Imposition!

Hello, subscribers!

This week, we are tackling a really dynamic and interesting topic in pragmatics-imposition.

We love this definition from our colleagues at CARLA: Rank of imposition [emphasis added] refers to the importance or degree of difficulty in the situation. For example, in requests, a large rank of imposition would occur if you were asking for a big favor, whereas a small rank of imposition would exist when the request is small (n.p.).

The trick with imposition is that it operationalizes distinctly across people and people groups. This reality means that our language learners need to be able to understand how people communicate (or not) when imposition is relatively high or low.

We hope you enjoy these resources!

Reference: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition. (2024). Dancing with Words: Strategies for Learning Pragmatics in Spanish. Center for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition (CARLA).

Imposition Overview

Explore the basics of imposition!

Ideas for Implementation and Further Exploration:

Want to keep learning more? Here are some resources!

Try this quick mini lesson about imposition.

This activity and video outline an observational activity for learners in which they consider the imposition inherent in asking questions.

The game-enhanced activities that can be downloaded here for This War of Mine model one approach to thinking through how imposition might influence communication choices with learners. As an important note, the game is not appropriate for younger audiences.

Click on each tile to interact with the original media!

Forward

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