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The Texas Airport Cookies

Pragmatic Variation from an Urban Legend

Faridah Pawan and Daniel J. Reed
Indiana University, United States

Level: Advanced ESL or EFL students

Time: 2 weeks

Resources: This chapter

Goals:

1) To enhance awareness of pragmatic variation with respect to cultural setting and participant characteristics (age, cultural background, and gender) in an airport scenario.

2) To provide practice opportunities in the following speech acts:·

• expressing a friendly greeting
  
• opening a general conversation
  
• making a request (to get something from interlocutor)
  
• requesting clarification
  
• expressing surprise
• expressing misunderstanding
  
• clarifying one's own position
  

Description of the Activity
The class reads the following transcription of the urban legend, "The Texas Airport Cookies." Subsequently, the teacher facilitates awareness and practice activities. These activities are outlined in step-by-step fashion below. This project is best accomplished over a period of a week or two to allow time for students to do the story rewrite, interview a native-speaker informant, and write a report.

The Texas Airport Cookies

A fellow went to Texas for a conference. When the conference was finished, he returned to the airport to catch his plane home and thought how much he had missed his wife while he'd been gone. "I'll take her something to show her how much I've missed her," he thought. He looked all over the airport. He thought about flowers, but he didn't really want to get flowers; he wondered whether to get her some candy, but that didn't seem quite right either. There just wasn't anything in that airport that he wanted to take home.

Suddenly, he smelled a marvelous aroma. "Wow! I've never smelled anything that good," he thought. He followed the aroma, and it led him to a little shop he hadn't noticed before. The sign over the shop read, The Best Cookies in the World. "If they taste anything like they smell," he thought, "they will indeed be the best cookies in the world." He went into the shop. "Do you have any chocolate chip cookies?" he asked the woman behind the counter. "Of course we do," she replied, "and they are the biggest and the best chocolate chip cookies in the nation. As you and I both know, everything in Texas is bigger and better than anywhere else."

"Great," the fellow said, "I'd like half a dozen, please." She boxed them, and he picked up his briefcase and newspaper and walked towards the terminal. When he arrived the terminal was crowded, and he looked all over to see if there was one seat that would let him be by himself. He saw one seat with a table next to it, then a grandmother seated on the far side with her two grandchildren. He walked quickly over to that seat, put his things down, took out his newspaper, and began to read it.

It wasn't long before he could smell those cookies again, and he wondered whether they really did taste as good as they smelled. "I wouldn't want to take something home that didn't taste good," he thought. "Maybe I should try one." He reached over, took a cookie from the box on the table, and began to eat it. It was excellent. He was savoring the flavor when he saw out of the corner of his eye the grandmother reaching toward his box of cookies. He watched as she took one and began to eat it. He couldn't believe his eyes. The nerve of that woman to take one of his cookies! But he couldn't face embarrassing her publicly, so he turned back to his newspaper in disbelief.

A short while later, he thought, "If I eat one more cookie, I can take the last three to my wife and she'll never know the difference." As he reached over to take another cookie, he was stunned to see the grandmother taking not just one cookie, but two. She gave them to her grandchildren, who began happily munching them. "This is outrageous! Unbelievable! How can she do that!" he thought. However, he was still unwilling to face her. Again he returned to his paper, but he was very angry inside.

"She won't get my last cookie," he thought, so he reached over to take it. But the woman reached over at the same time, and their hands paused above the last cookie. He glanced at her. She smiled at him. He returned to his newspaper. She took the cookie, broke it, and gave half to him while she ate the other half. That was the last straw! In anger, he hurriedly ate the half cookie she had given him, grabbed his briefcase and newspaper, and stomped over to the other side of the terminal. He waited there seething with anger until his flight boarded. He charged onto the plane, flung himself down in his seat, jerked down the tray table in front of him, slammed his briefcase down on it, opened the briefcase …and there was his box of cookies!

Activities for the Texas Airport Cookies story:

Activity 1: "Say something" (to enhance awareness and understanding)
The story revolves around what the two main characters, the man who bought the cookies and the grandmother, did not say to each other. The outcome would have been different if something had been said. Students take turns suggesting what the man or the grandmother could have said to each other at different points in the story. Students then discuss the reasons/objectives and possible outcome(s) of what was said.

Instructions for teachers:

Teachers should facilitate this activity by discussing ahead of time what would be most appropriate way, pragmatically, to express the following intentions to a stranger who is a grandmother or to a younger man:

a. express a friendly greeting
b. make general conversation
c. make a request
d. ask a question to clarify
e. express surprise
f . express misunderstanding
g. clarify position

Instructions for students:

a. Work with a partner.
b. Decide which character you will be, the man or the grandmother.
c. Say something to your partner at each of the four points in the story (given below).
d. Discuss why your character said something.
e. Discuss the result of what your character could have said and how it might change the story.

Point A:

He reached over, took a cookie from the box on the table, and began to eat it.

Point B

He was savoring the flavor when he saw out of the corner of his eye the grandmother reaching toward his box of cookies.

What could the man have said?	What could the grandmother have said?
Why would he have said it? (For example, to clarify ownership of cookies)	Why would she have said it?
How would the story have changed?	How would the story have changed?

Point C

As he reached over to take another cookie, he was stunned to see the grandmother taking not just one cookie, but two. She gave them to her grandchildren, who began happily munching them.

Point D

So he reached over to take it. But the woman reached over at the same time, and their hands paused above the last cookie. He glanced at her. She smiled at him.

Activity 2: Character Analysis(to provide practice in context)

This activity invites students to think about the story and the characters in the context of their own culture and the people they know. The main aim of the activity is to help students compare what would be pragmatically appropriate for the two characters to say in the students' culture with what American characters would say to avoid the misunderstanding that took place in the story. This activity helps students use what they know about their own culture to gain understanding of the conventions associated with American culture and its expression in American English.

Instructions to students:

a. Work with a partner (if possible, with someone who speaks your language)

b. Imagine that the man and the grandmother in the story are two people from your culture.

c. Discuss the characteristics of the man and of the grandmother.

d. With your partner, rewrite the story by inserting what the man and the
grandmother could have said to each other to prevent the misunderstanding
that occurred.

e. Discuss, with a native speaker or with someone who has spent some time in the
U.S., what the man and the grandmother could have said to each other.
Compare their opinions to what you and your partner have written in your
version of the story.

f. Discuss both the differences and similarities and they reasons they exist.

g. Write a short report on your discussion. It should include
information about what is polite or impolite to say to someone who is older than
you and what is polite or impolite to say when you want to "save
face" in your language and in English.

Rationale
The proposed activities emphasize reflection and participation. The speakers in the story experience a communication lapse, underscoring the point that native control over language forms is not in and of itself sufficient to ensure successful communication. In the first activity, "Say Something," it is up to the students to reflect on what went wrong and to co-construct (or co-reconstruct) meaning successfully (not to imitate a native speaker model). The second activity, "Character Analysis," provides practice opportunities and illustrates how success may vary with characteristics of the participants (cultural background, age, gender, etc.) as well as setting (airport in U.S. Vs. an airport in a student's home country). The use of the role-play formats also makes the activities especially useful for EFL students, who may have developed the ability to comprehend pragmatic behavior but still require opportunities to practice using appropriate forms in particular contexts (Kasper, 1997). In short, an awareness activity and a practice activity are proposed with the aim of developing control over pragmatic aspects of English that vary with setting and participant characteristics.

Covering the lesson over several class meetings (as opposed to a single 15-minute lesson) allows students to develop a deeper understanding of the pragmatic aspects of the story and provides them with increased opportunities for practice in role plays-conditions that help maximize students' chances of mastering these aspects of pragmatics.

Reference
Kasper, G. (1997). The role of pragmatics in language teacher education. In K. Bardovi-Harlig and B. Hartford (Eds.), Beyond Methods: Components of Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 113-136). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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