Abstract—This study aims at not only describing speech acts
but highlights the importance of the teaching of speech acts as
well. Recent second language research on speech acts
represents a focus on pragmatics, based on the theories of
speech acts proposed by Austin and Searle. It has been widely
believed and shared in linguistic quarters that there has been
very little or no systematic comparison of languages from the
point of view of speech acts and rules of speaking. As a result,
intercultural miscommunication is often caused by foreign
language learners' falling back on their native language
sociocultural norms in realizing speech acts in a target
language. To make language learners attain pragmatic use of
any foreign language requires first theoretical and then
practical study of “speech acts”. The teaching of “structural,
functional and affective” power of the language in actual use
through student projects and classroom discussions of both on
the structure, the function and the affect may well help
learners to become effective communicators. Therefore, the
inclusion of the functional and notional aspects of language
being taught to the curriculum cannot be an issue to be ignored.
The results of this study puts forward the possible sources of
sociopragmatic failures of learners and describe the
sociopragmatic development of foreign language learners.
Therefore, as foreign language teaching and learning is
considered to be a global issue throughout the world, the
descriptions and teaching implications of this study may shed
light over curriculum design and actual language teaching
milieus.
Index Terms—Pragmatics, speech acts, affective competence,
ELT curriculum, higher education.
Ridvan Tuncel is with Education Faculty Department of ELT, Anadolu
University, CO 26470 Turkey (e-mail: rtuncel@anadolu.edu.tr).
Cite: Ridvan Tuncel, "Philosophical and Practical Significance of the Inclusion of the Speech Acts in English Language Teaching Curriculum," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 5, no. 11, pp. 851-854, 2015.