Toward a contact pragmatics of literature: Habitus, text, and the advanced second-language classroom

Abstract

Drawing on field/practice theory and pragmatic stylistics, this chapter proposes a new aggregate model for upper-level second-language literature teaching called “contact pragmatics.” While fostering a native-like reading context, teachers can simultaneously encourage students to recognize literature as a form of social practice articulating to various, loosely concentric fields of interpretation: from the native “ratified” reader to the “unintended” second-language reader position. Contact pragmatics shifts pedagogical focus to the interstices, overlaps, misalignments, and disjunctions between these concentric fields, acknowledging that at their center lies a linguistic utterance designed to operate within certain fields of opposition and exchange. Contact pragmatics thus expands the scope of pedagogical inquiry from the historical, national, and cultural resonance of a given text to its social embeddedness in a shifting landscape of linguistic markets. The chapter offers concrete, classroom-based examples of the pedagogical dilemmas and experiences that gave rise to this concept as well as suggestions for how to incorporate it in curricular design.