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Pragmatics and discourse analysis work on explaining how we, the users, manage to communicate with language and what language means in context as it is used by real people in real life situations.
The sociocultural norms defines how the linguistic structure and context interact in all languages, even though the rules might vary, they do exist as "to whom, when where, why, and how" a statement should be made. Speech acts can be direct (i.e. declarative or directive statements) or indirect (i.e. intended meaning is different from the literal meaning). For successfully exchanging information experts believe that speakers must cooperate which requires following these conversational maxims: quantity , quality, relevance, and manner, in their discourse. They require in simple terms, both parties provide informative contributions, be truthful in statements, be relevant, and avoid obscurity of expression, ambiguity, and be brief and orderly. Another aspect of a cooperative conversation is the implied meaning (conversational implicature) in which the spoken words can be interpreted in various ways depending on the context and shared culture. Teaching Tips: * Cultural differences may create miscommunication in indirect speech act when the partners in the conversation are not familiar with cultural nuances of the vocabulary as it is with your ELLs. Experts advise teachers to learn as much as possible about their students cultural background to be able to identify the roots of the behaviors before becoming judgmental which can create conflict or lead to student shutting down and retreating to silence. * In Western cultures indirectness, is a sign of respecting others' needs and feelings, but may not be so in many other cultures of your ELLs. i.e when "a student asks for his test to be returned", directly, it may be considered a sign of disrespect because students here would ask that question indirectly, i.e. "have you finished grading the papers?" * Politeness is a relative matter when it comes to ELLs. If students do not know what is considered rude in our culture, they might walk up to you too closely to ask a question, or tap you on the shoulder, or do not wait for their turn. Experts inform us that we should teach them the expectations and behavior in our classroom culture, by modeling, one step at a time, posting them, and giving them chances to practice it with us and their peers. * Teach ELLs the discourse markers or words that carry out pragmatic functions, i.e. oh, however, so, well, look, and, but, you know, I mean, etc. These words help us connect our series of utterances in a our conversations and share an understanding among the speakers. |