Discourse analysis and pragmatics in the teaching of grammar : a need for integration

Abstract EN

This paper sets as its main purpose to bring some of those insights from discourse analysis and pragmatics into the English grammar classroom a the university in an attempt to help learners to become conscious of the processes that operate when they use language.

In order to investigate the English clauses, declarative, interrogative and imperative, the two areas mentioned above are brought into a symbiotic relationship which draws upon a communicative orientation.

The main leading principle is that when the grammar of language is taught for communication, clauses or any other grammatical items are held as resources for the creation and interpretation of discourse in context.

The grammatical system is, thus, learnt for the sake of communicating More than at any other time, in the new millennium where different cultures are being brought closer to one another, we are faced with the need for an interactive mode of learning / teaching.

The demand arises from a necessity to cope with world new challenges.

One such a challenge is FL teaching methodology.

This methodology must ensure that learners are given interactive presentations of language in use.

These presentations should contain linguistic forms and structures in contexts of use so as for learners to be able to understand and produce accurate as well as appropriate utterances, hence to do something with language.

It is just as much a matter of language competence to produce and understand grammatically well-formed sentences as appropriate utterances.

To be contextually appropriate or in Hymes's (Hymes 1972 : 277) terms to know when to speak, when not, what to talk about, with whom, when, where and in what manner is accounted for under pragmatics.

Pragmatics is the study of language in use.

Studying language in use entails an ability to match the formal aspect of language with the appropriate context, that is, utterances with their situations.

To deal with language from this perspective, is to account for the relationship holding between language forms and language users.

The issue is far more important in a foreign language context whereby instruction in pragmatics is expected to raise students' pragmatic awareness and makes them participate fully in the TL communication (Kasper 2001, Bardovi-Harlig 2001, Bardovi-Harlig and Mahan-Taylor 2003).

Failure to do this may cause learners to miss key points in what is communicated to them or make the others misunderstand what they themselves want to communicate (Thomas 1983).