Language in Culture and Cognition
John Austin
- founder of speech act theory - 'How to do things with words' (1962)
compliment definition (Holmes 1986: 485)
"A compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some 'good' (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer."
Apology Definition (Holmes 1995: 155)
"An apology is a speech act addressed to B's face needs and intended to remedy an offence for which A takes responsibility, and thus to restore equilibrium between A and B (where A is the apologiser, and B is the person offended)." - a function-based definition
The necessity of empirical research
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit factors."
'Bumping into people' method
"accidentally-on-purpose bumping into people and counting the number who said 'Sorry'" (Fox 2004)
ethnographic method
"it is our conviction that an ethnographic approach is the only reliable method for collecting data about the way compliments, or indeed, any other speech act functions in everday interactions." - the best method stated by Manes & Wolfson - taking field notes - Manes & Wolfson (1981) on compliments in AmE - 686 compliments - Data collection •Collectors: the authors and their students •Overhearing compliments and writing them in a notebook •also sex, approximate age, and (if known) the occupation of S and H, and the relationship between them - findings: •compliments in AmE are formulaic and predictable •an artefact of method employed? (collectors only noticed obvious compliments, non indirect ones)
IFIDs
'illocutionary force indicating devices' (e.g., performative verbs, sorry as an IFID of an apology, imperative as an IFID of a request (or command) → speech act recognition
Neuroscience on gender differences
- "That our gender identity is determined as early as in the womb has only been discovered fairly recently. Up to the 1980s it was thought that a child was born as a blank slate and that its behavior was then made male or female by social influences." - Feminists "believed that all of the differences between the sexes in terms of behavior, occupation, and interest had been forced on women by male-dominated society." - "Some gender-based differences in our behavior emerge so early on that they can only have arisen in the womb."
Meta-pragmatic terms
- "speech act names" := meta-pragmatic terms (or meta-communicative terms) - language users are able to identify speech acts, have vocabulary for naming speech acts - used in everyday communication to talk about communication → meta-communication - APOLOGY, OFFER, REQUEST, etc. are speech acts
The development of pragmatics: influenced by three different tendencies
- 'Antisyntactic': as reaction to Chomskyan school of linguistics - 'Social-Critical': development of a socially useful science of language (e.g. effects of language on people's lives) - 'Philosophical': J.L. Austin and J.R. Searle as particularly influential in this respect è up-to-date meaning of pragmatics: closely associated with speech act theory and its founders
Face (Def.)
- 'Face is an image of self', 'the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself' (Goffman) - the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself (Brown & Levinson) - 'Face' as a folk notion (i.e. a first-order concept): to lose face: "to do something which makes other people stop respecting you", to save face: "to do something so that people will continue to respect you"
aims of CA
- 'making seen the unseen' (Garfinkel) - identifying the practices all of us use every day and take for granted - spelling out what we do (unconsciously) and what we 'know' but are not aware of - how people behave in conversation: how they speak and listen, how they pause and interrupt, etc. - drawing conclusions from collections of similar cases - Identifying systematic (i.e. recurrent and non-individual) solutions to interactional problems
Politeness theories: two generations/wave
- 1: examination of politeness, focused on individual utterances (Lakoff, Leech, Brown & Levinson) - 2: currently, examination of politeness, impoliteness and related phenomena, focused on utterances in context, i.e. discourse (Culpeper, Bousfield; Watts, Locher), since 1990 until now
Robin Lakoff
- American sociolinguist - first linguistic theory of politeness (1973) - first linguistic study of gender variation (1973)
Recording naturally occurring discourse (method)
- Audio-recording naturally occuring responses to thanks (Rüegg 2014) - Quasi-replication of Labov's 'Department store study' (Labov 1966) - Restaurant talk in three types of restaurants in Los Angeles - Socio-economic variation
Problems with Lakoff's findings
- Based on her own experience and casual observation - No systematic analysis of empirical evidence - Only women are focused on - Speech features of men are not considered - Male language use is tacitly assumed as the norm
Text act
- Communicative function of a written text - Writer's (overall) intention - Global leve
Functions of compliments
- Compliments are "social lubricants" - "Greasing the wheels" of social interaction - Signaling affection and solidarity - Attending to the addressee's positive face wants - Applying Brown & Levinson's first positive politeness strategy - Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods) - Face-supportive acts (FSAs) - Means to an end - Flattery (upward interaction) - Asserting dominance (downward interaction) - Claiming inappropriate intimacy (verbal harrassment)
Conventions of means and of form of realization of requests
- Conventions of means: e.g. Suggestory formula - Conventions of form: • What about Ving (NP)? • How about Ving (NP)? • Why don't you V (NP)? • Why not V (NP)?
Second generation's differences
- Culpeper, Bousfield • Politeness vs. impoliteness • (Im)politeness₁,₂ • Utterances (in context) • Some utterances are at least conventionally (im)polite - Watts, Locher • Polite, impolite and nonpolite/politic behaviour • (Im)politeness₁ • Discourse • No utterance is inherently (im)polite
3 sociologial variables
- D → social distance of S and H (how well you know each other) - P → relative power of S and H (status difference: equal (students), assymatrical (student-prof)) - R → absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture (big favor → high imposition) - calculating the weightiness of an FTA x: Wₓ=D(S,H)+P(H,S)+Rₓ
Indirectness vs. politness
- Directness: how a speech act is phrased, can be determined without context - Politeness: wether a speech act is appropriate to a social situation, can only be determined in context
DCT (method)
- Discourse completion task - laboratory method - data elicitation instrument (also used for test purposes) - usually administered in writing (WDCT) - includes a prompt which requires a reaction - Informants are requested to provide a single-turn answer ??? p. 15 - structure: •description of situation •discourse single-turn slot to be completed •Rejoinder (i.e. next speaker's turn)
Generational differences between generations
- First generation theories • Politeness, not impoliteness • Politeness₂, not politeness₁ • Isolated utterances • Inherent politeness - Second generation theories • (Im)politeness and related phenomena • Politeness₁ and politeness₂ • Utterances in discourse • 'Relative' politeness
Gender studies in pragmatics
- Janet Holmes, New Zealand sociolinguist - Gender differences in complimenting and apologizing behaviour (actually biological sex differences because more comparability) - Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. London: Longman.
Structure of speech acts (Austin)
- Locutionary act (physical action, e.g. uttering I'm terribly sorry.) • Phonetic act - producing sound waves (pronunciation) • Phatic act - constructing a sentence (grammar) • Rhetic act - referring to the world (semantics) - Illocutionary act (attended meaning, e.g. performing an APOLOGY) - Perlocutionary act (achieved effect, e.g. achieving forgiveness)
Negative and positive face (Def.)
- N: "the want of every 'competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded by others", the desire to be left alone - P: "the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others", the desire to be liked
Structure of speech acts (Searle)
- Utterance act - Propositional act • Reference act (NP) • Predication act (VP) - Illocutionary act - Perlocutionary act
Conversation Analysis (CA)
- Utterances considered in context - Participants studied as they adopt the roles of S and H in turns - Focus on talk in interaction, not on action alone - Hence 'interactional linguistics': 'talk-in-interaction' - Specific focus on the co-ordination of action - Non-verbal behaviour increasingly included - Only field data, no intuitive or experimental data - analytic approach or method, rather than theory - extremely detailed examination of how people use language in everyday life - specifically, a meticulous description of how conversation is organized - local, bottom-up approach - 'participants know best' - exclusively naturally-occuring talk in interaction: esp. face-to-face or telephone conversations - audio-recorded or video-recorded material - data driven, 'unmotivated looking'
Conditional relevance
- adjacency pairs are typed - first pair-parts require specific responses (e.g. Greeting - return greetings) - Each first pair-part makes a specific set of utterances conditionally relevant as second pair-parts (e.g. Complaints - apology, excuse,... but not return greetings) - 'wrong' second pair-part may trigger inferences
Face-threatening (speech) acts
- any speech act has the potential of threatening face - any speech act is a face-threatening act (FTA) - intrinsic FTAs: 'acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or speaker' (e.g. orders, requests, threats, remindings) - threatening negative face of H: orders, requests, advice, remindings, threats, warnings - threatening positive face of H: criticism, complaints, accusations, insults, disagreement - threatening negative face of S: thanking, accepting thanks, apologies, offers - threatening positive face of S: apologies, confessions, self-humiliation, self-contradicting
rules of turn-taking
- at each transition-relevance place (a) the current speaker may select the next speaker (b) should this technique a not be employed, the next speaker may self-select (c) If neither current speaker selects next nor next speaker self-selects, then current speaker may continue
Brown & Levinson's theory
- best known, most elaborate and most influential theory of politeness
context vs. co-text
- context: extralinguistic conditions influencing our use and understanding of language (e.g. place, time, etc.) - co-text (esp. in British linguistics): linguistic context of an utterance
what is conversation?
- conversation analysis (G Konversationsanalyse, Gesprächsanalyse) - conversation (G ? Konversation, Gespräch, Alltagsgespräch) - conversation = the unmarked type of discourse - Marked types of talk include interview, debate, lecture, business negotiation, sales talk, service encounter, etc. - Marked types increasingly included in CA work - No fixed participant roles - No rules explicitly governing the distribution of the 'floor' (i.e. the right to speak) - No predetermined topics - No restrictions regarding duration
John Searle
- developed, systematized and popularized speech act theory - 'Speech acts' (1969) → effected the 'pragmatic turn'
Armchair Linguistics
- disrespectful term (after Fillmore) - "Linguists sit in an armchair and think about language" - relying on their own competence and experience - fabricated examples, intuitive data, "introspection" - examples: Austin's & Searle speech act theory; Grice's implicature theory; Leech's politeness theory
Speech act modification
- downgrading function (mitigating, softening): close the door, please. - upgrading function (aggravating, intensifying): close the door right now. - requests tend to be mitigated, apologies intensified - internal modification: inside the speech act proper ('could' you 'perhaps' answer the phone?), syntactic, lexical and phrasal downgraders - external modification: outside (i.e. before or after) the head act (would you answer the phone ? 'I'm busy'), supportive moves (e.g. grounder, insult)
impoliteness
- early theories of (im)politeness conceptualize impoliteness as the opposite of politeness (e.g. Culpeper 1996)
First-order and second-order concepts
- first-order conceptualisation: everyday understanding by laypersons; everyday vocabulary (request, promise, threat, greeting, insult) - second-order conceptualisation: abstract definition by researchers; technical terms (felicity conditions, propositional content)
Microlinguistics
- focus on language - language as a system: grammatical perspective - abstract network of signs and relations → phonology, morphology, syntax, ...
Macrolinguistics
- focus on language users - language as behaviour: social perspective (external, intentional use in social contexts) → pragmatics, sociolinguistics, ... - language as knowledge: individual perspective (internal, processes and representations in mind and brain) → psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, ...
Embedded sequences to adjency pair
- follow a first pair-part - to avoid premature commitment - e.g. Who else is coming to the party? How long to you need me?
Three features of women's speech (Lakoff)
- frequent use of question tags (e.g. That's okay, isn't it?) → diminish the force of a statement - question intonation in statements (using rising instead of falling intonation) → turns statements into questionable rather than definitive assertions - indirect requests (e.g. Would you mind shutting the window? as opposed to Shut the window!) → less authoritative than direct ones → Women are insecure, lacking in confidence or personal views, and have less authority
Choice of politeness strategy
- general guideline: minimize face threat, avoid face loss - the higher the number of the strategy, the lower is the social risk involved for the speaker - politeness = face-threat minimization
turn allocation
- how do participants know when they may start speaking? - in meeting and other marked types of talk, the 'floor' is allocated emplicitly - in conversation, turn-taking is self-regulating - Participants monitor each others' turns for TRPs - During the production of a turn, hearers can predict the unit under construction and anticipate its end ('projectability') - Two techniques of turn allocation: 'Self-selection' and 'Current speaker selects next'
Sociolinguistics
- influence of social factors on language use
Pragmatics
- intentional language use in communication - context-depending meaning - language behavior - language as action - pragma = 'action' (greek) - 'the study of action' - 'the study of (verbal) communication - "'those linguistic investigations that make necessary reference to aspects of the context', where the term context is understood to cover the identities of participants, the temporal and spatial parameters of the speech event, and [...] the beliefs, knowledge and intentions of the participants in that speech event... " (Levinson 1983: 5) - "Pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study of how utterances have meanings in situations." (Leech 1983: X)
Perspectives on language in linguistics
- language as a system (what is a language, what does it comprise) - language as behaviour (how is language used in human interaction) - language as knowledge (what goes on in mind and brain)
pros and cons of using a corpus
- large electronic machine-readable collection of language data - e.g. search for 'you're welcome' - responses to thanks is rather easy to search for, while requests are to various disadvantages: - not always complete - not always comprehensible - not always comparable - little or no background information - only forms can be searched for, not functions advantages: - authentic - can be replayed - no consent required - No technical equipment required - No transcription required - Not time consuming
Pragmatic turn
- late 1960s / early 1970s - paradigm shift - before: focus on language system and linguistic forms - after: focus on language behaviour and communicative functions → ordinary language philosophy: Speech Act Theory (John Austin, John Searle)
development of pragmatics
- linguistic pragmatics has become more and more prominent since the late 60s and early 70s of the 20th century - earlier: mentioned rarely, if at all - treated as a rag-bag (Leech 1983: 1) - early 1970s: paradigm shift ('pragmatische Wende')
brief glimpse of markedness theory
- originally in phonology and morphology - pertaining to the presence or absence of a feature - ex. sg versus pl forms of nouns: e.g. book vs. books: -s plural marker, no sg marker; (cf. Swahili kitabu 'book' vs vitabu 'books') moregeneral understanding - normal/frequent -> not marked versus abnormal/infrequent -> marked - ex. 2 regular versus irregular verbs
Turn-taking
- participants in a conversation take turns-at-talk - a 'turn (at talk)' is a speaker's contribution surrounded by speaker switches - turns may consist of sentences, clauses, phrases or individual words - these syntactic units are 'turn-constructional units' (TCUs) - the completion of a TCU is signaled by intonation - the completion of a TCU is a 'transition-relevance place' (TRP) - at each TRP, a speaker switch may occur
Functions of meta-pragmatic terms
- reporting speech acts: typically verb 3rd ps. sg. past simple ('Bloody cheek!' complained Oliphant.) - performing speech acts: typically verb 1st ps. sg. present simple (I'd like to invite you to our dinner reception.) - commenting on speech acts: (explaining or denying speech acts) typically verb 1st ps. sg. present continuous (I'm not offering you marriage) - problematizing speech acts: (clarifying or challenging a speech act) typically noun sg. nom. in yes/no-question ('Is that an order?')
Aspects of realization of compliments
- semantic patterns • Positive evaluations in compliments expressed through adj (80%, 72 different positive, only five frequent: nice, good, beautiful, pretty, great); verbs (16%, 5 different positive, only two frequent: love and like); adverbs (e.g. well); nouns (e.g. whiz) - intensification, most frequent 'really' - syntactic patterns most frequent NP ADJ, I {like,love} NP, PRO is ADJ NP
Speech act theory: basic insights
- speaking is doing: speech is action, i.e. intentional behaviour - people do things with words, i.e. they perform speech acts → intention, aim, pursue a goal, what they say has a communicative function - speech acts are the basic unit of communication
The empiricity principle
- verbal behaviour in communication cannot be fabricated, i.e. invented, it has to be studied in language data - not intuitive data are needed, but empirical data - empirical data can be naturally occurring data ('field data') or experimental data ('laboratory data') (Jucker 2009)
More gender differences
- women's style: interpersonal, affective, interaction-oriented - men's style: impersonal, instrumental, content-oriented
4 topic categories of compliments
1. Appearance - E.g. outfit, hairstyle, make-up, nails 2. Ability / performance - E.g. sports, music, presentation, DIY 3. Possessions - E.g. house, car, mobile phone, tablet, watch 4. Personality / friendliness - E.g. kindness, generosity, hospitality, support
Culpeper's impoliteness strategies
1. Bald on record impoliteness - Direct and unambiguous impoliteness (where face is relevant) 2. Positive impoliteness - Attacking H's positive face (e.g. ignore the other, seek disagreement,...) 3. Negative impoliteness - Attacking H's negative face (e.g. invade the other's space, frighten,...) 4. Sarcasm or mock politeness - Insincere politeness: saying the opposite of what is meant 5. Withhold politeness - Absence of politeness (where it would be expected)
Examples for negative politeness strategies
1. Be conventionally indirect 2. Question, hedge 3. Be pessimistic 4. Minimize the imposition, Rx 5. Give deference 6. Apologize 7. Impersonalize S and H: Avoid the pronouns 'I' and 'you' 8. State the FTA as a general rule 9. Nominalize 10. Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H
Pragmatic scales
1. Cost - benefit 2. Praise - dispraise 3. Agreement - disagreement 4. Sympathy - antipathy
Examples for Off record strategies
1. Give hints: motives for doing A/conditions for A 2. Give association clues 3. Presuppose 4. Understate 5. Overstate 6. Use tautologies 7. Use contradictions 8. Be ironic 9. Use metaphors 10. Use rhetorical questions 11. Be ambiguous 12. Be vague 13. Over-generalize 14. Displace H 15. Be incomplete, use ellipsis
Email analysis
1. Identify overall communicative function (i.e. text act) 2. Identify communicative acts 3. Identify their realizations 4. Determine politeness/ appropriateness
What do people apologize for?
1. Inconvenience offences / inadequate service - E.g. giving someone wrong item 2. Space offences - E.g. bumping into someone 3. Talk offences - E.g. interrupting, talking too much 4. Time offences - E.g. keeping someone waiting, taking too long 5. Possessions offences - E.g. damaging or losing someone's property 6. Social gaffes - E.g. Burping, farting, laughing inappropriately
Speech act realization: request strategies
1. Mood derivable - derived from grammatical mood: imperative 2. Performative 3. Obligation statement ('you ought to) 4. Want statement 5. Suggestory formula ('why not') 6. Query preparatory ('can you', 'could you', 'would you mind') 7. Hint - no direct reference to future act of H 1.+2. direct strategies, IFID 3.+4. direct strategies, propositional content 5.+6. conventionally indirect strategies, conventional interpretation 7. non-conventionally indirect (or implicit) strategy, context dependent
Examples for positive politeness strategies
1. Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods) 2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with H) 3. Intensify interest to H 4. Use in-group identity markers 5. Seek agreement 6. Avoid disagreement 7. Presuppose/raise/assert common ground 8. Joke 9. Assert or presuppose S's knowledge of and concern for H's wants 10. Offer, promise 11. Be optimistic 12. Include both S and H in the activity 13. Give (or ask for) reasons 14. Assume or assert reciprocity 15. Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)
Focus on intention: four scenarios
1. Offence intended, offence taken - Successful impoliteness/rudeness 2. Offence intended, offence not taken - Unsuccessful impoliteness/rudeness 3. Offence not intended, offence taken - Accidental impoliteness/rudeness 4. Offence not intended, offence perceived as unintentional and hence not taken - Incidental impoliteness/rudeness
Conversational maxims (Grice)
1. QUANTITY • Say as much but no more than is necessary 2. QUALITY • Don't tell lies or rumours 3. RELATION • Be relevant 4. MANNER • Be clear
Politeness maxims (Leech)
1. TACT/GENEROSITY (Directives & Commissives) • Minimize cost to other [Maximize benefit to other] • Minimize benefit to self [Maximize cost to self] 3. APPROBATION/MODESTY (Expressives & Assertives) • Minimize dispraise of other [Maximize praise of other] • Minimize praise of self [Maximize dispraise of self] 5. AGREEMENT (Assertives) • Minimize disagreement [Maximize agreement] between self and other 6. SYMPATHY (Assertives) • Minimize antipathy [Maximize sympathy] between self and other
Impoliteness maxims
1. TACTLESSNESS • Maximize cost to other [Minimize benefit to other] 2. MEANNESS • Maximize benefit to self [Minimize cost to self] 3. DISAPPROVAL • Maximize dispraise of other [Minimize praise of other] 4. IMMODESTY • Maximize praise of self [Minimize dispraise of self] 5. DISAGREEMENT • Maximize disagreement [Minimize agreement] between self and other 6. ANTIPATHY • Maximize antipathy [Minimize sympathy] between self and other
Different realizations of compliment responses
1. Thanking 2. Explaining: My aunt gave it to me for Christmas. 3. Returning compliment: You look great yourself. 4. Rejecting & denigrating: I'm not very happy with it. 5. Doubting: Do you really like it? 6. Joking: So I look better with my clothes on! 7. Agreeing: Yeah, it's nice, isn't it? 8. Expressing gladness: I'm glad you like it. 9. Offering: Would you like to borrow it? 10. Encouraging: Well, you can get one like this too. 11. Thanking & denigrating: Thanks but it's only a sweater. 12. Disagreeing & denigrating: No, I don't. 13. Expressing embarrassment: Oh, you're embarrassing me. 14. Challenging: What was wrong last time? 15. Rebutting: Piss off! 16. Thanking ironically: Danke für den!
Payoffs (advantages) of politeness strategies
1. bald on record: efficiency 2. positive politeness: satisfying H's positive face 3. negative politeness: satisfying H's negative face 4. off record: avoiding responsibility 5. don't do the FTA: avoiding offence altogether
Intra-lingual pragmatic variation
3 types: 1. Pragmatic variation in time and history - Historical pragmatics (in a narrow sense): historical use, synchronic (static) - Diachronic pragmatics: historical development (dynamic) - Data problem (no recordings, only drama or courtroom proceedings) 2. Pragmatic variation across social situations - Situational or micro-social variation - Language use depends on who talks to whom - Micro-social factors: P and D 3. Pragmatic variation across varieties of the same language - influence of macro-social factors: region, social class, ethnicity, gender, age - levels of pragmatic analysis: 1. formal level (e.g. functions of discourse markers like 'well'), 2. actional level (e.g. realization of speech act), 3. interactional level (e.g. negotiating offers, opening/closing sequences), 4. topic level (e.g. taboo topics), 5. organisational level (e.g. turn-taking)
Adjacency pairs
= the basic unit of sequence organization - Combinations of two adjacent utterances (including actions) - produced by different speakers - as first and second pair-parts - with the first pair-part requiring the second - e.g. Greeting - return greetings
Other maxims
Aesthetic, social or moral maxims (e.g. social: 'Be polite')
CCSARP
Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project
Conversation and other discourse types
Graphic from VL 06 page 11
Uncooperative behaviour
If a conversational maxim is (obviously) violated and H assumes that S is not cooperative, then H may criticize S for violating the maxim
Who apologizes to whom?
Of all 183 NZE apologies - male to male ~8 - male to female ~17 - female to male ~18 - female to female ~56
Who compliments whom?
Of all 484 NZE compliments - male to male ~48 - female to male ~75 - male to female ~120 - female to female ~248
QEU (method)
The Questionnaire on English Usage by Schneider - written mixed-task multi-focus questionnaire - 15 tasks - 3 task formats: Discourse Completion Task (DCT), Multiple Choice Task (MCT), Dialogue Production Task (DPT) - 8 different pragmatic phenomena: request, complaint, apology, hint; response to thanks, response to compliment, response to insult; small talk - some situational variation - Data sets • Native language: EngE, IrE, AmE, CanE; German • Second language: NamE, GhanE • Foreign language: German learners of English • N=approx. 1,600 - Data processing •realizations: what informants write (e.g. You are welcome, you're welcome) •realization types: coding labels for data analysis (e.g. WELCOME)
pros and cons of recording naturally occurring discourse
disadvantages - consent required - 'observer's paradox' - technical equipment required - transcription required - time consuming - not always comparable - no background information advantages - authentic! - can be replayed ???
pros & cons of the ethnographic method
disadvantages: - not reliable - limitations of perception and memory - many features of utterances cannot be written down (e.g. intonation, hesitation, markers, false starts, repair) - time consuming advantages: - unobtrusive - no consent required - avoiding 'observer's paradox' (Labov 1972) - no technical equipment required
pros and cons of MCTs
disadvantages: - requires previous research - very limiting advantages: - Cf. DCTs - increases cooperativity - suited to eliciting information about rude language - giving the option to say nothing
pros and cons of DCTs
disadvantages: - written data to study spoken language use - answers not spontaneous - no information about intonation, etc. - not what people would say advantages: - large amounts of data in short time - comparable data - control over situational variables (e.g. power, distance, gender) - no transcription required - what people should say (social norms)
Cooperative Principle (CP)
• 'Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.' (Grice 1975) • In other words - You are engaged in a talk exchange (e.g. a conversation) - This talk exchange has an accepted purpose/direction - This purpose/direction is accepted by all participants - Each stage in this talk exchange has specific requirements - Your contributions should meet the respective requirement
Leech's Politeness Principle (PP)
• 'Minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs.' • 'Maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs.'
Grice's theory
• 'Theory of implicature' • Aimed at explaining how people interpret indirectness in conversation • That is, how hearers infer what is meant from what is said • Focus on S (as in speech act theory) and also on - the impact of Grice's theory: • Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean approaches • Anglo-American pragmatics (Philosophy, semantics, 'armchair linguistics') • Continental European pragmatics (Social sciences, interactional linguistics, empirical) • Post-Gricean developments (Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995); Experimental pragmatics (XPrag): Employing psycholinguistic methods (Noveck & Sperber 2004))
Some criticism of speech act theory
• (Philosophical) speech act theory - Reduces communication to isolated utterances/sentences - Ignores the context, both the surrounding utterances (co-text) and the social context (situation) - Concentrates on speakers alone and their intentions - Focuses narrowly on action, not interaction - Uses only fabricated examples ('armchair linguistics') • Some of this criticism also applies to speech act analysis in linguistics - With the exception that it is not normally 'armchair linguistics'
H. Paul Grice
• 1913-1988 • British philosopher • Ordinary Language Philosophy • University of Oxford / University of California, Berkeley • The Cooperative Principle, conversational maxims, and conversational implicature • William James Lectures at Harvard University 1967 • "Logic and conversation" (1975)
CA: background
• American sociology • Ethnomethodology - Introduced by Harold Garfinkel (1917-2011) - Studying people's knowledge of ordinary affairs and the production of social order - 'member methods' • Conversation analysis - Introduced by Harvey Sacks (1935-1975), UCLA and Irvine, 1960s/1970s - Further key researchers: Emmanuel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson
CP & PP
• Both principles deal with indirectness • The PP is a necessary complement to the CP • Example: A: We'll all miss Bill and Agatha, won't we? B: Well, we'll all miss Bill. • Apparently, B fails to observe the Maxim of Quantity • Conversational implicature: 'We won't miss Agatha' • This B could have added without being untruthful, irrelevant or unclear • However, this impolite belief is suppressed (PP) • The PP provides a motive to using indirectness (e.g. via conversational implicature)
Qualitative differences of compliments and apologies
• Compliments - F: strong, M: weak - F: emphatic, M: minimal - Most important: Appearance (F-F), Ability / performance (M-F), Personality / friendship (F-M), Possessions (M-M) • Apologies - F: space and talk offences, M: esp. time offences - F: light offences, M: more serious offences - F: equals, M: upwards / downwards - F: friends, M: intimates / strangers
CMC
• Computer-mediated communication • A type of communication in the new media • Other types include e.g. texting • New ways of communicating • New social practices • New genres • Features: - 'Shouting': e.g. LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Abbreviations (e.g. asap, fyi, lol, OMG, gr8, t2ul, t+) - Emoticons
Leech's politeness theory
• Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London/New York: Longman, ch. 4, 5 & 6. • = part of his rhetorical theory of pragmatics (Textual rhetoric, Interpersonal rhetoric -> Cooperative Principle (Grice), Politeness Principle, ... )
Genres
• Conventional patterns of complex verbal actions • Typical combinations of functional, structural and contextual features • These patterns have developed historically • They are part of the communicative competence of ordinary language users • They serve as guidelines for both text reception and text production (Brinker 2010: ch. 5.3) • Genres differ across languages and cultures • Members of text act classes are genres - E.g. news report, advertisement, warranty, last will - Everyday genres vs. literary genres (e.g. novel, comedy, sonnet) - Names for everyday genres, like speech act names, are part of the general vocabulary of a language - When faced with a piece of written discourse, competent language users are able to identify the genre it belongs to
Inter-lingual pragmatic variation
• Differences between languages (e.g. English vs German) - Contrastive pragmatics - Pragmalinguistic variation • Differences between cultures (e.g. American English and German German) - Cross-cultural pragmatics - Sociopragmatic variation • Primarily a difference in focus - Often no distinction is made between language differences and cultural differences
Quantitative differences of compliments and apologies
• Different frequencies of compliments and apologies - Women use more compliments and more apologies than men (F>M) - Women use more to women than to men (F-F>F-M) - Women use many more to women than men do to men (F-F>M-M) • Different conceptualizations of compliments and apologies - Apologies (M): self-oriented FTAs - Apologies (F): other-oriented FSAs - Compliments (F): FSAs for strengthening relationships - Compliments (M): FTAs
Post-colonial pragmatics
• Examining pragmatic transfer in post-colonial societies - Language of the colonists retained as a second and official language (e.g. India) - Pragmatic features are transferred from the various native languages and cultures into the use of the second language
Types of methods
• Field work: Observational data - Taking field notes (ethnographic method) - Audio-/video-recording naturally occurring data - Using corpora • Laboratory research: Experimental data - DCTs - Multiple-choice tasks
Intrinsic (im)politeness?
• First generation theories - Politeness is inherent in linguistic expressions • Second generation theories - No utterance is as such polite or impolite - (Im)politeness cannot be predicted by researchers - (Im)politeness is negotiated by the participants in discourse ("discursive struggle") - Some utterances are open to an interpretation as polite or impolite - Interpretations depend on the context and the hearer - (Im)politeness is "in the eye of the beholder" (Locher & Watts 2005) - Discursive approach - but there are also Conventionalised impoliteness formulae/ expressions (e.g. dismissals, silencers, insults)
First-& second-order (im)politeness
• First-order (im)politeness - Aka (im)politeness₁ - Everyday conceptualization of ordinary language users (= lay perspective) - ignored by first generation theories - options how to study: 1. Analyzing etiquette manuals (Prescriptive statements about how to behave in social contexts), 2. Analyzing public discourse, e.g. blog posts, letters to the editor, 3. Analyzing the use of metapragmatic terms, 4. Using rating tasks (employing experimental task formats for eliciting judgements from informants) • Second-order (im)politeness - Aka (im)politeness₂ - Theoretical construct developed by researchers (= expert perspective) - only focus of first generation theories
Some criticism of B&L's theory
• Focus on individual utterances (i.e. speech acts/FTAs) • Not a theory of politeness, but a theory of facework • Specifically a theory of FTA minimization • Too pessimistic • Ethnocentric, not universal • Western bias: individualism
Perspectives on pragmatics
• Focus on pragmatic universals - how humans use language in communication - speech act theory, politeness theory, conversation analysis - All languages have illocutions, positive politeness, turn-taking, etc. • Focus on pragmatic variation - Differences across languages: Inter-lingual variation - Differences inside languages: Intra-lingual variation - Speech act analysis in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics - Speech acts are realized in different ways
Compliment responses: dilemma
• If you accept it, you observe the Maxim of Agreement, but at the same time violate the Maxim of Modesty • If you reject it, you observe the Maxim of Modesty, but at the same time violate the Maxim of Agreement
Conversational implicature
• Implicature = what is implied (or: implicated) • Conventional vs conversational implicatures • Conventional implicature: - she was cursed with a stammer, unmarried but far from stupid. (but means 'contrary to expectations') • Conversational implicature: - A: Have you done your homework? B: Nice day, isn't it? by intentionally violating a conversational maxim (of relation), S forces H to search for an alternative interpretation of S's utterance (i.e. for a conversational implicature)
Brinker's text act classes
• Informative (e.g. news report) • Appellative (e.g. advertisement) • Obligative (e.g. warranty) • Contact (e.g. letter of condolence) • Declaration (e.g. last will)
Interlanguage pragmatics
• Interlanguage (Selinker 1972) - Learner language - A dynamic concept - Developmental process - With increasing proficiency, the interlanguage becomes more similar to the target language - At the same time, the influence of the L1 decreases • Interlanguage pragmatics - Examines the mastery of speech acts in learner performance - By comparing learner performance to the performance of native speakers of the target language and of the learner's L1
Digital genres
• Internet genres are born, develop, change, and may die • Genres: Homepages, Wikis, Blogs, Chats, Discussion forums, Social networking sites, Email,...
First generation theories of politeness
• Lakoff, Brown & Levinson, Leech • All referring to or based on Grice's theory • Face-saving view - Brown & Levinson (1978/1987) • Conversational-maxim view - Leech (1983) - Lakoff (1973)
How can these aims of foreign language teaching be achieved?
• Learners as researchers - Collecting data (in language teaching contexts: DCT, role plays, interviews or in clinical contexts: CA analysis recordings, assessment batteries) - Discovering patterns in corpus material - Developing pragmalinguistic competence • Learners as interpreters - Discussing language use, e.g. in terms of intentions, power and distance, appropriateness, politeness and rudeness - Making language use conscious - Using role play, drama and film - Developing metapragmatic awareness - Thus developing sociopragmatic competence
Contrasting the organization of academic texts
• Michael Clyne (e.g. 1987) • Contrasting research articles in English and German, and also across disciplines: linguistics and sociology • Findings - E: linear, G: digressive - E: symmetrical, G: asymmetrical (i.e. unbalanced structure) - E: 'advance organizers', making structure explicit - E: examples & statistics in text, G: in footnotes or appendix - E: reader-orientation, G: content-orientation • Findings by House e.g. 1996: German culture vs Anglo-Saxon culture: - content- ↔ addressee-orientation - self- ↔ other-orientation - ad-hoc formulation ↔ verbal routines - directness ↔ indirectness - explicitness ↔ implicitness
preference organization of turn-taking
• Not all conditionally relevant second pair-parts have equal status: some are preferred, others dispreferred (e.g. OFFERS, INVITATIONS and SUGGESTIONS prefer ACCEPTANCE and disprefer REJECTION) • Typical features of dispreferred second pair-parts: - Delayed (e.g. following a pause) - Longer than preferred second pair-parts - Include hesitation markers (e.g. initial well, or erm, uh) - Include downtoners (e.g. perhaps) - Include explanations or compensation etc.
Non-politeness
• Politeness and impoliteness as complementary opposites • An in-between category: non-politeness • Most of what people say is neither polite nor impolite, but non-polite • Non-polite behaviour is behaviour which is expected in a given situation and therefore goes unnoticed • Non-polite behaviour is unmarked behaviour, while polite and impolite behaviour are marked
Pragmalinguistics vs sociopragmatics
• Pragmalinguistics - Language-specific - Interface with the language system - The specific language resources for realizing a speech act - E.g. how to pay a compliment in a given language or variety (choice of adjectives, syntactic constructions, intensifiers, etc.) • Sociopragmatics - Culture-specific - Interface with sociology - The specific social conditions for performing a speech act - E.g. when to pay a compliment in a given language or variety (influence of gender, also power and distance, etc.)
Functions of apologies
• Restoring equilibrium • Signaling respect • Attending to the addressee's negative face wants, i.e. the addressee's need not to be imposed on or offended • Applying Brown & Levinson's sixth negative politeness strategy - Apologize • Face-supportive acts
Contrastive rhetoric
• Robert Kaplan (1966) • Observation: Foreign students at American universities were found incapable of writing "proper" essays, term papers, research reports, etc. (by American standards) • Explanation: These students followed the patterns of their native language and culture • Five "cultural thought patterns": English: linear, Semitic (e.g. Arabic): parallel constructions, Oriental (Chinese and Korean, not Japanese): circling topic, Romance: digressive, Russian: digressive
Self-initiated self-repair
• Self-initiated self-repair in the same turn is the most frequent type • e.g. "the ma- the husband" replacing man with husband • Self-initiated self-repair may also occur in a later turn • e.g. "paintings"-...-"I mean frames"
Summary of national differences
• Small talk differs across national varieties of English • In the same type of situation, speakers of different varieties behave in different ways • Distinct differences can be observed across varieties • Striking similarities can be observed between speakers of the same variety • Overall, the same types of speech acts and realisations are used, but with different frequencies and distributions • Most features are variety preferential rather than variety-exclusive
Implicating vs inferring
• Speakers implicate, hearers infer • Inferring what is meant (implied meaning) from what is said (expressed meaning) • If a conversational maxim is (obviously) violated and H assumes that S is cooperative, then H tries to work out (i.e. infer) what is actually meant by the words spoken by S
Speech act theory vs speech act analysis
• Speech act theory: philosophy - How verbal communication works - Pragmatic universals - Ordinary language philosophy (Austin, Searle) • Speech act analysis: linguistics - How speech acts are used in individual languages - Language- and culture-specific features - Sociolinguistics: speech acts in one language (or variety) - Applied linguistics: speech acts in more than one language (usually native language and target language of learners)
Rules of politeness and stylistic strategies (Lakoff's rules)
• Three 'rules of politeness' and strategies of conversational style 1. Don't impose (Distance) 2. Give options (Deference) 3. Be friendly (Camaraderie) • A fourth stylistic strategy (Lakoff 1979) 4. Clarity = observing Grice's conversational maxims (Clarity is for content, not for relationship management, e.g. news reports or term papers)
Pre-sequences to adjency pair
• To make a preferred second pair-part more likely, pre-sequences can be used • Pre-sequences are adjacency pairs prefacing the "actual" adjacency pair • e.g. What are you doing?, Have you got a minute? Have you heard the wonderful news?, Guess what!
Pragmatic transfer
• Transferring pragmatic features of the L1 into the use of the foreign language - e.g. German learners of English may be more direct in requesting than native speakers of English • Types of transfer - Negative transfer: pragmatic failure - Positive transfer: pragmatic success
CA: summary of main issues
• Turn-taking and turn allocation • Adjacency pairs and conditional relevance • Preference organization - Preferred and dispreferred second pair-parts • Types of sequences - Pre-sequences and embedded sequences • Repair - Self-repair versus other-repair - Self-initiated or other-initiated
Other-initiated self-repair
• e.g. "He is?" - "Well he was"
Self-initiated other-repair
• e.g. "I can't think of his first name -Watts " - "Dan Watts"
Other-initiated other-repair
• e.g. "playing around" - "Uh- fooling around" - "Eh- yeah"
Repair (in conversation)
• is necessary if something goes wrong in conversation • 'Repairables' may be errors made by the participants, or caused by outside sources (e.g. traffic noise) • Not all errors in talk are corrected • The organization of repair - Self-repair versus other-repair - Self-initiated or other-initiated • Logically, the combination of these distinctions results in four possible types of repair
Pragmatic competence (Defs.)
•"Pragmatic competence is the ability to communicate your intended message with all its nuances in any socio-cultural context and to interpret the message of your interlocutor as it was intended." (Fraser 2010: 15) •"pragmatic competence consists of (at least) two components: knowledge of a pragmatic system, and knowledge of its appropriate use. The former provides the range of linguistic options available to individuals for performing various acts, while the latter enables them to select the appropriate choice given a particular goal in a particular stetting [sic!]." (Liu 2004: 14) • "Pragmatic ability is crucial in everyday life since it is necessary for interpersonal interactions. It affects the way people communicate and behave in social situations just as such behavior affects the way the communicative partners respond and then react" ... "the ability to use language and other expressive means, i.e. non-verbal/ extralinguistic means such as gestures and facial expressions, in order to convey and interpret meaning in a specific context." (Gabbatore et al 2019: 28, 27)
Appropriateness of email requests
•"no clear-cut rules as to how student-professor communication via e-mail should be carried out appropriately." (Biesenbach-Lucas 2005: 25) •Students communicate confidently with friends, but are insecure when writing to a professor, aware of the status inequality •"in constructing their e mails to academic staff, students regularly appear to put a lot of work (...) into getting their requests granted." (Merrison et al. 2012: 1096) → No agreement among students on - Use of titles - Level of formality and directness - Use of emoticons - Correctness (typos; grammatical, spelling, punctuation errors) → Choices reveal - How writers position themselves vis-à-vis their addressees - How they perceive or define the relationship in terms of P and D → Two camps - "Conservative" (upward, formal, negative politeness, respect) - "Modern" (symmetrical, informal, positive politeness, camaraderie)
Sociopragmatic competence
•Being able to judge a given social situation in terms of e.g. power and distance •Knowing which of the existing realization strategies and modificational devices can be used to successfully perform a particular speech act in a given situation to achieve an intended effect •Knowing what is generally considered appropriate, polite or rude in this situation
What do language learners need to know?
•Grammar, i.e. syntax and morphology •Vocabulary, i.e. lexis •Pronunciation, i.e. phonology and intonation •how to structure paragraphs and arguments (written discourse) •participate in conversations (spoken discourse) the way speakers of the language do (native-speaker knowledge) •understanding which sentence types can accomplish which purposes in social interaction (pragmalinguistic competence, form-to-function matching) •what might work as an apology, for example, or how to decline an invitation (function-to-form matching) → Language∼linguistic competence is made up of grammatical and pragmatic competence
Pragmalinguistics competence
•Knowing which words and constructions can be used to felicitously perform a particular speech act, e.g. a request •Knowing which realization strategies are available and how they differ, e.g. in terms of directness •Knowing which modificational devices exist and what their functions are •Equally relevant for production and comprehension
Why is L2 pragmatic competence important?
•Native speakers expect learners to have an accent and to make lexical and grammatical mistakes •but Pragmatic errors are often interpreted as rude behaviour or attributed to personality flaws (e.g. Thomas 1983) •"Mastery of discourse conventions should be a high priority in second-language teaching" (Palmer & Sharifian 2007: 3) •"metapragmatic awareness will help [learners] to adapt to whatever variety they might encounter" (Martínez Flor & Usó Juan 2010: 159)
aims of foreign language teaching
•no need to imitate native speekers but "it is the teacher's job to equip the student to express her/himself in exactly the way s/he chooses to do so - rudely, tactfully, or in an elaborately polite manner. What we want to prevent is her/his being unintentionally rude or subservient." (Thomas 1983: 96) •"Forcing white, middle class Britain down students' throats is probably not the most effective way of getting English out of their mouths!" (Thomas 1983: 110) •"To give the learner the knowledge to make an informed choice and allowing her/him the freedom to flout pragmatic conventions, is to acknowledge her/his individuality and freedom of choice and to respect her/his system of values and beliefs." (Thomas 1983: 110) •"We should not teach foreign language learners to behave like native speakers, but to behave like human beings." (McCarthy 2015: pers. comm.)