The Language Teacher
05 - 2003
Raising Pragmatic Consciousness in the Japanese EFL Classroom?
Mayumi Fujioka
Kinki University
Pragmatic Competence/Speech Acts
Perhaps many native English speakers in Japan can relate to the following. Upon coming to Japan their image of Japanese people as being polite and indirect gets completely overturned by some of the linguistic behavior in English of Japanese speakers. For example, when they talk to native English-speaking teachers, Japanese college students often say, "I want you to read my essay" when requesting help, or they say "You had better turn off the lights" when offering advice to a teacher about how to use an overhead projector. Why do those students, who can behave politely in their native language, say things that strike other speakers as rude or pushy when speaking English? This question raises the issue of pragmatic competence.
Pragmatic competence refers to the ability to use language in culturally and contextually appropriate ways. The studies on interlanguage pragmatics have paid a great deal of attention to second language learners' pragmatic competence in terms of speech acts, that is, "[a]ctions performed via utterances" (Yule, 1996, p.47). Specific speech acts include apologies, complaints, compliments, refusals, requests, and suggestions. Compared with native speakers, the research findings overall indicate that even advanced-level nonnative speakers often lack native-like pragmatic competence in a range of speech acts (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992).
There are several reasons for this lack of appropriate pragmatic competence. First, learners may not realize that there are different ways to convey the speaker's intention; they know they can say, "Please lend me your CD" but may not know other or more indirect ways of making the same request, such as "Could I borrow your CD?", "Would you mind if I borrowed your CD?", or "I was just wondering if I could borrow your CD." Second, there is an issue of pragmatic transfer, (the influence from the nonnative speaker's L1). As in the case of the Japanese speaker of English saying, "I want you to read my essay," the speaker is attempting to translate an equivalent linguistic form in Japanese "essei wo mitehoshiin desukedo," which functions appropriately as a request in Japanese.
Furthermore, according to Matsuda (1999), the effects of learning--both "the result of classroom instruction" and "perceptions formed outside of a classroom setting" (p.43)--may be a cause of nonnative speakers' pragmatic failure. For example, Japanese speakers' typical perception of "you'd better" as being equivalent to "it would be better" is possibly due to inaccurate descriptions of "you'd better" in some English textbooks in Japan (Rinnert, 1995). Stereotypes of the target language and the speakers of that language could have effects outside the classroom. For example, some Japanese speakers of English fail to realize style shifts in English according to the speaker-hearer relationships, due to their view of English as an "egalitarian" language. They also have a false image that native English speakers speak directly regardless of the situation (Tanaka, 1988).
Since pragmatic competence involves sociocultural rules of language use, the consequences caused by learners' violations of those rules could be serious. Native speakers tend to be less tolerant of nonnative speakers' pragmatic errors than their grammatical errors (Ervin-Tripp, 1972; Wolfson, 1983, both cited in Matsuda, 1999). Nonnative speakers who demonstrate pragmatic failure may be perceived as rude, as mentioned earlier regarding the examples of saying "I want you to..." and "you had better. . . ," and in extreme cases, nonnative speakers may be denied important academic or professional opportunities (Matsuda, 1999). In order to help learners avoid potential difficulty they might encounter in their future interaction with speakers of English, they need to be assisted to develop their pragmatic competence in English, and that is where instruction comes into play.
Pedagogical Issues
A goal of instruction
Rose (1994) proposes "pragmatic consciousness-raising" (the same concept is suggested by Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford, Mahan-Taylor, Morgan and Reynolds, 1991), and Kasper & Rose (2001) propose activating learners' L1 pragmatic knowledge. Based on the discussion by Bardovi-Harlig, et al., (1991) and Rose (1994), a realistic goal of instruction of pragmatics can be to raise students' awareness of pragmatic functions in language, rather than teaching all the complexities of, for example, making requests, apologies or complaints. Furthermore, Kasper and Rose (2001) comment that adult L2 learners already possess a lot of pragmatic information in L1, but they do not always utilize their L1 knowledge in L2 contexts; thus a role of instruction can be to make learners aware of their existing pragmatic knowledge and "encourage them to use their universal or transferable L1 pragmatic knowledge in L2 contexts" (p.7).
Possible activities for instruction
In order to help Japanese EFL learners develop their pragmatic competence in English, the following activities can be implemented. First, as a warm-up activity, role-plays in Japanese can be effective. Students role-play borrowing a dictionary from their class members (i.e., the teacher/a close friend/a classmate whom they hardly know/a classmate who is older than they are in the case of a mixed-age class). This simple role-play with a situation that students are likely to encounter can give them a chance to see in their native language how contextual factors (e.g., familiarity, power relations, and age differences between the speaker and the hearer) affect their language use.
After the role-play, a film analysis can be introduced as an effective means of pragmatic consciousness-raising. As Rose (1997) comments, film "provides ample opportunities to address virtually all aspects of language use in a variety of contexts, and it also offers the possibility for repeated viewings which can be used to uncover multiple layers of pragmatic particulars from a single scene" (pp.282-283).
Here is an example of a film analysis in class. A series of scenes in the film A Few Good Men (Brown, Scheinman, & Reiner, 1992) focus on the request speech act (see Fujioka, 2002, for related article). In one of the scenes, a young, ambitious military attorney, the main character, asks a senior marine officer for a document to investigate the murder of a private named Santiago, saying "Colonel, I just need a copy of Santiago's transfer order." Students watch the scene in English without any subtitles first, transcribe the attorney's words, translate his words into Japanese, and then watch again to check their translation against the subtitles. In the next scene, the officer appears agitated by the attorney's words, which strike him as arrogant, and says authoritatively, "You have to ask me nicely." The students write down in Japanese what the attorney is going to say in the next scene, and then check their predictions against the subtitles with the English sound turned off. Based on the Japanese subtitles, students write what they think the attorney will say in English and then listen to check their English sentences against the attorney's actual words: "Colonel Jessep, if it's not too much trouble, I'd like a copy of the transfer order, Sir."
As a follow-up activity, a group or whole-class discussion where students share their reactions to the film analysis could be effective. They can probably easily point out the style shift in the attorney's words in the Japanese subtitles, and many of them probably mention that they are surprised to see a style shift in English, which they may not have realized existed, as pointed out in the introductory section. In addition, students can learn various linguistic devices to make a particular utterance sound polite and formal; in the attorney's utterance, the impact of the request is mitigated by the phrases "If it's not too much trouble" and "I'd like..." and by the attorney being overtly polite by addressing the officer as "Sir."
In addition to film, students could benefit from language samples audio taped for class (with permission) by the teacher of his/her friends and acquaintances engaged in conversation outside the classroom (Tanaka, 1997). Students can also obtain language samples electronically; email and electric bulletin boards make effective data sources on pragmatics (Rinnert, 2002). Through the language samples from the various sources, students can learn how such speech acts as starting and ending a conversation or making a request or a suggestion are performed in real language contexts.
Textbooks are also an important source of pragmatic input. Nowadays, EFL textbooks that address the performance of specific speech acts in contexts (e.g., making an appointment with a professor, offering advice to a friend who is having a health problem) are widely available. However, as Bardovi-Harlig (1996) and Matsuda (1999) note, both ESL and EFL textbooks often fail to reflect the reality of language use, such as an abrupt way of ending a conversation or using a highly informal speech style in speaking to a higher status person. Thus, teachers and learners benefit from comparing textbook examples with data collected from movie scenes, recorded conversations, and computer-mediated communication.
Conclusion
In this article, an overview of interlanguage pragmatics in terms of speech acts was provided and, drawing upon previous research, possible activities for instruction were introduced. As mentioned earlier, students already possess pragmatic competence in their L1, and a goal of teaching pragmatics can be to activate students' existing pragmatic knowledge and transfer that knowledge to L2 contexts. If students understand that they already have knowledge and resources that could contribute to their language learning, then learning English could be more meaningful and enjoyable for them.
References
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1992). Pragmatics as part of teacher education. TESOL Journal, 1(3), 28-32.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1996). Pragmatics and language teaching: Bringing pragmatics and pedagogy together. In L. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning, monograph series vol. 7 (pp. 21-39). Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois.
Bardovi-Harlig, K., Hartford, B. A. S., Mahan-Taylor, R., Morgan, M. J., & Reynolds, D. W. (1991). Developing pragmatic awareness: Closing the conversation. ELT Journal, 45, 4-15.
Brown, D., Scheinman, A. (Producers), & Reiner, R. (Producer/Director). (1992). A few good men [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures and Castle Rock Entertainment.
Fujioka, M. (2002). The need to raise Japanese EFL learners' pragmatic competence in English: Suggestions for university English courses. Kinki University Department of Language Education Bulletin, 2(1), 61-75.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2001). Pragmatics in language teaching. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics and language teaching (pp. 1-9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matsuda, A. (1999). Interlanguage pragmatics: What can it offer to language teachers? CATESOL Journal, 11, 39-59.
Rinnert, C. (1995). Cultural preferences for communicative functions in English and Japanese: Implications for cross-cultural understanding. Hiroshima Journal of International Studies, 1, 163-179.
Rinnert, C. (2002). Ideas for collecting pragmatic research data electronically. Paper presented at the Seventh International CALL SIG Conference. Summary obtained from Pragmatic Matters (JALT pragmatics SIG newsletter), 3(3).
Rose, K. R. (1994). Pragmatic consciousness-raising in an EFL context. In L. Bouton & Y. Kachru (Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning [Monograph]. 5, 52-63. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois.
Rose, K. R. (1997). Pragmatics in the classroom: Theoretical concerns and practical possibilities. In L. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning [Monograph] 8, 267-295. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois.
Tanaka, K. (1997). Developing pragmatic competence: A learners-as-researchers approach. TESOL Journal, 6(3), 14-18.
Tanaka, N. (1988). Politeness: Some problems for Japanese speakers of English. JALT Journal, 9(2), 81-102.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mayumi Fujioka received her Ph.D. in language education from Indiana University, USA. She currently teaches undergraduate English courses at Kinki University, Osaka. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, language learning strategies, and L2 academic literacy development.
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