Politeness pragmatic instruction in Spanish tourism industry programs for non-native English speakers

Abstract

Several cross-cultural studies have proven the need of pragmatic instruction for foreign language students. However, there is still a lack of explicit pragmatic teaching in the pedagogical materials used to teach a foreign language. In this study, the teachability of pragmatics and the optimal method for its delivery have been assessed, targeting the employees of the tourism industry in Spain. With focus on the speech acts of requesting and apologizing, a survey using the discourse completion test (DCT) has been carried out among Spanish Tourism students in order to corroborate the need of the instruction, and to establish the baselines for the realization patterns of these communicative acts. Furthermore, the main differences between the performance of requests and apologies of native speakers and the Spanish students have been investigated to assure that the instruction covers the issues that are more problematic. Finally, the aforementioned instruction was designed and presented. The results show significant differences between the Spanish students and the norm obtained from the native speakers that could result in communicative failure, especially concerning the directness of the requesting strategy and the insufficient use of the acknowledgment of responsibility strategy when apologizing. Further research in pragmatics is needed to have a better understanding of the general rules for the realization of these speech acts, and teaching approaches need to encourage the inclusion of pragmatic instruction in any language learning course’s syllabus.