Rise of pragmatics
Pragmatics is a study of how people interact when using language
Language in use is part of human interaction - shift from langue to parole (particular human communicative intentions in part. comm. situations, with part. configuration of participants)
Better definition: study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (writer) and interpreted by a listener (reader) - WHAT PEOPLE MEAN BY WHAT THEY SAY
Milestones in pragmatic research:
Austin (1962), How to do Things with Words
Searle (1969), Speech Acts
Grice (1975), „Logic and Conversation”
Leech (1983), Principles of Pragmatics
Levinson (1983), Pragmatics
Sperber and Wilson (1986), Relevance: Communication and Cognition
Brown and Levinson (1987), „Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena”
Wierzbicka (1991), Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Semantics of Human Interaction
Verschueren (1999), Handbook of Pragmatics
Pragmatic issues:
role of context (verbal, situational, pragmatic)
deictic expressions (referring to speaker and hearer, time and place)
I have put it there.
co-operative principle: make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (theory of rational cooperation)
maxims of:
quantity - make your contribution as informative
as is required (not more)
quality - do not say what you believe to be false,
do not say that for which you lack adequate
evidence
relevance - make your contribution relevant
manner - avoid obscurity and ambiguity, be brief
and orderly
what is cooperative?
Daughter: Where is my ball?
Father: Why don't you look behind volume 6 of Dostoyevsky's Collected Works?
communicative intentions (explicit and implicit)
principle of relevance - overriding according to Sperber and Wilson:
minimum effort and maximum cognitive benefit
successful communicator makes his (informative, persuasive etc) intentions `manifest' to himself and the partner(s):
George has a big cat.
conventional implicatures (do not depend on context, associated with certain words):
Mary suggested black, but I chose white.
Even John came to the party.
The flag is red (= completely red)
conversational implicatures (violations of maxims):
I hope you brought the bread and the cheese. Ah, I brought the bread.
You left the door of the fridge open.
How do you like my hairstyle? Let's get going.
a) Generalized implicature (no special knowledge required):
I was sitting in a garden one day. A child looked over the fence.
b) scalar implicature:
I have completed some of the courses.
They are sometimes really interesting.
This should be stored in a cool place.
It is possible that they were delayed.
c) particularized implicature (the context necessary):
Hey, coming to the wild party tonight? My parents are visiting.
Where are you going with the dog? To the V-E-T.
Do you like ice-cream? Is the Pope Catholic?
presuppositions (sth assumed by the speaker - pragmatic presupposition)
The present King of France is bald (existential)
When did he leave? (structural)
Why are you so lazy?
How fast was the car going when it ran the red light?
He stopped smoking. (lexical)
He started complaining.
Cut us another slice.
He did not realize she was ill. (factive)
I am glad that it is over.
I dreamt I was rich. (non-factive)
If you were my friend, you would have helped me. (counterfactual)
speech acts
locution (act of uttering)
illocution, illocutionary force (function of the utterance)
perlocution (effect of the utterance)
felicity conditions (appropriate circumstances)
I sentence you to six months in prison
When you leave this building, you will get a
surprise.
general conditions (understanding the lg, serious)
content conditions (promise/warning - future
events)
preparatory conditions (promise - the event will not happen by itself, it will be beneficial;
warning -hearer may not know sth will occur, speaker believes it will occur, it will not be beneficial)
sincerity conditions (promise - speaker genuinely intends, warning - speaker genuinely believes)
essential condition (promise - creates obligation,)
classification of speech acts:
assertives: The earth is flat. (S believes X)
declaratives: I pronounce you man and wife.
(S causes X)
expressives: I am sorry. (S feels X)
directives: Don't touch that! (S wants X)
commissives: I will be back. We will not do that.
(S intends X)
three basic structures: declarative, interrogative and imperative
direct speech acts (direct relation between structure and function):
Shut the door.
Do you wear a seat belt?
- indirect speech acts
Could you pass the salt?
There's a draught in here.
Do you have to stand in front of the TV?
You would make a better door than a window.
Politeness principles
"face" - interactional identity, public self-image:
Will others be upset? Will they like me? How can I say what I want to say?
negative face - need to be independent, to have freedom of action, not to be imposed on by others
positive face - need to be accepted, liked by others, to belong to a group, to know that one's wants are shared by others
face-saving (FS) and face-threatening (FT) acts:
Stop that awful noise right now.
Are you going to stop soon because it is getting a
bit late and people need to get to sleep?
politeness - verbal or non-verbal strategy of human behaviour, which consists in observing conventionalised social norms aimed at respecting another person's face
negative politeness - a FSA which is oriented to the negative face - shows deference, emphasizes the other's time and concerns, autonomy, apologises
Could you lend me your pen?
I am sorry to bother you, but can I ask you for a pen or something.
There is going to be a party, if you can make it.
positive politeness - a FSA which is oriented to the positive face - shows solidarity, emphasizes that both speakers want the same, have common goals
I would appreciate it if you let me use your pen.
Let us shut the door.
These biscuits smell wonderful.
Come on, let us go to the party. Everyone will be there.
politeness principle: minimize the expression of impolite beliefs, maximize the expression of polite beliefs
maxim of tact: You could borrow my copy if you liked.
maxim of generosity: I could lend you my copy.
maxim of approbation: Your lecture was outstanding.
maxim of modesty: How stupid of me! (*clever)
maxim of agreement: It was a nice performance, wasn't it? Yes, it was, wasn't it?(*No)
maxim of sympathy: I am terribly sorry (*delighted) to hear about your cat.
hedging: Well, I think.., I suppose, He is kind of strange, I just have my doubts, or something like that, perhaps, may, suggest
interactive elements which may serve as a bridge between the propositional information in the text and the writer's actual interpretation
taxonomy of hedges:
modal auxiliary verbs (can, may, would)
modal lexical verbs (seem, believe, assume, suggest, argue, indicate, speculate)
adjectival, adverbial or nominal modal phrases (possible, unlikely, perhaps, apparently, virtually, assumption, claim, estimate)
approximators (roughly, about, often, occasionally)
introductory phrases (we believe, it is own knowledge)
if clauses (if true, if anything)
compound hedges (it seems reasonable, it would seem somewhat unlikely that)
non-informative use of language (joking, lying, metaphor)
What's the difference between a hungry man and a glutton? One longs to eat and the other eats too long.
How many lawyer jokes are there? Only three. The rest are true stories.
My wife is a monster
different communication purpose: to inform, to entertain, to mislead, to inspire esthetically, to persuade
irony
- traditional definition: saying the opposite of what you mean:
It's lovely today, isn't it? (seeing the heavy rain outside)
- irony as mentioning (echoing) sth heard before (as opposed to using the expression for the first time)
It's lovely today, indeed.
- irony as the inappropriate, but relevant
I do so love the warm spring rain (one farmer to another, ploughing the dry field in the scorching sun)
cross-cultural pragmatics
PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE - responsible for mechanisms recovering un-coded meanings of messages
Rise of text linguistics
text - linguistic expressions used in (oral and written) communication and interpretation the hearer/reader makes of them. Applies only to verbal expressions (paraverbal and non-verbal ones are excluded - just interpretation clues)
INTERPRETATION BASIS (knowledge + ideas, feelings) ; TEXT + INTERPRETATION CLUES
text linguistics - study of how speaker and hearer manage to communicate via text, esp. via relations between sentences, paragraphs, sections etc.
writer/speaker has the intention of conveying a message to a reader/hearer. He formulates a message called the text. In order to understand it we have to study the representations speaker/hearer have of the text.
no direct mapping of communicative intentions to linguistic expressions. The mapping is mediated through the conceptual level =text representation
seven standards of textuality: what makes a text a text:
cohesion, coherence, informativity, intentionality acceptability, situationality, intertextuality
coherence - property that distinguishes texts from arbitrary sets of sentences
a text is coherent if it is possible to construct a coherent representation of that text
cohesion - presence of elements that link clauses to surrounding text
In the street I was approached by a man. The man was very friendly.
My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could. That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes I think I'd rather have the convertible.
My father bought a Lincoln convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That color does not suit her. She consists of three letters. However, a letter isn't as fast as a telephone call.
referential coherence
- endophoric (to cotext) and exophoric (to outside
context)
Look at the sun. It's going down quickly.
It's going down quickly, the sun.
Look at that.
anaphoric (to preceding text) and cataphoric (to
following text),
Peel and slice the potatoes. Put them in cold water.
I turned the corner and almost stepped on it. There
was a large snake in the middle of the path.
- underspecification: zero anaphora -
Drop the slices into hot oil. Cook [?] for three
minutes.
Or the indefinite in place of the definite article
overspecification - name for pronoun (additional effects)
coherence relations (consequence, contrast, evidence etc.), connectives: therefore, but, for example, etc
coherence is possible to achieve with cohesion if cultural background fills in the gaps (frames, scripts, scenarios - forms of background knowledge)
I just rented a house. The kitchen is really big.
The bus came on time, but he did not stop.
When you go to the polling station, give the clerk your
name and address.
He sat down, examined the menu, ordered a steak,
and got up and left.
missing inferences:
The house has a kitchen.
The bus has a male driver.
Typical restaurant script/scenario:
ENTERING
walk into restaurant
look for table
decide where to sit
go to table
sit down
ORDERING
get menu
look at menu
choose food
waiter arrives
give order to waiter
waiter takes order to cook
wait, talk
cook prepares food etc.
EATING
PAYING
LEAVING
Trying not to be out of the office for long, Suzy went into the nearest place, sat down and ordered a sandwich. It was quite crowded, but the service was fast, so she left a good tip when she had to rush back.
dangers of (elaborative) inferencing:
The animal ran towards the kennel.
The policeman held up his hand and stopped the car.
The housewife spoke to the manager about the increased meat prices.
discourse coherence
role of relations between sentences, speech acts (illocution):
Self Employed Upholsterer. Free estimates. 332 5862.
Find a Ball. Win a House. Page 4.
What time is it?
Well, the postman's been already.
Can you go to Edinburgh tomorrow?
BA pilots are on strike.
`That's the telephone.'
`I'm in the bath.'
`OK.'
Did you want an ice lolly or not?
What kind have they got?
ambiguity of speech acts:
Hey, Michele, you've passed the exam.
other criteria of textuality:
informativity: Sea is water.
San Juan gunfire kills one.
intentionality/acceptability (goals, tolerance of range)
I cannot collect my sick pay. I have six children,
Can you tell me why?
situationality: (relevant factors):
Are you here or not?
intertextuality:
Are you some sort of Hamlet?
genres or text types
criteria: succession, chronology, prescription (instruction), projection (for future or past)
narrative (+S+Ch-Pro-Pre)
procedural (+S +Ch+Pro+Pre)
expository (-S-CH-Pro-Pre)
hortatory (-S-Ch+Pre +Pro)
N: He went to get the eggs.
P: Take four eggs and throw them onto the pan.
E: The eggs lay on the kitchen table smelling rather suspicious.
H: You should always make sure that the eggs smell good before you use them.
Other distinctions:
narrative and non-narrative texts,
fiction vs non-fiction,
literary vs non-literary texts
non-narrative - not only temporal, generic truth, permanent across contexts, verifiable events, impersonal
NEWS FLASH:
YOU MUST DECIDE
HAS PERFECT PIZZA FINALLY GONE CHEESY MAD
OR
ARE WE SIMPLY GIVING YOU AN OBSCENE NUMBER OF GREAT OFFERS?