La investigación como actividad didáctica en la clase de Español como Lengua Extranjerainstrumentos para el desarrollo de una competencia pragmalingüística contrastiva intercultural en estudiantes de L2

Resumen

Abstract The present study aims, through an experimentation, to verify the effectiveness of didactic methods and approaches useful for students to initiate dynamics of development of a pragmatic competence in the field of the FL teaching-learning process. For this purpose, we want to observe if a didactic reflection activity integrating both aspects belonging to the pragmalinguistic sphere and to the sociopragmatic sphere, can give rise to a potential awareness and consciousness about verbal behaviors as well as conversational norms and modes observed from the type of contact, that the activity offers students, with the target speech community. Dealing with the encounter of two sociocultural systems, which is what the learning of a foreign language in practical terms is, this type of didactic action becomes imperative, due to the fact that the interpretation of the experiences and situations everyone faces in the world, pass through a primary and automatic filter which determines a cultural-oriented conception of every linguistic and contextual aspect. Regarding the present study, the interpretative differences between the Spanish and the Italian systems, in terms of perception of what is considered as polite/impolite, adequate/inadequate during communicative act, are the main research lines examined with a contrastive approach. The aim is to evaluate to what extent such cultural-oriented conceptions and perspectivizations, resulting from norms which are shared among the members of the same speech community, can affect, and at the same time explain, pragmatic phenomena and socially accepted verbal behavior which characterizes a certain speech act. Testing this hypothesis, on the basis of the analysis of perceptive data related to politeness strategies and related to the concept of verbal behavior adequacy towards a specific situational context, is of particular interest between the Italian and Spanish systems, given a perceived affinity between them, which can lead to misunderstandings and pragmatic ―incidents‖ (Calvi 2004; Guil Povedano 2007; Bailini 2016). This work aims to observe the affinity gradient between the Spanish and the Italian system taking as reference parameters provided by the model proposed by Haverkate (1996; 2003), which relativizes politeness strategies on the basis of two different cultural macro-areas of the world, and by the model proposed by Bravo (1999; 2005), which determines parameters for a reading of in-group interactional modes. If pragmatic issues are a direct consequence of a sociopragmatic perspectivization, it becomes essential to find a didactic approach which can be effective in transmitting the ―linguistic form/structure - functional pragmalinguistic value‖ relation. At the same time, the didactic approach should provide a first contact with the target speech community, which can offer a system of reference of those natural and inborn correspondences between pragmalinguistic resources and sociopragmatic values. Getting closer to the FL-Culture system requires the ability to read the norms of the target speech community and of the contextual situation from an emic perspective (Duranti 1997). The teaching action must set both the transmission of pramalinguistic and sociopragmatic information related to the FL sociocultural system as a goal, to make the student aware of the use of form and structures which result adequate according to the target speech community standards. To reach this goal, the present study seeks to test an input processing mode base on an inductive implicit system, which employs input enhancement techniques as support and guideline for the input processing. As an additional goal, the method aims to reduce negative pragmatic interferences. The audiovisual material completes the prospect, being the source of the sociopragmatic information. We think that working with a sort of ―hybrid‖ material, half-way between an FL linguistic activity and a survey about sociocultural issues, carried out autonomously by student-informers, can lead also to reflections about the potential connection between research and didactic application in the FL teaching-learning field. 2