Pragmatics is a new branch of linguistics and it concentrates on the aspect of meaning that cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge alone and need to take into account knowledge about the physical and social world. Pragmatics emphasizes the expressions of meanings instead of the language forms and emphasizes the speakers’ meaning instead of the meaning of the words and sentences. It is not enough for any language learner only to master language forms. Learners should distinguish intended meaning from literal meaning. In pragmatics, logical grammar and meaning are not the only standards to depend on. What is more important is the language’s appropriateness. As pragmatics has been promoted and has been accepted wider and wider, its influence on language teaching is becoming stronger and stronger.
Sometimes, how much the pragmatics can produce in the English teaching is due to the degree of using it inside and outside the classroom. We should not only teach the students English grammar, but also pay much attention to pragmatics so as to develop the students’ ability to use English as it should be.
In language teaching, the relationship between pragmatics and grammar should carefully be dealt well with. Take teaching vocabulary as an example, to teach a word well, a teacher should not only let students know what it refers to, but also what is the difference between it and words with similar meaning. In English, synonyms are words that share a general sense and so may be interchangeable in a limited number of contexts, but which on closer inspection reveal conceptual differences. For example, extend, increase, expand. In the following sentence, they can be replaced by one another.
e.g. The company has decided to extend/increase/expand its range of products. But in the following sentences, they are not interchangeable.
e.g. We are going to extend the kitchen by ten feet this year.
We want to increase our sales by ten percent next year.
The metal will expand if we heat it.
Another example on vocabulary teaching is words’ affective meaning. Attitudinal and emotional factors can be expressed in an item of vocabulary. These are often referred to as connotation. Compare the following two sentences:
Mary is a single woman.
Mary is a spinster.
The conceptual meaning of both is that Mary is an unmarried adult female. However, “spinster” has a series of evaluative and emotional associations, for example, old, isolated, odd etc. It is hardly complimentary or pleasing.
In the past years, the traditional way of teaching English is teaching a sentence by analyzing its grammar and its meaning as elaborately as possible. To some extent, this method of teaching English is equal to viewing any sentence as an isolated unit of language. However, according to Speech Act Theory, which is proposed by J.Austin and J.Searle, language is not only used to informed or to describe things, what is more, it is often used to do things, to perform acts. So in terms of Speech Act Theory, a sentence in communicative process not only presents proposition, but also indicate speakers’ illocutionary act. We can classify all the sentences into four forms: statements, questions, imperatives and exclamation. But sometimes, one sentence may have both literal meaning and pragmatic meaning. Examples are as following:
e.g. A:Did you hear the man is dead?
B: Your shoes need cleaning.
Sentence A is a question, but actually,its pragmatic function is not to ask but to tell someone the news that the man is dead. While sentence B is a statement, but its pragmatic function is to give an instruction that you should clean your shoes. Performative verbs can help English learners understand some sentences’ pragmatic functions. Only can the listener obtains the speaker’s pragmatic meaning correctly, can illocutionary act be well done.
So as far as sentences are concerned, the differences are mainly pragmatics but grammar. The following sentences may show the pragmatic diversity.
e.g. A: I believe that she is an honest girl.
B: It is believed that she is an honest girl.
C: We believe that she is an honest girl.
Sentence A expresses the speaker is rather concerted; sentence B is a neutral one; sentence C shows that the person is modest.
A: May I borrow your book?
B: Can you lend me your book?
The two sentences above have the same meaning in common, while sentence A conforms to the politeness principle of pragmatics. Sentence B directly asks others for something. It is impolite in English spoken countries.
In a word, the relationship between pragmatics and teaching grammar is quite close and it deserves to pay much attention to. How much pragmatics can produce is due to the degree of using it in the real context. As an English teacher, we should not only teach the grammar, but also pay attention to pragmatics so as to develop students’ ability to use English.
2.2 The application of pragmatics in teaching English listening
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