Pragmatic
A person who is pragmatic is someone who values practicality, reasonableness, and common sense. Pragmatism is also a philosophy that stresses that knowledge is tentative and that experience shapes belief. It’s often contrasted with skepticism and is a reaction to the skeptical tradition of Descartes.
While semantics is the meaning of a word or sentence in a literal sense, pragmatics is the broader study of the social, cultural, and situational context of communication. It is the part of language that considers things like politeness, turn-taking norms, and navigating ambiguity.
In this month’s Teacher’s Corner, we explore the idea of pragmatics in English language learning and why it is such a valuable component to include in our instruction. We also offer some resources and ideas for including pragmatics lessons in our classrooms.
The field of pragmatics has a long history and is rich in research. There are a number of different perspectives and approaches, with one general tendency being that pragmatics is more than just a philosophical project; it’s something that can be integrated into linguistics and the study of human behavior.
Another approach to pragmatics is that of functionalists and socioculturalists who focus on the underlying causes of communicative behavior. They believe that the behavior is caused by a variety of factors such as the linguist, the culture, and the interactional context. They also believe that these factors can be learned and changed.
Lastly, there are those who take an empirical view of pragmatics, which is concerned with understanding the nature of utterance interpretation as an inferential process. They are interested in how a speaker’s intention is determined by the context, how the speaker is perceived by others, and the ways that the environment affects utterance interpretation.
There are many ways to incorporate pragmatics into your ESL classroom, but some of the most effective strategies are explicit teaching and collaborative learning activities. Social stories, visual supports, and video modeling are some examples of this type of instruction. In addition, role playing and cooperative group work are great ways for students to practice pragmatic skills in a safe and supportive environment.
The goal of pragmatics is to help students become more aware of the subtleties of communication and how to interact appropriately in a given situation. The knowledge that they gain from this type of learning will allow them to build more successful relationships with both native and non-native speakers of English.
The next time you hear the term pragmatic, think about what it means to you as a language learner and how you can apply that to your own interactions in the classroom. The more you understand how pragmatics can be used in the ESL classroom, the more you will see its value as a tool to help your students become proficient communicators.