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Presenter
Bel  Abbes  Neddar
Department of English Studies,
University of Mostaganem
Algeria

Title
Which Pragmatics Systems to Teach in E I L Contexts?

Abstract

England’s greatest success story of all is the English language. The number of people using English for international communication is increasing on an unprecedented scale and the spread of English shows no signs of stopping.  This has made its mastery an urgent necessity. However, this mastery requires a shift from a focus on the traditional theoretical frameworks towards a more communicative perspective, from language as an idealized version, deprived of its socio-cultural dimension, to language as a discourse that takes into account all the interactional and contextual factors that shape its daily use. Such a shift of interest impels us, as EFL teachers, the need to help learners become more aware of what is culturally distinct in the TL and develop thus their cross-cultural pragmatic competence.

This requires a fuller investigation of what the nature of discourse is and what pragmatic components are needed so that foreign language learners can become more pragmatically appropriate. However, there are other issues that such a debate raises: can pragmatics be taught? If so, which pragmatics system are we going to teach and how are we to test learners’ pragmatic competence in the absence of valid testing methods? The increasing emphasis on different Englishes recently has not only made the focus on one version of English redundant, but has also cast doubt on any model based on the native speaker’s intuition.

This paper looks at the different pragmatics systems of world Englishes and suggests a standard version which is more relevant in EIL contexts.