An Integrated Approach to Pragmatic Competence: Its Framework and Properties

Abstract

The exploration of pragmatic competence has been endowed with theoretical and empirical significance for half a century, yet a common framework is still under investigation from different perspectives. First, this article conducts a critical review of the investigation of pragmatic competence in communicative ability theory, the function-discourse model, the componential and meaning-driven model, and the relevance-theoretic model. Based on the merits and demerits of these proposals and their relation with Chomsky’s dichotomy of grammatical and pragmatic competences, an integrated model of pragmatic competence (IMPC) is reformulated for thought and communication, focusing on the interactions among various organism-internal submodules under the current minimalist framework and their interactions with outside sociocultural factors. Finally, a comparison is made between the integrated proposal and the theory and models.

Pragmatic competence, autistic language use and the basic properties of human language

“…Take the egocentric but steady mental computation of autistic individuals as a departure, it seems reasonable to presume that the abstract linguistic computations relying on the operations and interactions of the internal linguistic subsystems/submodules remain nearly intact, and the sociopragmatic deficiencies could be attributed to other factors, such as the insufficient interactions between linguistic subsystems/submodules and sociocultural contexts (because of DEP or others). 3 In this case, a proper way to address what autistic language use implies might lie in how to expound the respective developmental trajectories and functioning of grammatical and pragmatic competences for autistic language learners and users, and in particular, the distinct development and unfolding of "internal pragmatic competence (IPC) and pragmatic competence for external communication (PCEC)" under an Integrated Model of Pragmatic Competence (IMPC) (Mao, 2020b(Mao, , 2021Mao & He, 2021).…”

Communication models in a foreign language in relation to cognitive style category width and power distance

“…Current research on communication models in foreign language learning focuses on the investigation of pragmatic competence within the communicative competence and their impact on the appropriateness of the choice of linguistic and non-linguistic indicators in communication (e.g., Huang, 2019 ; Glaser and Limberg, 2020 ; Yan, 2022 ), on the influence of the mother tongue communication patterns on the communication style in a foreign language (e.g., Fernández and Cairns, 2017 ), on the influence of the sociocultural environment on pragmalinguistic competence (e.g., Mao, 2021 ; Mao and He, 2021 ), on transcultural communication through the media and cultural proximity (e.g., Schulz et al, 2023 ), on language modeling through ICT (e.g., Verbeke et al, 2017 ), and on the dynamics of creating models of students’ thinking in a foreign language with regard to the social environment, social motivation, and experience with the culture of the foreign language (e.g., Gehlbach et al, 2016 ; Kroll and Dussias, 2017 ; Mao and He, 2021 ).…”

The Reason and Pragmatic Knowledge: Retrieving the Integrative Meaning

“…In this sense, the cognitive experience, the cognitive capacity, the communicative competences are of great importance. The specificity of the pragmatic competence valid for knowledge is fully found in the communicative competence [1]. It is difficult to dissociate between cognitive competence and communicative competence.…”