Theoretical Conditions for Learning Pragmatic Competence:Pedagogical Applications

Abstract

Linguistic competence as postulated by Noam Chomsky (1965) has long been questioned and today a number of researchers and scholars view language acquisition as something more than a sheer mastery of grammatical competence. The concept of communicative competence has been put forward since. One of the competences that constitute the theoretical construct of communicative competence is that of pragmatic competence: essential for learners for discerning whether or not a particular behavior and linguistic choice are appropriate in a given context. The evidence points to the fact that second language learners drastically differ from native speakers in execution of pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig, 1996). Consequently, promoting and developing learners´ pragmatic proficiency is fundamental in the foreign classroom. The goal of this paper is to outline the necessary theoretical conditions conducive to developing learners´ pragmatic competence. In doing so, the paper first provides definitions for a number of relative terms found in the field of pragmatics, focusing, specifically, on what constitutes communicative competence in section 1. In section 2, the most prominent models of communicative competence that followed the initial version set forth by Hymes (1972) are reviewed. Section 3 deals with the definition of pragmatic competence. The theoretical conditions necessary for developing pragmatic competence and some of the pitfalls that learners might face in the formal instructional settings are discussed in section 4. Pedagogical applications informed by the reviewed authors are proposed in the section 5. Finally, section 6 draws on the information discussed in the paper offering the conclusion.