Abstract
This paper aims to show how Japanese learners perceive some pragmatic aspects of French and to emphasize the need to address pragmatics more in the context of teaching French in Japan. The results of the interviews with 11 students show that their perception of speech acts such as refusal can be distorted by their lack of knowledge about the pragmatic characteristics of French. The analysis leads us to reflect on the consequences of teaching based on the translation-grammar method and on textbooks which do not include many pragmatic elements.
