PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE: DEFINITION, THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS, AND TEACHABILITY

Pragmatic competence is broadly defined as the ability to use language appropriately within social contexts, encompassing knowledge of what to say, how to say it, when, and to whom (Thomas, 1983). This competence entails a speaker’s sensitivity to social norms, interpersonal roles, power relations, and cultural expectations. As conceptualized by Thomas (1983), pragmatic competence comprises two interrelated dimensions: pragmalinguistics, referring to the linguistic means available for performing communicative acts (e.g., grammatical structures, modal verbs, politeness markers), and sociopragmatics, which involves the understanding of how these linguistic forms are deployed appropriately according to social contexts, such as varying degrees of directness contingent on the interlocutor’s status.