Transcript Pragmatics - MFI - University of Miskolc

PRAGMATICS
Language functions
Language as a tool
FORM
phonological
semantic
syntactic
Language as an act
FUNCTION
„the pragmatic uses that speakers put
language to in communication”
Language functions
social bonding
and maintenance
(„phatic communication”)
expression of identity
‘informative’ communication
collective memory
Language functions
by Halliday (1973)
instrumental
I pronounce you husband and wife.
regulatory
You’ll be the doctor and I’ll be the patient,
right?
heuristic
When was Shakespeare born?
imaginative
The little pony shook and suddenly turned
into a beautiful princess.
representational
We all long to be loved.
interactional (‘phatic function’)
How are you today?
personal
I hate being bullied.
Speech Act Theory by
Austin (1962)and Searle (1972)
 Locution
 Illocution
 Perlocution
- Oh, what a
lovely bike!
- I’ll lend it to you if you
give me a chewing gum,
all right?
Felicity conditions
direct
(Stop teasing the dog!)
and indirect speech acts
(You’ll stop teasing the dog.
Would you stop teasing the dog?
I wish you would stop teasing the dog.)
Grice’s Communication Theory
Communicative situations are rather
limited:
rely on shared knowledge, common goals
and mutual interests,
do not convey a large amount of new info,
do not attempt to bring about a complete
change of view or behaviour,
based on agreed processes of adjustment
and accommodation.
Grice’s Interaction Theory (1975)
 Maxims of
Quality
Quantity
Relevance
Manner
Other elements of cooperative
communicative acts

conversational implicature (implied but
unstated meanings)
- Where is your husband?
- He is in the living room or in the
kitchen.
Implication: The speaker does not know
which room he is in.
presupposition (what is assumed or taken
for granted that is why unstated)
Sam has stopped beating his wife.
Sam hasn’t stopped beating his wife.
Presupposition: Sam beat his wife.
Food – 3 miles
Good Food – 30 miles
Daily Grill – In Palm Desert at El Paso
“I never read The Economist”
Management Trainee, Age 42
shared assumptions and agreement on
how specific encounters are to be
regulated in terms of
turn-taking (taking the floor)
exchange
silence
Pragmatic differences across cultures
Deborah Tannen
 level of indirectness tolerated
 paralinguistic signals of different speech acts
 different cultural expectations - stereotypes (the
pushy New Yorker, the stony American Indian,
the inscrutable Chinese)
Example 1:
TAKING THE FLOOR
Indian English (by raising
volume)
British
English
(by
repeating the introductory
phrase)
Example 2: ‘Thanksgiving dinner’ situation
A: In fact one of my students told me for the first time, I
taught her for over a year, that she was adopted. And
then I thought – uh – THAT explains SO many things.
B: What.
That she was –
A:
Cause she’s so different from her mother
B:
smarter than she
should have been? Or stupider
than she should’ve been.
A:
It wasn’t smart or stupid,
Actually, it was just she was so different. Just
different.
B:
[hm]
Anna Wierzbicka
Ethnocentric view of speech acts
Cross-cultural differences in directness
Mrs Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit!
Will/Won’t/Would you sit down?
Please, have a little more! You must!
Would you like to have some more? How about
a beer?
What’s the time?
You wouldn’t happen to have the correct time,
would you?
Indirectness and politeness
You are to get off. Not to show oneself to
me here!
Why don’t you bloody get off? Get off, will
you.
Underlying beliefs
individualism
collectivism
„compromise”
Michael Clyne
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Should you not make your utterance more informative
than required? (How are you?)
Should you always be truthful? (I’m fine thanks)
Should you always be relevant and straightforward?
(Arab business, collectivism)
Goals of a pragmatic theory
 produce a classification of speech acts,
 analyse and define speech acts,
 specify the various uses of expressions,
 relate literary and direct language use to
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linguistic structure,
the structure of the communicative situation,
the social institutions,
speaker-meaning,
implication, presupposition and
understanding.
Communicative competence
„An aspect of our competence that
enables us to convey and interpret
messages and to negotiate meaning
interpersonally within specific contexts”
(Dell Hymes , 1967)
CALP and BICS
Canale & Swain (1980)
Grammatical competence
Discourse competence
Sociolinguistic competence
Strategic competence
Bachman, 1990
Language competence
Organisational
Grammatical Textual
- Vocab
- Cohesion
- Morphology - Rhetoric
- Syntax
- Phonology
/Graphology
Pragmatic
llocutionary
- Ideational
- Manipulative
- Heuristic
- Imaginative
Sociolinguistic
- Dialect
- Register
- Naturalness
- Cultural
references
& figures of
speech
Communicative language ability
(Bachman, 1990)
Knowledge structures
Language competence
Strategic competence
Psychophysiological
mechanisms
Context of situation
 This is why the idea of intercultural competence has arisen. It
actually means that in intercultural communication you should have
alternative strategies to communicate your messages and negotiate
meaning as you can’t take messages at face value. Eg. In native
communication you would rarely ask if a yes is a real yes, or if a no
is a real no, but intercultural communication this may be necessary.
And yes, it does mean an awareness and knowledge that other
nations may have different patterns of communication (e.g. attentive
listening for us means silence and nodding, whereas in Italy or even
New York simultaneous speaking. If you are aware of this difference,
you migh actually explain that you silence doesn’t mean the lack of
interest but you find it difficult to talk together with others).,