It is only recently that ESL and EFL teachers have become convinced that in addition to being able to produce grammatical sentences, students need to know what to say when. In particular, students who intend to interact with L1 speakers of English are painfully aware of their need for information on how to perform actions such as requests, refusals, and invitations appropriately in situations ranging from interacting with a superior in a business situation to conversing with English-speaking friends and classmates. Such information has been available since the 1980s, with analysis of speech acts in English (Wolfson, 1988) and a range of other languages (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989), as well as comparisons of the speech acts produced by L1 speakers of English and English language learners (Beebe & Takahashi, 1989a, 1989b). These studies focused on the strategies, modifications, and supportive moves used to convey a particular action in a variety of circumstances. Some of the initial data on speech acts looked at compliments in English (Wolfson, 1988), requests and apologies across languages (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989), and refusals (Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss Weltz, 1990). Research in the decades since has expanded to include a number of other acts.

Analyses have usually focused on two aspects of the speech act data collected: linguistic realization and context in which the speech act was performed. Linguistic analyses categorize the linguistic resources used to perform the act and resources for softening or intensifying the force of the act. Thus, requests have been characterized as direct (e.g., imperatives), conventionally indirect (e.g., questions of ability, willingness, statements of need), and indirect (e.g., hints), while compliments have been described in terms of most frequent grammatical form and vocabulary (e.g., I like/love X; That’s a Adj N – where the adjective is generally one of the following: nice, good, great, beautiful, pretty). In addition, researchers have identified common intensifiers (e.g., so, really) and downgraders (a little, just). Sociopragmatic information has often been reported in terms of the relationship between the interactants (power, degree of intimacy) and the degree of imposition or face threat of the action. One problem with this research is that it is not written with teachers in mind, and it takes some digging and sifting to glean information that can be used for developing pedagogical activities.

Fortunately, in the past decade accessible summaries of research on a variety of speech acts in English have become available (Bardovi Harlig & Mahan-Taylor, 2003; CARLA Web site; Houck & Tatsuki, 2011; Ishihara & Cohen, 2012; Tatsuki & Houck, 2010; Wong & Waring, 2010). These resources draw on research on the forms and functions of acts, often in predetermined contexts designed to vary according to the three social factors already mentioned: the relative power of participants; intimacy of participants; and degree of imposition of the act. Thus, teachers interested in instructing their students on how a particular speech act is performed now have resources with summaries of prior research and suggestions on how to construct activities based on this research.

However, there is another consideration. While the research underlying most pedagogical applications clearly taps into recognizable performance strategies, it has limitations. One of the most important limitations is the data collection procedure. Much of the original research was gathered using written elicitation tasks―predetermined situations for which the respondent writes what he or she would probably say. These have the disadvantage of representing not what is actually said by speakers of English, but what a speaker thinks she says. Such L1 speaker intuitions can be notoriously unreliable (Kasper, 1997), and the data resulting from these discourse completion tasks often yielded a commonsense view of a speech act, rather than a language actually used. Thus, while “You’re welcome” is often taught as the appropriate response to “Thank you,” it is rarely used in real interactions. Responses such as “No problem” or “My pleasure” are more frequent, depending on the situation.

As early as the 1980s, alternative, more labor-intensive means of data collection were employed. These included observation of speech acts as they occurred (Beebe, 1994; Wolfson, 1988) and recording and close transcription of natural interactions (Wong & Waring, 2010). Though these methodologies address the problem of validity, another limitation exists: pragmatic variation among speech communities. Groups from different geographical areas and speakers with different social characteristics (gender, age, social status) may differ in their reliance on particular strategies or types of modification, as well as their distribution.

Thus although research reports on the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic characteristics provide a wealth of general information on particular acts, teachers may find it desirable to supplement data in pedagogical texts with observations from their learners’ target speech communities. Natural examples of the speech act can be observed in situations typical of those that the learners expect to encounter. A useful supplement to research-based classroom activities is the collection by learners of real instances of, say, compliments being performed by native speakers. For this type of data collection, the words used to perform the act and the circumstances of its production need to be recorded precisely (see Beebe, 1994). However, it is not always practical for learners to identify and write down speech acts as they are produced for a variety of reasons: They may not recognize an act as such; they may not understand vocabulary; they may miss function words; and their memory of speech in a foreign language is limited. In addition, EFL learners may have little access to naturally occurring speech.

Teachers may wish to collect the data themselves. Ideally, the collector jots down acts by speakers from the target speech community on a note pad or cell phone as they occur. This provides the teacher with actual examples of local patterns. For instance, in a set of compliments collected by Southern California undergraduates for a pragmatics class, students noted that compliments on appearance were often an integral component of greetings. They also noted that, though “Hey” was the most common form of greeting between students on campus, another frequent form was some version of How are you such as “What’s up?” “What’s going on with you guys?” (usually to groups), or “How’s it going?” Clearly, subtle variations among speakers and situations still exist. However, this type of data can be used to raise learners’ awareness of the language around them and serve as a springboard for their own observations. (Note that observers should limit themselves to data that is produced in public, without eavesdropping, or acts from friends who have agreed to have their actions recorded. Leslie Beebe would often whip out a notebook and ask permission to write down a speech act from a conversation in progress.)

Teachers interested in helping their students develop an understanding of the forms and uses of speech acts in their community have numerous resources, ranging from published summaries of research (and examples of successful activities for teaching the acts), as well as data collection by learners and by the teachers themselves. With a little time and commitment, teachers can provide valuable information to learners on how to behave naturally and appropriately―a service that rivals the teaching of grammar in its importance to interaction with speakers of the target language, and one that is often ignored in ESL/EFL classrooms.

REFERENCES

Bardovi Harlig, K., & Mahan-Taylor, R. (2003). Teaching pragmatics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State. Retrieved from www.indiana.edu/~dsls/publications/printtableofcontents.doc

Beebe, L. (1994, March). Notebook data on power and the power of notebook data. Paper presented at the 28^th Annual TESOL Convention and Exhibit, Baltimore, MD.

Beebe, L. M., & Takahashi, T. (1989a). Do you have a bag?: Social status and pattern variation in second language acquisition. In S. Gass et al. (Eds.), Variation in second language acquisition: Discourse, pragmatics and communication (pp. 103-125). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Beebe, L. M., & Takahashi, T. (1989b). Sociolinguistic variation in face-threatening speech acts: Chastisement and disagreement. In M. R. Eisenstein (Ed.), The dynamic interlanguage: Empirical studies in second language variation (pp. 199-218). New York, NY: Plenum.

Beebe, L., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-Weltz, R. (1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. Scarcella, E. Andersen, & S. Krashen (Eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language (pp. 55-73). New York, NY: Newbury House.

Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

CARLA Web site, http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/index.html.

Houck, N., & Tatsuki (2011). Pragmatics: Teaching natural conversation. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Ishihara, N, &. Cohen, A. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. London, England: Pearson.

Tatsuki, D., & Houck, N. (2010). Pragmatics: Teaching speech acts. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Wolfson, N. (1988). The bulge: A theory of speech behavior and social distance. In J. Fine (Ed.). Second language discourse: A textbook of current research (pp. 21-38). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Wong, J., & Waring, H. (2010). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/EFL teachers. New York, NY: Routledge.