What Linguistics Teaches Us About Communication and Social-Emotional Skills

This chapter focuses on the often-overlooked and necessary contributions of sociolinguistics to language teaching. Interacting through language depends on communicative competence as well as linguistic competence. Communicative competence is the knowledge of how to use language appropriately in varying social situations. It includes grammatical competence and the knowledge of language structures, discourse competence and how language is cohesive in structure and coherent in meaning, and strategic competence including how individuals compensate in interaction when they lack sufficient communicative competence. The chapter discusses the field of pragmatics and how the choice of speech acts, politeness strategies, and cooperative norms contribute to competent language structure and function. Two opportunities to create LiFT activity plans are provided.