The
analysis of discourse is necessarily the analysis of language in use. As such
it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of
the purposes or functions which those are designed to serve in human affairs.
(Brown
and Yule, 1983:1)
...
one must learn more than just the pronunciation, the lexical items the
appropriate word order... one must also learn the appropriate way to use those
words and sentences in the second language.
(Gass
and Selinker, 1994,182)
INTODUCTION
This
chapter and the next one provide idea foundation for the framework we present
in this book- a framework in which both discourse and context are crucial to
effective language teaching. Chapter 1 deals with discourse. Which refers
primarily to the language forms that are produced and interpreted as people
communicate with each other. Chapter 2 deals with pragmatics with context and
its various feature, which deals primarily with the social, cultural, and
physical aspects of the situations that shape how people communicate with each
other. Another way of looking at this situation is to say that Chapter 1 deals
primarily with textual aspects of messeges whereas Chapter 2 deals primarily
with the situational aspects of messages.
Sometimes
it is hard tro draw the line between text and context since the same forms may
be used to signal important information in either domain. A good example of
this is the referential use of demonstratives in English (e.g this, that,
Consider the following example :
1.
Child pointing at food on the plate in fron of him) What’s this ?
2.Curude
thinks we should postpone the picnic, What do you think at this ?
In
the first example, the referent of this is the food on the child’s plate. The
referent is clear because the child is pysically pointing to what he is talking
about. We call this situational (or dseictic) reference, which is part of
context. In the second example, the referent of this is an idea prevously
mentioned in the ongoing discourse “we should postphone the picnic.’’ We refer to
this type of reference as textual (or anaphoric) reference because we find the
referent in the prior text.
In
addition, pragmatic analysis would take language variation in use into account.
For instance, in the first example the speaker i a child talking at home, a
circumstance under which the question “What’s this ?” is appropriate. An adult
guest invited to dinner would not ask the question this way since it might be
insulting to the host, so the guest might instead say something like:’What’s
the new dish you’re serving ?” In addition to interlocutor-related factor such
as age and social relationalship, communicative factors such as politeness and
appropriacy are also relevant to pragmatic analysis and need to be part of
one’s overall communicative competence. Language teaching, therefore, must be
concerned with how bot the discourse itself and the overall context contribute
to communication.
