The Yunshan Chair Professor of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Istvan Kecskes fromNew YorkStateUniversity(Albany) was invited by theNationalCenterfor Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies to give a lecture on Bilingual Pragmatic Competence on June 8th, 2013. The participants from the faculties of the university include M.A and Ph.D. students, academic visitors, teachers and researchers.
The lecture delivered by Professor Kecskes consists of three main parts: (1) the origin and definition of pragmatic competence; (2) the nature of pragmatic competence, which is elaborated with respect to appropriateness, willingness, resistance, and limits imposed by cultural factors; (3) how pragmatic competence develops in bilinguals, for which individual control of the pragmatic socialization, use of situation-bound utterances, the use of formulaic expressions, transfer of pragmatic skills, etc. are elaborated with examples from bilingual situations.
In the Question & Answer section, the participants discussed with Professor Kecskes about pragmatic competence, pragmatic errors/failures, pragmalinguistic aspects, and individual control of pragmatic socialization, etc.
