Resumen de Der kommunikative Denkstil
The article analyses the development of the communicative approach to language teaching during the 1970ies and 1980ies. It uses Fleck's concept of thought style to capture some of the basic assumptions underlying this approach. Thought styles are commonly shared and unchallenged assumptions among a research community. They set the parameters within which research questions are formulated and answered. About one hundred articles from British, American, German, and international journals as well as a number of key monographs were analysed with a view to uncovering the characteristics of a communicative thought style. The article looks at academic disciplines (e.g. social science and pragmatics) contributing to a communicative thought style and at the debates surrounding its central tenet, the primacy of language use over language form.
