Teaching Children with Pragmatic Difficulties of Communication

Classroom Approaches

Gilber MacKay, Carolyn Anderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138166912
• eBook ISBN: 9781134117413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2000. In everyday life, 'pragmatic' means 'useful', 'functional' or 'what's right for just now'. In communication, it means just the same. This book has been written for teachers and speech and language therapists (SLTs) working in services for children who have difficulty communicating usefully.

CHAPTER ONE

Useful communication

Gilbert MacKay and Carolyn Anderson

Background

In everyday life, ‘pragmatic’ means ‘useful’, ‘functional’ or ‘what’s right for just now’. In communication, it means just the same. ‘Pragmatics refers to the use of language to express one’s intentions and get things done in the world’ (Gleason 1985, p. 22). This book has been written for teachers and speech and language therapists (SLTs) working in services for children who have difficulty communicating usefully. The range of literature dealing with their pragmatic difficulties is vast and sometimes inaccessible. We wanted to give fellow professionals a new guide to the topic, to help them take confident decisions about their daily practice. We want children with pragmatic difficulties to express their intentions and, as Gleason said, get things done in the world. But, first, we should say what we mean by pragmatic difficulties. Here are three examples. In each case and throughout the book, names and other identifying details have been changed.

Andrew

Imagine a service for children who have marked difficulty communicating. Its staff have built up a good relationship with the families of the children who attend, and have encouraged some to act as voluntary classroom assistants. Among these is the grandmother of one of the girl pupils. She is trying to help 9-year-old Andrew with a language puzzle on a computer program, but she is having some problems with the technology. Andrew turns to her and says in a calm, bland tone, ‘You’re a stupid old woman who never went to school anyway.’ Surprisingly, she does not take offence. She has encountered pragmatic communicative difficulties before.

Brenda

Brenda is discussing a garden scene with her speech and language therapist. At 11, she is aware that she often knows what she wants to say but has problems finding the right words. She describes the insects she can see in the picture, ‘There’s a bee and a (long pause), a peanut butter.’ ‘Nearly,’ prompts the therapist, ‘It’s a butter…’ ‘Fly.’ says Brenda. The therapist asks Brenda what she can see growing under the ground. Brenda names them as globes. They are flower bulbs.

Colin

In class discussions, Colin rarely contributes. When meeting people, especially for the first time, he does not look at them but stares at his feet and shuffles continually. He gives the impression that he would rather be doing anything else than talking. Having a conversation with Colin can take a long time because his stammering speech makes it difficult to follow what he is saying.

Andrew, Brenda and Colin have pragmatic difficulties because they have problems communicating effectively. Yet, it is clear that these are three unique individuals with three quite different types of problem. Andrew’s social gaffe is typical of the pragmatic difficulty that is seen in autistic behaviour. Brenda routinely has problems with double-meaning words and idiomatic phrases, which can be a frustrating barrier when she, her teacher and her fellow pupils do not take account of them. In school, Colin has no difficulty keeping up with the rest of his age group in lessons, and participates fully and equally as an ordinary member of his class. The examples were chosen for their diversity, but all of that diversity fits within a general context which is worth outlining in a little detail.

Pragmatics in principle – broad and narrow perspectives

From a historical perspective, pragmatics is the most recent of the language areas to be studied. The sciences of semantics (meaning) and syntax (grammar and word-ending rules) developed earlier and, in some ways, lent themselves more easily to objective study. Pragmatics tends to be less well known as it is a more recent research field, and as it has also suffered from a lack of commonly-accepted theory. Different researchers have generated different types of research depending on which view of pragmatics they take. In addition, each different way of understanding pragmatics may affect the type of intervention which is followed when working with people who have pragmatic difficulties. For this reason, it is important to know the current two main models of how pragmatics relates to linguistics – the other areas of language. Craig (1983) described relationships between linguistic and pragmatic rules in terms of either a narrow view of pragmatics or a broad view.

The narrow view treats pragmatics as one component in the language puzzle – it is as important as semantics and syntax but is independent from them. The practical implication of this perspective is that each component can be taught separately so that, for example, grammatical rules could be practised and learned without regard to their use in conversation. This view has perhaps been more prevalent among those speech and language therapists and linguists who use a ‘deficit’ model of intervention, targeting the more obvious surface features of difficulties. For example, this approach might involve intervention to help the development of syntax alone, with little emphasis on the underlying motivation for its use.

By contrast, the broad view of pragmatics is interactionist. Communication is seen as an integrated system of rules – pragmatic functions drive the choice of the elements of semantics and syntax. (See Bates and MacWhinney 1979, for further reading on this view; it is also discussed in Prutting and Kirchner 1987.) Each element of communication can be identified and studied but, in practice, it is only possible to understand semantics and syntax in relation to their achieving a desired purpose in communication. This point is important in reminding us that communicative purposes are the motivation for acquiring language in early development. Children learn the linguistic rules of their society which will help them achieve various goals through communication. Working in this model of pragmatics, intervention would use more natural social situations where communication functions provide the aims for using different linguistic codes. Teachers work from an educational model which places language in social context. They should have fewer problems accepting the interactionist model than therapists whose background in medical and linguistic models may, until recently, have inclined them to see difficulties in the area of pragmatics as distinct from those in the other areas.

Focus of the book

If language is like a puzzle, the ‘narrow’ view of pragmatics would treat the component parts as an inset board puzzle with a designated place for each. The ‘broad’, interactionist view would look at them like a Rubik cube. The interactionist view is adopted in this book. It may be complex and a little untidy at times, but that is the nature of communication too. Respect for that complex system influenced our choice of issues which the book should cover.

Chapter Two concerns the roots of pragmatic communication in early childhood. It shows how they make communication work by processes of action and interaction. Communication is action because it is an activity, and because it has a purpose. It is interaction because its success often depends on how well we relate to others. Making sense of difficulties in action and interaction is a challenge. The difficulties are varied and individualistic. There is a bewildering range of schemes that attempts to classify them. Chapter Two suggests that teachers and therapists might think of communication as a system. Other chapters refer to this systems approach, showing its potential in everyday work with children.

Pragmatic difficulties are outlined in Chapter Three. The discussion of communication as a dance, which was introduced in Chapter Two, is extended to group pragmatic skills into four main areas. The model of pragmatics as a dance sequence is intended to capture the integrated nature of communication and to connect behaviours which may appear unrelated. This framework is used to show which areas are likely to be most affected in children with different types of pragmatic difficulties.

Chapters Four and Five deal with the communicative difficulties of primary school pupils. In Chapter Four, detailed case studies are presented which describe the communication worlds of two children. The social and educational implications are discussed with recognition of the necessity for collaborative working to address each individual’s very different needs. Chapter Five looks at case material on the pragmatic difficulties of a larger number of pupils in terms of the functions their communication can fulfil. It also gives details of a variety of strategies which teachers and SLTs have devised to make it more purposeful.

The book ends with three chapters dealing with how various systems may be organised to support pupils with pragmatic difficulties, their families and their professional helpers. Chapter Six deals with children who stammer. Conventionally, stammering is not thought of as a pragmatic difficulty but in a very real sense, it is. People who stammer have problems with making communication purposeful because of their difficulties in getting their ideas across. They have difficulties in the interactional aspects of pragmatics too, because of the disruption to normal rules of social interaction which is experienced by people who meet them. Chapter Seven deals with the system of the school. In particular, it shows how a school learned to respond to the educational and personal needs of a secondary school pupil with severe pragmatic difficulties through the medium of an action-research project. Finally, Chapter Eight reviews various dimensions of support that have to be taken into account if a service is to function well. Pragmatic communication is concerned with useful actions and interactions in the broad community. It is a complex task to set up structures that allow a system of support to operate there. This chapter gives guidance on aspects of provision, management and administration that enable this to be done more effectively.

Checkpoints

‘Checkpoints’ appear at various points throughout the book. Their purpose is to consolidate the points of what has just been read, and to help readers to relate the ideas to their own circumstances. These checkpoints are also designed to be points of focus for staff-development exercises in schools and special services, in which teachers and SLTs work together. They invite readers to go beyond the book into their own places of work and to relate its ideas to these settings. In that way, the processes of innovation and reflective practice give professionals and pupils new opportunities for useful – pragmatic – communication.

CHAPTER TWO

Actions and interactions: the roots of pragmatic communication

Gilbert MacKay

Introduction

Communication is sharing ideas. From birth, we behave as if the behaviour of other people towards us is intentional and purposeful – an attempt to let us share their ideas. We look for meaning in the acts of others, and we try to help them find meaning in ours. Sometimes our attempts to find meaning and to convey meaning are unsuccessful. Critical aspects of the activity’s performance may be misleading, confusing, unusual or absent. For example, a reprimand from someone who is smiling might give a mixed message to any of us. Also, we may not use communication for a full range of its possible purposes. For example, some people may have difficulty using communication to share their feelings or to extend their knowledge and understanding. This can cause problems with relationships and with learning.

These examples are taken from two different aspects of pragmatics – the study of what communication achieves for us. The first aspect concerns relationships – how appropriate to their communicative partners are the forms of speech, writing, gesture or other behaviour which people use in acts of communication? The second aspect concerns purpose – how effective are acts of communication for achieving what people wish to achieve? There are many ways of trying to make sense of pragmatics in communication, but these two areas recur in different guises throughout a vast literature, and will form the basis of this chapter.

There is a detailed discussion of this two-sided view of pragmatics in sources such as van Dijk (1977) and Bachman (1990). Here, we shall look at how relationships and purpose develop in children’s activity from their earliest days. Knowledge of this development gives insight into pragmatic difficulties which may cause concern in the school years and beyond. It should give teachers and therapists a clearer picture of how they may help children’s communication to become more useful – more pragmatic, in fact. The next section of the chapter discusses the development of relationships in communication. Difficulties with the relationships that form and reform in acts of communication are probably the most striking evidence of pragmatic problems. After that, the chapter will outline the purposes which communication achieves, as these too have practical implications for work with children. The final sections of the chapter deal with attempts to find a useful framework for understanding pragmatics as a whole.

Why be concerned about frameworks? It is because practitioners often find it helpful to have points of reference that will enable them to understand their practice more quickly and accurately, so that they may make better decisions when faced with new challenges. Several examples of existing frameworks will be outlined, followed by a proposal for looking at pragmatic communication in a new and less complex way. Throughout the chapter, readers will be asked to stop to examine their own practice in the light of the issues that arise.

Relationships – the communication dance

This section of the chapter examines the interpersonal nature of communication. In particular, it examines it from a developmental point of view. The reason for this approach is that what appear as pragmatic difficulties in the school years and beyond, have parallels (if not their origins and roots) in early infant-adul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Useful communication
• 2 Actions and interactions: the roots of pragmatic communication
• 3 Pragmatic communication difficulties
• 4 Two case studies of pragmatic difficulties
• 5 Primary-age pupils with pragmatic difficulties
• 6 It takes two to stammer: interaction factors and stammering
• 7 The school as an integrated support system for pupils with pragmatic difficulties
• 8 Systems for establishing and maintaining a service
• References
• Index