Teaching Pragmatic Competence and Compliments

Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence can and should be taught in the English classroom to enable students to avoid communication failure and still let them choose what degree of politeness they want to express. There are many methods to develop L2 pragmatic competence in the classroom such as presentations, discussion, role playing, collecting data, and videos (Fernández Amaya, 2008; Grossi, 2009).

It is interesting to notice that pragmatic competence is not only important for L2 students, but also for NSs since globalization lead English speakers to interact with people from many different cultures. For example, if an Asian student makes a request in an indirect way, this may be misunderstood by a United States professor who is used to direct requests; or the open acceptance of a compliment may be understood as self-praise if the compliment is given by an Asian student to a German classmate, because the first one expected a downplaying compliment response, instead of an open acceptance. So, pragmatic competence is useful for everybody to successfully interact in this globalized world.

The complex nature of compliments and compliment responses make it one of the most difficult communication acts to master. Even though variables such as gender, age, relationship between speakers, and context play an important role in the characteristics of compliments and compliment responses; there are also common features that differ from one culture to another. The results of different studies on this issue have shown that compliments are more frequently used by United States speakers than Africans; but African speakers show more acceptance than those from the United States. Also, the topic of compliment was different between British and United States speakers. The first group use to compliment about ability, and the second about appearance. Chinese use more indirect compliments than United States speakers, and with people they know well, rather than with strangers, like the case of the second group. Japanese usually do not accept compliments to show politeness to the other speaker, but United States speakers usually respond with “thank you”(Grossi, 2009, p. 55). Knowing about these differences is crucial to have successful communication with people from different countries; therefore, English teachers play an important role in helping their students to master pragmatic competence.

References

Fernández Amaya, L. (2008). Teaching culture: Is it possible to avoid pragmatic failure? Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 21, 11-24.

Grossi, V. (2009). Teaching pragmatic competence: Compliments and compliment responses in the ESL classroom. Prospect, 24(2), 53-62.