Theroetical Framework:

 

Communicative Competence: Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics

 

Communicative competence in language teaching has become a priority.  Since the communicative approach hit the scenario for language teaching and learning in the early 80´s, Linguistic Competence (grammar and vocabulary) has just become an integrated part of it, but not an exclusive dimension as it used to be previously.  That is, not only grammar and vocabulary should be taken into consideration by teachers in the quest to develop a Communicative Competence in their students. Apart from these two competences, in language teaching and learning, there are other components teachers should be aware of if they do not want just to teach the system of a language, but its function and use as well.  In other words, teachers should not just put emphasis in teaching the language as a system, but as a product and as a result of using it.  Consequently, teachers should be aware of other Communicative Competences, namely the discursive and pragmatic competences. (Song, 2010)

 

     As we have observed from our personal experience in teaching Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics at undergraduate level, these two assets of the Communicative Competence should be considered as those domains of language that will assist us in finding sentences and utterances as “sense making” structures.  Discourse Analysis deals with finding the linguistic outcome of persons when speaking or writing as coherent and cohesive structures, and Pragmatics deals with the adequate production of a message taking into consideration the context in which this outcome is produced. (Van Dijk, 1980; Song, 2010)

 

Thus, as we analyze sentences or utterances from the Discourse Analysis point of view in order to check if they are coherent (if they make sense), we will realize immediately why Discourse Analysis is an important competence bilingual teachers should be aware of when teaching. For instance, in the following couple of sentences: “There was a tornado that hit the town. Everything was destroyed and all roads were closed”.  Could we find these sentences coherent?  Do they make any sense at all? For most of us, they are sentences that are indeed coherent because they seem to make sense to us.  We know that when there are Tornados, there is as well some degree of destruction and damage, and roads could be closed because of the damage tornados may cause from time to time.  And as prevention, roads may be closed so drivers could not drive in a certain direction.  We then see that between these two sentences there is a semantic relationship, a logic link between them, namely a cause-effect relation. But then, if we consider more or less the same sentences, but if we say instead “There was a Tornado that hit the town. Everything was destroyed so let´s go out for dinner” we would immediately infer that something is wrong with these sentences.  We would consider logic that if everything was destroyed we could not look for a restaurant.  As we could see in this last couple of sentences, they are correct grammatically, even though there is something that common people would ponder as something wrong because these two sentences do not any make sense at all.  As a result of these instances, Discourse Analysis will be defined then as that property of language that is beyond the limits of grammar and that sets and looks for semantic and logic relations (coherence) among sentences and utterances. This specific aspect of Discourse Analysis is also known as Textual Competence, or as Teun A. Van Dijk calls it: Text Linguistics (Van Dijk, 1980).

 

 

            Now, when considering Pragmatics in language productions and based on of our personal experience teaching the subject, everyone, as producers of any linguistic outcome, do have to consider the context as an important matter on any linguistic outcome.  Using an example again, it can be observed how Pragmatics works, in the following utterance “John, do you know that Pete has just quit smoking?” Originally, when someone first listen to the question, he or she could infer that Pete was a heavy smoker, that he probably has been smoking for years, and that he smoked a lot.  But could anyone consider this utterance as an insult?  In most cases, no one could think of this utterance as an insult.  But let us picture the following scenario or the following context:  John is a very heavy smoker too, simply as Pete was.  John has just had a very terrible day.  He has just suffered the loss of his pet which he has just happened to find it dead this morning.  Then, when he was at his office he received some bad news:  he has just been informed that he has been fired.  Then the girl, that he was looking forward to go on a date for years, has not shown up after one hour of waiting for her.  Then, when he arrived at home that evening, someone has just told him the utterance we set as an example above: “John, do you know that Pete has just quit smoking?”  The reaction of John after listening to that utterance could go wrong when he interpreted this as the drop that spills out the glass of water.  He could think of this sentence as an insult as he interpreted that this person is meaning that he does not have the will for stop smoking as Pete did.  He then would consider this utterance as an insult.  This fictional, but simple example illustrates why Pragmatics should be taken as a competence and a property of language that goes beyond grammar and, as Discourse Analysis, it is an integrated part of the Communicative Competence. (Ducrot, 1982; Elleseff, 2014).

 

Consequently, these two competences should be regarded as something quite important to be observed within the classroom by Bilingual teachers. (Elleseff, 2014).