Citizens who are capable of engaging in civic discourse, resolving conflict, and negotiating meaning are essential for sustainable development. However, the classroom is often disregarded as a primary location for the development of communicative competence in Nigeria’s development communication models. This paper applies pragmatics and discourse analysis to classroom interaction in Nigerian secondary schools to situate English language teaching within the broader discourse of national development. The study investigates teacher-student interactions in six public secondary institutions in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, utilising Austin’s Speech Act Theory and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis. During the 2024/2025 academic session, 18 hours of transcribed classroom discourse, teacher interviews, and student writing samples were collected. The analysis indicates that teachers primarily employ directive and representative speech acts, while commissive and expressive acts that demonstrate civic responsibility, empathy, and deliberation are uncommon. Mitigation strategies, turn-taking negotiation, and contextual inference exercises are also infrequently employed in classroom discourse. As a result, students are able to memorise language forms but do not possess the inferential and civility skills necessary for participatory development activities, such as community meetings, advocacy, or conflict mediation. This paper suggests a pragmatics-based instructional framework that includes Speech Act Repertoire Building, Development Scenario Simulation, Discourse-Based Feedback, and Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. It posits that the English classroom can be repositioned as a development communication laboratory, thereby advancing SDG 4 and SDG 16.
Keywords: Nigeria, Pragmatics, SDG 16, SDG 4, Speech Acts., and English language teaching, classroom discourse
