“What do you mean by this?” – a few remarks on the significance and development of the pragmatic competence in a foreign language

Emilia Podpora-Polit

Uniwersytet w Białymstoku

Abstract

The proper identification of a function/goal of an utterance in a particular interaction (speech act) plays an important role in comprehension. The main aim of the article is therefore to investigate if and to what extent the reading and listening tasks offered in some secondary school English textbooks develop the skill to understand communicative intentions. The paper also gives a brief insight into the speech-act theory and the content of some important curricular documents, ending up with a few suggestions for classroom exercises.

Keywords:

speech acts, comprehension, pragmatic skills, pragmatics, speaker intention, social language use, communication