Abstract
Since the 1990s, there has been increasing attention paid to teaching pragmatics in second and foreign language (L2 for simplicity) educational contexts. This is because competence in an L2 involves much more than understanding and producing grammatically correct utterances—L2 users need to know when and how to choose between grammatically correct utterances in appropriate contexts. Unfortunately, much of the instructional pragmatics scholarship has assumed that pragmatic appropriateness is a matter of correct and incorrect choices, which are typically determined on the basis of idealized native speaker conventions. In this talk, I present some of my recent work that has aimed to redress the role of appropriateness and social meaning in instructional pragmatics through the framework of concept-based pragmatics instruction (CBPI) in French and Spanish. The aim of CBPI is to lead language learners to internalize categories of meaning through the explicit instruction of sociopragmatic concepts (e.g., social distance) and to connect categories of meaning to communicative action. In this way, learners develop the ability to navigate and use agentively a second languaculture system that centers on social meaning potential. The discussion will center around both practical applications of the CBPI framework as well as implications for research on the role of consciousness in L2 development.