Discourse Analysis Unit III: Meaning in Interaction
🎯 Stage 1 — Desired Results
A. Established Goals
Students will deconstruct authentic spoken interactions to comprehend the pragmatic functions of utterances and the collaborative nature of human conversation.
B. Transfer Goals
Students will independently use their learning to:
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Become “Learning Weavers” who transparently design and share communicative classroom activities that mirror the authentic, unstructured nature of real-world interaction.
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Diagnose conversational breakdowns in the language classroom by evaluating the pragmatic failures and unspoken rules of human turn-taking, rather than just grammatical errors.
C. Meaning
Enduring Understandings (Students will understand that …)
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Utterances perform actions (locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts) rather than merely transferring information.
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Human conversation is a highly structured, collaborative process governed by unspoken rules, including adjacency pairs and turn-taking mechanics.
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There is a distinct functional difference between interactional (social) and transactional (informative) talk, and both are necessary for communicative competence.
Essential Questions
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How do we use language to “do” things in the real world?
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Why do conversations sometimes break down even when the vocabulary and grammar are perfectly correct?
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How can we make the invisible, collaborative rules of social interaction visible and teachable to English language learners?
D. Acquisition
Students will know …
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The fundamentals of Speech Act Theory (locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts).
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The mechanics of adjacency pairs and the rules governing turn-taking.
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The defining characteristics of interactional (social) versus transactional (informative) talk.
Students will be able to …
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Transcribe short, publicly available audio or video clips of natural conversations.
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Code conversational transcripts to label speech acts, turn-taking signals, and adjacency pairs.
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Evaluate breakdowns in conversational flow and identify pragmatic failures.
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Design role-play activities for the ELT classroom that highlight interactional vs. transactional talk.
🎯 Stage 2 — Evidence
A. Performance Task (GRASPS)
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Goal: Demystify spoken pragmatics by transcribing a natural conversation, coding its hidden mechanics, and designing a classroom-ready role-play activity that brings this theory into practice.
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Role: An ELT educator who models transparent learning and teaching.
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Audience: Pre-service teachers, language learners, and your broader Personal Learning Network (PLN) of educators.
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Situation: To contribute to an engaging, open community of educators, you are preparing a multi-modal instructional breakdown. You will select a short, publicly available audio or video clip of a natural conversation and transcribe it. You will then code the transcript for speech acts, turn-taking, and adjacency pairs. Finally, you will use this analysis to design a practical role-play activity highlighting interactional versus transactional talk for the ELT classroom.
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Product/Performance: A “Pragmatics in Action” resource package. This could be formatted as an ELT podcast episode script, a Substack newsletter post containing the annotated transcript, or a video breakdown. The product must incorporate theoretical grounding from Cook (1989) Section 1, McCarthy (1991) Chapter 5, and Searle (1969).
Standards/Rubric (summary): (Note: Unit III assignments and quizzes represent 30% of the total course grade.)
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Purpose & audience: The breakdown transparently connects theoretical linguistics with practical classroom application for a public audience of peers.
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Organization & cohesion: The transcript is accurately coded, and the resulting role-play activity logically aligns with the identified interactional or transactional features.
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Detail & diction: Speech Act Theory fundamentals (locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary) are applied accurately to evaluate the interaction.
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Language control (B1+): Professional, engaging register is maintained; the use of English accounts for 50% of the evaluation.
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Process & integrity: APA style is utilized for all citations (including the media source); the work is 100% original, complying strictly with departmental AI and plagiarism policies.
B. Other Evidence
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Formative Quizzes: Knowledge checks covering the core concepts of Searle’s Speech Acts and the mechanics of adjacency pairs.
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Pragmatic Failure Audit: A short evaluation of a provided conversational breakdown transcript to identify where and why the communication failed pragmatically.
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Transcription Workshop: Collaborative, in-class practice transcribing and coding short audio samples to build practical skills before the final task.