SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECT OF ESP READING

Reading text and decoding linguistic units are not enough for ESP students. They should understand purpose. To understand a text is to understand who wrote it, for whom, in what situation and for what purpose. This is the sociolinguistic side of reading. Recent research on language indicates that social factors have a strong impact on economic and financial texts: institution, audience, culture and the moment all affect how they are framed, the metaphors they use, their level of formality and their genre. Yet this sociolinguistic knowledge has barely penetrated the teaching of reading. This paper, set within the framework of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and the study of economic discourse, outlines recent studies of economic and professional language and of ESP teaching. It identifies five gaps in the teaching of reading to economics students: reading is rarely the main aim; economics students are rarely studied; sociolinguistic findings have not become classroom methods; reading teaching has mostly stayed within one type of method; and Central Asia is missing from the research. In response, the paper presents a sociolinguistic framework for reading, CELLO, and suggests avenues for future work.