A01 cohe4573 01 se fm. Qxd

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G R O U N D I N G I N T H E T E A C H I N G A N D L E A R N I N G O F L 2 P R A G M A T I C S
F: Look, Charlie. I’ve been getting reports on your teaching style from more than one
student and not just recently. If you are teasing anybody, it’s gotta stop now. We can’t
have this kind of thing going on here because . . .
C: Listen, Francine. I resent your just accepting whatever the students said to you. How
do you know they were telling the truth? It’s unfair to me to make assumptions when
you don’t know . . .
F: Charles. You’re still relatively new here and in my opinion you have a lot to learn. 
I have watched how you make quips at faculty meetings. You think you’re being funny,
but sometimes people get offended. You really need to be more careful about what you
say if you want to continue to work here and . . .
C: Well, maybe I should look for another job then – one where I am more appreciated
just the way I am.
Part II Varying the pragmatics in an apology situation
Assume that in a luncheon with colleagues, you said something negative behind the
back of another colleague, Harry – namely, that he lacked tact. Unfortunately, it got
back to him. Over a cup of coffee, he confronts you with what he heard you had said:
Harry: Hey, I just was talking with Bethany, and she said you were saying things about
me behind my back. I guess I want to hear it directly from you. . . .
You: 

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C H A P T E R 2
Teachers’ pragmatics:
knowledge, beliefs, 
and practice
Noriko Ishihara
Introduction
N
ow that we have discussed the basics – what pragmatics is, how
it is intertwined with culture, and why it is important to teach
it in the L2 classroom – we would like to shift the focus to what the teacher
brings to the learning and teaching of pragmatics. Therefore, this particular
chapter may be of interest to teacher educators, as well as to teachers and
prospective teachers. We know that teachers’ backgrounds, knowledge,
experiences, and beliefs have an impact on what and how they teach. As
stated earlier, a primary intention of this book is to help narrow the gap
between what is currently known about how language is pragmatically used
and how that information is (or is not) taught in the classroom. In doing so,
it is quite clear that the teacher is the main agent in creating this bridge. 
In our view, this bridging work can be achieved in part by making available
to teachers research-based information about how language is used prag-
matically, as well as by demonstrating effective approaches to the teaching
of pragmatics (a theme we will come to in upcoming chapters). A recent
nationwide survey has found that the treatment of pragmatics in teacher
development courses in the US centers on theoretical models (e.g., those
relating to linguistic politeness and to speech acts) rather than on practical
applications (e.g., how to teach L2 pragmatics).
1
It may be assumed that if
given an appropriate theoretical framework, language teachers can devise
1
Vasquez and Sharpless (2009).

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