Reflections On The Teaching Of Culture In EFL Classroom: A Perspective Of Culture Pragmatics

The importance of understanding target culture and developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is an increasingly acknowledged aspect in foreign language teaching (FLT). Yet the integration of culture teaching and language teaching in EFL classroom remains controversial. Beginning with a consideration of the causes leading to foreign language (FL) learners' "cultural errors", the present thesis tentatively argues for a model of culture pragmatics. It is progressed from the following aspects: construction of the model of culture pragmatics, and its relations to culture teaching and language teaching in EFL classroom.By drawing on three qualitative research methods, discourse analysis, pragmatics and ethnography of communication, it attempts to capture the dynamic relationship between language and culture. The chain of "cultural anchors (linguaculture in nature)→situated/emergent meanings→cultural patterns→cultural logic (thinking patterns)" may represent the operation of "culture in language use". The discussions show that FL learners are constructing "interculture" rather than blindly "acculturated" into the target culture, and ICC, in depth, may be construed as cross-cultural interpretability (CCI).The teaching of culture is therefore interpreted as a process of deconstruction, with the focus on CCI. In teaching practices, we should explore the classroom discourse with its full range, enable learners to attend to cross-cultural interpretations at different levels of language use, and design proper task-based activities. Noticeably, the specific tasks and teaching techniques involved remain unsolved.This culture-pragmatic perspective is of the twofold importance: on the one hand, we foreign language teachers should help learners construct interlanguage and interculture; on the other hand, an intercultural perspective of FLT in China is a necessity.