BY AYSHA MOHD SHARIF

What is pragmatics? What is the main interest of pragmatics? And why

teach pragmatics?

According to Stalnaker (1972), pragmatics is "the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in
which they are performed" (p. 383). In terms of applied linguistics, pragmatics can assist
people, as language users, in their endeavors to realize their personal goals in the societal
setting in which they live (Mey, 2001, p. 315). The ability to extract meanings from the
context is pragmatics. Pragmatics is more specifically defined as the study of the conditions
of human language uses as these are determined by the context of society (Mey, 2011, p. 42)
or simply, the study of meaning in context (Archer & Grundy, 2011, p. 2).

Interest of Pragmatics: Within second language studies and teaching, pragmatics

encompasses

speech

acts,

conversational

structure,

conversational

implicature,

conversational management, discourse organization, and sociolinguistic aspects of language

use such as choice of address forms (Taylor and Harlig). Pragmatics literature classifies
speech acts according to the degree of their explicitness or directness. Accordingly, direct
speech acts are those acts where the utterance explicitly abides by its felicity conditions
(especially the structural ones) whereas indirect acts rely more on context in order to
reconstruct the underlying speech act performed. Thus speech acts could be placed on a
continuum ranging from the most direct down to the least direct act which may even be
confused with a normal constative utterance. It is important that ESP students be made
aware of this continuum because the degree of explicitness that is appropriate for a given
social context is vital to observe. Any failure in this respect can misfire and cause undesirable
effects. Therefore, the main interest of pragmatics is the speech act theory that explores the

distinction between locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, the Felicity Conditions
necessary for any speech event to count as a speech act, and the distinction within speech acts
between direct and indirect acts. The speech acts can misfire, leading to different
Perlocutionary effects. The possibility of such mismatch has already been foreshadowed by
Halliday (1985).

Teach pragmatics: Teaching pragmatics shows that there is a demonstrated need for it and
that instruction in pragmatics can be successful (Taylor and Harlig). They added, Teaching
Pragmatics explores the teaching of pragmatics through lessons and activities created by
teachers of English as a second and foreign language. A language awareness approach to
teaching foreign languages pays special attention to developing learners language awareness
of how the target language is typically used in communication (Tomlinson 1994). The use
and adoption of pragmatic strategies will help the leaners to achieve their communicative
goals in daily communication which is difficult as it requires the contextualization of
language use. It is assumed that while the linguistic competences, i.e. knowledge of the
language system in its lexical, grammatical, semantic and phonological dimensions and skill
in its use (Trim 2005), are at the core of language use and language learning, other
communicative language competences, i.e. the sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences,
can be promoted by adopting a pragmatic awareness approach to teaching. According to
Mounir Triki (2002), The term English for Specific Purposes is the most obvious
justification for the papers central concern with affinities between ESP and Pragmatics. The
preposition for has a constraining function having to do with language use and not simply
language competence. This constraint makes the approach essentially functional. Moreover,
the zero article in specific purposes, coupled with the plural, conveniently inserts an element
of indefiniteness which is so flexible that it can account for a variety of contexts. Thus
context-sensitivity and intentionality, which are fundamental to Pragmatics, are constitutive

of the very term ESP. Pragmatic awareness can be achieved if students are regularly exposed
to authentic English and guided to an understanding of the gap between their use of the target
language and that of proficient language users. ESP is seen as a functional tool involving
interpretation of pragmatic force (Hyde, 1994). Bachman and Palmer (1996), identifies that
language knowledge for communication is comprised of the two mains areas of grammatical
knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. Pragmatics encompasses, according to Rebecca and
Harlig, speech acts, conversational structure, conversational implicature, conversational
management, discourse organization, and sociolinguistic aspects of language use such as
choice of address forms which is why it is important to teach pragmatics as language used in
ESP contains a lot of speech power which is important to see the effective changes in the
target situation. As highlighted by Triki (2002), Pragmatics, as opposed to structural drilling,
is most naturally suited for ESP purposes; that it offers a theoretical framework for ESP
curriculum design; and that it provides a didactically useful methodology for ESP teaching.
As ESP teaching is more contextual, the focus mostly is on the verbal or spoken conversation
as the spoken communication is mostly unplanned whereas the written part is done with more
thinking and understanding. So, pragmatics used in the spoken conversation in an ESP
context will help the students to understand the meaning. The matching between language
structure and social function is exactly the domain of Pragmatics. In other words, Pragmatics
will be called upon to mediate between the customers needs identified through Needs
Analysis and the linguistic structures taught in ESP (Triki, 2002).

Therefore, the teaching activities that can be included can be of a wide range of teaching
styles and approaches. But regardless of method, they share some important pedagogical
practices. Readers will find that 1) awareness activities generally begin the units described in
the chapters, 2) authentic language samples are used as examples or models, and 3) input
precedes interpretation by learners or production activities (Triki, 2000).