Speech Act Realization in Literary Discourse: A Qualitative Study of Goodbye Mr. Chips for Pragmatic Competence Development

Abstract

Pragmatic competence is one of the most important aspects of second language learning. It helps learners to observe that language performs different functions. Speech act theory, one of the dimensions of pragmatic competency, describes the actual behaviours of speakers based on their communicative intents, such as, making requests, producing apologies and asserting information as described in this theory. Inadequately attending to context variables resulted in pragmatic failure or pragmatic misinterpretation. Although pragmatic competence is an important area of EFL teaching and learning, there continues to be an inconsistency in teaching and evaluation of the input needed to develop pragmatic competence; this study will review an EFL novel, Goodbye Mr. Chips as endorsed by the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board, to determine its efficacy for developing learners’ pragmatic competence as it pertains to speech acts. Qualitative descriptive research approach were used under the lens of Searle’s (1979) taxonomy of speech acts employed to identify the number of speech acts represented (representative, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarative) in a cross-section of the text. This study analyzed their distribution across the text to determine that the text contains a balanced representation of speech acts for the purpose of providing opportunities for developing learners’ pragmatic competence. While the findings of this study found an unequal representation of the various speech act types in the novel, the most frequently occurring speech act types such as, representative and directive were found to be representative and directive. Conversely, the least frequent type (commissive) was identified in the text. Thus, the text provided opportunities for exposure to some types of functions of language, it does not provide a comprehensive range of speech acts necessary to ensure a proper balance of pragmatic competence for the learners. This study has identified the need for the integration of pragmatically rich EFL learning materials to support learners in becoming more communicatively competent.