Pragmatics and its applications to TESOL and SLA addresses both theory and application issues, and presents a concise introduction to the field of theoretical pragmatics and to its applications to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA).
Following the first two chapters in which the two overall areas are introduced and defined, each chapter takes a two-part approach to pragmatic concepts/models: one theoretical and one applied. The theoretical section presents in clear, accessible language the basic concepts underlying the various areas of pragmatics, while the applied section reviews critically the most significant studies and their results pertaining to TESOL/SLA. Organized around two major themes, speech act theory from its origins in ordinary language philosophy to its development into neo-Gricean pragmatics and rationality-based politeness theories, to a survey on ways in which contextual information is reflected in discourse (e.g., markers) ranging from information structure, to social and interactional information (contextualization cues). The two final chapters round off the volume: a chapter on research design, meant to facilitate the development of students into independent scholars, and one on metapragmatics.
Pragmatics and its applications to TESOL and SLA provides a breadth of coverage across 10 chapters to suit advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and scholars in Pragmatics, Second Language Acquisition, Language Teaching, TESOL-related applications, and Intercultural Communication.
