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C O N T E N T S

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Acknowledgments
F
irst and foremost, we would like to express our deep gratitude 
to the participants of our Center for Advanced Research on
Language Acquisition (CARLA) five-day institute courses held in summer of
2005–2009 at the University of Minnesota. These participants made invalu-
able contributions to chapters under development in this book. Their voices
and their reactions to materials, coming from their own expertise and expe-
rience, greatly enhanced the book. We are also grateful to both the Director
of CARLA, Elaine Tarone, and to the Coordinator, Karin Larson, for agreeing
to offer this new institute on pragmatics and for their feedback on this prac-
tically oriented resource, especially with respect to Chapters 5 and 14.
In addition, we would like to acknowledge the contributions made 
by several colleagues to the shaping of specific chapters. Rachel Shively 
generously shared her expertise in technology and the teaching of Spanish 
of pragmatics, and her input is reflected in Chapter 13. Thanks also go to 
Kim Johnson and Anne Dahlman for their brilliant insights from a teacher
educator’s perspective for Chapter 2. We also thank our current and former
graduate students at American University and at the University of
Minnesota for helping to make this book more readable and accessible to
practicing teachers.
We would also like to thank the series editor for Pearson Education,
Chris Candlin, for his solid support of our effort to create this book and for
his insights in preparing the book for publication. Our heartfelt thanks go to
Mayuko Onda for her original illustrations. We also wish to acknowledge
Kumiko Akikawa for her meticulous work in coordinating the references for
this book. We are grateful to the Pearson Education editorial staff as well for
their assistance in this endeavor. Last but not least, special thanks go to our
families for their support and encouragement during the preparation of this
manuscript.

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Publisher’s acknowledgements
W
e are grateful to Oxford University Press for permission to
reproduce the extracts on pp. 158–60 from Bardovi-Harlig, K.,
Hartford, B. S., Mahan-Taylor, R., Morgan, M. and Reynolds, D. W.,
‘Developing pragmatic awareness: closing conversation’, ELT Journal, 45(1),
4 –15, 1991. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.
In some instances we have been unable to trace the holders of copyright
material, and we would appreciate any information that would enable us 
to do so.

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Introduction
T
he theme of interlanguage pragmatics and, in particular, the
link between language and culture has gained wide appeal 
internationally, and has enjoyed attention in the field of language educa-
tion for the last 30 years at least. This has resulted in a growing number 
of applied-linguistics books with pragmatics in the title and several inter-
national journals which encompass this field, such as the Journal of Pragmatics
and Intercultural Pragmatics. It is probably fair to say that pragmatics has
increasingly become mainstream in second/foreign-language (L2) teaching
and learning.
The writing of this book was prompted by what we perceived as a 
gap between what research in pragmatics has found and how language is
generally taught today. As of the present time, research in cross-cultural and
interlanguage pragmatics has delved into a number of topics with direct 
relevance to language instruction. For example, there are now numerous
studies available exploring speech acts such as requesting, refusing, apolo-
gizing, complimenting, and complaining in various languages. There are also
many studies on how L2 speakers of those languages comprehend and
behave pragmatically in their first language (L1) and in their L2. On the
other hand, not much of this empirical work has as yet been systematically
applied to the L2 classroom and few commercially available textbooks offer
research-informed instruction. In addition, few teacher education programs
seem to deal with the practical application of pragmatics theories. In putting
together the book we have attempted to help fill this gap by illustrating 
a number of ways in which empirically validated pragmatics material 
can become a mainstream part of teacher development and can assume a
more prominent place in L2 instruction. Accordingly, this bridging work in 
support of instructional pragmatics constitutes a key theme of the book.
This book is intended as a guidebook for teachers with various hands-
on activities. As such, the book may be of interest to pre- and in-service 
language teachers and graduate students, as well as teacher educators. Our

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primary concern is to show how pragmatics interfaces with culture in
human interaction and to underscore this link in language teaching. So, the
book is primarily focused on classroom practice, and we see this research-
informed, pedagogically oriented approach to pragmatics as a relatively new
contribution to the field. Special attention is afforded to instructional
approaches and classroom processes, as well as to modes of assessment in
this context. We are also concerned with curriculum writing and the incor-
poration of online pragmatics material. At the same time the book addresses
issues of language learning and teaching in terms of discourse and inter-
action. Although speech acts are given major attention in the guide, we neither
equate them with pragmatics nor suggest that speech acts should dominate
the L2 curriculum that incorporates pragmatics. Speech acts are only one
component of pragmatics, and much of our discussion applies to the prag-
matics of written language as well to spoken discourse. Because speech acts
have been well-studied, research findings about them are readily applicable
to instruction. Indeed it is our intention to call for further research and
instruction in other areas of pragmatics.
We view the learning of pragmatics not only as a cognitive process but
also as a social phenomenon, looking into how L2 speakers construct and
negotiate their identities as they become socialized into the L2 community.
We see the pragmatic norms of a community as constructed not by native
speakers of the language, but by pragmatically competent expert speakers,
native or non-native. Because non-native speakers can be as pragmatically
effective as (or at times, more so than) some native speakers, we wish to
depart from the misleading dichotomy of native vs non-native speakers
wherever possible. In fact, especially with regard to English, the demarcation
between native and non-native speakers is becoming increasingly blurred
with the spread of English as an international language. Rather than relying
on this questionable distinction, we view one’s pragmatic ability as con-
textually constructed in interaction, often negotiable in context. This is 
why we emphasize the speaker’s goals and intentions, the way that they are
interpreted by the listener, and the likely consequences of the interaction,
whoever the speaker and the listener may be. We intend to highlight the
social aspects in the learning of L2 pragmatics and invite teacher readers to
consider how learners’ social being relates to the instructional and evaluative
practices of the teachers.
In our view, language teachers need to have specific guidance in how 
to teach and assess pragmatics systematically in order to feel comfortable
incorporating empirically based pragmatics more into their teaching. In this
book we provide guidelines, practical steps, and examples for classroom