Intercultural Pragmatics in Foreign Language Learning

Learning a foreign language accurately means more than simply mastering its linguistic structure, phonetics, vocabulary and idioms. It means learning also to see the world as native speakers of that language see it, learning the ways in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behaviour of their society. Learning a language, in fact, is indivisible from learning its culture; therefore a pragmatic component needs to be included in the curriculum design of a foreign language. We also have to widen the concept of sociocultural contents, these cannot only deal with the mere explanation on “uses and habits” of the countries nor with the so often simplified contextual information, therefore, we have to deal with the use of language in specific communication situations. The learner of a foreign language has to be aware of cultural differences between his and the Metalanguage and be able to behave within a multicultural context.