Secondary language personality and principled pragmatism in developing that personality in foreign language education at tertiary linguistic schools

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of developing the secondary (English-speaking) language personality of English-major Ukrainian university students who have chosen the professions of teachers of English, translators, and interpreters. Only the development of such a personality, consisting of the language, communicative, and cultural constituents, can provide for learners’ achievement of the native-like proficiency in all aspects of communication in English, that proficiency being the goal of learning English for English-major students. The paper analyzes the essence of the notion “secondary language personality,” the constituent parts of that personality, and the components of its leading, cultural, constituent that includes communicative etiquettes and communicative behavioral patterns different for different (national) speech communities. The characteristics of communicative etiquettes and communicative behavioral patterns are also analyzed in relation to the communicative culture of English-speaking nations. The article states that, when teaching English-major students, all the three constituents should be taught integratedly. The principled pragmatism with its ten underlying principles is suggested as the theoretical approach to such teaching and learning, while experiential learning, based on the same ten principles, with its creative experiential learning activities is considered as the practical method of implementing the principled pragmatic theory in pedagogical practice.

Keywords:

• secondary language personality
• language
• communicative
• cultural constituents of the secondary language personality
• communicative etiquettes
• communicative behavioral patterns
• principled pragmatism
• experiential learning

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

The theoretical research investigates how to ensure culture-oriented teaching of English as a foreign language to students of Ukrainian higher linguistic schools who study that language as their majoring discipline. The paper demonstrates that, for adequately attaining the learning goals, learners need to develop the secondary (English-speaking) language personality. Only the development of such a personality, consisting of the language, communicative, and cultural constituents, can provide for learners’ achievement of the native-like proficiency in all aspects of communication in English. The three constituent parts of the secondary language personality are discussed with the emphasis on the cultural constituent. The article states that, when teaching English-major students, all the three constituents of the secondary language personality should be taught in full integration and total harmony. The principled pragmatism with its ten underlying principles is suggested as the theoretical approach to such teaching and learning, while experiential learning is considered as the practical method of implementing the principled pragmatic theory in pedagogical practice.

1. Introduction

It has always been known and believed that every language that we acquire has a strong impact on human psychology and personality. The idea that each language influences that personality found support in Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956) elaborated in the first half of the 20^th century. According to that hypothesis, the language that we use every day as our mother tongue (L1) determines to a great extent the way we think and perceive the reality surrounding us.

In late 20^th century Russia those ideas were reflected in the notion of “language personality” (Karaulov, 1987). The language personality comprises the L1-dependent personality features of an individual which make that individual perceive the world around him/her through some typical social and cultural norms, as well the national mentality,—those norms and mentality that prevail in the speech community (D.H. Hymes, 1971) to which the individual in question belongs. D. Hymes (1986, p. 54) defined the speech community as “a community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretations of speech.” These rules are reflected in the communication in L1 of all the members of that speech community—meaning socially and culturally adequate communication without breaking any of the “taboos,” i.e. following all the social and cultural norms, “communicative etiquette,” and “behavioral patterns” accepted as appropriate inside the community (see about the “communicative etiquette” and “behavioral patterns” further in the article and also Lado, 1957; Tarnopolsky, 2001; Tarnopolsky & Sklyarenko, 2003). It is those taboos, norms, communicative etiquette, and communicative behavioral patterns, as well as the specific background knowledge—all of them mostly acquired subconsciously in the course of the individual’s life spent by him or her within his or her speech community,—that form, together with language and communication skills, the “nucleus” of L1 language personality without which the individual’s communication in the community will at once be branded as something “not belonging” because the communicator constantly commits errors (often unacceptable) all through the communication with people who “do belong” to the speech community in question.

It goes without saying that the language personality, besides the culture-dependent part, also includes the language part and communication skills part, i.e. the command of L1 and L1 communication skills with which the command of the cultural norms in communication within the given speech community is most closely and even inextricably integrated. But it is the culture-dependent part of the language personality that regulates the functioning of language and communicative skills in practical communication, therefore, being the leading part in the structure of that personality.

The language personality developed in the course of individual’s lifetime on the basis of L1, the speech community where that L1 is spoken, the communicative etiquette, communicative behavioral patterns, and the specific background knowledge proper to it may be called “the primary” one (the primary language personality). Calling it “primary” is rational because there can be “secondary,” “tertiary,” etc. language personalities developed by one and the same person. It is the secondary language personality and its formation in tertiary linguistic students who learn a foreign language as one of their principal university courses that is the subject matter of this article. In our case, the foreign language that is considered as the majoring subject in the foreign language education of tertiary linguistic students (students of Philology) is English, so the examples given in the paper are mostly taken from that language and the English-speaking nations’ cultures. The university students in question towards whose needs our theoretical research was oriented are learners of English in Ukraine acquiring it for their future professions of teachers of English, translators and interpreters from and into that language.

The notion of “secondary language personality” is the logical continuation of the primary language personality notion (Khaleeva, 1989). Most certainly, the secondary language personality, just as the primary one, includes the command of the language (the acquired foreign one, L2, in this case). And again, as with the primary language personality, if a person studies some foreign language, like English, especially if it is studied as a future profession, acquiring linguistically (grammatically, lexically, phonetically) correct communication skills is absolutely not sufficient. No less, if not more, important are the skills of communicating with full social and cultural appropriateness (Byram, 1997). Native speakers willingly forgive language mistakes and errors in the speech of a foreigner—moreover, such mistakes and errors are expected. But their reactions may be very negative if their subconsciously acquired as far back as the early childhood social and cultural rules of communication normative in their speech community are broken. It is because such rules, norms, and standards (what was called above the communicative etiquette and communicative behavioral patterns) lie at the bottom or even form the most important part of their subconscious or, at least, unclearly realized primary language personality, and whatever encroachment on human personality is always painful and may generate resistance and even rebuffs.

Foreigners, even if they are professionals in the area of the language being used in communication, can often be blamed for such encroachments because their primary language personality is never in full accord with such a personality of their native speaker-interlocutor(s) since communication partners belong to different speech communities—sometimes far distanced from each other in what concerns communicative etiquette and communicative behavioral patterns. Hence, misunderstandings and even conflicting situations not infrequently leading to cultural shocks and clashes.

To avoid this, it seems to be of paramount importance to develop in foreign language students, especially if the language is being acquired by them as a future profession (e.g., a future teacher of English or translator from and into that language), the full language personalities that would be compatible with the language personality of a typical educated native speaker whose language and culture is being studied for professional purposes. It does not mean turning a Ukrainian into an American. It means making a Ukrainian student acquire a secondary language personality that, when active, would let him or her communicate with the native speakers of English in such a way which would totally preclude the manifestations of any social and cultural incompatibilities, inconsistencies, and mismatches (language personalities’ clashes). Such a secondary language personality is separated from the foreign language students’ primary language personality and is “dormant” in communication in L1 within their own speech community. But it immediately “wakes up” and becomes active in communication with the speakers of the acquired foreign language (L2).

It follows from everything said above that students of English as a foreign language must develop their secondary language personalities in the complete integration of its language-dependent, communication-dependent, and culture-dependent constituents if they aspire to achieve proficiency in communication in English, i.e. to make it anywhere close to native-like proficiency. Those learners that are acquiring the foreign language (English) as their future profession are even obliged to develop such personalities (and that must be one of the most important curriculum goals) because otherwise they will be too much distanced from educated native speakers in what concerns the level on which they can communicate in the target language.

It certainly does not signify that the students, who graduated from, for instance, a Ukrainian tertiary linguistic school with English as their major and who have a high level of English (C1/C2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages …, Council of Europe, 2001) and their secondary (English-speaking) language personality adequately developed, will not be recognized as foreigners by native speakers. But this will happen mostly because of their not quite native accent which is very difficult, even well-nigh impossible, to eliminate (Gorman, 2007; Hope, 2006) in whatever university or outside university language course—even specifically aimed at accent reduction. But they will be recognized as foreigners, not as aliens because their accent on C1/C2 level of command of English will be such as, though noticeable, not to impede communication in any way, and their behavior in such communication will fully match that of the native speakers producing no cultural clashes, shocks, or even mismatches.

However, the secondary language personality, despite its importance outlined above, is very little studied, especially in what concerns teaching English as a foreign language and as a major to tertiary linguistic students, in particular, at Ukrainian universities. The purpose of this article is to study this phenomenon deeper, first, by disclosing and clarifying its essence and answering the question what the constituents of the individual’s secondary linguistic personality are. Second, the paper is aimed at developing the theoretical and practical foundations for forming the secondary language (English-speaking) personality of Ukrainian tertiary students majoring in English. It means answering the question about the appropriate theoretical approach and practical method designed for such a personality development. The first question needs to be discussed first to create a basis for answering the second question.

2. The essence of the secondary language personality

As it becomes clear from everything said above, the primary language personality is a specific subconscious monitor that allows and even makes people communicate in their L1 without breaking any explicit or implicit linguistic, social, and cultural norms and rules regulating L1 communication of native speakers in their own speech community. This monitor makes the speaker’s communication fully culturally and socially adequate (again, it should be emphasized—adequate from the point of view of the norms existing in that particular L1 speech community which may be very different from the norms existing in other speech communities).

The essence of the secondary language personality is, in principle, quite similar. It is also a kind of monitor that does not allow the speaker to break the linguistic, social, and cultural norms and conventions existing in the target language speech community, permits that speaker to behave in communication (both oral and written) in the way the native speaker does. The differences from the primary language personality are twofold:

1. It does not in most cases, as it has already been mentioned, stand in the way of native speakers recognizing a foreigner (mainly because of accent peculiarities), though makes them accept that foreigner as “one of their own” in everything that concerns the cultural and social features of communication in their language and in their speech community.

2. The monitor in question is at the beginning always conscious (unlike the almost fully unconscious monitor of the primary language personality) and in this respect, it is quite analogous to Krashen’s (1981) language monitor which helps the conscious learner of a second or foreign language to avoid language mistakes and errors in communication. The monitor under discussion is also at first always conscious because there is no other way to develop it but to focus L2 students’ attention on the difference in the communicative culture in the learners’ own speech community and the target community. The aim is to make students realize those differences and consciously act in accordance with the communicative culture appropriate for the target speech community, and not their native one, when communicating in the target language. Most certainly, in the course of practicing the target language communication, fully adhering to its cultural norms (especially if practicing takes place in the target language environment), the monitor in question may become subconscious or even totally unconscious, just like language/communicative skills, but it is a gradual process and, most frequently, even in the most favorable conditions, it gets finalized after the target language course is completed (in after-language-studies target language genuine practical communication with native speakers).

It can be concluded that the secondary language personality in its essence is similar to the primary language personality fulfilling an absolutely identical function but in relation to the target language communication and target language speech community and with the main difference that for a long time the secondary language personality (unlike the primary one) fulfils its function mostly on the fully conscious basis.

3. The constituent parts of the secondary language personality. Communicative etiquette

Determining the essence and function of the secondary language personality opens the way to analyzing its composition, i.e. its integrated constituent parts that make it a single psychological entity regulating target language communication in the target speech community. This regulation is not only language and communication-dependent but also culture-dependent, ensuring, as it is clear from everything said above, the cultural appropriateness of non-native speaker’s target language communication in the target speech community. If such appropriateness is achieved in non-native speaker’s communication in the target language, it may be said that the speaker in question has acquired the already mentioned communicative culture characteristic of the target speech community. This communicative culture is the outward manifestation of the already formed secondary language personality. Of course, the language constituent (knowledge of the language system and command of grammatical, lexical, and phonetic language skills), which is the first one in the structure of the secondary language personality, and the second communication constituent (communicative skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing) should never be forgotten but in this paper they will be paid much less attention to since the article is focused on the third, culture-dependent, constituent of that personality although in reality the latter is fully integrated with the former.

In what concerns this third constituent, it should be emphasized that the communicative culture of any speech community is practically embodied in what was called in the Introduction the communicative etiquette and communicative behavioral patterns. Those may be defined as the two components of the culture-dependent constituent of the secondary language personality, which is the principal subject matter of this paper.

The communicative etiquette is a definite set of all those socio-cultural norms that in fact regulate practical communication throughout the speech community. According to Tarnopolsky (2001), the communicative etiquette of a target speech community that should be acquired by a foreign language learner (secondary language personality) consists of several categories of such an etiquette, all of them influencing different aspects of communication:

1. General rules of culture-specific communicative behavior. These rules first of all define the “forbidden (taboo) topics” in communication. For instance, in English-speaking cultures (unlike some Eastern European ones) the question about a person’s income or earnings is absolutely unacceptable (taboo) due to greater respect for the personal privacy.

2. General speech, or verbal, etiquette is what language forms make communication culturally appropriate (polite). For instance, in Ukrainian adding “please” to a request makes it sound quite polite (“Open the door, please!”). In English such a request is too imperative and may be considered even rude being closer to an order than a request. A polite request in English would sound something like: “Would you mind opening the door, please?”.

3. General paralinguistic, or non-verbal, etiquette consisting of rules of non-verbal behavior in communication (body language, gestures, distance between communicators, etc. (Damen, 1987)). For instance, this category of etiquette of English-speaking nations requires direct eye contact of interlocutors while in the Japanese culture it may be considered insulting.

There are also some specific categories of verbal and non-verbal etiquettes that regulate communication according to specific relationships of communicators (e.g., communication between close friends, a superior and a subordinate, in the family circle, etc.), according to a specific area/subject matter of communication (professional communication versus small talk, etc.), according to specific situations and formal or informal characteristics of communication (e.g., communication on the same topic at a Board meeting or having a cup of coffee during the break in that meeting), and, finally, communication of different groups within one and the same speech community (e.g., communication of university professors among themselves and university students, also among themselves). All these categories of etiquettes, often manifested at one and the same time, create a very complex and variegated interplay of etiquettes in human communication and a foreign language learner must be aware of very many of them to develop an adequate secondary language personality.

However, in all this interplay every kind of etiquette in practice is brought to life through activating definite behavioral patterns (communicative behavioral patterns). They have already been mentioned several times but now it is important to define them accurately and analyze what their role in communication is.

4. The constituent parts of the secondary language personality. Communicative behavioral patterns

The term “communicative behavioral patterns” originates from the famous and even classical definition of communicative culture by Lado (1957). He calls it “a patterned behavior” meaning that communicators conduct communication and behave in it according to certain acquired and culturally dependent patterns. It is clear from everything already said that communicative behavioral patterns implement in practical communication the communicative culture manifested in different communicative etiquette phenomena. But before defining such patterns, it is necessary to state to which of the types of culture they belong. There are two types of cultures distinguished in professional literature on cultural issues. Every nation has its “high culture” (or ‘big C’ culture) including art, literature, history, legislation, etc. The high culture of the English-speaking nations should most certainly be taught to tertiary students of English majoring in that language but in theoretical courses, such as the “British and American Literatures,” “Histories of the English-Speaking Countries” but not in the practical course of English as a foreign language. In that course what Damen calls “the fifth (cultural) dimension” in language studies is taught through making students acquire what Hymes in the quotation given above termed “the rules of conduct and interpretation” (D. Hymes, 1986, p. 54), or a ‘small c’ culture. Teaching that means making the students realize “how the English (whoever they are) act in given situations, which may distinguish them from the Japanese etc.” (Killick, 1999, p. 4).

Therefore, it can be stated that communicative behavioral patterns, just like the communicative etiquette which they represent in communication practice, belong to the ‘small c’ culture—the culture of “the rules of conduct and interpretation” regulating socially and culturally the human communication in the given language within the given speech community. Both are the manifestations of the communicative culture existing in that community. All the categories of communicative etiquette are kinds of “lists” of such rules of conduct and interpretation, more or less consciously or subconsciously realized by native or non-native speakers as something to be obligatorily observed in spoken or written communication in the speech community in question. So, communicative etiquettes belong to what people using a certain language know (again, more or less consciously or subconsciously) or, at least, if they only start learning some foreign language, should necessarily know after the completion of their language course. Thus, psychologically any communicative etiquette lies in the sphere of communicators’ knowledge.

Unlike the etiquettes, communicative behavioral patterns are not knowledge but skills that allow communicators to operate and efficiently use etiquette rules of conduct and interpretation in genuine practical communication (we may say that communicative etiquette rules are latent while communicative behavioral patterns are active). However, only both these components of the cultural constituent of the secondary language personality (latent etiquette rule and active behavioral pattern skills) can form that personality as a whole embodying the communicator’s command of the target language communicative culture.

Foreign language learners can acquire the communicative behavioral patterns as skills included into the structure of their secondary language personality first on the conscious basis, so that at the beginning they function with the communicator’s full realization of what specific pattern should be used in a given situation and how and why to use it. For instance, a Ukrainian talking to an American or several Americans may have a strong urge to ask the interlocutor(s) about their earnings. But knowing it to be a taboo topic, he or she consciously, and sometimes with difficulty, restrains himself/herself and avoids asking the impermissible question. This is an internal psychological process with the communicator being aware of every detail of it. However, in the course of communicative practice in the target language and in the target language speech community the process gets automatized and the communicator, having an internal urge to know about the interlocutor’s income and earnings, suppresses this urge without any difficulty and even hardly realizing that the unacceptable question was successfully avoided. It means turning a consciousness-based skill into a genuine subconsciously functioning one thanks to the abundant communication practice in the target language in the natural environment of its use.

Discussing the types of communicative behavioral patterns, first of all it should be emphasized that the three most prominent of them “serve” the principal categories of communicative etiquettes being used for the implementation of those kinds of etiquette-dependent communicative behavior in genuine communicative practice. They are verbal, non-verbal, and mixed types of communicative behavioral patterns.

Verbal communicative behavioral patterns. What is meant by speaking about this type of patterns can be demonstrated by a simple example. The following questions: Do you want something to drink?, Fancy something to drink?, and Would you like something to drink? are absolutely identical from the point of view of their informational contents, communicative purpose, and motivational background. But the first two questions, quite admissible if they are addressed to one’s friend, family member, or any other person in close and intimate relationship to the speaker (the second alternative—Fancy something to drink?—being even more informal, casual, and conversational than the first), would be considered rude if they were addressed to a new acquaintance of a high social status or any interlocutor whom one is not intimate with. In the latter case to meet the existing social requirements the third form should be chosen.

Another example is the way people from different cultures answer the standard question of “How are you?” when meeting their friends or acquaintances. In the Ukrainian culture a wide range of alternatives is possible from “OK” or “Fine” to “Could be better”, “So-so” or even “Nothing to boast of”, “Bad”, etc. In the optimistic American culture practically the only possible answer is “Fine, thank you” or something alike to that because anything else might annoy and estrange the interlocutor.

Verbal communicative behavioral patterns serve for the implementation in communication of all the explicit or implicit regulations of general speech, or verbal, etiquette and of all specific verbal etiquettes (see above). They also cover a substantial part of the explicit or implicit general rules of culture-specific communicative behavior. For instance, the rule allowing or not allowing to ask a question concerning the interlocutor’s income which has been given above as an example of one of the rules of culture-specific communicative behavior is implemented by way of using a definite verbal communicative behavioral pattern.

Non-verbal communicative behavioral patterns. They implement the regulations of paralinguistic, or non-verbal, etiquette in communication—both general and specific non-verbal etiquettes. For instance, as it has already been mentioned, they bring to life the regulations concerning the standards of communicative distance between interlocutors who are not close people—those standards that are conventional and specific for a given culture. For example, in Anglo-Saxon (British, American), Scandinavian, and other Northern cultures the normal speaking distance between interlocutors is about an arm’s length or even a little longer. In Southern cultures (like Italy) this distance is closer. So, when an Italian is talking to an English person, he or she will unconsciously try to move closer while the English person will, equally unconsciously, try to step back. As a result, the Italian may think the English person haughty while the latter may feel the interlocutor to be rather intrusive. Another example concerns the greeting patterns. When two men from Ukraine who know each other meet, they usually exchange a handshake, and sometimes do it again, after having a talk, when saying goodbye. It is done even if people meet every day. The British exchange a handshake only when getting introduced to each other, and hardly ever at later meetings and encounters. So, if a male person from Ukraine studying or working at a British university stretches his hand for a handshake every time he meets his British fellow-students or colleagues, they may be quite surprised or even a little annoyed. In this way, the non-verbal communicative behavioral patterns deliver socially and culturally relevant messages by purely non-verbal means.

The non-verbal communicative behavioral patterns also serve for implementing the non-verbal part of the explicit or implicit general rules of culture-specific communicative behavior. For instance, in every culture there are some taboo gestures inacceptable in polite communication. Not letting them ‘slip into’ the polite intercourse is the function of non-verbal communicative behavioral patterns. This is especially important for foreign language students because some gestures quite neutral and admissible in polite communication in one culture may have obscene meaning in another one—to say nothing of numerous cases when one and the same gesture may have absolutely different meanings (e.g., in the Ukrainian culture stroking the right jaw with the backs of your right-hand fingers means an invitation to some other person to have a drink together while in France it is a derogatory gesture meaning “Oh, la barbe!”—an expression of boredom and annoyance at something said by another person; in the same way, for a Bulgarian nodding the head up and down means “No” while for all the other Europeans it means “Yes”).

Mixed communicative behavioral patterns combine the verbal and non-verbal ones. For instance, in the American culture smiling is an important part of communicative etiquette behavior and a smile is very often combined with words. People are used to regard a smile as an indispensable tool of verbal socializing. It is a mixed communicative behavioral pattern and a very important one since a person who does not smile frequently in the process of verbal communication may be thought of as being gloomy or even hostile. When you are walking along the street and meet the eyes of quite a strange person, they may often smile at you and say “Hello!” showing friendliness and good intentions. The situation is different in other cultures—for instance, in the Ukrainian one. The Ukrainians smile much less frequently than the Americans do since a smile in their communicative etiquette behavior is not thought to be so important for establishing verbal contacts.

The description given above shows how communicative behavioral patterns serve to implement in the communicative practice the general rules of culture-specific communicative behavior, the general and specific verbal and non-verbal communicative etiquettes. But those patterns have even a larger scope serving not only for implementing the communicative etiquette behavior of the representatives of a given speech community but some other features of culture-specific behavior of such representatives.

The most vivid example of communicative behavioral patterns not dependent on culture-specific communicative etiquettes or on the explicit or implicit general rules of culture-specific communicative behavior is the lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns which may also be verbal and non-verbal. They serve quite a special category of social communicative contacts. They are those in which an individual contacts representatives of a whole social institution as an outsider—a user of services of this institution. For this person the officials of the institution with whom he or she is in contact represent the institution as a whole—and are hardly viewed as individuals. The examples of this kind may be the communication of a customer and a shop assistant, of a client and a teller at the bank, of a taxi driver and a passenger. Such kinds of communicative contacts embrace practically everything that the economists refer to as the tertiary sector—all kinds of services, health care, leisure, tourism, etc. Here (as in all lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns) the institutional aspect of every such pattern is at its peak because in the relationships of a user of services of a social institution (customer) and a representative of that institution there is hardly anything personal as a rule (of course, there may be exceptions—situations of conflicts, etc.). That is why communication in such situations—whether verbal or non-verbal—and behavior in them are most highly standardized, and communicative behavioral patterns in such situations are probably the most standardized of all the patterns.

It should be strongly emphasized that social communicative contacts of the kind described above is something that happens to us every day—and many times a day. People use public transport, shop, make different payments, eat at public places of eating every day. They often go to theaters, cinemas, or museums, make tourist trips, fly from one city to another by planes or go by trains and buses, they stop at hotels and rent apartments, they use public pay-phones and send letters by mail, they consult doctors and use beauty parlors and laundries—and do an enormous number of other things requiring the services of special institutions specifically designed for rendering such services. It may be said that ways of doing these things determine people’s lifestyle outside the sphere of their purely personal and professional life. That is why the specific communicative behavioral patterns employed for doing those daily things should best be called the lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns.

Lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns may be defined as standardized patterns used by individuals to obtain specific services from social institutions designed for rendering such services in communication with either human or mechanical (like an ATM) representatives of these institutions.

Such patterns may be quite different in different social and cultural communities. Especially different they are in the developed Western countries and the post-Soviet countries. For the citizens of latter countries when they first get into the midst of developed Western societies the difference of lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns from those that they are used to may cause a real cultural shock. For instance, in the USA the pattern of using such public transport as buses is totally different from the Ukrainian one. To board a bus, you must have exact fare that you pay to the so called farebox. If you do not have exact fare, you will not be allowed to board and may stay in the street at nighttime (which happened to one of the authors of this article). Quite serious problems may ensue causing a culture-dependent psychological shock.

Here it should be emphasized that the lifestyle behavioral pattern just discussed is a strictly communicative one. If a passenger is silently boarding an American bus, silently paying the fare to the farebox by the side of the driver, and is as silently making their way to take a vacant seat, it may be said that an adequate and meaningful passenger-driver communicative exchange has taken place. By paying fare to the farebox, the passenger sends a message to the driver that their duty has been done, and now it is the driver’s duty to take them to the stop that they need on the route of the bus. Reading indications on the farebox that the fare has been duly paid, the driver gets this message and complies with the implicit request. But if a passenger boarding a bus starts trying to pay the driver and get change or to ride free because he or she does not have the exact fare and does not know the regulations, this communication, though verbal, is mostly meaningless. It is not the driver’s business to adapt regulations to a passenger who does not know them—so, most probably such a person will be left planted in the street.

The example given above shows how important it is to teach target speech community’s lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns to students of English as a foreign language, especially if English is their major. Those patterns are required to be known not for helping the students to follow strictly the communicative etiquette regulations in the target speech community. They serve to help them achieve a no less important purpose: to avoid a cultural shock, to survive, and fully adapt to everyday life in such a community.

There is one more type of communicative behavioral patterns that stands apart from the four types of them discussed above. The difference between the first four and the last one is due to the fact that the first four patterns fully lie within the range of what was earlier defined as a ‘small c’ culture. The last, fifth, type of communicative behavioral patterns lies “in-between” the ‘small c’ and the ‘big C’ cultures. The patterns belonging to this type embrace the phenomena of the so called mass culture which are so deeply rooted in the conscious and even subconscious strata of the target language native speaker’s psyche that it would be difficult for them even to imagine how it is possible to communicate with a non-native speaker of their language if such a speaker does not know the obvious things from the area of mass culture, “known to absolutely everybody”. For example, it will be a real shock for an American talking to a foreigner speaking very good English to learn that his or her interlocutor does not know who Mickey Mouse or Elvis Presley are. Due to that, some “patterned,” i.e. used in communication as patterns (communicative behavioral patterns), mass culture phenomena should be included into the practical course of the English language, at any rate if it is a course for students studying English as their major. There are not too many of those phenomena, or patterns, that should be by all means acquired by future language teachers and translators/interpreters, so their inclusion into the practical language course will not really make a serious problem.

Everything said above in this article leads to the conclusion that teaching a foreign language (English), especially to students studying it as their major, means developing those students’ secondary language personality that has three constituents: the language one, the communicative one, and the cultural one, the latter probably being the most important for ensuring the learners’ native-like proficiency in target language communication. That cultural constituent includes several kinds of communicative etiquettes. These etiquettes are practically manifested and implemented in communication through three types of communicative behavioral patterns: verbal, non-verbal, and mixed ones. There are also two other types of communicative behavioral patterns: the lifestyles ones and those reflecting the most popular and well-known mass culture phenomena. They are not connected with communicative etiquettes but are also quite important for successful communication and everyday life in the target speech community.

The question is how to teach all those etiquettes and patterns to foreign language learners (especially those majoring in the foreign language) or, wider, how to develop their secondary language personality so as to harmonize teaching and learning all the three of its constituents: the language one, the communicative one, and the cultural one. Harmonization in this case means that all the three constituents are acquired in unison, integratedly, each constituent helping to form the other two in the process of its own development.

What is discussed below in the article is an attempt to answer this question.

5. Principled pragmatism as the basic theoretical approach to developing the secondary language personality of learners of English as a foreign language

As it has just been said, in foreign language (English) courses aimed at developing students’ secondary language personalities the three constituents of that personality (the language, communicative, and the cultural ones) need to be taught in a totally integrated manner so as to ensure learners’ full target language communication adequacy both from the linguistic and cultural points of view. It means that English-major students’ language communication skills (the abilities to speak, write, read, and listen in the target language with the proficiency close to that of educated native speakers) should be organically and inextricably linked, even merged, with their cultural communication skills learned by way of acquisition of the target speech community’s communicative etiquettes and the five types of communicative behavioral patterns.

All the traditional approaches to foreign language teaching (“approaches” in the sense of Richards & Rogers’ understanding of that term—as the full ‘schemes’ of such teaching including its goals, contents, methods, etc. (Richards & Rogers, 1986)) cannot solve the problem of achieving the full merger of the language, communicative, and cultural constituents in the development of students’ secondary language personality. It is so because all those traditional approaches beginning from the grammar-translation one and ending with the audio-lingual one are strictly language acquisition-oriented with practically no focusing on the cultural constituent of the secondary language personality and even insufficient focusing on target language communication skills as opposed to purely language skills. Even the now dominant communicative approach, which is fully focused on developing students’ target language communication skills and not the skills originating from the mastery of the language system per se, does not fully meet the requirements of welding together the acquisition of language communication skills and cultural communication skills. Though the communicative approach in no way opposes the culture-oriented intercultural approach, as some authors think (e.g., see Burkert et al., 2010), and even allows to include, to a certain measure, the acquisition of cultural communicative skills into its procedures (e.g., see Tarnopolsky, 2010, 2011), culture studies is something superimposed on this approach but not its organic and inherent part. Therefore, some new approach should be found where language teaching, communication teaching, and communication culture teaching will form one indivisible entity.

Such an approach has already been elaborated by Kumaravadivelu (2001, 2003) who proclaimed it as the manifestation of the “post-method era” when the domination of one approach to foreign language teaching is done with, and practical teachers are expected to extract and pragmatically combine in their teaching the postulates and elements from different methodological approaches in accordance with the needs, requirements, abilities of their particular students, in their particular classrooms, and in their particular conditions and circumstances. Naturally, such a pragmatic combinatorial approach easily allows for combination of elements from the communicative, intercultural, and even more traditional approaches for solving the problem of harmoniously uniting language, communication and cultural studies in one single approach to foreign language teaching and learning.

However, according to Kumaravadivelu (2003), such a pragmatically combined approach can only be based on principled pragmatism, i.e. on following certain principles in the pragmatic combination of elements from different approaches to make the new approach really effective, efficient, and meeting today’s requirements. Those principles formulated by Kumaravadivelu (2003) are:

1. Maximizing learning opportunities. It means making the learning process as intensive as possible (without making the learners stressed and overtired) because only if learning is really intensive, learning opportunities incrementally grow in numbers. For the course developing the secondary language personality such incremental growth of opportunities is absolutely indispensable because in such a course there are more skills and materials to be acquired (linguistic, communicative, and cultural) than in more traditional courses, even the totally communication-oriented ones.

2. Minimizing perceptual mismatches. Perceptual mismatches are some kinds of misunderstanding between the teacher and the student(s) when the former means one thing and the latter understands it differently (Andarab & Büyükyazi, 2013). The best way to avoid perceptual mismatches is students’ learning autonomy (Benson & Voller, 1997; Dam, 2002; Holec, 1981), self-teaching, and peer-teaching (Tarnopolsky, 2017) because any perceptual mismatch is more easily resolved in the students’ own communicative interaction and/or when soliciting help from the teacher. This is especially important for the course developing the secondary language personality because in the intensive learning that it must ensure (see above) there is simply no time and place for lingering perceptual mismatches.

3. Facilitating negotiated interaction. Such interaction of students means communication in the target language for successfully solving the learning tasks, communication tasks, and avoiding or solving perceptual mismatches in the learning process (see above). In the foreign language course developing the secondary language personality, providing opportunities for and facilitating students’ negotiated target language communicative interaction is probably one of the most important tasks because only in such interaction learners can really acquire and reinforce the target language communicative and language skills, as well as the communicative etiquette and communicative behavioral patterns.

4. Promoting learner autonomy. Without that no minimization of perceptual mismatches is possible (see 2 above) and no genuine negotiated communicative interaction is achievable (communication, to be genuine, has to be autonomous). Hence, the importance of this characteristic of the principled pragmatic approach for the course aimed at developing students’ secondary language personality.

5. Fostering language awareness. In the strictly communicative approach (Krashen, 1981) fostering language awareness is considered not only unnecessary but even harmful for developing the communicative abilities. But later research (Ellis, 1990; Fotos, 1994) demonstrated that without students’ (especially adult ones’) consciousness-raising as to a number of language phenomena the development of both communicative and language skills suffer. The introduction of such consciousness-raising techniques means pragmatically combining the communicative approach with the earlier language form-focused ones. For the language course aimed at developing learners’ secondary language personality, such a rational pragmatic combination is no less important than for any other language course where both communication and language skills are to be acquired.

6. Activating intuitive heuristics. Genuine communication is based on intuitive heuristics, and following the implicit regulations of communicative etiquette and subconsciously implementing in practice most of the communicative behavior patterns are intuitive heuristics-dependent as well. This is why the language course developing the secondary language personality should obligatorily create opportunities for activating such heuristics.

7. Contextualizing linguistic input. The linguistic input that students obtain in the course of language training should be contextualized in genuine communication; otherwise, the language learned will not be able to serve the communication needs. The same concerns contextualizing cultural phenomena for communication—hence, the importance of this principle for developing the secondary language personality.

8. Integrating language skills. Kumaravadivelu (2003) meant by the language skills the basic skills of communication: speaking, listening, reading, and writing which are always integrated in the development of the communicative abilities of all educated speakers of the language and in their using those abilities for communicative purposes. This is why such integration is obligatorily required in every communication-oriented foreign language course, and all the more so in the course designed for developing the secondary language personality.

9. Ensuring social relevance and 10. Raising cultural consciousness are the two last principles that seem to be specially designed for introducing the cultural component into the foreign language course and for forming students’ secondary language personality in it. Ensuring social relevance means teaching students to be socially acceptable in their target language communication (learning communicative etiquettes and communicative behavioral patterns appropriate for the given social and cultural setting), while the principle of raising cultural consciousness means that learners acquiring the etiquettes and patterns in question have no choice but to first clearly realize their differences in the target speech community from their own L1 speech community.

Having defined the principled pragmatism and its principles as the fundamental theoretical approach for designing a foreign language (English) course aimed at developing the English-major students’ secondary language personality, it is necessary to define by what practical method of teaching and learning this approach can be implemented in the teaching practice. We see this method in experiential learning.

6. Experiential learning as the method of implementing the principled pragmatic approach in the teaching practice

The method of experiential learning seems to be the only practical method that fully matches the requirements of the theoretical principled pragmatism approach in pedagogical practice and, in this way, as it follows from what has been said above, also meets the requirements of developing the secondary language personality in the language course. Experiential learning (Kohonen et al., 2014; Tarnopolsky, 2012) presupposes such an organization of the teaching/learning process which gives opportunities of constantly modeling the extralinguistic activities in students’ language learning activities, so that the latter model the genuine target language communication. The important point is that the implementation of that quasi-genuine communication not by the means of learners’ L1 but by the means of their target language creates opportunities for acquiring the foreign language and communication skills mostly involuntarily and subconsciously—as a by-product of modeled extralinguistic activities and quasi-genuine L2 communication.

It may be said that the experiential learning method, which may otherwise be called the constructivist method (Glaserfeld, 1995; Richardson, 2003), is a way of “ … providing students with opportunities of ‘constructing’ their own knowledge and skills through practical experience in real-life or modeled activities. In this case, students acquire their knowledge and skills as a by-product of their real-life or modeled activities, thus internalizing (appropriating) the knowledge and skills and not just learning them” (Tarnopolsky, 2012, p. 13). The works of the last mentioned author (Tarnopolsky, 2012, (2018), and a number of others) demonstrate that experiential learning when teaching English at Ukrainian tertiary schools means designing the teaching/learning process as an uninterrupted succession of extralinguistic activities completed in the target language: role plays and simulations; students’ brainstorming, case studies, discussions; presentations; learning projects; essays, abstracts, and summaries writing, etc. All those activities are constantly accompanied by learners’ autonomous search for information in the target language (mostly on Internet sites in English) and by processing the information found through reading and listening with the aim of providing sufficient data required for doing all the above-listed creative learning tasks. The fact that students’ English Internet-search for information that they need to complete such tasks is done regularly and quite frequently in and out of class makes the learning process a blended one (Sharma & Barrett, 2007) meaning that on-line work becomes a regular feature of English language studies. This unifies traditional classroom learning and on-line learning, thus creating a flexible learning environment which greatly helps to intensify and facilitate practical language training.

Having explained what is meant by experiential learning, it is now necessary to analyze it and prove the fact that it really implements in teaching practice all the ten Kumaravadivelu’s (2003) principles of principled pragmatism, thereby providing the best opportunities for developing learners’ secondary language personality in the language course.

This analysis should better start with the two last principles: those of ensuring social relevance and raising cultural consciousness. They are probably the most relevant to what concerns covering the cultural (and, therefore, also the social) constituent of the secondary language personality which has been primarily discussed in this article. In experiential learning these two principles are fully implemented because learning from the experience of target language communication means placing that communication into cultural (and social) context of human verbal and non-verbal intercourse. It depends on the teacher or the author of teaching materials to create such a context that would stimulate learners’ developing specific cultural (and social) components characterizing the secondary language personality as different from the primary one. It also depends on the teacher to make their students aware of those differences in the chosen social and cultural context. Finally, ensuring learners’ acquisition of cultural and social phenomena (first of all, communicative etiquette and communicative behavioral patterns) by means of primarily verbal communication in modeled target speech community’s social and cultural context contextualizes the linguistic input, thereby implementing the seventh of Kumaravadivelu’s principles (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). As a result, three out of ten Kumaravadivelu’s (2003) pragmatic principles are put into practice in experiential learning, and they cover the cultural constituent of developing the secondary language personality.

However, the principle of contextualizing the linguistic input also serves for developing the language and communicative constituents of that personality through experiential learning because, as it is clear from the description of activities included into such learning, there are no decontextualized ones in it. That makes the acquisition of language items and language and communicative skills in this learning totally immersed into target speech community’s typical communicative contexts which is really important for the communication and communication context-oriented development of secondary language personality as a whole. The language and communicative constituents of the secondary language personality are also intensively developed in experiential learning thanks to the fact that all communicative skills (which Kumaravadivelu calls language skills—see before) are inevitably acquired by students in an integrated manner. For instance, to deliver an oral presentation in class (speaking), learners need to collect materials for it (e.g., on the Internet) in the target language through reading and listening, write the notes for the presentations and prepare texts for the slides (writing), listen to questions and answer them after delivering the presentation (speaking and listening), etc. This provides for the experiential learning fully meeting Kumaravadivelu’s eighth principle of integrating language/communicative skills when developing the first two constituents of the language personality. But that concerns the third (cultural) constituent of that personality too because in experiential learning students obtain and process the relevant cultural information through reading, listening, speaking, and writing.

The same may be said about activating intuitive heuristics (the sixth principle). Communication in creative experiential activities, such as project work, case-studies, discussions, writing essays, etc., being creative in itself, cannot avoid being based on those heuristics. They are activated even when acquiring the language and cultural information for such communication because the search for and choice of information to be acquired for completing a particular creative task is a creative process in itself. This makes the development of all the three constituents of the secondary language personality in experiential learning based on activated intuitive heuristics.

The principle of fostering language awareness (the fifth) also perfectly fits the experiential learning methodology due to the generally pragmatic character of the latter—aimed, in particular and among other things, at developing the language constituent of the secondary language personality. Experiential learning methodology is not strictly and purely communicative in Krashen’s (2001) sense and is in no way averse to limited language focusing, especially if that focusing follows the communicative needs generated by learners’ completing creative experiential tasks. Such focusing may be teacher initiated and monitored, but especially valuable in experiential learning is the language focusing initiated and completed by students themselves for meeting their own communicative needs. Such language self-focusing prevents perceptual mismatches (the second principle) and is widely spread in experiential learning practice because that practice is mostly autonomous (the fourth principle). Learning autonomy in experiential learning, as well as minimizing perceptual mismatches thanks to the implementation of such autonomy, covers the process of forming all the three constituents of the secondary language personality, which is self-evident because without them neither the language constituent nor the communicative and cultural ones can be provided with suitable conditions for their contextualized and intuitively heuristic (see above) development. The same holds true of the principle of facilitating negotiated interaction (the third one) because all the creative experiential learning activities in experiential learning are based on negotiated interaction in the target language communication (see, for instance, students’ discussions in the target language or role plays where they are required to manifest the acquired target culture communicative behavioral patterns).

Finally, the principle of maximizing learning opportunities (the first one) is inherent to experiential learning because the latter one is intensive by nature and, when applied to developing all the three constituents of the secondary language personality, provides the best opportunities for such development since the intensive, communication and communication culture-oriented character of all the creative experiential learning activities makes them best suited for ensuring learners’ acquisition of all the numerous components of those three constituents.

As a conclusion to all the analysis discussed above, it may be stated that all the principles of principled pragmatism (as a theory, or theoretical approach) are fully practically embodied in experiential learning as the most suitable practical method for the integrated development of the secondary language personality of Ukrainian university students majoring in English as their future profession. All the relationships between the formation of the three constituents of that personality, the theoretical approach to such formation, and its embodiment in the practical method of personality development through a set of 10 principles can be represented as a model in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The model of developing the secondary language personalities of students studying English as their major at Ukrainian tertiary linguistic schools

Everything said in this article allows to draw several conclusions.

6. Conclusion

This article has discussed the issue of developing the secondary language personality of university English-major students who have chosen English as their future profession. It has demonstrated the main feature of the secondary language personality based on the acquired target language (L2—English) distinguishing it from the person’s primary language personality based on the mother tongue (L1). This feature is the cultural peculiarities of communication differentiating theTarnopolsky communicative culture of the target speech community from the communicative culture of the L1 speech community.

Every language personality (both primary and secondary) consists of three principal constituents: the language, the communicative, and the cultural ones, and it is this last constituent that mostly covers the greatest and most prominent differences in the communicative cultures of different nations. The constituent in question includes the communicative etiquettes (verbal, non-verbal, and mixed) which are sets of norms and rules regulating communication so as to make it culturally adequate, i.e. meeting the specific cultural requirements of a given (national) speech community. The communicative etiquettes are brought to life in practical communication through communicative behavioral patterns (also verbal, non-verbal, and mixed) mostly subconsciously employed by communicators in their communicative interaction/intercourse. There are also two other types of communicative behavioral patterns not directly connected with communicative etiquettes but serving the implementation in communicative practice of some specific peculiarities of the communicative culture characterizing a definite national speech community. Those are the lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns and some of the most spread and popular mass culture phenomena universally known in that speech community.

The secondary language personality, especially in what concerns its most prominent cultural constituent, should necessarily be developed by every student learning English as their major because otherwise the native-like proficiency in the target language communication (the ultimate goal of learning English as a majoring discipline) can never be achieved. The native speakers will always perceive such a person not simply as a foreigner but as an alien not able to communicate culturally adequately, i.e. strictly following in communication the existing cultural norms known and observed by everybody really belonging to the given speech community.

This is why it is so important to develop the secondary (English-speaking) language personality of all Ukrainian university students majoring in English by providing them in their English course with appropriate cultural training (training aimed at the acquisition of English-speaking nations’ communicative etiquettes and communicative behavioral patterns). Most certainly, in forming the secondary language personality of English-major students no less important than developing its cultural constituent emphasized in the article is the development of its language and communication constituents. All the three constituents should be developed in the integrated manner, in unison and harmony, so that no knowledge or skills important for the formation of each of the interdependent and intertwined constituents is neglected. A specific English teaching/learning theory and practice is required for achieving this goal.

The article substantiates the expediency of selecting principled pragmatism as the theoretical approach to ensuring the implementation of the required specific kind of English teaching/learning at tertiary linguistic schools training future translators, interpreters, and teachers of English for Ukraine. It is shown that the ten principles underlying the approach in question are the most suitable for organizing the efficient formation of learners’ secondary language personalities in the entirety of all its constituents. Those principles are also discussed as the basis of the practical method of developing such constituents and the personality as a whole in classes of English at tertiary linguistic schools. That practical method is experiential learning with its various creative experiential activities which in teaching practice really meet the requirements of developing in an integrated manner all the constituents of the secondary language personality of English-major university students.

The last statement certainly is in need of experimental corroboration and a relevant experimental study is planned by us for the near future. However, our practical experience in teaching English as a majoring subject at Alfred Nobel University (Dnipro, Ukraine) in accordance with the suggested experiential learning system confirms that the system effectively works in forming the secondary language personality of English-major students. Besides, there is an indirect confirmation in the use of a similar (though not identical) teaching/learning system developed by us for the students of non-linguistic specialties. The effectiveness of that last system has been fully experimentally proved in our studies (Tarnopolsky & Kozhushko, 2004) which allowed us to prepare and publish a series of relevant coursebooks of English for professional purposes designed for future economists, psychologists, tourism managers, pedagogues, and specialists in technology (see, for instance, Tarnopolsky & Kozhushko, 2007; Tarnopolsky et al., 2014 and others). All this shows that the direction of teaching and learning English as a majoring subject elaborated and analyzed in this article is quite promising so that further research is both desirable and practically necessary.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research

Notes on contributors

Oleg Tarnopolsky

Oleg Tarnopolsky is Doctor Habilit., Professor, PhD. He heads the Department of Applied Linguistics and Methods in Foreign Language Teaching at Alfred Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine and specializes in researching English teaching. He is a Merited Educator of Ukraine, holds two Fulbright Awards (USA), and is the author of more than 400 publications in more than 20 countries.

Svitlana Kozhushko is Doctor Habilit., Professor, PhD. She is the Professor of the Department of International Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant Business, and Language Training at Alfred Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine. Her research interests are in teaching English.

Ruslan Kliuchnyk is Candidate of Political Sciences, PhD, Associate Professor of the Department of Global Economics at Alfred Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine. He teaches English as a foreign language.

Svitlana Storozhuk is Candidate of Pedagogy, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Applied Linguistics and Methods in Foreign Language Teaching at Alfred Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine. Her research interests embrace aspects of teaching English.