The Cultural Script Approach: A Praxis Of An Intercultural Pragmatic Oriented Pedagogy

Abstract

Intercultural pragmatics, one of the relatively new ramifications of Pragmatics, focuses mainly on the use of the language system in “social encounters between human beings who have different first languages but communicate in a common language, and, usually, represent different cultures” (Kecskes, 2010). Many foreign language researchers have recently been trying to find out ways to implementing the concept in foreign language pedagogy. Yet, in the lack of longitudinal studies, little is known about how learners can upgrade their intercultural pragmatic competence in instructional settings. Latterly, some researchers (Wierzbicka, Goddard and Ameka, to name only few) theorized that one way to attain such an objective is the instruction using the cultural scripts, an approach for “articulating cultural norms, values, and practices” (Wierzbicka and Goddard, 2007) by dint of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage technique. Through a one group pre-test post-test design, a discourse completion test, targeting specifically the speech act of requesting, is administered (prior then subsequent to introducing the Anglo-script of personal autonomy) to fifteen master’s students, department of English, University of Khenchela. The findings demonstrate that a cultural scripts-based instruction can qualitatively promote the respondents’ Intercultural requesting strategies, and so, provide a practical groundwork for Intercultural pragmatics pedagogy.