This chapter discusses a language component that has not received sufficient research attention, that is, pragmatics. The chapter answers socially oriented questions such as How can I make this request politely? and What’s the best way to address this person? The chapter explains how pragmatics knowledge helps learners be aware of the requirements of the larger social context surrounding the language, and understand which grammatical and lexical forms are appropriate and helpful in different social contexts. Different pragmatic knowledge is discussed, that is, sociopragmatics (i.e., knowledge about the context) and pragmalinguistics (i.e., knowledge about specific linguistic forms). In addition, the chapter discusses speech acts, such as requests and compliments, which are used to achieve goals in our daily life by using language appropriately and effectively. The chapter then explains how pragmatics is embedded in our society by discussing illocutionary force and intercultural communicative competence. Finally, the chapter explores different ways of teaching pragmatics.

This chapter concludes the book by summarizing the main results and discussing future prospects of study.

Sociopragmatics encompasses the study of social, interactional, and normative dimensions of language use, while intercultural pragmatics examines how language is used in social interactions between people who have different first languages and are usually considered to represent different cultures. While there are some points of overlap between them, the main aim of intercultural pragmatics is to analyze and theorize how language is used when participants have limited common ground and do not necessarily adhere to L1 preferred ways of speaking. It is thus argued in intercultural pragmatics not only that intercultural encounters are deserving of theorization in their own right, but that theorization in intercultural pragmatics can usefully inform pragmatics more broadly. The aim of this chapter is to consider how research in intercultural pragmatics can inform work in sociopragmatics, and vice versa. Following discussion of the main theoretical foundations of sociopragmatics, a case study examining the openings of first conversations in intercultural settings is used as a springboard to consider the place of sociopragmatics vis-à-vis intercultural pragmatics, and what insights each can bring to the other. The conclusion is that sociopragmatics would benefit from building more explicitly on the important empirical and theoretical insights offered by intercultural pragmatics.

Propelled by the third wave of variationist sociolinguistics, the present work argues that pragmatic and variationist inquiry are mutually enriching and fundamentally united. Relying on both traditions, I develop a general principle of language use and interpretation – briefly: utterances are evaluated according to not only their own semiotic character but also what sets them apart from that of alternative utterances that appear to offer a favorable mix of costs and benefits in context. I demonstrate that these principles underlie a wide range of phenomena observed in third-wave and pragmatics literature, with particular focus on two cases of social meaning rooted in semantically based inferences: (i) John McCain’s reference to Barack Obama as ‘that one’ in a 2008 US presidential debate; and (ii) the tendency for phrases of the form the Xs (e.g. the Democrats) to depict the referents as a bloc separate from the speaker in a way that bare plurals (e.g Democrats) do not (Acton 2019). As I will show, the perspective developed in this work makes principled predictions and leads us to expect to find complex and varied interactions across and within multiple dimensions of meaning.

This chapter examines both the roots of sociopragmatics and current understandings of the field. It starts by positioning sociopragmaticswithin pragmatics, pointing out some particular difficulties with its conception. After consideration of whether J. L. Austin’s work could be said to be an early precursor, the foundations of sociopragmatics in the work of Geoffrey N. Leech and Jenny Thomas are reviewed, including the distinction they propose between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, a distinction, it is noted, that has gained traction in certain sub-fields of pragmatics (e.g. cross-cultural pragmatics). The penultimate section examines the role of context in definitions of sociopragmatics, arguing that meso-level contextual notions are key. Finally, a definition of sociopragmatics is proposed

Sociopragmatics encompasses the study of social dimensions of language use. This chapter discusses directions in the rapidly growing field of sociopragmatics. It begins by first introducing the rationale for producing the first handbook of sociopragmatics, before briefly discussing the different, albeit complementary, ways in which the scope of sociopragmatics has been framed in the field. In the course of this discussion we draw particular attention to three key anchors of sociopragmatic research: social, interactional and normative dimensions of language use. We then offer an overview of the contents of the handbook, explaining how we have brought together a range of different research areas, topics and approaches under the umbrella of sociopragmatics. We conclude with thoughts on the place of sociopragmatics with respect to the broader field of pragmatics.

This chapter has two broad aims: to explore the potential for a role for corrective feedback in instructional pragmatics; and to review studies of instructional pragmatics that have investigated the effectiveness of corrective feedback. The chapter starts with the observation that there has been a disinclination to correct learners’ pragmatic errors. In fact, studies of instructional pragmatics rarely refer to “errors,” which is a construct integral to feedback studies. Allowing for this difference in orientation, the chapter discusses potential issues related to correcting pragmatic errors, such as challenges in identifying errors, the feasibility of correcting pragmalinguistic versus sociopragmatic errors, and the lack of firm norms to use in correction. Next, the chapter summarizes the findings of nine studies published between 2005 and 2017 and assesses their methodological strengths and weaknesses. The review revealed that although most of the studies reported positive effects for corrective feedback, many of the studies reviewed suffered from major methodological limitations. Owing to the nature of the available evidence, the chapter advocates neither for nor against the implementation of corrective feedback in instructional pragmatics. The chapter concludes by providing guidelines for future principled investigations into the role of corrective feedback in instructional pragmatics.