(By Wu Shuang, Chen Kezhen)

On April 25, 2017, Professor Richard F.Youngdelivereda lecture titled asPragmatics and LanguageLearningto the teachers and students from School of Foreign Languages of WIT. 

At the very beginning, a brief introduction was givento us by Prof. Zhang Yuanyuan, dean of School of Foreign Languages, with ChenKezheng, a sophomore from WIT, serving as a simultaneous interpreter.  

Richard F.Young is a Professor in English Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, and he also serves as a director of English asa Second Language Program.

His researches are embodied in several booksincluding "Variation inInterlanguage Morphology" ( 1991), "Talking and Testing" 1998),"Language and Interaction" (2008) and"Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching" (2009), andhe has published over 60 articles in journals.

(Prof. Zhang is giving an introduction)

 "Now what is pragmatics?I am going to give you a lot of examples of pragmatics and by the end of thislecture, I am going to ask you again  'what is pragmatics '”, ProfessorRichard said when the lecture was proclaimed to start.

(outlineof the lecture)

As was displayed on the screen, his lecture wascomposed of three parts, which got across to us by two stories.

The first story was about Veronica, who grew up inShanghai and had lived her life in Shanghai until she met her husband,Tim, an Australian.Then she moved to Australia with her husband and put down her reflections onher life as a Chinese migrant in Australia. According to what she had written,Professor Richard illustrated how different life in Australia was from that inChina, when it came to pragmatics. For instance, frequently used expressions ofgreeting and thanking in Australia couldn't' promise the same importantposition in China. And the meaning of simple phrase “I love you” doesn't meanthe same between China and Australia. The wayspeople request are also different.

The second story Professor gave to us was "letthem eat cake ", which warned how serious the consequence would be whenthe pragmatics was misunderstood in intercultural situations. From Vienna, where the residents believe in “Wein Schema”, a kind ofpragmatics which means no matter how tough the life gets, just smile, the King LouisⅩⅥ’s wife, Marie Antoinette came. When thequeen was told that her people couldn't even live off bread, then she saidstartlingly that “let them eat cake”, which finally brought her life to an endin aguillotine. 

The last part of this lecture was Q&A session. Professor Richard was willing to share hisown experience on the dilemma where he got the pragmatics wrong in China. Andsome other students raised questions related to linguistics and intercultural communication. Professor Richard impressed every participant by hiseasiness, humor and vivid examples. What a feast!

（Face In English and Chinese)

 （300 or so teachers and students are listening to Prof.Young） 

(Professor is taking a selfie)