Pragmatic Pragmatic DevelopmentDevelopment

Pragmatic Pragmatic DevelopmentDevelopment

Pragmatics The study of the rules a society

has for language use; understanding language used in social contexts and conversations

Communicative Competence

• Communicative competence: the ability to use language

adequately and effectively in a variety of situations.

Communicative Competence

• 3 reasons why achievement of communicative competence is important

1. Necessary for children to understand and function in school and the everyday environment

Communicating in the environment

* Know when and how to speak and respond to teachers and peers

* Know how to display knowledge and obtain information appropriately

* Know how to comprehend indirect language

* Know how to modify their behavior appropriately in different school settings

Communicative Competence

• 2. Components of communicative competence is predictive of later literacy skills– Narrative skills provide a bridge to

print literacy– Relationship b/w pragmatic

awareness and early writing ability

Communicative Competence

• 3. Competent children are better liked than those who are less skilled– Dell Hymes wrote “A child capable of

any and all grammatical utterances, but not knowing which to use, not knowing even when to talk and when to stop, would be a cultural monstrosity “ (1967)

Communicative Competence

• Why it is difficult to acquire communicative competence:– There are usually not strict or specific rules

for communicative competence– Many polite forms have no clear referents– Conventions for competent communication

in one setting are often different from those in other settings

Language Appropriateness

• Why is it so difficult to specify what makes someone competent? How do we judge what is appropriate?

Using Language in Social Contexts

• Nonegocentric Language

Using Language in Social Contexts

• Requests

Using Language in Social Contexts

• Conversational Skills

Using Language in Social Contexts

• Giving and responding to Feedback

Acquiring communicative

competence• Family influence• Teacher influence• Peer influence• Media and environment• Cognitive abilities

Pragmatic awareness

• According to Hulit, Howard, and Fahey; “by about the time a child is 5 or 6 they are able to make judgments about whether enough information is contained in a message…”

Pragmatic Awareness

• According to Hulit, Howard, and Fahey; “By the time a child is 8 years old, they child understands that the speaker is sometimes responsible for failure.”

Pragmatic Awareness

• Adolescence = developed pragmatic

skills

Pragmatic Development in the

Preschool Years• Discourse skills

Discourse: A Definition • Discourse

– Conversation• Series of successive utterances shared

by at least two persons.– Cohesion

» Utterances in a conversation should “stick together” and “add something new”.

» Cohesion refers to the relatedness of successive utterances in discourse.

Discourse SkillsBehaviors that contribute to

cohesion in discourse:1. Turn taking

– Young preschoolers are sensitive to the need for taking turns in conversations and rarely interrupt their partner (Owens, 1996).

– Exhibit more turns per topic as their cognitive abilities develop• 2- and 3-year-olds

– 1 to 2 turns per topic• Older preschoolers

– 5 turns per topic

Discourse Skills2. Presupposition

– Process of assuming which information a listener possesses or may need.• Speaker will omit redundant information

from his/her utterance because he/she presupposes that the listener shares the information already.

Discourse skills3. Topic Maintenance

– Contingency- the relatedness of an utterance to the preceding utterance.

• Conversational repairs- behaviors that result in clarification of previous utterances.

• Cohesive devices- ”a way to link the content of different parts of a conversation through the uses of pronouns, ellipsis, connectives, anaphora and other conversational strategies”