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Renée Marshall is the International Programs Specialist at CASLS. She teaches English pragmatics lessons to Oregon International Internship Program and Oregon Summer Program students.

So what is pragmatics? According to Merriam-Webster it is: “the study of what words mean in particular situations.”

What does that mean exactly?

When Americans say, “How are you?” is it a question, or really more of a greeting; a way to acknowledge the other person’s presence politely? When Americans say, “Let’s get a coffee sometime,” is this an invitation, or really more of a polite way to end the conversation? Just because a sentence is grammatically correct does not mean that it will be understood or used the way it was intended. Even the same sentence can change meaning depending on context and tone. If my son comes in late and I say, with a light, curious tone of voice, “Oh, it’s late, you must have had fun?”, this has a different meaning than if he comes in late and I say, with a sarcastic or angry tone of voice, “Oh, it’s late, you must have had fun!”

Situation and context make a huge difference on the meaning of an utterance and how it’s interpreted. I’ve been studying Spanish off and on since high school, but it wasn’t until I read the online resource Dancing With Words: Strategies for Learning Pragmatics in Spanish from our sister LRC, CARLA, that I realized I had been misunderstanding my Spanish-speaking friends when it came to invitation sequences. I mistook their insistence of the invitation as being pushy, even rude. But insistence is a particular strategy intended to show that the invitation was truly genuine. Why had I spent 10+ years learning Spanish but didn’t learn this until now? Teaching pragmatics is important just like all the other skills in order to help L2 learners become effective language speakers.

Two resources I have found helpful in my own teaching are:

1. Teaching Pragmatics from American English: online resource for teaching pragmatics in the ESL/EFL context. Even if you don’t teach ESL/EFL, the examples can inspire you to think about the language you teach and what pragmatic points may be important.
2. Teaching and Learning Pragmatics: Where Language and Culture Meet (2010) by Noriko Ishihara and Andrew D. Cohen: a book resource for teachers looking to incorporate pragmatics into their curriculum.