1.2 Objectives of the study

There is no denial that the questions of What to teach? and How to teach? are the two permanent topics of language teaching and learning.The questionWhat to teach? concerns the goal and content of language teaching which is usually claimed as the achievement of a defined proficiency.Language proficiency is the language user's ability or competence in communication.It can also be interpreted as what the learners need,what the teachers want the learners to learn,and what the society needs in second or foreign language education.The issue of How to teach? involves ways,methods and approaches that realize one's aims and goals,and how can we find a way to accomplish our aim? The aim of our research intends to answer the question of What to teach? The question,as is universally accepted,contains two sides:linguistic competence and pragmatic competence（Paradis,1998）.Linguistic competence,as described by Chomsky（1965）is the implicit knowledge of the ideal speaker-listener's grammar in a homogeneous speech community.The automatic,unconscious use of linguistic competence is what allows speaker-listeners to produce and understand sentences（Paradis,1998）.Specifically,the side of linguistic competence refers to the ability to use the forms of a language such as sounds,words,sentence structures,etc.As it characterizes the properties of sentences,its components appear to be accessible to describe,and there is an approximate consistency among various models of language or communicative competence about this side of the constructs.The problem is the characterization of pragmatic competence where there still remain unsolved issues which cause a long-term controversy over the interpretation of communicative competence in the academic world.As is illustrated in Section 3.1,the emergence of communicative competence reveals that the focus of linguistic theory shifts from“competence”to“performance”（Leech,1983）,that is to say,from linguistic competence to pragmatic competence.It can be said that the question of communicative competence is what pragmatic competence is concerned about.

According to Lee（2006）,the concept of communicative competence is one of the most influential theoretical developments in language education as it helped redefine the objectives of L2（second language）instruction and the target language proficiency,and then,the main goal in this research can be categorized into the scope of instructional objectives and the target language proficiency defined in the theory of communicative competence.Yet,it has to focus on figuring out answers to the unsolved issues which cause the controversy over the interpretation of communicative competence so as to better formalize it into theoretical constructs that can offer common frames of references for establishing L2 instructional objectives and measuring language proficiency of non-native students（Lee,2006）.Then,what are the unsolved issues of understanding pragmatic competence? We dare not say that our research is intended to raise doubts and questions about the previous definitions and models of pragmatic competence.What we attempt to do in the research is to reconsider the constructs of pragmatic competence from another angle for the purpose of working out a rational systematic formulation of pragmatic competence.

In 2008,the First China National Forum on Pragmatic Competence and Development was held at East China Normal University,which not only demonstrated the absolute necessity for an enquiry in the area,but also gave us the inspiration to do a systematic enquiry into the area because researchers and scholars in the forum unanimously persisted that the study of pragmatic competence involves an interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional perspective,and a systematic formulation of pragmatic competence will have a great active effect on the development of EFL teaching in China（Wang Hongjun,2009）.The achievements from recent studies on linguistics and pragmatics,the advocates of various models for conceptualizing communicative competence and language proficiency in applied linguistics and SLA designate the imperative need and provide the substantial clues for making the study of pragmatic competence from cognitive linguistics.Therefore,this research chiefly aims at reconsidering the constructs of pragmatic competence in FL/EFL context from the perspective of cognitive linguistics in order to seek a comprehensive interpretation of pragmatic construct.As this research aim is pursued in the background of FL/EFL teaching,the following questions are thought to be explored specifically：

1）Why do we think that the issue of pragmatic competence is the main cause for long-term controversies over the interpretation of communicative competence？

2）What is the current situation of pragmatic competence study in second or foreign language education? And what is the role of pragmatic competence in FL/EFL teaching and research？

3）What implications do the recent studies on communicative competence and L2 language proficiency provide for reconsidering the construct of pragmatic competence？

4）What might be a sound comprehensive construct of pragmatic competence? And what are the rationales underlying a comprehensive construct of pragmatic competence？

5）Does the cognitive approach to the construct of pragmatic competence adopted in this research have the explanatory power for the existing problems in current FL/EFL teaching,and provide implications for solving the problems？