1. Chapter 2, Harmer (2007)
Prof. Estela N. Braun, Adjunto regular a/c (2013)
Describing the English
Language.

2. LANGUAGE IN USE
 Task: Analyze the texts provided.
 Formal/informal language
 Different kinds of written/oral language
 MEDIUM they are operating in.
 GENRES.
 SITUATIONS.
 REGISTER.
 Which grammar can be used to express those
meanings?

3. B. What we want to say
 No smoking area. Context/Rules.
 GRAMMAR: form, meaning, use.
 CONTEXT (situation)
 CO-TEXT (lexis and grammar)

4. PURPOSE
 J. l. Austin/Searle (1962). Doing things with
Words.
 Performatives: I promise, I name you
 Indirect Speech Acts
 The study of functions and how they are
realised in language has had a profound
effect upon the design of ELT materials.

5. APPROPRIACY AND REGISTER
 Would you like to join us for dinner?
 Fancy something to eat?
 There are VARIABLES that govern our
choice of language to achieve a
communicative purpose.

6. VARIABLES
 SETTING
 PARTICIPANTS
 GENDER
 CHANNEL
 TOPIC
 TONE
 Language is a social construct as much
as it is a mental activity.

7. Language as TEXT and DICOURSE
 COHERENCE: logical line of reasoning.
 COHESION:
 Lexical (see “Teacher Man”,by Frank Mc
Court)Repetition, theme and rheme.
 Grammatical Cohesion: tense agreement.
 Anaphoric reference.
 Substitution, ellipsis.
 Linkers or connectors.

8. CONVERSATIONAL DISCOURSE
 Turn taking rules.
 Transactional vs. Interactional
 Moves
 Cooperative principle (Grice, 1975)
 Make contributions informative
 -Make them true
 -Make them relevant
 -Avoid obscurity and ambiguity
 -Be brief and orderly (Polonius, in Hamlet)

9. GENRE:
 Type of written organization that will be
instantly recognized by members of a
discourse community.Goal-oriented social
process.
 Analysis of adverts (Page 31)
 DISCOURSE:the sentences and utterances
we use are more than a combination of
grammar, morphology, lexis.

10. GRAMMAR: Parts of speech.
 Manuel se corto con un vidrio.
 Manuel cut himself with a piece of broken glass.
 Discuss: What do non-native learners of English
need to learn?
 Grammar: syntax, semantics, morphology.
 Words can trigger the grammatical behaviour of
words around them.