This module focuses on politeness and listener-oriented strategies to ensure success in multicultural workplace settings, as well as on the pronunciation and prosodic features that can facilitate mutual comprehension.
Theoretical background
Pragmatics in the world of work (for English foreign language practitioners)
- Socio-cultural context + situational context in the multicultural workplace settings (context-bound assumptions)
- Goal-oriented interaction + speaker- vs hearer-oriented communication
- Direct/indirect speech acts
- Politeness
Practical session
- Decide to use formal or informal register
- Directness/indirectness
- Modal verbs
- Downgrades / upgrades / hedges
- Avoiding Face-threating acts
Time for reflection
- Pair work: Take some time, at this point, and read this article
- Could you list and (explain) at list three benefits of being polite at work?
- Do you think interlocutors’ origins and cultural background affect politeness strategies?
- Jigsaw reading and discussion
Practice and reflection
- Telephoning (exercises / online resources)
- Skype / Panopto (exercises / online resources
- Grammar: reported speech
- Pragmatics: managing conflicts / misunderstandings
