(Download) "When Something is Not Quiet Right: Pragmatic Impairment and Compensation in the College Writing Tutorial" by Writing Lab Newsletter ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: When Something is Not Quiet Right: Pragmatic Impairment and Compensation in the College Writing Tutorial
- Author : Writing Lab Newsletter
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 72 KB
Description
Like all talk, tutoring talk follows unwritten rules of pragmatics. Pragmatics is "[the study of] the use of linguistic and non-linguistic capacities for the purpose of communication" (Perkins, Pragmatic 10). Since the tutoring session is not a "regular" conversation, conversational rules apply in a non-conventional way. Many times, even in non-directive tutoring, (2) the tutor wants to direct the tutee to provide some information or to do something, but the directive can be either directly or indirectly stated ("Read this." vs. "Would you mind reading this?"). It's important to keep in mind the difference between non-directive (or Socratic) tutoring, in which the tutor attempts to draw ideas out of the student, and indirect speech acts, which are actually requests for information or behavior couched in language that is conventionally polite. Since the participants in a tutoring session are purportedly engaged in a mutual goal-oriented, cooperative behavior, the concept of the Cooperative Principle is relevant: "Make your conversational contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged" (Grice 26). If the principle is violated, it is up to the interlocutors to figure out why the other party is being indirect, ambiguous, or obscure and to play along accordingly. For some, this capacity to "play along" is impaired. This state of "something not being quite right" with language in use is known as pragmatic impairment, (3) and is associated with diagnoses as varied as Asperger's syndrome, autism, learning disability, traumatic brain injury, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (Perkins, "Pragmatic Ability" 367; van Balkom and Verhoven 289). Definitions of pragmatic impairment are often vague, such as "problems with language use" (Perkins, "Pragmatic Impairment"). Perkins notes some specific features that may be present with pragmatic impairment, but the reader must be aware that people with pragmatic impairment don't necessarily exhibit every feature: "problems understanding sarcasm.. .indirect requests, irony, and punchlines of jokes ... indirect replies ... lies ... ambiguity resolution ... text and discourse processing ... and others' mental states, attitudes and emotions" ("Clinical" 11).
 "When Something is Not Quiet Right: Pragmatic Impairment and Compensation in the College Writing Tutorial" by Writing Lab Newsletter ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}