The representation of pragmatic knowledge in recent ELT textbooks

Pragmatic competence has become an increasingly crucial component of language pedagogy. This article reports on a quantitative and qualitative study of ten English language textbooks used in Chinese universities with a particular focus on their coverage of pragmatic knowledge. Detailed analysis focused specifically on the mention of pragmatic information, the treatment of speech acts, and the representation of intralingual pragmatic variation. The findings show that pragmatic knowledge is still under-represented in most textbooks. The range of speech acts included is rather limited, and the ways that speech acts are presented seem to be based on writers’ intuition. There is a paucity of explicit metapragmatic information on speech acts. In addition, little attention is devoted to enhancing learners’ awareness of intralingual pragmatic variation. The implications of these results for teachers and textbook writers are discussed.