Learning Pragmatics in Foreign and Second Languages

Abstract

 
Pragmatic competences are essential for interacting appropriately in a variety of situations. But how can they best be taught and learnt? Babylonia 1/26 explores this question and provides insights into various teaching projects:

To begin with, Cecilia Bartoli, Maria Rossi and Alessandra Smerilli demonstrate how pragmatic competences can be developed through biographical storytelling in a migration context. Similarly, Typhaine Manzato & Anne Criblez show how idiomatic expressions can be taught in an intercultural and plurilingual approach.

Christian Dumais highlights the importance of including pragmatics for the development of oral competencies in the L2 classroom. Readers get to have a glimpse of the complexities both students and teachers face when dealing with pragmatics. Yet, it becomes evident how it is essential to include pragmatics in L2 teaching, despite the challenges it involves.

Luc Fivaz presents a teaching sequence based on advertising spots, in which students grasp the unsaid and produce humorous clips themselves. Luzia Sauer & Margarida Pereira explore which pragmatic competences can be strengthened in an L2 English ‘Spot the Difference’ task in primary school. This focus on early language learning is further developed in an interview with Anders Myrset who explains why L2 pragmatics should already be taught to young learners and how their metapragmatic awareness can be enhanced.

Shifting the focus to a specific dimension of pragmatics, Rachel Shively examines L2 humour, discussing the challenges speakers face, arguing for its place in the language classroom, and suggesting ways of integrating it effectively.

Through a specific case, Jeremy Jaquet provides the reader with an example of how language variation challenges L2 teaching. The reader is plunged in the reality of a French L2 teacher in Louisiane where there are vernacular and competing forms challenging the normative Eurocentric French.

Finally, in Polifonia, Francesco Screti & Giuliana Santoro confront their ways of dealing with the word signorina in class. And to close the issue, Giuliana Santoro returns to the topic in a more creative form, illustrating it through a tale.

Also, don’t miss this issue’s editorial, where we take a clear stand against racism in textbooks.