Pragmatics and Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

Abstract The study of pragmatics is traditionally held to encompass at least five main areas: Deixis, Conversational implicature, presupposition, speech acts, conversational structure. Within second language studies, work in pragmatics is narrower than it is in the field of pragmatics at large, including the investigation of speech acts and to a lesser extent conversational structure and conversational implicature. It is also broader, investigating areas traditionally considered to be sociolinguistics. In the intersection of second language studies and pragmatics, research is best characterized by Stalnaker's definition of pragmatics: “the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in which they are performed.” The most dominant area of pragmatics in second language studies is the study of speech acts. Speech act theory views utterances as not just stating propositions, but as a way of doing things with words; hence the concept of act. Speech acts include five categories: Representatives, Directives, Commissives, Expressives, and Declarations.