Speech acts and culture in a text book on Portuguese as a foreign language
Keywords:
speech acts, textbook, Portuguese as a foreign language.Abstract
The theory of speech acts, as conceived by Austin (1962), brought important contributions for the teaching of foreign languages. Teaching a foreign language is also teaching about how speech acts work (KERBRAT-ORECCHIONI, 2005). Thus, we will investigate the speech act "to refuse" in Brazilian Portuguese, through the analysis of empirical studies on the topic developed in comparison with other cultures. Although this act can be understood as a fairly ommonplace speech act, it can manace the face, if it is used or interpreted improperly by learners of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL), as it generates misunderstandings and therefore negative effects in the interaction. The objective is to investigate how this theory is used in teaching activities and to evaluate whether and how these learning activities proposed deal with cultural awareness.