Abstract
When we speak we use speech acts. Examples of speech acts include performing greetings, giving compliments and responding to compliments, making complaints and responding to complaints, making and responding to requests, congratulating, and consoling. In English language textbooks we normally see one response to some of these speech acts. For example, “thank you” as a response to a compliment or “good morning/afternoon/evening” as a greeting. As English has become a world language spoken by non-native speakers of English, many non-nativised cultural norms when performing speech acts are noted in real-time interactions. In this chapter, examples of nativised speech acts expressed in acceptable English are drawn from a number of data sources ranging from both real-time interactions, literary sources, which are a reflection of life, and social media, which encompass Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp messages. Pedagogical ramifications of such authentic real-time data are discussed. The result will be the teaching of the English emerging from localised cultural norms in the speech acts we perform.
TopIntroduction
Over the years, identity has excited interest of researchers from a wide range of disciplines; particularly a marked shift has been witnessed from hard-core psycholinguistic models of second language acquisition to greater interest in sociological and anthropological dimensions of language and education. A number of scholars have worked on language and education drawing from socio-cultural, post-structural and critical theory (Norton and Toohey, 2001; Block, 2003). Rather than focus only on the linguistic input or output of second language acquisition, the above scholars have chiefly concentrated on the intersection between the language learner and the larger social world in diverse cultural, social and historical contexts (Norton, 2011).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Condolences: A speech act to express sympathy or sorrow to someone who has experienced some sorrow or a loss.
Speech Act: An utterance that has a function in communication.
Intercultural Communication: Situated communication between individuals or groups of different linguistic and cultural origins.
Congratulations: A speech act used by a speaker to express joy at the good news received by another.
Nativised Discourse Norms: Language adopted by the indigenous communities through the process of adaptations and innovations from indigenous cultures. A form of language that is an accepted standard or a way of behaving or doing things that most people from their own community understand and agree with.
Social Interaction: An exchange between two or more individuals and is a building block of society. Social interaction can be studies between groups of two (dyads), three (triads) or larger social groups.
Greetings: Something friendly or polite that you say or do when you meet or welcome someone.