Pragmatic-discursive competence in foreign language teaching - theoretical overview and critical reflection

The aim of this paper is to discuss certain aspects of fostering pragmatic-discursive competence in foreign language teaching. The concepts of pragmatic and discursive competence in foreign language education are examined, whose development gained greater focus with the emergence of the communicative approach in the 1970s. The study is based on the communicative paradigm and the concept of communicative competence, analyzing their influence on contemporary didactics. It is emphasized that, despite the significant progress of subdisciplines such as pragmalinguistics, sociolinguistics, and conversational linguistics, their application in teaching remains limited. Special attention is given to the interrelationship between grammatical and pragmatic-discursive competence, whereby grammar is understood as an interactional phenomenon that includes the illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects of speech. Through the example of linguistic politeness—considered both a pragmatic and a discursive phenomenon—it is shown that in foreign language instruction at philological faculties, more than in other educational and artistic contexts, greater attention should be paid to language use (parole) and to the transmission of pragmatic and discursive knowledge and skills related to this phenomenon. In this context, the paper analyzes how communicative awareness and pragmatic-discursive competence can be encouraged in foreign language teaching within the field of philological studies.
Keywords: pragmatic-discursive competence, grammatical competence, foreign language teaching, communication.