Classroom procedure for explicit instruction in conversational implicature
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This document outlines a classroom procedure for teaching conversational implicature to advanced English language learners. The procedure involves four stages: 1) presenting Grice's Cooperative Principle and theories of implicature, 2) analyzing implicatures in a model conversation, 3) interpreting implicatures, and 4) group analysis of social interactions. The procedure was tested with 16 advanced learners but encountered difficulties, suggesting it is best for high-proficiency students.
Classroom procedure for explicit instruction in conversational implicature
- 1. Classroom Procedure for Explicit Instruction in Conversational Implicature Muhammad Azam Research Scholar COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Lahore, Pakistan
- 2. Introduction • This paper discusses a classroom procedure for providing explicit instruction in native speaker use of conversational implicature. • The objective is to raise learners’ pragmatic awareness by studying the reasoning process through which implicatures are interpreted.
- 3. Introduction • Explicit pedagogical intervention is thus considered one of the ways in which the learners can most efficiently develop their pragmatic competence.
- 4. Methodology • The classroom procedure described in this paper was conducted on a trial basis with a group of sixteen high proficiency adult learners.
- 5. Four Stages of the Procedure • 1. Theory Presentation – There were three steps in the theory presentation. • Firstly, Grice’s Cooperative Principle was introduced and explained • In the second step, the concept of conversational implicatures was explained. • Finally, Verschueren’s framework for interpreting two types of implicatures (based on adherence or non- adherence to Grice’s maxims) was presented
- 6. Four Stages of the Procedure • Stage two: Gricean analysis of a model conversation – Learners first worked in small groups attempting to apply the maxims, and a class discussion followed which considered the suggestions provided by each of the groups and attempted to derive a consensus analysis.
- 7. Four Stages of the Procedure • Stage three: Interpretations of implicatures in the model conversation • Stage four: Group interpretations of a range of social interactions
- 8. Conclusion • A number of difficulties were encountered during the classroom practice, which suggest that this procedure would only be suitable for high proficiency learners. • There are conceptual difficulties both with the intrinsic complexity and the formulation of Grice’s theory.
- 9. Conclusion • There are a number of other factors (including politeness strategies) that affect the form of social discourse, and which may counteract the significance of the Cooperative Principle. • Teachers with advanced learners may wish to extend this procedure into a number of other interesting language domains. Areas suggested in the original theory include the teaching of: – tautologies (in terms of flouting the quantity maxim) – irony and metaphor (flouting the quality maxim) – ambiguity (flouting the manner maxim).