Sociocultural Theory and L2 Instructional Pragmatics

Rémi A. van Compernolle is Assistant Professor of Second Language Acquisition and French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University. His areas of research include second language acquisition, pedagogy, and assessment, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and classroom discourse and interaction.

• 1. Introduction 2. Appropriateness in Language Learning and Language Teaching 3. Understanding Learners as People 4. Developing Awareness of Pragmatic Knowledge through Verbalized Reflections 5. Developing Pragmatic Knowledge through Appropriateness Judgment Tasks 6. Developing Performance Abilities through Strategic Interaction Scenarios 7. The Future of Vygotskian Approaches to Instructional Pragmatics

This book provides a remarkably robust theoretical reconceptualization of L2 instructional pragmatics.  The book is situated in a cutting edge treatment of sociocultural theory that is adeptly related to pedagogical practice in the difficult-to-teach area of pragmatics.  Throughout the text, the theoretical and pedagogical discussions are richly illustrated with empirical examples.  Overall, the work has significant implications for pragmatics and other discourse-based research in applied linguistics.