Consider the following:
1. A:Got the time?
B:Ten fifteen.
2. Waiter:More coffee?
Customer: I'm okay.
3. Parent:Dinner!
Child: Just a minute!
In so many of our everyday exchanges, a single sentence sometimes contains certain presuppositions or entailments that are not overtly manifested in surrounding sentence-level surface structure, but that are clear from the total context. All three of the above conversations contained such presuppositions (how to ask what time of day it is; how to say "no more coffee"; how to announce dinner and then indicate one will be there in a minute). So, while linguistic science in the middle of the twentieth century centered on the sentence for the purpose of analysis, in the last quarter of a century trends in linguistics have increasingly emphasized the importance of intersentential relations in discourse. In written language, similar intersentential discourse relations hold true as the writer builds a network of ideas or feelings and the reader interprets them.
Without the pragmatic contexts of discourse, our communications would be extraordinarily ambiguous. A stand-alone sentence such as "I didn't like that casserole" could, depending on context, be agreement, disagreement, argument, complaint, apology, insult, or simply a comment. A second language learner of English might utter such a sentence with perfect pronunciation and grammar, but fail to achieve the communicative function of, say, apologizing to a dinner host or hostess, and instead be taken as an unrefined boor who most certainly would not be invited back!
With the increasing communicative emphasis on the discourse level of language in classrooms, we saw that approaches that emphasized only the formal aspects of learner language overlooked important discourse functions. Wagner-Gough (1975), for example, noted that acquisition by a learner of the -ing morpheme of the present progressive tense does not necessarily mean acquisition of varying functions of the morpheme: to indicate present action, action about to occur immediately, future action, or repeated actions. Formal approaches have also tended to shape our conception of the whole process of second language learning. Evelyn Hatch (1978a: 404) spoke of the dangers.
In second language learning the basic assumption has been . . . that one first learns how to manipulate structures, that one gradually builds up a repertoire of structures and then, somehow, learns how to put the structures to use in discourse. We would like to consider the possibility that just the reverse happens. One learns how to do conversation, one learns how to interact verbally, and out of this interaction syntactic structures are developed.
Of equal interest to second language researchers is the discourse of the written word, and the process of acquiring reading and writing skills. The last few years have seen a great deal of work on second language reading strategies. Techniques in the teaching of reading skills have gone far beyond the traditional passage, comprehension questions, and vocabulary exercises. Text attack skills now include sophisticated techniques for recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices (for example, reference and ellipsis), discourse markers (then, moreover, therefore), rhetorical organization, and other textual discourse features (Nuttall 1996). Cohesion and coherence are common terms that need to be considered in teaching reading. Likewise the analysis of writing skills has progressed to a recognition of the full range of pragmatic and organizational competence that is necessary to write effectively in a second language.
The above comments on the significance of acquiring literacy competence notwithstanding, conversation still remains one of the most salient and significant modes of discourse. Conversations are excellent examples of the interactive and interpersonal nature of communication. "Conversations are cooperative ventures" (Hatch & Long 1980: 4). What are the rules that govern our conversations? How do we get someone's attention? How do we initiate topics? terminate topics? avoid topics? How does a person interrupt, correct, or seek clarification? These questions relate to an area of linguistic competence possessed by every adult native speaker of a language, yet few foreign language curricula traditionally deal with these important aspects of communicative competence. Once again our consideration of conversation rules will be general, since specific languages differ.
Very early in life, children learn the first and essential rule of conversation: attention getting. If you wish linguistic production to be functional and to accomplish its intended purpose, you must of course have the attention of your audience. The attention-getting conventions within each language—both verbal and nonverbal—need to be carefully assimilated by learners. Without knowledge and use of such conventions, second language learners may be reluctant to participate in a conversation because of their own inhibitions, or they may become obnoxious in securing attention in ways that "turn off" their hearer to the topic they wish to discuss.
Once speakers have secured the hearer's attention, their task becomes one of topic nomination. Rules for nominating topics in conversation, which involve both verbal and nonverbal cues, are highly contextually constrained. It is odd that only in recent years have language curricula included explicit instruction on how to secure the attention of an audience. Typical classroom activities in English include teaching students verbal gambits like "Excuse me," "Say," "Oh, sir," "Well, I'd like to ask you something" and nonverbal signals such as eye contact, gestures, and proxemics (see a discussion of these categories later in this chapter).
Once a topic is nominated, participants in a conversation then embark on topic development, using conventions of turn-taking to accomplish various functions of language. Allwright (1980) showed how students of English as a second language failed to use appropriate turn-taking signals in their interactions with each other and with the teacher. Turn-taking is another culturally oriented sets of rules that require finely tuned perceptions in order to communicate effectively. Aside from turn-taking itself, topic development, or maintenance of a conversation, involves clarification, shifting, avoidance, and interruption. Topic clarification manifests itself in various forms of heuristic functions. In the case of conversations between second language learners and native speakers, topic clarification often involves seeking or giving repair of linguistic forms that contain errors. Repair, as we saw in Chapter 8, involves a continuum of possibilities ranging from indirect signals to outright correction. It is what Canale and Swain (1980) labeled "strategic competence," and comprises a part of what Bachman (1990) included in strategic competence. Topic shifting and avoidance may be effected through both verbal and nonverbal signals. Interruptions, a form of attention getting, are a typical feature of all conversations. Rules governing appropriate, acceptable interruption vary widely across cultures and languages.
Topic termination is an art that even native speakers of a language have difficulty in mastering at times. We commonly experience situations in which a conversation has ensued for some time and neither participant seems to know how to terminate it. Usually, in American English, conversations are terminated by various interactional functions—a glance at a watch, a polite smile, or a "Well, I have to be going now." Each language has verbal and nonverbal signals for termination. It is important for teachers to be acutely aware of the rules of conversation in the second language and to aid learners to both perceive those rules and follow them in their own conversations.
H.P. Grice (1967) once noted that certain conversational "maxims" enable the speaker to nominate and maintain a topic of conversation:
1. Quantity: Say only as much as is necessary for understanding the
communication.
2. Quality: Say only what is true.
3. Relevance: Say only what is relevant.
4. Manner: Be clear.
Grice's maxims have been widely used as criteria for analyzing why speakers are sometimes ineffective in conversations, and as suggestions for improvement of one's "power" over others through conversation.
One aspect of the acquisition of conversation competence is the recognition and production of conventions for accomplishing certain functions. Second language researchers have studied such varied functions as apologizing (Olshtain & Cohen 1983), complimenting (Wolfson 1981), disapproving (D'Amico-Reisner 1983), inviting (Wolfson, D'Amico-Reisner, & Huber 1983), and even "how to tell when someone is saying 'no'" (Rubin 1976). There is no end to the possibility for research on such topics. The applications to teaching are equally numerous, apparent in a perusal of the many foreign language textbooks now aimed at focusing on conversational discourse.
Implicit in the above discussions of language functions, discourse analysis, and conversation rules is the importance of pragmatics in conveying and interpreting meaning. Pragmatic constraints on language comprehension and production may be loosely thought of as the effect of context on strings of linguistic events. Consider the following conversation:
[Phone rings, a ten-year-old child picks up the phone]
Stefanie: Hello.
Voice: Hi, Stef, is your Mom there?
Stefanie: Just a minute, [cups the phone, and yells] Mom! Phone!
Mom: [from upstairs] I'm in the tub!
Stefanie: [returning to the phone] She can't talk now. Wanna leavea message?
Voice: Oh, [pause] I'll call back later. Bye.
Pragmatic considerations allowed all three participants to interpret what would otherwise be ambiguous sentences. "Is your Mom there?" is not, in a telephone context, a question that requires a yes or no answer. Stefanie's "Just a minute" confirmed to the caller that her mother was indeed home and let the caller know that she would either (a) check to see if she was home, and/or (b) get her to come to the phone. Then, Stefanie's "Mom!Phone!" was easily interpreted by her mother as "Someone is on the phone who wants to talk with you." Mom's response, otherwise a rather worthless bit of information, in fact informed Stefanie that she couldn't come to the phone, which was then conveyed to the caller. The caller didn't explicitly respond "no" to Stefanie's offer to take a message, but implicitly did so with "I'll call back later."
Second language acquisition becomes an exceedingly difficult task when these sociopragmatic or pragmalinguistic constraints are brought to bear. Kasper (1998), LoCastro (1997), Turner (1995, 1996), Scollon and Scollon (1995), Kasper and Blum-Kulka (1993), Harlow (1990), and Holmes and Brown (1987) have all demonstrated the difficulty of such conventions because of subtle cross-cultural contrasts. Variations in politeness and formally are particularly touchy:
American: What an unusual necklace! It’s beautiful!
Samoan: Please, take it. (Holmes & Brown 1987:526)
American teacher: Would you like to read?
Russian student: No, I would not. (Harlow 1990:328)
In both cases the non-native English speakers misunderstood the illocutionary force (intended meaning) of the utterance within the contexts.
Learning the organizational rules of a second language are almost simple when compared to the complexity of catching on to a seemingly never-ending list of pragmatic constraints. Pragmatic conventions from a learner's first language can transfer both positively and negatively. Apologizing, complimenting, thanking, face-saving conventions, and conversational cooperation strategies (Turner 1995) often prove to be difficult for second language learners to acquire. Japanese learners of English may express gratitude by saying "I'm sorry," a direct transfer from "Sumimasen," which in Japanese commonly conveys a sense of gratitude, especially to persons of higher status (Kasper 1998:194). Cooperation principles are especially difficult to master: the difference between "Rake the leaves" and "Don't you think you could rake the leaves?" (Turner 1996:1) is an example of how, in English, cooperation is sometimes given precedence over directness.
One of the major pragmatic factors affecting the acquisition of communicative competence in virtually every language, and one that has received considerable attention recently, is the effect of one's sex on both production and reception of language. Differences between the way males and females speak have been noted for some time now (Tannen 1990, 1996; Holmes 1989, 1991; Nilsen et al. 1977; Lakoff 1975). Among American English speakers, girls have been found to produce more "standard" language than boys, a pattern that continues on through adulthood. Women appear to use language that expresses more uncertainty (hedges, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, etc.) than men, suggesting less confidence in what they say. Men have been reported to interrupt more than women, and to use stronger expletives, while the latter use more polite forms. Tannen (1996) and others have found that males place more value, in conversational interaction, on status and report talk, competing for the floor, while females value connection and rapport, fulfilling their role as more "cooperative and facilitative conversationalists, concerned for their partner's positive face needs" (Holmes 1991: 210).
These studies of language and gender, which were conducted in English-speaking cultures, do not even begin to deal with some of the more overtly formal patterns for men's and women's talk in other languages. Among the Carib Indians in the Lesser Antilles, for example, males and females must use entirely different gender markings for abstract nouns. In several languages males and females use different syntactic and phonological variants. In Japanese, women's and men's language is differentiated by formal (syntactic) variants, intonation patterns, and nonverbal expression. It is not uncommon for American men who learned Japanese from a female native-speaking Japanese teacher to inadvertently "say things like a woman" when, say, conducting business with Japanese men, much to their embarrassment.
In English, another twist on the language and gender issue has been directed toward "sexist" language: language that either calls unnecessary attention to gender or is demeaning to one gender. Writers are cautioned to refrain from using what we used to call the "generic" he and instead to pluralize or to use he or she. What used to be stewardesses, chairmen, and policemen are now more commonly called flight attendants, chairs, and police officers. Words/phrases like broads, skirtchasers, the wife, etc., are now marked as demeaning perpetuations of negative stereotypes of women. The list of sexist terms, phrases, and metaphors goes on and on. Fortunately, the research of linguists like Janet Holmes, Robin Lakoff, and Deborah Tannen has called the attention of the public to such sexism, and we are seeing signs of the decline of this sort of language. All these factors are subtleties that a second language learner must contend with. They all form a significant, intricately interwoven tapestry in our sociopragmatic competence.
Another important issue in describing communicative competence is the way we use language in different styles depending on the context of a communicative act in terms of subject matter, audience, occasion, shared experience, and purpose of communication. A style is not a social or regional dialect, but a variety of language used for a specific purpose. Styles vary considerably within a single language user's idiolect. When you converse informally with a friend, you use a different style than you use in an interview for a job with a prospective employer. Native speakers, as they mature into adulthood, learn to adopt appropriate styles for widely different contexts. An important difference between a child's and an adult's fluency in a native language is the degree to which an adult is able to vary styles for different occasions and persons. Adult second language learners must acquire stylistic adaptability in order to be able to encode and decode the discourse around them correctly.