Pragmatics

Development

The field of pragmatics, with its focus on understanding speaker meaning or intention, draws on work in philosophy and linguistics. The field began to develop in the 1970s as a response to the focus in theoretical linguistics on the structure of language. Pragmatics, as well as the related field of sociolinguistics, introduced the speaker, speaker meaning, and the notion of context into the field of linguistic study.

Early work in pragmatics focused on exploring universals in meaning or intention behind words and drew on the insights and work of Austin; H. Paul Grice, who introduced the concept of the cooperative principle; and John Searle, who introduced the concept of speech acts. Searle outlined differences in meaning associated with direct speech acts, such as “Give me that book,” versus indirect speech acts, such as “Are you using that book?” with the same intended meaning, that is, a request for the book.

Classic work in the area of pragmatics, extending from work on speech acts, sought to associate referential meaning with social meaning. This research focused on speech acts such as compliments, requests, and apologies, as well as on the concept of politeness, seeking to outline the underlying sets of assumptions that speakers and hearers make as they interpret others' words in social space. Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's 1978 study of politeness outlined a scale of politeness and associated it with, among other things, the degree of directness of that speech, with the basic observation that the more indirect an utterance is, the more polite it is.

Intercultural Pragmatics

Early work on pragmatics did not take into account cultural differences in speaker meaning. Beginning in the 1980s, however, researchers began to examine differences between cultures in how members “naturally” construct meanings associated with forms of language. The field of cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics is closely aligned with anthropological linguistics. Three areas of research within these fields are important to bilingual education and the teaching of English language learners (ELLs): The first focuses on differences in pragmatics and their effect on miscommunication; the second extends the first by examining how power differences between groups can cause significant consequences for members of less powerful groups; and the third area focuses on the development of second-language pragmatic competence, that is the ability to become a fully competent speaker and hearer of a second or additional language. Applications of these strands of research include the development and adaptation of curricula and teacher training programs that attempt to raise awareness about the sources of such miscommunication.

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