Chapter 2: Pragmatics and Phonology
Even though we use pragmatics every day without even thinking about it, itâs amazing how we can assign different meanings to situations and let the listener know through tone, emphasis, and the wording of a sentence what we are trying to convey. At first I thought that this could only be expressed vocally, but even children learning sign language use pragmatics. Not in the form of their tone or speech but in their facial expressions, and movements. I think these are very important tools for communication, and because of this we are able to understand others based on the situation and queues that are given.  Does this mean there are universal pragmatics that let us communicate with people of other languages just by using hand gestures, facial expressions, and intonation of voice?
Here is a clip that I believe was created to teach children pragmatic language and associate a situation with vocal tone of voice and visual facial and body movements. That is my guess of what this video is so please correct me if I am wrong or if you have any other ideas :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDFxr6dMJUE
Another thing I found interesting in the reading was about how a language learnerâs ethnic affiliation and sense of identity are related to how they make the sounds and rhythms of a second language. The book states that learners who kept a strong âforeign accentâ were sometimes characterized as being more loyal to their ethnic group and those who achieved high accuracy in pronunciation in their second language were thought to be less loyal to their ethnic group. This reflects the learnersâ desire for proficiency in the target language and shows how much your mental state can influence how you learn. I always wondered how some people get great pronunciation in a short amount of time, maybe this is the reason.  Â
My question is do you think that native-like pronunciation can be achieved by second language learners? Or do you believe it is not necessary?











