The Pragmatics of Greetings: Teaching Speech Acts in the EFL Classroom

When Taro’s name was called, he stepped away from the tired and disoriented group of Japanese students who had just completed the long flight from Tokyo to Toronto and a bus ride to the University reception where they would meet their Canadian host families. His host mother walked right up to him and gave him a hug.

Taro stood with his arms at his sides looking uncomfortable, if not alarmed. He did not know how to react. Japanese do not touch during an initial greeting.When his host mother ended the hug, he gave a nervous laugh. She smiled to disguise the awkwardness of the moment.

Taro was not the only one in the group unprepared for their initial meeting with a host family. Although they had studied the English language before their trip, the group lacked an understanding of its pragmatics and, in this case, the speech act of greetings.

As a language teacher, I have long realized that knowing the words of a language is only part of speaking it. Knowing how to interpret a communicative act is equally important, and it needs to be taught explicitly. Therefore, I make this learning a regular part of the class experience. As the chaperone for the group of Japanese students in this anecdote, I was able to witness the benefits of pragmatics instruction when a host mother greeted another of the exchange students, a girl who had participated in my class the year before. She knew what to expect through watching videos and participating in class discussions on the speech act of greetings.When her host mother gave her a hug, she hugged back with a smile on her face. She also knew that the appropriate response to her host mother’s greeting of “Nice to meet you” was a reply of “Nice to meet you, too.”

Greetings are one of the few speech acts that children are taught explicitly in their native language (Kakiuchi 2005). Yet, the communicative function that greetings serve is usually understood as subordinate to other purposes in the ultimate goal of communication (DuFon 1999). In the language classroom, this subordinate position often means that teaching greetings is neglected; too little attention is paid to the roles that greetings play in various cultures and how these roles may affect the ultimate goal of communication. This article will provide background information on this important speech act and instructional strategies for use in the classroom to help teachers equip their students with a critical component to successful interactions.This article also describes four awareness-raising tasks that introduce the greeting speech act as a cycle of explicit pragmatic instruction, including keeping a greeting journal, watching contemporary TV shows, using discourse completion tasks (DCTs), and participating in role plays and mingles.