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Title IMPROVING BUSINESS COMMUNICATION SKILLS THROUGH PRAGMATICS

Author(s) Muhammad Asif Javed

Abstract ABSTRACT Thesis Title: Improving Business Communication Skills through Pragmatics Pragmatics is an important branch of linguistics that deals with a sender’s intended message, a receiver’s interpretations, context, and language contents. Business communication is a specific branch of general communication. Business communication courses aim at preparing the students for effective professional communication required in their future careers. This study aims at exploring the effectiveness of teaching pragmatics explicitly along with the prescribed course contents of business communication in the classroom. The data have been collected through (1) comparative analysis of business communication relevant contents of ESP/communication courses prescribed by Higher Education of Pakistan (2012) for BBA and relevant pragmatics concepts, (2) written discourse completion tasks (WDCTs) of learners who were taught pragmatics explicitly on the pattern of single-subject experiment design, (3) semi-structured interviews of teachers of business communication, and (4) semi-structured interviews of business administrators with relevant qualification. Through the comparative analysis, the majority of contents of business communication and pragmatics are found comparable with each other. A significant impact of explicit instruction of pragmatics is noted on the learners of the singlesubject experimental group. The teachers are found convinced of the utility of pragmatics in teaching business communication and a majority of them supported the notion of explicit instruction of pragmatics combined with the course contents. The business administrators also reported that they use pragmatics in their corporate communication which they have learnt implicitly through their vast exposure and they also appreciated the notion of making pragmatics a part of business communication courses. The findings of the study reveal that concepts of pragmatics are very useful in business communication. Based on findings, this study recommends the explicit inclusion and instruction of pragmatics in business communication course contents to better prepare the business students for their later professions. Further, the study also suggests additional research on the interface of pragmatics and professional communication.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2021-08-26

Subject English Linguistics

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