Small Talk: Sociopragmatic Discord in the Business English Classroom

Page No.: 
216
Writer(s): 
Josef Williamson, Linguage Intercom

Reference Data:

(2016). Small talk: Sociopragmatic discord in the business English classroom. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), Focus on the learner. Tokyo: JALT.

An increasing corporate need for English communicative proficiency, driven by globalization and domestic population decline, makes it imperative that low English sociopragmatic competency among corporate learners be more effectively addressed by teachers. Spencer-Oatey’s sociopragmatic interactional principles (SIPs; Spencer-Oatey & Jiang, 2003) offer one solution. A context-dependent framework based on SIPs offers analytical and pedagogical utility for corporate English training by helping to identify salient areas of sociopragmatic discord between learner and comparison groups. In this research, an SIP-based framework for Business English small talk in Western English-speaking groups was used to explore sociopragmatic competence in a Japanese corporate English training context.

国際化と人口減少を背景として、企業においては社員の不十分な英語力が深刻な問題になっている。なかでも、原因の一つに、社内英語研修が語用(pragmatics—実践的な言葉の使用)の発達を十分に促していないということが挙げられる。しかし、語用論的原理(pragmatic principles)を通して英語と日本語の使い方の違いを明らかにすることで、一段と効果的な教え方を導き出せると考える。本論はSpencer-OateyによるSIPs (sociopragmatic interactional principles; Spencer-Oatey & Jiang, 2003)の枠組みに基づいて、企業の英語研修参加者と西洋人の社内雑談における語用の違いの調査と分析をする。

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