch of study based on the theories of pragmatics and second language acquisition which has direct guide significance for foreign language teaching. This paper firstly introduces the theoretical models of the two theories and then focuses on the implications for foreign language teaching. Index Terms— interlanguage pragmatics, pragmatics theory, SLA theory, implications I. INTRODUCTION In 1969, the psychological linguists Selinker in his paper "Language Transfer" pointed out that when people in different countries and regions have communicate in second Language, language often appears with some native Language and relevant, and with this two kinds of pragmatic styles of Interlanguage totally different, this is "the Interlanguage" (Interlanguage). In Selinker view, the former study of interlanguage study was just the grammar system study. Therefore, the study of interlanguage was only limited from speech phonemes, lexical, syntactic to semantic etc...

Words: 2131 - Pages: 9

Free Essay

Annotated Bibliography

...Writing 3 Assignment Annotated Bibliography By: Andre Mutia 12010/NK-1 2012 1. Article 1 Abed, A., Q. (2011). Pragmatic Transfer in Iraqi EFL Learners' Refusals, International Journal of English Linguistics, 1(2), 166-185. doi:10.5539/ijel.v1n2p166 The study deals with pragmatic transfer of Iraqi EFL learners' refusal strategies as reflected by their responses to a modified version of 12- items written discourse completion task; and compare with two groups ,namely Iraqi native speakers of Arabic and American native speakers of English. The data were collected from task consisted of three requests, three offers, three suggestions, and three invitations. Each one of the situations included one refusal to a person of higher status, one to a person of equal status, and one to a person of lower status. Data analyzed according to frequency types of refusal strategies and interlocutor's social status. I prefer this article because it is very useful for my topic. The author found that Iraqi EFL learners are apt to express refusals with care and/or caution represented by using more statements of reason/explanation, statements of regret, wish and refusal adjuncts in their refusals than Americans. Americans are more sensitive to their interlocutor's higher and equal status, whereas Iraqi EFL learners to lower status. The study is suitable for the topic I chose for its valuable information. 2. Article 2 Al-Khatani, S., A., W. (2005). Refusals Realizations in Three Different...

Words: 2596 - Pages: 11

Premium Essay

Cross Cultural Communication

...Abstract This study is a pragmatic study of Indonesian strategies of refusing. By modifying a discourse comprehension test (DCT) developed by Bebee et al (1990), this study was conducted to answer two research questions; the strategy used in refusing and whether the difference in status and gender of the requesters affects the strategy used. The findings of this study show that Indonesian respondents are similar to Japanese, Egyptian and American respondents who in previous studies used mostly indirect refusals. However, the type and frequency of the indirect refusals differ. While an Egyptian and American comparative study conducted by Nelson et al (2002) reveals five primary indirect strategies, Indonesians use six primary strategies. The type of primary strategy also differs from Nelson’s findings since there are strategies used in this study which were not included in Nelson’s study; white lies, suggestions and the use of pragmatic particles. In conclusion, Indonesians use indirect strategies to ‘save face’ and the effort given to do this differs according to the status of requesters. Indonesians use more strategies and attempt to ‘save face’ when refusing requesters of higher status; less effort is evident when requesters are of lower status. Keywords: politeness strategy, negative face, direct and indirect refusals Introduction Communication is not culturally independent; thus, aside from syntactic and semantic knowledge, communicative competence requires more than an acquisition...

Words: 5330 - Pages: 22

Free Essay

Multicultual in English Literature

...anything requires talk and, often, texts, both in private and public spheres. However, until recently, little attention has been given to what people actually say and do in particular everyday circumstances. People talk about the world, about their work, about others and their relations with them. And in talking, they do things. That was Austin’s (1962) revolutionary insight into an aspect of language that had not been fully recognized: the pragmatic function of language, what language does to make social life possible. This turn to language, or to discourse, has had the effect of breaking down barriers between different social sciences concerned with the analysis of everyday social life. 1.2. Definitions of discourse Discourse analysis is widely recongnised as one of the most vast and least defined areas of linguistics. One reason for this is that the understanding of discourse is based on scholarship from a number of academic disciplines that are quite different from one another, such as, the philosophy of language, pragmatics, sociolinguistics. In a very general sense, two definitions are prevalent in the field, which underlie two different assumptions about the general nature of language and the goals of linguistics: the so-called ‘structuralist’ or ‘formalist’ approach, and the so-called ‘functional’ approach. The former defines discourse analysis as ‘language above the level of...

Words: 1756 - Pages: 8

Free Essay

Social Context of English

...that are encoded in the texts and not going beyond them.” To illustrate the limitation of this view of interpretation, Fish notes that if a wife asks her husband why don’t we go to the movies tonight ? The answer to that question depends on the history of the marriage, the kind of relationship they have, the kind of person the husband thinks the wife is. The words themselves will not produce a fixed account of their meaning [emphasis added]. What Fish is arguing in this statement is that communication does not exist\ in a vacuum: to engage in a conversation, for instance, we do not simply decode the meanings of the words that people speak but draw upon the larger social context in which the conversation takes place. 1.GRAMMATICAL VS PRAGMATIC MEANING A.GRAMMATICAL The term 'grammar' covers the proper use of words and word-forms as well as thegrammatical structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences. While different wordforms of lexemes are created by the adding of inflectional morphemes, combinations of words into more complex units are the domain of syntax proper. Grammatical categories that are marked by English inflectional morphology are tense, person, number, gender, case, and comparison. Most of these grammatical categories which can thus be formed synthetically can also be expressed analytically (such as the comparison of adjectives, or possessive case); others are always formed periphrastically, i.e. by the use of function...

Words: 7962 - Pages: 32

Free Essay

Grice

...WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? MAXIMS IN TEXT MESSAGE CONVERSATIONS An Undergraduate Thesis Proposal Presented to the Faculty of St. Mary’s College of Bansalan, Inc., Bansalan, Davao del Sur In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor in Secondary Education Major in English Merry Grace O. Bajo Maristelle R. Agcaoili Kimberly Villarin Ernyl Ver Egod CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING Introduction Grice's theory of conversational implicatures is considered as one of the basic and most interesting theories in the history of pragmatics (Levinson, 1983). It sets forward the mechanism that language users should follow in order to understand each other in so many instances when meanings and intentions are not explicitly conveyed (Terkourafi, 2007). Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicatures revolves around the maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner and how they are violated or flouted. Paul Grice came up with these not as a set of prescriptive rules that people should follow in conversation, but as a means of describing and analyzing the way people convey meanings in real life interactions. The maxim of quantity refers to how much information is necessary in a particular conversation. In observance of this maxim according to Grice, “one should make his or her contribution as informative as required” and “one should not make his or her contribution more informative than is required” in a conversation. The maxim of quality on the other hand, pertains...

Words: 1888 - Pages: 8

Free Essay

Philip Morris International

...Textual Analysis Philip Morris International The move structure is expository with clearly defined sections for respectively situation, problem, solution and evaluation. Line 2 briefly states the situation and stipulate that litigations are inefficiency and unavailing, whereas lines 5 - 9 elaborate on the matter and describe the problem. The solution is diminutive stated in line 13, and bluntly claim their solution to be correct and de jure. The evaluation starts in line 13 and reaches a interim conclusion in line 15, and the remainder of the text can be seen as an elaborative evaluation of the litigations, and ends abruptly in line 52 without an actual conclusion. The move structure is rather unusual, as the evaluation constitutes the vast majority, hence the textual analysis will primarily revolve around the lines 1 - 15, and incorporate the evaluation as supplementary information. The media text embraces all of the appeal forms to a certain degree, and uses argumentative discourse to persuade the reader. The primary appeal form is undeniably logos, which also aligns with the previously defined expository move structure. With the primary focus on logos, PMI undertake a historical approach to persuade the reader of litigation being insufficient as a means of control. An example of logos is found in line 38 - 44, where PMI elaborate on past and ongoing litigations. PMI utilize repetitions and enumerations of the countries implicated, which substantiate and emphasize PMI’s...

Words: 1172 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Discourse Analysis

.........3 II. Development …………………………………………………..4 1. Conversation Maxims……………………………………...4 2. Violating of the maxims……………………………………7 3.1. Flouting of the maxims………………………............8 3.2. Violating of the maxims……………………………...8 3.3. Infringing the maxims………………………………10 3.4. Opting out of the maxims…………………………….10 3.5. Suspending the maxims……………………………..11 III. Conclusion……………………………………………………..11 Abstract This paper is about how people should consider to meet the cooperative principle and the conversational maxims, in order to performs successfully in professional communication. It is based mainly on Paul Grice`s theory of implicature which is considered one of the most important contribution to pragmatics. Another contribution is that of Sperber...

Words: 1985 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Rapport Management

...Abstract This paper focuses on the motivational concerns that underlie the management of relations. In linguistics, the management of relations has been discussed extensively within politeness theory, and so the paper starts by identifying four key issues of controversy in politeness theory: a) should „polite‟ language use be explained in terms of face (e.g. Brown and Levinson, 1987), conversational maxims (e.g. Leech, 1983), and/or conversational rights (e.g. Fraser, 1990); b) why are speech acts such as orders interpersonally sensitive – is it because they are a threat to our autonomy (Brown and Levinson, 1987), or because of cost–benefit concerns (Leech, 1983); c) is Brown and Levinson‟s concept of negative face too individually focused, and should a social identity component be included (Matsumoto, 1988); and d) is face just a personal/individual concern or can it be a group concern (Gao, 1996)? The paper then uses reports of authentic rapport sensitive incidents to throw light on these controversial issues and to find out the relational management concerns that people perceive in their everyday lives. It maintains that such data is important to politeness theory, because linguistic politeness needs to be studied within the situated social psychological context in which it occurs. The paper ends by presenting and arguing for a conceptual framework that draws a fundamental distinction between face and sociality rights, and that incorporates an independent/interdependent...

Words: 916 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Learner

...| |[pic] | | | |Lexical and grammatical meaning. | | | |Ranez.Ru > Помощь в учебе абитуриентам и студентам > Студенту > Английский язык > Лексикология > | | | | | | | | | | | |[pic] | | | | | | | |Lexical meaning – the specific kind of 'content' produced (or engendered) by the reverberation of objective reality in the human | | | |consciousness which constitutes the inner (semantic) structure of linguistic units with respect to which their material form is the | | | |outer (or phonetic) structure (O.Akhmanova); the material meaning of a word, i.e. the meaning of the main material part of the word (as | | | |distinct from its formal, or grammatical part), which reflects the concept the given word expresses and the basic properties of the | | | |thing (phenomenon, property, state, etc.) the...

Words: 535 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Philosophy

...CROSS CULTURE-PRAGMATICS Student Name Institution affiliation Course Name Instructor Date of Submission CROSS CULTURE-PRAGMATICS While researching about cross culture-pragmatics, I found out that the communication practice between a language group with another is known as cross cultural communication. Pragmatics on the other hand, a subfield of linguistics involves the study of language in a context of use. It involves utterances but not sentences. Pragmatics consists of special aspects such as speech acts, which was developed by "J. L." Austin (How to Do Things With Words, 1962). Speech Acts are acts which are accomplished by the use of language. They may be either locutionary acts; acts that convey meaningful utterance using a referring expressive and a radiating expressive, or illocutionary acts; the intentions of the speaker in delivering words for example persuading. They can also be perlocutionary acts; defined as the effect felt by the hearer after the utterance. For example the utterance ‘I’ve had a lot of health problems lately’ the locutionary act with the referring expressive ‘I’, illocutionary act of persuading and perlocutionary act of the hearer being persuaded. Cultures are very different and therefore have very different pragmatic system. Different cultures also have varying speech acts. This may cause misunderstanding in communication between these cultures. To avoid these misunderstandings, it is necessary to evaluate keenly the pragmatic functions...

Words: 283 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Speech Acts

...Teaching ideas A-level English Language and Literature 7707 Dramatic Encounters: Speech acts Introduction These teaching ideas can be used with students when exploring the types of speech acts given to character and the effects of these. They offer students the opportunity to explore the nature of different speech acts and their significance in relation to the overall focus of ‘conflict’, and how understanding these is important to interpreting key aspects of dramatic discourse, the themes, characterisation and the links with contextual factors. They also encourage students to think about how the playwright represents natural speech features, show characters’ asserting power through the writer’s choice of speech acts. The suggested activities are intended to span two lessons lasting one hour each. Learning objectives Students will: • • • define speech acts and recognise the different types of speech acts explore how playwrights use speech acts to craft characteristics of conflict, for characterisation and to link to the key themes of the play evaluate the significance of different speech acts in their use within the play and their likely interpretative effects, as well as the influence of contextual factors. Prior knowledge needed Students should have some knowledge of the following: • • • • language levels how playwrights represent natural speech features power – how it is presented, negotiated and shifts aspects of stagecraft and dramatic...

Words: 1560 - Pages: 7

Free Essay

Education

...Paper Nº2: Essay on Pragmatics Date: 17-11-11 Students: Bruno, Fabiana García, Verónica Vocal, María Laura PRAGMATICS APPLIED TO EVERYDAY LANGUAGE Introduction Chapter 1: Deixis and distance 1. Person deixis 2. Spatial deixis 3. Temporal deixis Chapter 2: Reference and inference 1. Referring expression 2. Inference 3. Co-text 4. Anaphoric reference Chapter 3: Presupposition and entailment 1. Types of presupposition 2. Entailments Chapter 4: Cooperation and implicature 1. The cooperative principle 2. Hedges 3. Conversational implicatures 4. Generalized conversational implicatures 5. Scalar implicatures 6. Particularized conversational implicatures 7. Conventional implicatures Chapter 5: Speech acts and events 1. Speech act classification 2. Felicity conditions 3. Speech events Chapter 6: Politeness and interaction 1. Politeness 2. Face wants 3. Say something: off and on record 4. Positive and negative politeness Chapter 7: Conversation and preference structure 1. Conversation analysis 2. Pauses, overlaps, and backchannels Chapter 8: Discourse and culture 1. Discourse analysis Chapter 9: Identification and application Conclusion Bibliography Appendix: Script Introduction: Pragmatics is concerned with...

Words: 11921 - Pages: 48

Free Essay

Critical Thinking

...ABSTRACT: This report explores critical discourse analysis as a theory in rhetoric discourse and speech act and pragmatics. The framework of analysis includes the mixture of my own ideas and theory of various experts such and Aristotle, Tuan Van Dijk, H.P Grice and Robert Dilts. As critical discourse analysis is a very flexible term of social linguistic study and it allows one to go with the own ideas, here I have chosen suitable analytical tool of experts to analyze the two different discourse, one is verbal discourse ( Tryst with Destiny) and second is written discourse ( Toyoda’s statement 2013) and at the end comparison of both discourse. Key words: critical discourse analysis, rhetoric discourse, speech act, pragmatics, social linguistic, tryst with destiny, Toyoda’s statement 2013. INTRODUCTION Critical discourse analysis (CDA) comprises three inter-related processes of analysis which are linked up with three inter-related dimensions of discourse. Three inter-related process of analysis. 1) Text analysis (description) 2) Processing analysis ( interpretation) 3) Social analysis ( explanation) Three inter-related dimensions of CDA. 1) Discourse structure (systematically and explicitly described structure at all level) 2) Social structure (in the context of society) 3) Cognitive structure ( mental cognitive interface) The three dimensions of CDA is coherently related with each other to make up a substantial discourse where mental cognitive...

Words: 1862 - Pages: 8