Pragmatics and Semantics: Politeness and Concept Maps. A proposal of complementarity.

Abstract

The broad objective of this work is to reflect on the relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics and how it influences the teaching of foreign languages. From a semantic perspective, we propose to investigate the validity of concept maps as an appropriate didactic tool for teaching SFL. Initially conceived for non-linguistic purposes, their function has been largely limited to the acquisition of semantic knowledge, leaving other levels of the language no less important beside. To mitigate this tendency, we propose to complement the use of concept maps with pragmatic activities. Our proposal is aimed at youth students of SFL, with intermediate level. The creation and exploitation of the concept maps is done through the story (comic) Bartleby, the clerk, while the creation of the dialogue takes advantage of the contributions of the principle of politeness. The results underline the need to find new ways of exploiting concept maps to diversify their use, in the foreign language classroom, and to complement them with activities involving the use of language in context (pragmatic dimension).