It's all about functional language:

Pragmatics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in language in a particular context, meaning the place where the thing is said, who says it, or the things that
you have already said. Also, pragmatics studies how people speak when they both know something.

Pragmatics also studies how people speak not literally, but in an indirect way, and why even though this is the case, people can still understand
each other. It also studies how people can understand each other even if the words are ambiguous.

The ability to understand what someone intends to tell you is called pragmatic competence.

Pragmatics - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a nice list - for teaching/learning Spanish:

Resources in Pragmatics and Spanish Linguistics
Conversando en Español Lengua y Cultura

With useful information and pedagogical materials for teaching and learning pragmatics and general linguistics, for

• language instructors
• students
• researchers


• Pragmatic variation Includes theoretical and empirical information on the acquisition of pragmatics by monolingual and bilingual children at different stages of pragmatic development. Pragmatic variation is illustrated on this site by an atlas which describes regional variation in the Spanish-speaking world and includes samples of how speech acts and conversational routines (e.g., greetings, agreeing/disagreeing) vary in Spain and in Latin America. (In progress.)
• Politeness Politeness phenomena and samples of perceptions of politeness among different speakers of Spanish.
• Speech acts Classifications and samples of various speech acts in English and Spanish: apologies, refusals, requests, etc. Access transcripts of interactions, listen, view video clips featuring interactions which highlight particular speech acts. (In progress.)
• Voces Hispanas Explores the rich diversity of the Spanish voices and culture around the Spanish-speaking world through audio clips of native speakers from multiple countries. Provides Spanish teachers with a variety of activities for teaching various aspects of the Spanish culture. (In progress.)
• Teaching Pragmatics Teachers' Resource Manual, student handouts, and PowerPoint presentations to accompany the instructor's presentation in class. Includes a pedagogical model that has been used at Indiana University's Department of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as various lesson plans for activities for teaching different cultural aspects of the Spanish-speaking world in the classroom (with audio clips and transcripts). (In progress.)
• Pragmatic Development Includes theoretical and empirical information on the acquisition of pragmatics by monolingual and bilingual children at different stages of pragmatic development. Audio and video samples of children communicating pragmatic intent include: greeting, requesting, disagreeing, apologizing, and complaining. Includes samples from everyday conversations in settings with family and friends. (In progress.)
• Exercises in Pragmatics Activities in pragmatics which allow learners to practice various speech acts in Spanish as a Foreign Language.
• Resources

Discourse Pragmatics - Index

And it's all about 'communicative acts':

What are communicative acts*? Where do communicative acts fit into pragmatics?
What are communicative acts?
As you learned on the first page of this module, pragmatics refers to the way we convey and interpret meaning in communication. Since it would be impossible to cover every area of pragmatics (i.e., all the ways to convey meaning) in this website, we have chosen communicative acts as our point of departure. A communicative act is an utterance, or set of utterances (communicative act set), that we use to perform some sort of linguistic action or function in communication. For example, we use language to apologize, request, compliment, invite, refuse, greet, and complain. Here are some things to remember about communicative acts: The length and complexity of these acts can vary greatly. Sometimes they require only one word (e.g., the greeting "Hello!") and other times require numerous words and sentences in a complex sequence (e.g., "Good Morning, Mr. President. It is a pleasure to meet you."). The meaning of any communicative act is influenced by non-verbal signals such as gestures and even silence. Where do communicative acts fit into pragmatics? Learning to effectively perform communicative acts is essential in accurately conveying and interpreting meaning in any language. Remember, meaning is the key to pragmatics. You may have all the proper language skills, but ineffective pragmatic strategies will limit your ability to accurately express and interpret meaning. What are the necessary pragmatic strategies you need to convey meaning appropriately? PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES can be divided into two types: Sociocultural Strategies—understanding the sociocultural norms of behavior underlying the communicative act Language Strategies—understanding the appropriate language behavior (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, structures) for performing the communicative act Both types of strategies are necessary in order to convey and interpret the proper meaning of a communicative act. How would you apply these pragmatic strategies? Let's look at a real-life situation to get an idea of how these pragmatic strategies apply to communication in Spanish. A passenger boards the bus in Madrid, Spain and asks a stranger to switch seats. He/She says: Perdón, ¿Le importaría cambiarse de sitio? Many sociocultural strategies are needed for this situation. For example... The boarding passenger must know whether or not it is even appropriate to ask the person to change seats. Is it different for elderly people? Young people? The boarding passenger must also decide how to ask based on the social relationship and imposition of the request. How would it be different if there was only one other seat next to a bunch of screaming kids? Knowing how to handle these situations requires the necessary sociocultural knowledge of the society you are in (in this case, Madrid) as well as the different options available for making the request. There are also many language strategies that are necessary. For example... You would need to know the conditional form (typically, but not always, more polite between strangers in Spanish) The proper vocabulary (i.e., perdón vs. lo siento) The other linguistic elements involved in the request (por favor) As you can see, it requires a complex set of skills, even for a relatively straightforward situation. This website is designed to help you learn some pragmatic strategies (sociocultural and language) for successfully maneuvering communicative acts (e.g., inviting, requesting, apologizing) in Spanish.

The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)
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