Pragmatic Competence

Pragmatic Competence
Author: Naoko Taguchi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2009-09-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110218550

In the disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA), the study of pragmatic competence has been driven by several fundamental questions: What does it mean to become pragmatically competent in a second language (L2)? How can we examine pragmatic competence to make inference of its development among L2 learners? In what ways do research findings inform teaching and assessment of pragmatic competence? This book explores these key issues in Japanese as a second/foreign language. The book has three sections. The first section offers a general overview and historical sketch of the study of Japanese pragmatics and its influence on Japanese pedagogy and curriculum. The overview chapter is followed by eight empirical findings, each dealing with phenomena that are significant in Japanese pragmatics. They target selected features of Japanese pragmatics and investigate the learners' use of them as an indicator of their pragmatic competence. The target pragmatic features are wide-ranging, among them honorifics, speech style, sentence final particles, speech acts of various types, and indirect expressions. Each study explicitly prompts the connection between pragmalinguistics (linguistic forms available to perform language functions) and sociopragmatics (norms that determine appropriate use of the forms) in Japanese. By documenting the understanding and use of them among learners of Japanese spanning multiple levels and time durations, this book offers insight about the nature and development of pragmatic competence, as well as implications for the learning and teaching of Japanese pragmatics. The last section presents a critical reflection on the eight empirical papers and prompts a discussion of the practice of Japanese pragmatics research.


Pragmatic Competence and Foreign Language Teaching

Pragmatic Competence and Foreign Language Teaching
Author: Alicia Martínez Flor
Publisher: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9788480214162

This volume includes eleven chapters written by well-known specialists in foreign language teaching and interlanguage pragmatics: K. Bardovi-Harlig, D. Boxer, C. Clennell and S. Nichols, A. Cohen, M. A. Dufon, J. House, H. Kobayashi and C. Rinnert, A.J. Meier, M. P. Safont, P. Salazar, and A. Trosborg. The authors bring together both theoretical and empirical studies dealing with pragmatic competence and its teachability: they review the latest studies carried out in the field, examine issues of developmental pragmatics in the classroom, describe various projects and analyses of different pragmatic aspects, provide evidence of the benefits of explicit teaching of pragmatics, and suggest interesting activities to develop learners' pragmatic knowledge.


Pragmatic Competence

Pragmatic Competence
Author: Naoko Taguchi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2009
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3110218542

In the disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA), the study of pragmatic competence has been driven by several fundamental questions such as: What does it mean to become pragmatically competent in a second language (L2)? This book explores these key issues in Japanese as a second/foreign language.


Context, Individual Differences and Pragmatic Competence

Context, Individual Differences and Pragmatic Competence
Author: Naoko Taguchi
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1847696112

Pragmatic competence plays a key role in the era of globalization where communication across cultural boundaries is an everyday phenomenon. The ability to use language in a socially appropriate manner is critical, as lack of it may lead to cross-cultural miscommunication or cultural stereotyping. This book describes second language learners’ development of pragmatic competence. It proposes an original theoretical framework combining a pragmatics and psycholinguistics approach, and uses a variety of research instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, to describe pragmatic development over one year. Situated in a bilingual university in Japan, the study reveals patterns of change across different pragmatic abilities among Japanese learners of English. The book offers implications for SLA theories, the teaching and assessment of pragmatic competence, and intercultural communication.


Pragmatic Competence and Relevance

Pragmatic Competence and Relevance
Author: Elly Ifantidou
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2014-06-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027270376

This book probes into under-researched issues in L2 pragmatics. Firstly, pragmatic competence, pragmatic awareness and metapragmatic awareness are re-defined and clearly distinguished on theoretical grounds. Secondly, pragmatic competence and its manifestations are evaluated on empirical grounds by distinct criteria and validated testing measures. More importantly, genuine pragmatic inference is elicited in contexts of online interpretation where figurative speech plays a central role. Genre-specific discourse which occurs in editorials and news reports serves as a natural testbed for examining the role of advanced mind-reading abilities in developing pragmatic competence. Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory accommodates the findings of empirical assessment and yields new insights in the cognitive procedures activated during interpretation. The comprehensive theoretical and methodological treatment of pragmatic competence makes this book of interest to researchers and students in pragmatics, L2 theory and applications, genre studies, and to those concerned with the cognitive underpinnings of communication in L2.


Effects and Implications of Pragmatic Competence for Enhancing Efl University Students Written Performance

Effects and Implications of Pragmatic Competence for Enhancing Efl University Students Written Performance
Author: Barham Sattar Abdulrahman
Publisher: Author House
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2012-12-11
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1477250050

The book Effects and Implications of Pragmatic Competence for Enhancing EFL University Students Written Performance highlights the effects and implications of the Kurd EFL students lack of pragmatic competence on their written performance. It includes with the written performance of the students at the recognition level and the production level, and relies on the results achieved from its instruments: the students test, the students questionnaire, and the lecturers questionnaire. Depending on the results obtained from the tools, the study tries to identify and find out the sources of errors in the written performance of the Kurd EFL university students. The book hypothesizes that the inadequacy of the students written performance could be attributed to the curricula and/or the students dependence on the grammatical aspects of the foreign language neglecting the pragmatic and the socio-cultural dimensions. This gives turn to state that the students written performance is better at the recognition level than the production due to the negative interference of their mother tongue. The book concludes that Kurd EFL learners at the university level face serious difficulties when writing in English. The inappropriateness of their written performance can be attributed to the negative effects of their first language, lack of contact with English native speakers and culture as well as the limited opportunities to have been in English speaking communities. Therefore, for enhancing EFL university students written performance, it is recommended that they should be introduced to the English culture through adding pragmatics and English Culture as two separate subject matters to the curricula, and to arrange summer courses for the students in English speaking countries, UK and US in particular.


Investigating the Learning of Pragmatics across Ages and Contexts

Investigating the Learning of Pragmatics across Ages and Contexts
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-08-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004409696

The present volume, edited by Patricia Salazar-Campillo and Victòria Codina-Espurz, is a timely contribution to the field of interlanguage pragmatics. The nine chapters presented here expand the scope of research to date by including different contexts (i.e., formal instruction, stay-abroad, and online) and age groups which have received less attention (for example, young learners and adolescents). Whereas the speech act of requesting is the one that has been most explored in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, as attested by several chapters in the present volume, disagreements and directives are also tackled. This book embraces research addressing both elicited and naturally-occurring data in studies which deal with pragmatic use, development, and awareness.


Measuring Second Language Pragmatic Competence

Measuring Second Language Pragmatic Competence
Author: Rod Ellis
Publisher: Channel View Publications
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2024-03-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1800417756

Taking a psycholinguistic perspective, this book investigates how second language (L2) learners’ pragmatic abilities in English can be measured. It complements and extends earlier work on the testing of implicit and explicit grammar. The authors present a set of tests they developed using both well-established methods of measuring pragmatic knowledge (e.g. a Metapragmatic Knowledge Test and role plays) and more original tests (e.g. an Irony Test and an Elicited Imitation Test). They explain the development of the tests and report the results of their work with native speakers of English and Chinese and Japanese L2 learners. A confirmatory factor analysis lends support to the theoretical basis of the tests. The authors also report studies that explored the use of the tests to investigate L2 linguistic proficiency, study abroad and formal instruction. In concluding, they consider the strengths and limitations of the tests and propose some directions for future research.


Pragmatics in Language Teaching

Pragmatics in Language Teaching
Author: Kenneth R. Rose
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2001-10-15
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521008587

Pragmatics in Language Teaching examines the acquisition of language use in social contexts in second and foreign language classrooms. Included are 2 state-of-the-art survey chapters, and 11 chapters reporting the results of empirical research. The empirical studies cover three areas: incidental acquisition of pragmatics in instructed contexts, the effects of instruction in pragmatics, and the assessment of pragmatics ability. The studies address a number of areas in pragmatics, from speech acts and discourse markers to conversational routines and address terms, and represent a range of target languages and contexts in the United States, Asia, and Europe.