E. Alcon Soler and Alicia Martinez Flor (Eds): Investigating Pragmatics in Foreign Language Learning, Teaching and Testing.

Abstract

In the last 10 years, the field of interlanguage pragmatics has seen a marked increase in the number of edited volumes (e.g. Rose and Kasper 2001; Bardovi-Harlig et al.2006; Puetz and Neff-van Aertselaer 2008) and special issues (e.g. Alcón Soler and Martínez Flor 2005; Barron and Warga 2007) being published that provide insights into how pragmatics may be learned and taught. The volume under review with its focus on pragmatics in the foreign language context is a welcome addition to the literature available. Following a preface by Amy Snyder Ohta, and an introductory chapter outlining the rationale for the volume by the two editors, the book is divided into three parts, with foci on learning (Part 1), teaching (Part 2), and testing (Part 3). In the second chapter entitled ‘Language acquisition theory and the acquisition of pragmatics in the foreign language classroom’, Margaret A. DuFon calls for a theoretical approach in second language acquisition that is of an integrative nature and regards social and mental aspects as equally important. She argues that the interactionist and holistic nature of language socialization theory offer researchers the opportunity to explore pragmatic acquisition in a more integrated paradigm. Also advocating a social-interactional participation framework, the authors of the following chapter, Yumiko Tateyama and Gabriele Kasper, investigate foreign language learners’ exposure to and participation in request utterances in their study entitled ‘Talking with a classroom guest: opportunities for learning Japanese pragmatics’. The results of their investigation show that the presence of the classroom guest helped expose foreign language learners to a greater variety of request strategies than they would normally encounter in a typical foreign language classroom context.