Communicative rituals in foreign language teaching/learning

Abstract

Interacting in a foreign language (i.e. performing rituals deemed communicative in linguistic and extralinguistic terms) means bringing a variety of referential worlds, constructs and angles on reality into contact, some of which may even dovetail. It also means being able to distance ourselves the 'natural' universe - the language itself - to which we are accustomed and by which we are enveloped in order to learn to accept other points of view and values as legitimate. The know-how and knowledge shared by members of the same culture or social group and the way individuals represent their own world and construe the world of the other on the basis of their own experience require learners to become familiar with the interactional behavior peculiar to speakers of the language they are learning. Among communicative rituals, conventional acts with their respective stereotyped linguistic forms and the dialogic value attributed to them (e.g. when an individual makes contact with another, he or she expects a response from the latter) deserve special attention.