A01 cohe4573 01 se fm. Qxd

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F U R T H E R I S S U E S I N L E A R N I N G , T E A C H I N G , A N D A S S E S S M E N T
or in a more indirect manner:
Hey, dad. I was wondering whether you were planning on using the
Mazda this weekend. I promised Caitlin and Megan I’d take them out
to the country arts fair in Lanesboro . . .
Depending on the language and culture, it may be strategic for the speaker
to adjust the delivery of the speech act according to the age, relative status,
or gender of the listener. The speaker would also need to know what it
means to borrow a car in that particular context – that is, how big an imposi-
tion it is considered to be in that culture (e.g., whether a car is a daily 
necessity or a luxury) and in that specific context (e.g., borrowing a new and
relatively valuable car vs an older “spare” car). In some cases, it may be
important to refrain from mentioning the borrowing of the car altogether,
but rather just to call attention to the need for transportation and to leave it
to the listener to determine whether to offer a car or not. In this example,
there may also be some family history involved, such as whether the father
feels that his daughter will drive the car safely. Issues of family personalit-
ies and relationships are also likely to play a part in the phrasing of the
daughter’s request and in the father’s response to this request. And natural
discourse retrieved through corpus data reveals that it could take a number
of turns for the interaction to resolve itself, one way or the other.
As was demonstrated in Chapter 1, effective speech acts performance
entails not only having the cultural knowledge about whether it is appro-
priate to ask to borrow the car and if so when to ask, but also the language
knowledge in order to do it appropriately in the given speech community
(“Can I take . . . ?” vs “I was wondering if . . .”). Pragmatically competent
speakers of English and in this case, a daughter, might either make a direct
request or soften it through the use of the past progressive tense (e.g., “I was
wondering if . . .”). While many learners of English may well have studied
this tense of the verb, they would not necessarily have sufficient control
over its use in their requests to know whether or when to use it.
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There are
other ways to make a request seem less imposing, such as by using mitigators
to downplay the demands: “Professor Cohen – would it be possible for you
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Bardovi-Harlig (2003).

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S T R A T E G I E S F O R L E A R N I N G A N D P E R F O R M I N G S P E E C H A C T S
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to take just a few minutes of your time to read through my thesis and perhaps
give me an idea or two about how I might prepare it as a journal article?”
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The context for language use
With regard to the context, learners may have such limited access to a par-
ticular speech acts situation that they find themselves unsure of just how to
behave when confronted with the situation. For example, an L2 user may
not know what to do or say at a funeral, and the textbooks are unlikely to
have a unit on this. Saying or doing the wrong thing can be particularly
upsetting both to those in mourning and to the learner! The learner may in
such situations draw from cultural patterns of behavior associated with the
L1 (where, for example, it might be appropriate to share how one of their
own loved ones died), but may well find that they are being inappropriate in
this L2 culture.
It is likely that learners will acquire the speech acts that they come in
contact with the most, that they notice, or for which they have the most need.
So, for example, they need to deal with forms of greetings and leave-takings,
and with requests immediately. Depending on the tasks they encounter,
other less mainstream situations will emerge as important. For example, if
L2 learners are backpacking across a country, then they may need to learn
the strategies that are appropriate for hitchhiking in that culture. When
hitchhiking in the US, for instance, the hitchhikers may consider it their
role to entertain the driver, particularly at night where talk may help to 
keep him/her awake. In other cultures, such as in Israel, hitchhikers may,
depending on the driver, be expected to keep silent and only speak in
response to a question posed to them.
Discussion
This chapter has focused on the need for supporting learners in their efforts
to acquire pragmatic ability through calling their attention to strategies for
enhancing how they learn and perform speech acts. The speech acts strategy
taxonomy provided here is seen as a preliminary step in this direction.
Ideally, you will take away from this chapter some ideas for how to sup-
port your students in their efforts to learn and to perform speech acts both
in and outside of the classroom.
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Italics are used here to identify the mitigators.

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