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
“Pragmatics is a way of investigating how sense can be made
of certain texts even when, from a semantic viewpoint, the
text seems to be either incomplete or to have a different
meaning to what is really intended. Consider a sign seen in a
children's wear shop window: “Baby Sale - lots of bargains”.
We know without asking that there are no babies for sale -
that what is for sale are items used for babies. Pragmatics
allows us to investigate how this “meaning beyond the
words” can be understood without ambiguity. The extra
meaning is there, not because of the semantic aspects of the
words themselves, but because we share certain contextual
knowledge with the writer or speaker of the text”
 Models of Language Proficiency
Bachman‘s (1990) model of communicative language ability is
composed of
three components, most importantly
• LANGUAGE COMPETENCE, "a set of specific knowledge
components thatare utilised in communication via language“, which
is further subdivided into
• ORGANISATIONAL COMPETENCE, containing
GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE and TEXTUAL COMPETENCE
• PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE, subsuming ILLOCUTIONARY
COMPETENCE and SOCIOLINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
(1990:94)
 Context: what is it?
Here are four subareas involved in fleshing out what we mean by context.
Physical context: we can think of this in terms of where the conversation is taking
place, what objects are present, what actions are occurring, and so forth.
Epistemic context: the epistemic context refers to what speakers know about the
world. For example, what background knowledge is shared by the speakers is
crucially part of your epistemic knowledge when you have a conversation with
someone else?
Linguistic context: the linguistic context refers to what has been said already in
the utterance. For example, if I begin a discussion by referring to Jane Smith and in
the next sentence refer to "her" as being a top notch athlete, the linguistic context
lets me know that the antecedent of "her" (the person "her" refers to) is Jane Smith.
Social context: the social context refers to the social relationship among speakers
and hearers.
Contextual knowledge allows for the hearer to comprehend that the intended
meaning is distinct from the literal meaning. With any luck, they'll even tone it
down.
role-of-context argument:

It is often casually remarked that what a speaker says or means in uttering a given sentence
“depends on context,” is “determined” or “provided” by context, or is otherwise a “matter
of context.” That’s not literally true. Assume that by context we mean something like the
mutually salient features of the conversational situation. Does context determine what the
speaker says? Suppose he utters an ambiguous sentence, say “Gina wants to belong to a
golf club.” Presumably he is saying that Gina wants to belong to a group of golfers, but
given the ambiguity of ‘golf club’, he could be saying, however bizarrely, that Gina wants
to belong to a thing that is used to hit golf balls. Context doesn’t literally determine that he
does not.
And context doesn’t constrain what a speaker actually means. It can constrain only
what he can reasonably mean and reasonably be taken to mean. That is, it constrains what
communicative intention he can have in uttering a given sentence and reasonably expect
to get recognized. So suppose someone says, “Harry has a happy face.” Presumably what
he means is something to the effect that Harry has a facial expression indicating that he’s
happy. Even so, he could mean, however strangely, that Harry’s face is itself happy (as if
faces can be in different moods on the sadness-happiness scale). Similarly, a speaker who
says, “Many investors lost every dollar,” presumably means that many investors in some
particular deal each lost every dollar that they respectively put into that deal, even though
that goes well beyond the meaning of the sentence. But it is not literally context that
determines that this is what the speaker means in uttering the sentence.

Jeanette K. Gundel, A Hedberg

 Austin
Constatives vs. Performatives
True vs false Felicity conditions
       speech acts
locution (act of uttering)
illocution, illocutionary force (function of the
utterance)
perlocution (effect of the utterance)
Austin began by distinguishing between what he called
‘constatives’ and ‘performatives.’ A constative is simply
saying something true or false. A performative is doing
something by speaking; paradigmatically, one can get
married by saying "I do" (Austin, 1962). Constatives are
true or false, depending on their correspondence (or not)
with the facts; performatives are actions and, as such, are
not true or false, but ‘felicitous’ or ‘infelicitous,’ depending
on whether or not they successfully perform the action in
question. In particular, performative utterances to be
felicitous must invoke an existing convention and be
invoked in the right circumstances
 Identifying performatives (vs
constatives)
I promise to talk to you
Peter promises to talk to you
I will promise to talk to you

I bet you sixpence that it will rain tomorrow

I apologize
I (hereby) declare war on Zanzibar
I christen this ship the H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth

What do they have in common? – the form of a statement, they

have an effect of an action, truth conditions do not apply
 Speech Acts
-        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)
  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)
 Direct / indirect speech acts
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.
Suggest a plausible speech act that might be performed by the
utterance of each of the following sentences.
1. I can’t find my pen.
2. Do you have a match?
3. It’s too hot in here.
4. Do you know the time?
5. The front of the oven is extremely hot.
6. I’ll be at your lecture tomorrow.
7. Have a good time.
8. Why don’t you have a rest now?
A: “Thers’s a sale at Jenny’s”
B: “I’ve no time now”
A: “Well, that was not my point”
B: “So what?”
Two people in a restaurant. When it is time to pay, A finds out
that she’s forgotten her purse.

A. I haven’t got any money

B. It’s all right I’ve got money
A. I’ll pay you back later
B. It’s Ok

B later is surprised to find that A has put the cost of her lunch in
B’s pigeonhole. What has gone wrong?
 Grice

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)
 co-operative principle
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
 Flouting, violating, infringing,
and opting out
Five ways of not fulfilling a maxim:
a.A participant can violate a maxim. The purpose is often
to mislead the interlocutor, for instance by lying.
b.A participant can infringe a maxim when he fails to
observe the maxim although he has no intention of
deceiving or generating implicatures.
c. A participant can opt out, for instance by saying "I
don't want to talk about it".
d. A participant can be faced with a clash of maxims.
e. A participant can flout a maxim. It is the flouting of
maxims that creates the conversational implicatures
 conversational implicature
The speaker may flout a maxim, to the full knowledge of the
addressee

• It is assumed that at some level, the speaker is always

observing the cooperative principle, even if this is not
evident from what is literally said, i.e., what is literally
said does not coincide with the maxims. Observing the
maxims at a non-literal level triggers a conversational
implicature
What is cooperative?
1
Virginia: Do you like my new hat?
Mary: It´s pink.
2
Maggie: Coffee?
James: It would keep me awake all night.
3
Linda: Have you finished the student evaluation form and the reading list?
Jean: I´ve done the reading list.
4
Phil: Are you going to Steve´s barbecue?
Tarry: Well, Steve´s got those dogs now.
5
Annie: Was the dessert any good?
Mike: Annie, cherry pie is cherry pie.
 Relevance theory
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):
 
 Ostensive communication
Ostensive-inferential communication
a.         The informative intention:
The intention to inform an audience of something.
b.         The communicative intention:
The intention to inform the audience of one’s informative
intention

Communicative Principle of Relevance

Every ostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own
optimal relevance
 Relevance Theory
Optimal relevance
An ostensive stimulus is optimally relevant to an audience iff:
a.         It is relevant enough to be worth the audience’s
processing effort;
b.         It is the most relevant one compatible with
communicator’s abilities and preferences
Relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure
a.         Follow a path of least effort in computing cognitive
effects: Test interpretive hypotheses (disambiguations,
reference resolutions, implicatures, etc.) in order of
accessibility.
b.         Stop when your expectations of relevance are satisfied
 Implicatures and presuppositions
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
 Implicatures and presuppositions
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 had been there, you would have helped me. (counterfactual)
 Implicatures and presuppositions
Cancelling presupposition and implicature
 
 Mike: What happened?
Dave: Steve’s dog wrecked the garden - and in fact, Steve
doesn’t have a dog.
  
Terry: How do you like your bath?
Jane: Warm. ("I don´t like it hot" -
implicature)
Cancellation: "I like it warm. No, actually, I like it hot.
 Politeness principle
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.
 Politeness
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
 Politeness
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
• The bald on-record strategy does nothing to minimize threats to
the hearer's “face”
• The positive politeness strategy shows you recognize that your
hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the
relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity.
• The negative politeness strategy also recognizes the hearer's face.
But it also recognizes that you are in some way imposing on
them. Some other examples would be to say, “I don't want to
bother you but...” or “I was wondering if...”
• Off-record indirect strategies take some of the pressure off of
you. You are trying to avoid the direct FTA of asking for a beer.
Instead you would rather it be offered to you once your hearer
sees that you want one.
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 strategies
Strategies of involvement Strategies of independence
Notice or attend to H Make minimal assumptions about H’s wants
Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H) Give H the option
Claim in-group membership with H Minimize threat
Claim common point of view, opinions, attitudes, etc. Apologize
Be optimistic Be pessimistic
Indicate you know H’s wants and take Dissociate S, H from discourse
them into consideration
Assume or assert reciprocity State a general rule
Use first names and nicknames Use family names and titles
Be voluble Be taciturn
Use H’s language or dialect
 hedging
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/speaker’s actual
meaning/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 common
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)
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)
 Pragmatics
cross-cultural pragmatics
 
 
PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE –
responsible for mechanisms recovering
un-coded meanings of messages