Teaching, Learning and Investigating Pragmatics: Principles, Methods and Practices

Sara Gesuato · Winnie Cheng

Sep 2015 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

About this ebook

This volume presents a collection of research papers investigating how to foster the learning and teaching of pragmatic phenomena, as well as how to administer tests that assess pragmatic competence in second/foreign language education with regards to several target languages. The topics investigated include: speech acts; computer-mediated communication; conversation analysis; pragmatic, intercultural, and emotional competence; native and non-native performance; data collection and instructional methods; needs analysis; and syllabus design and materials development. The contributions will be of particular interest to linguists, language learners and teachers, teacher trainers, and communication experts.

About the author

Sara Gesuato is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Padua, Italy. Her research interests include pragmatics, discourse and genre analysis, verbal aspect, lexical semantics, corpus linguistics, and pronunciation teaching. She has recently investigated the structure and wording of extended oral and written speech acts, the phraseology and content of academic genres, and the temporal and aspectual meanings of catenative motion verb constructions.

Francesca Bianchi is Researcher and Lecturer of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. Her research interests include discourse and genre analysis, corpus linguistics, and audiovisual translation. She recently published Culture, Corpora and Semantics, a methodological investigation into the use of elicited data and web data in the analysis of cultural specificities.

Winnie Cheng is Professor of English and Director of the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English, and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include pragmatics; corpus linguistics; critical discourse and genre analysis; ESP; lexical semantics; discourse intonation; intercultural communication; and professional and organizational communication. She has recently published work on metaphor studies in media and public discourses.