AbstractDrawing on field/practice theory and pragmatic stylistics, this chapter proposes a new
aggregate model for upper-level second-language literature teaching called “contact pragmatics.”
While fostering a native-like reading context, teachers can simultaneously encourage
students to recognize literature as a form of social practice articulating to various,
loosely concentric fields of interpretation: from the native “ratified” reader to the “unintended”
second-language reader position. Contact pragmatics shifts pedagogical focus to
the interstices, overlaps, misalignments, and disjunctions between these concentric fields,
acknowledging that at their center lies a linguistic utterance designed to operate within
certain fields of opposition and exchange. Contact pragmatics thus expands the scope of
pedagogical inquiry from the historical, national, and cultural resonance of a given text
to its social embeddedness in a shifting landscape of linguistic markets. The chapter offers
concrete, classroom-based examples of the pedagogical dilemmas and experiences that gave
rise to this concept as well as suggestions for how to incorporate it in curricular design.
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