ABSTRACT
Over the past few years, pragmatics has increasingly become accepted as an important strand of the language teaching curriculum. From the 1970s onwards, it became well understood in the field of second language (SL) and foreign language (FL) teaching that learning a language involves considerably more than the learning of grammar and vocabulary. This chapter describes as study of how learners 'acquire the ability to produce and understand communicative action in a second language, such as refusing an offer of food asking a professor to write a letter of recommendation'. It provides an overview of the key themes addressed by early studies in both of these sub-areas, their theoretical underpinnings and the findings brought to light. The chapter identifies trends in the topics of research in second language pragmatics in instructed settings in recent decades, delineated current topics of inquiry and suggested lacunae in this body of research that future studies might address.
