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Pragmatic awareness of implicatures
Author
Tan, Phaedra Joanna
Supervisor
Silver, Rita
Abstract
Pragmatic implicature is an area in which little pedagogical emphasis is placed, particularly in the Singapore schools. Students in primary schools are not taught pragmatic implicatures through their textbooks and the topic is not included in the schools’ scheme of work, yet it is an important area of communication. Personal experiences have shown that primary school age children can sometimes take things too literally and this can result in misunderstandings between teachers and students. The impetus for the study was the concern that students of primary school age have minimal knowledge of pragmatic implicature. Therefore, this study examines the pragmatic awareness of primary students on six categories of pragmatic implicatures: Pope Q, Minimum Requirement, Relevance-Based, Irony, Indirect Criticism and Sequence of Events (Bouton, 1994:90-97).
Fourteen teachers who taught at different grade levels and who had varying years of experience were given a survey which consisted of six questions for each of the six types of implicatures. Their responses showed that Pope Q and Relevance-Based questions were the easiest to come to a universal agreement and Irony and Minimum Requirement questions posed the most problems in terms of coming to a universal agreement.
593 subjects from Primary 1 to 6 (7 years old to 12 years old) were given a survey which consisted of three questions for each of six types of implicatures. Their responses were compared with model answers from 14 teachers at the same school. Results from the students’ survey indicated that students from as young as Primary 1 were aware of pragmatic implicatures and their answers were often similar to their teachers’ answers. Most of the students had no problem with the Pope Q and Relevance-Based questions. However, Irony and Minimum Requirement questions seemed to be difficult for the students.
The results show a progression in the students’ understanding of pragmatic implicatures throughout the various grade levels.
Fourteen teachers who taught at different grade levels and who had varying years of experience were given a survey which consisted of six questions for each of the six types of implicatures. Their responses showed that Pope Q and Relevance-Based questions were the easiest to come to a universal agreement and Irony and Minimum Requirement questions posed the most problems in terms of coming to a universal agreement.
593 subjects from Primary 1 to 6 (7 years old to 12 years old) were given a survey which consisted of three questions for each of six types of implicatures. Their responses were compared with model answers from 14 teachers at the same school. Results from the students’ survey indicated that students from as young as Primary 1 were aware of pragmatic implicatures and their answers were often similar to their teachers’ answers. Most of the students had no problem with the Pope Q and Relevance-Based questions. However, Irony and Minimum Requirement questions seemed to be difficult for the students.
The results show a progression in the students’ understanding of pragmatic implicatures throughout the various grade levels.
Date Issued
2008
Call Number
P99.4.P72 Tan
Date Submitted
2008