Learning And Interaction: Developing Through Talk

There has been much reflection in other journals recently on how language gets used in language classrooms, by language learners and by language teachers. Rather than the perennial debate about target-language use, I am referring to the growing body of classroom research in the area of linguistics known as pragmatics. Pragmatics, as defined by Crystal 1997: 301 (cited in Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006: 53) involves looking at 'language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication.' Pragmatics includes areas such as the study of politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987) and the analysis of conversation (Sacks, 1992), and, in particular, it highlights aspects of how we realise our interpersonal relationships in language and, in particular, spoken language.