Pragmatics

Social Deixis

term coined by Levinson (1982) - the address form indicates social standing in addition to identifying the person addressed. Social respect bound up with the status of the addressed person Your Grace = for persons of ducal originYour Eminence = used for cardinals of the Roman Catholic ChurchYour Holiness = used for the pope himselfYour Excelency = for major civil officials, governors of states, ambassadors Your Chastity = used spiritual leader=> they transfer from the office to the office holder, a property (holiness, eminence, excellency, chastity etc.) => this transfer requires a metonymical value (attrubutes stand for the supposed possessors of the qualities)

Exophoric and Endophoric reference

when the referent is mentioned for the first time ex. Names such as Frank, later referred to as "he" The reference "Us" and "We" are endophoric reference, because the pronouns refer to the items in the text previously mentioned participants

Limitations of the Cooperative Principle

Different cultures may have different ways of observing and expressing maxims for particular situations. There's often an overlap between the maxims sometimes few operating at once. Flouting the maxim of quality and manner How is it going Phil? - One of us thinks it's okay

Conventional implicature

"last" denotes by conventional implicature -the ultimate item in a sequence In conversational implicature it denotes that which came before the time of speaking Ex. speaking with an accent gives information that you are foreign. speaking a non-standard variety connotes a lack of culture and education. Such implicatures cannot be changed because they are standardized by convention ex. ti vs. vie

Addressivity

'Addressivity' = term coined by the Russian linguist and semiologist Mikhail Bakhtin. The fact that any utterance is addressed to somebody every utterance is dialogic Addressivity is the 'quality of turning to someone' Act of addressing Forms of addresses Very important in most cultures Most of the languages tous/vous form, T(familiar) vs. V(reverential) English - you form / Respect shown with 2 p.pl. => French, vous; Czech, vy; Finnish, Te In other languages: 3rd person verbal form = form of respectful address, German, Sie; Danish, De (both meaning they) 3rd p. replaced by a 'frozen' paraphrase of an original honorific, Spanish Usted, pl. Ustedes (written Vd., Vds.) => short for Vuestra(s) Merced(es), Your Grace = English, when addressing nobility of a certain rank => Macedonia (past) - другар, Yugoslavia - другови/другарице

Teaching Politeness

(1) Showing people that we respect and value them (positive politeness); (2) Making what you say or write less direct so as not to sound too forceful (negative politeness). Teachers intuitively address these concepts e.g. teaching openings and closings (Dear Sir or Madam / To Whom it May Concern / Yours sincerely / Yours faithfully)=>an example of positive politeness overly direct requests, Sit! Sit! ...Would you like to sit down? => negative politeness otypical formulaic language which can be introduced to students at different stages and through different types of materials orole-plays and simulations, structured and semi-structured dialogues, listening activities and task-based activities which promote student interaction and language production practice. oLanguage varies according to social relationship between speaker-listener, and writer-reader, and we need to be ever-sensitive to these contextual variables and build up an awareness of how to show, in an appropriate way, that we respect and value our listener or reader through what we say or write. TEACHING ASPECTS OF NEGATIVE POLITENESS Directness/ indirectness This cuts across areas such as modal verbs, vocabulary and grammatical structures. Carter & McCarthy (2006): negative politeness can be categorised in spoken language across hedging, vague language and approximation and pragmatic marking (discourse markers, interactional markers and response tokens) HEDGING •in academic writing => the use of devices to show hesitation or uncertainty •to display politeness and indirectness and to defer to the reader's point of view •overt teaching of hedges is crucial in English Language Teaching PRAGMATIC MARKERS Þdiscourse markers, interactional markers and response tokens. oan umbrella term for a number of items that occur outside the clause. ooperate more at a discourse level than at a grammatical level. othey may have low syntactic or semantic value, but have high pragmatic value. owell, however, anyway, right, you know, I see, really, okay osignal the speaker's potential communicative intentions PRAGMATIC MARKERS: DISCOURSE MARKERS In classroom: used in formal written context, but prevalent in spoken texts evaluative adverbs: strangely, oddly viewpoint adverbs: personally, professionally linking adverbs: however, consequently main function => to organise stretches of text or conversation. PRAGMATIC MARKERS: INTERACTIONAL MARKERS you know (what I mean), I mean, you see, the thing is •listener-oriented devices •The speaker uses them in an attempt to make the message clearer and to mark what is shared as well as what is new information PRAGMATIC MARKERS: RESPONSE TOKENS •Short utterances, such as mm, mmhmm, yeah, oh really, that's a pity etc. and non-verbal surrogates such as head nods and shoulder shrugs that listeners utter or make by way of response to what a speaker is saying. •speaker relies to some degree upon these signals for guidance as to how the message is being received by the listerner(s).

TRP

- transition relevance place - a point in conversation where a change of turn is possible/ usually the end of the sentence - When the speaker doesn't want to wait till TRP - interruption // A: Tell me what it is you want B: Umm,may I request the introduction please? When the hearer predicts that the speaker's turn is about to end and they come in before it is - overlap Interviewee: But no no more. Yeah.. Interviewer: What happened to them? qIn an exchange where there is power imbalance no interruptions nor overlaps are expected/the language is more 'tidy' than in real-life discourse and the turns are pre-planned ✘Cultural differences in the length of pauses §If the pause is intended to carry meaning = attributable silence ✘§Cultures with low level of tolerance of silence / immediately utter 'um', 'so there you are'/ if the speakers don't know each other well - feel awkward

Research in Pragmatics

-language corpora -DCTs -Interviews -role-plays I've got a headache - carries a variety of meanings a patient to a doctor: I need a prescription. a mother to her teenage son: Turn down the music. two friends were talking: I was partying last night. a response to an invitation for a a walk from a friend: No Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), interviews or role-plays => data elicited by the researcher / to build your own corpus and transcribe it Recently, there has been a marked shift towards the use of real-life, naturally-occurring data in pragmatic research Language corpora = large databases of spoken and written language available on computer for empirical study/ language is authentic, spontaneous, unrehearsed and uncensored

Felicity conditions (Searle)

1. The utterance must predicate some future act of the speaker 2. Hearer would like Speaker to do an Act and speaker knows this 3. It shouldn't be obvious to both of them that Speaker will do an act in the normal course of events 4. Speaker must intend to do an act 5. The utterance of the promise counts as speaker's taking on an obligation to do an act He calls rule 1 - the propositional content rule (assures the sentence is semantically a promise) rule 2 and 3 - the preparatory rules (hold in advance before the promise is made) rule 4 - sincerity rule (guaranteeing the sincerity of the promise) rule 5 - essential rule (capturing the essence of the act - the promise itself)

Three views of metapragmatics

1.Theoretical discussion on what pragmatics is and what it should comprise 2.Discussion of the conditions and possibilities that enable people to act by using words, to 'do' pragmatics by acting pragmatically 3.Metalinguistic level = Reflexive language the way language reflects on itself, questions itself, improves itself etc. e.g. You did a great job, and I'm not being polite)

Pragmatics and Metapragmatics

>Pragmatics: the study of humans communicating using language in the context of society >Metapragmatics: a discussion of 'object pragmatics' on a higher level = discussing pragmatics

DCT - Discourse Completion Task (Pragmatics in use)

A Discourse-Completion Task (DCT) is a tool used in linguistics and pragmatics to elicit particular speech acts. A DCT consists of a one-sided role play containing a situational prompt which a participant will read to elicit the responses of another participant.

5 levels of structure =ranks

A lesson = can be broken down into five levels of structure = ranks §The act is the lowest rank: similar to Austin and Searle's speech acts but these are more general/ in the context of a lesson, defined by their interactive function § fillers (I mean , you know), markers (well, ok, right), acknowledge (backchannel), cue (hands up, don't call out) - these encourage the hearer to contribute and evaluate (good, interesting) - these evaluate hearer's answers §These acts are carried in a fixed order = moves §Three basic moves: initiation, response, and follow-up = IRF ✘The combination of moves is called an exchange = a series of moves in the interaction ✘Exchanges can combine to make the transaction = the next rank up ✘The lesson is the highest rank = it is the speech event that consists of combinations of transactions

Metalanguage

A shift of 'level' in the language we are using and the activities we engage in = one level 'up' from the language itself, the object language => A language about the language: it indicates, comments on, examines, criticizes E.g.1 ...as I was saying, it should be next week. (Wardhaugh 1998:299) Eg. 2 => inverted commas function as metalanguage statements Object language and Metalanguage reflexive' = reflects on what is being or has been said Comments: 'you know', 'if you see what I mean', 'how shall I express myself', 'frankly speaking' Whenever we theoretise about language, i.e. whenever we try to describe a language by writing up grammatical and other rules we create metalanguage

Central speech act

A speech event is an activity in which participants interact in order to arrive at some outcome. It includes a central speech act and other utterances leading to the central speech act

Types of Endophoric reference

Anaphora - when the referring expression is used to link to something previously mentioned before (ex. When pronouns stand in place of something else) The man was walking. He carried a stick. He's been to Italy many times but still doesn't speak the language. Cataphora - when the referring expression is used to link forward to a referent in the text that follows to keep the reader in suspense

Politeness and Face

Choices made in language use, linguistic expressions that give people space and show a friendly attitude to them Brown and Levinson => in order to enter into social relationships we have to acknowledge and show an awareness of the face, the public self-image, the sense of self. Face Threatening Acts Negative politeness => respecting hearer's negative face Positive politeness => attends the hearer's positive face You can do FTA if it's on or off record off record: ask for help indirectly I wonder where on earth that website is! (indirect SA => usage of declarative representative functioning as a question 'to yourself' but needs the hearers to interpret it as a directive, a request for help) => One can make suggestions, requests, offers, invitations quite casually = hearers will most likely understand the illocutionary force but may choose to ignore it! => Give people options and retreat behind the literal meaning e.g.1 A: How do I look? B: Your shoes are nice. (quantity) e.g.2 (flouting relation => drop a hint) Interesting book. Pity I don't have $30 on me. e.g.3 (flouting manner) Looks like someone had a good time last night. => Hearer may respond to it or ignore it, without losing face On record Making a request, suggestion, offer or invitation in an open and direct way. Direct speech acts that contain the imperative with no mitigating devices e.g. Give that note to me! => the most face -threatening mode of action Sometimes to save the hearer's face: Marry me, Have some more curry => the FTA is pleasant, the firmer the invitation the more polite it is

Grammatical vs. Communicative competence

Communicative competence is learned through a social setting and is learned so a person can be accepted into their social group. They learn the language without really being taught the proper way to construct a sentence or whether they are using the noun appropriately in the sentence. Grammatical competence is to fully acquire the grammar of one language meaning an ability to recognize lexical, morphological, syntactical, and phonological features of a language and to use these features effectively.

Context and types of context

Context is a dynamic and it enables the participants in a communication to interact in a way that the linguistic expression becomes intelligible. Physical context = spatio-temporal location of the utterance ex. He is not the chief executive, he is the managing director Linguistic context = surrounding utterances in the same discourse ex. John: Who gave the waiter a tip? Mary = Kelen. General knowledge context = common knowledge ex. I went to Beijing last month. The Forbidden City was magnificent.

Ethnocentricity and its discontents

Differences between peoples and cultures e.g. Some of my best friends are ... (Black, gay, Mexican,=> implies that the speaker doesn't like whatever [...] stand for, but is duty-bound to deny that implicit dislike by an explicit assertion => such an approach could be called ethnocentric or ethnopetal (we consider all other cultures strange) The very terms we use to refer to other people and cultures Ethnofugal attitude to other languages and cultures => better than us èWorry about a particular deteriorating and disappearing culture, language or dialect + anxiety about their own existence

Context and types of context 2

Context is a dynamic concept and is understood as the continually changing surroundings. Grammatical and user-oriented view of language Grammatical = when the linguistic elements are described in isolation as syntactic structures User-oriented = asks how these linguistic elements are used in the context of interaction ex. John is a policeman - only makes sense in the context where John is a person I know and he happens to be a policeman User-oriented context differs from user to user and from language to language Context gives our utterances a true pragmatic meaning ex. It's been a long time since we visited your mom Cutting introduces 3 types of spoken cotext Situational = when speakers know about what they can see around them, where the interaction is taking place (uni, bar, supermaket) Background knowledge = what they know about each other and the world around them. Can be of two types 1. Cultural general knowledge: the knowledge that most people carry in their minds about areas of life, if speakers establish that they are part of the same group they can assume mutual knowledge. Groups with mutual knowledge vary in sizes: very large groups (stars come out at night, the world is round) small groups (vodno, sredno vodno) 2. Interpersonal Knowledge: private knowledge about the history of the speakers themselves acquired through verbal interactions or joint activities and experiences Co-textual = what they know about what they have been saying

Conversational implicature

Conversational implicature - something which is implied in a conversation, something which is left implicit in language use A: What time is it? - The bus just went by - conveyed propositions that are not explicit in our utterances but implied by them. -the way we understand an utterance in conversation according with what we expect to hear

language corpora

Corpus = machine-readable spoken and written language samples that have been assembled in a principled way for the purpose of linguistic research The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English (LLC) The Brown Corpus, based on American written English The Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus, based on written British English The Collins and Birmingham University International Language Database (COBUILD) Publishing houses: the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC), the Longman Corpus Network, the Oxford English Corpus and the Collins Corpus *Include> speeches, meetings, lectures, casual conversations, texts (different genres) *freely available; a fee; unavailable for the public Common distinctions are made between: specialised and general corpora Specilized corpora - include texts that belong to a particular type, e.g. academic prose/usually small General corpora - include many different types of texts/ usually large Historical corpora - include texts from different periods of time and allow for the study of language change Monitor corpora - tend to focus on current changes in the language Parallel corpora - texts in at least two languages (original + translation / texts in different languages for the same purpose) Learner corpora - contain collections of texts produced by learners of a language (the Cambridge Learner Corpus of written English, the Longman Learners' Corpus of written English The primary benefits that corpora offer researchers is large amounts of naturally-occurring data (language in use) Corpus linguistics offers research tools which benefits the study of pragmatics in a number of ways Corpus tools: frequency list; keyword lists and concordance lines (e.g. AntConc.exe)

Metadiscourse markers

Crismore et al., 1993; Hyland, 1998: Metadiscourse can be:TEXTUAL AND INTERPERSONAL Textual (interactive) metadiscourse => organizes the text and directs readers towards the intended interpretation. Interpersonal (interactional) metadiscourse => helps writers to express their attitude towards the proposition and establish a certain relationship with the readers.

Cross-cultural pragmatics

Cross-cultural pragmatics What is polite in one culture may not be polite in another Turn taking in CA as well as silence (its length) differ from culture to culture Silence is interpreted differently in different cultres, it could be an indication of disinterest, admission of guilt, consent, a signal of concentration on one's own thoughts, or a pause-filler. Silence is a pragmatic act - the act of silence does not properly make sense unless it is situated, as to both its linguistic and cultural context

Grammatical and Pragmatic errors

EFL learners and their teachers (in Hungary) consistently ranked grammatical errors as more serious than pragmatic errors ESL learners and their teachers (in the USA) ranked pragmatic errors as more serious. Textbooks Þcannot be counted on as a reliable source of pragmatic input for classroom language learners Þoften contain insufficient specific input or insufficient interpretation of language use Þthe focus on speech acts in textbooks may actually be pragmatically inappropriate for students' (Vellenga, 2004: 10) Þassume that learners know when it is appropriate to employ a particular SA, instead of being shown when and for what purposes to use a SA ÞVellenga (2004): a 'pragmatically friendly' textbook should include pragmatic awareness-raising activities that equip learners with the contextual information, variety of form and in-depth cultural information necessary to make the correct pragmalinguistic (the range of forms available) and sociopragmatic (the right form for the right situation) choices. Research suggests that explicit instruction is more effective than implicit Takimoto (2009): research with treatment groups (those who received instruction in Sas) => outperformed the control group (who received no instruction) effective learning occurs when the tasks provide learners with opportunities for processing both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features of the target structures e.g. instruction on use of hedges and boosters (intensifiers) => ss. Used them more afterwards

Politeness theory

Each person has a positive face, which is their desire for interaction and solidarity with others, and a negative face which is their desire to be respected, in effect and left alone Face threatening acts - seen as a threat to the hearer's self image

Direct and Indirect speech acts

Explicit vs. implicit performatives I apologize for stepping on your toe- I'm sorry I stepped on your toe Direct speech acts= a match between the illocutionary force and the form Declarative in form, illocutionary force of a statement: He sighed when he the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it Imperative in form, illocutionary force of a command Bloody stay there! Interrogative in form, illocutionary force of asking a question What am I supposed to do? Indirect speech acts= mismatch between the linguistic form and the illocutionary force Declarative in form, illocutionary force of a request I'd be grateful if you could pull me out Interrogative in form, illocutionary force of request Would you be so kind to go to my room and give me the phone? Interrogative in form, illocutionary force to offer help Need any help with the dishes?

Generalized Conversational Implicature and Particularized Conventional Implicature

Generalized Conversational Implicature= attached to the form, does not need to be computed anew with each relevant utterance. Particularized Conventional Implicature=unique to the particular context in which they occur, the speaker believes the utterance is true and has a reason to believe that the utterance is true. Context independent conventional implicature - consistently attached to a particular linguistic expression, regardless of the context

Semanticism, Pragmaticism and Complementarism

How is pragmatics related to other field of research such as semantics? Leech distinguishes three possibilities Semanticism (pragmatics inside semantics) -semantic definition more important than pragmatic meaning Pragmaticism (semantics into pragmatics) -pragmatic meaning more important than semantic definition Complementarism (semantics and pragmatics are independent areas of research but complement each other)

Ways of researching pragmatics

How to get data? - the first issue which faces if you are interested in conducting a pragmatic research / a number of means to this end What types of data can you use? Intuitive vs. attested data Intuitive data (language that we have reflected upon within one's mind) Attested (witnessed) data is language which we have said, heard, written or read and which we have recorded Attested data: elicited and corpus-based Elicited data - a type of task whereby you survey many speakers as to what they would say in a certain situation (e.g. make offers, apologies, refusals etc.) Discourse Completion Tasks or Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) DCTs have been widely and successfully used in the study of speech acts and speech events A type of language questionnaire whereby you elicit what a speaker thinks they would say in a situation The degree to which the situational variables are controlled can vary DCT data compared with corpus data - DCT data is normally based around single utterances Role-plays offer another means of collecting data/ a method which brings the researcher closest to authentic data/ provide as natural a setting as possible while allowing for the control of certain variables in the study the researcher sets up a context for the participants to speaking e.g. The speech act of apologies: • You did not have time to change before going to the wedding of your best friend, and therefore you are wearing sports clothes. Oral interviews are another means of collecting data for the purposes of pragmatic research. These involve the elicitation of conversation using various prompts; they can be structured or unstructured. The recordings are then transcribed and used for analysis. The main difference between an oral interview and a role-play is that the participants do not take on new identities or roles. In addition to Discourse Completion Tasks (an open-ended written questionnaire), multiple choice questionnaires can be used to give participants a number of plausible options or interpretations of utterances in given situations.

Felicity conditions

If a sentence violates the rules of syntax it is ungrammatical If a speech act violates the rules governing speech acts it is infelicitious In order for a speech act to be successful a number of contextual factors need to be fulfilled = Felicity conditions ex. getting married 1. There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances 2. The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked. 3. The procedure must be executed by all participants bot correctly and completely. 4. A person participating in and invoking the procedure must have those thoughts or feelings 5. And must conduct themselves subsequently violation: the intended act doesn't go through = Misfire the intended act goes through but the participants are insincere = Abuse

Illocutionary and Locutionary acts

Illocutionary act - what the speakers are doing with their words, the function of words and the speaker's purpose (requesting, promising, apologizing etc.) - performance in saying something, the intention of the speaker behind the spoken utterance Locutionary act - what is said, the form of the words uttered - performance of saying something also, prelocutionary effect - the hearer's reaction to the spoken utterance (persuasion) IFIDS- Illocutionary Force Indicating Device= presence of a verb that specifically names the illocutionary act being performed = performative verb (promise, warn, ask, tell), word order, stress, intonation

Speech acts and discourse

In metapragmatic terms: what are the societal (and other 'extralinguistic') conditions that determine whether or not a particular speech act succeeds, is 'felicitous' or 'happy'? Metapragmatics reflects the discursive context of the users and examines how speech acts are conditioned by the context, inasmuch as they are pragmatic acts => The context does not refer only to the immediately percieved one, but it also comprises the hidden conditions that govern such situations of language use

Situated speech acts

In order to be effective, SAs need to be situated (rely on and actively create the situation in which they are realized) SAs = speech events (speech as centered on an institutionalized social activity of certain kind, e.g. teaching, visiting a doctor's office) Pragmeme - a situated speech act in which the rules of language and of society combine in determining meaning, intended as a socially recognized object sensitive to social expectations about the situation in which the utterance to be interpreted is embedded. => a general situational prototype capable of being executed in the situation, a generalized pragmatic act. e.g. An American lady asked me (in an email): "What is your story?" ... It can be a request for a "life story," perhaps a request for an assessment of "how did you accomplish so much?" in positive cases or "how did things get in such a mess?" in negative ones.

Indirectness

Indirect speech act is much more associated to politeness ex. Thank you for not smoking instead of No smoking indirectness is also used depending on the formality of the context and social differences Indirect requests - I was hoping..

Pragmatic presupposition in cultures

Intercultural misunderstanding based on different and unfamiliar pragmatic presuppositions e.g. 1 a Western tourist visiting a Japanese temple compound addresses a female attendant Japanese or Western style/ male or female toilet => she directed him to a 'Western-style' male toilet facility e.g.2 Two secretaries (members of the same culture) meet in the hallway of their common office A: Would you like a piece of apple cake? => link between the spoken words and the B: Have you got some? link between the spoken word and world of their users that is needed to form an appropriate pragmatic act

The Cooperative Principle

Introduced by Paul Grice, states that speakers are attempting to be cooperative in a conversation above all else. "Make your conversational 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 in". In other means, make your utterances appropriate to their conversational context.

Natural vs. conventional language

Language is natural because of the human desire to communicate and express ourselves by those means Language is conventional because there is no immediate natural connection between a word and its expression. We cannot "read" a speaker in a natural way and interpret what they precisely mean because sentence meaning operates on grammatical rules and context of society. Language users must use socially conventional, linguistic means to express themselves. The invisible workings of the mind can't be immediately expressed in a natural way. Only the pragmatics of the situation can give meaning to one's words ex. Great! (when your professor tells you the exam won't be online but you don't live in Skopje)

Politeness Maxims

Leech (1983): Politeness Principle with conversational maxims 6 maxims: TACT Focuses on the hearer, and says: minimise cost to other,maximise benefit to other A. Minimise imposition = negative politeness e.g. Could I interrupt you for half a second - what was the website address? B. Attend to hearer's interests, wants and needs e.g. If I could clarify this then... GENEROSITY Focuses on the speaker, says: 1. minimise benefit to self, 2. maximise cost to self e.g. 1 Could I copy down the website address? e.g. 2 Let Me Clean While You Relax (ad) APPROBATION A.Minimise dispraise of other, B. maximise praise of other - Avoid disagreement, make other people feel good by showing solidarity e.g.1 Mary you are very efficient and make notes of everything - you must have a copy of that website address we were given today e.g.2 I heard you singing at the karaoke last night. It was, um...different! MODESTY A.Minimise praise of self B. Maximise dispraise of self e.g.1 Oh I am so stupid - I didn't make a note of that website address! Did you? e.g.2 => at a conference: violating the maxim of quality, but saving their face and the face of the hearer AGREEMENT A.Minimise disagreement between self and the others B. maximise agreement between self and other SYMPATHY A.Minimise antipathy between self and other B. maximise sympathy between self and other Politeness SA as congratulate, commiserate and express condolences e.g. I was sorry to hear about your mother Euphemisms e.g. I am going to go powder my nose/ wash my hands

Metapragmatic awareness

Leech(1983): Metagrammar is in fact reasoning about rules, an effort to 'rule' certain rules in order even though they may seem motivated non-conventionally For instance: we have to invoke metapragmatics ...when we talk about grammar principles, like the 'Principle of Economy' ('Law of Least Effort'; the 'Efficiency Principle')= the human propensity toward achieving maximum effect with least possible effort - Under what conditions and in which contexts of language use the positing and application of such a principle would be acceptable? - Need arises when speed and efficiency in communicating are crucial, e.g. Fire!, Help!; or in other restrictive conditions such as the state of one's postal expense account (restriction in words used)

Negative and Positive Politeness strategies

Negative: demonstrate distance between interlocutors and avoiding intrusion on each other's territory => speakers use them to avoid imposing and presuming and to give hearer options e.g. use of apology, hesitation, question (so that the interlocutor can say no) Sorry to bother you... I don't want to be a nuisance but... (could you possibly tell me the address...) Feel free to ...(come to the party if you have got the time) Giving an option to the hearer; make it seem smaller than it is; adding hedges (If possible; I wonder) Positive politeness strategies: save positive face, demonstrate closeness and solidarity, appealing to friendship, making other people feel good and emphasising that both speakers have a common goal e.g. Mary sweetie - I'd really appreciate it if you'd tell me the address for that website we were talking about this morning Main type of positive politeness is claiming common ground - attending to hearer's interests, wants and needs e.g. I know you hate parties, Jen, but come anyway. We'll all be there

Joint Acts

Not all speech acts are made of a single utterance I bet you $10 Julie will win the game - there would be no bet if the hearer doesn't respond to it A single act might involve many people Teacher: Would the last person to leave please close the door?

Limitations of the speech act theory

Often there's an overlap - one utterance can fall into more than one micro-class "They are all dead" an emotional outburst (expressive) description of the present state (representative) SA Fillers: you know, there you go (avoid silence, not categorized as speech acts) Backchannels: Was it? Oh really? (tell the speaker that the hearer listens) Incomplete sentences: She.. didn't do.. err..

Pragmatic Acts as a social empowerment

PA - adapting oneself to context; situation-derived and situation-constrained Pragmatic Acting => contextualized adaptive behaviour Jacobs and Jackson (1983), conversational influencing => the ways in which speakers try to influence each other through the use of language in order to realize their goals The society itself speaks through the interactants when they try to influence each other (felicity conditions, conventions, culture, social structure)

Pragmatic Acts and action theory

PAs can be seen from 2 points of view: 1. that of an agent, 2. that of the act ÞIndividual agent (class, gender, age, education = factors identified by ethnomethodologists as member resources, or background knowledge) ÞAct: language that is used in performing a PA; the question has 2 aspects: from the individual perspective (what language can I use to perform a specific act) from the perspective of context (what language can be used to create the conditions for me to perform a PA) adaptability of language by which individual members of the society rely on language as their principle tool to adapt to the ever-changing conditions surrounding them Þ3 ways of choosing the appropriate linguistic means: 1. appeal to the actual circumstances legitimating a particular choice, as in the presuppositions we recognise e.g. I am sorry to hear about your dog. 2. create or invent the circumstances that make certain choice appropriate, as in conversational implicature e.g. Имаш саат? => implies: what time is it? 3. an utterance may be adapted only to certain circumstances that have to be actualized before the act becomes possible, suitable, legally binding e.g. the act of baptizing When SAs are uttered in context => PAs PAs need not be SAs (not even indirect ones) Children learn to deal with PAs long before they discover the existence of SAs Mother: (calling out the window to child in yard): Joshua, what are you doing? Joshua: Nothing... Mother: Will you stop immediately! (Joshua's PA=> trying to opt out of a conversational minefield)

Pragmatic Acts and body moves

PAs involve the whole individual in communication, not just the speech portion of his/her contribution What is lacking in SA interaction is interactive feedback: linguistic or with body movement (1. just illustrate what is said or 2. taking part in the dialogue (e.g. 'I want you' poster) 2=body move (BM), executed in an 'engagement space'; 'field of engagement' (Composite) Dialogue Act = the body speaks 'if the body does not follow you, the listener will not either'

Pragmatics across cultures

PRAGMATIC APPROPRIATENESS of a particular expression in a particular context of use => rather different from culture to culture, and consequently from language to language! Apology in Japanese => thanking in an English context => The basic character of a SA is culture-dependent => The pragmatic validity of a SA will vary when considered in intercultural perspective

Politeness and the Cooperative Principle

Politeness strategies in conflict with CP Speakers can violate cooperative maxims to show positive politeness e.g. 1 A: Well, how do I look? B: Good! => Violate the Maxim of Quality opt out of the Maxim of quantity for instance when making a polite request to strangers: I'm terribly sorry to bother you but I couldn't help noticing you've got a copy of the new Artic Monkeys CD, and I wandered whether you wouldn't mind me just having a quick look at it.

Pragmatic Acts

Pragmatics starts out from the conception of language actively used by individual language users with a particular history, a living context Commercials, ads - perform pragmatic acts! => invitation to do or buy something => The appeal is never made explicit: it does its job by the viewer's implicit inclusion in and identification with the situation of the message and its wording -Among the most common PA are the ones of 'implicit denial'. (avoiding responsibility) A frequent PA is the one of implied identification with the reader or viewer, co-opting the target of the advertising act => technique of persuasion = relies on the unsaid not on the said => the context of the acting carries more weight than the spoken act itself e.g.1 a journalist = an effort by lawyers to 'strike a deal' => CIA (conversational influence attempt) = they seemed to offer him some info that he could use in the reporting in exchange for his keeping out of some particular sensitive area (but not explicitly) => there was no SA of offering performed e.g.2 $20 bill tacked to the back of the driving license (bribe?) PA do not necessarily include specific SA -> I haven't seen him (soliciting an invitation without saying it) Would you like to tell us, Mr Khan, why you've applied to Middleton College in particular? ÞCandidate given a chance to say sth nice about the college (part of the game!) ÞAdd 'indirect force' to the literal force of the utterances so as to account for their 'indirect effects' ÞSA theory lacks a theory of action

Reference

Reference = the act of using language to refer to entities in the context is known as reference. An act in which the speaker uses linguistic means to enable the hearer to identify something. Referring expression = the linguistic form used to refer something or someone The Referent = the entity that is being referred to

Reflexivity and Indexing

Reflexive reference =reflexive pronouns e.g.1 Real men shave themselves e.g.2 Wives, submit yourselves into your own husbands, ... husbands, love your wives. A particular form of the language carries with it a kind of 'index' telling us where to look for the appropriate reference Context is essential though From a metapragmatic point of view the presence of actual or potential conversational partners is a necessary condition on any use of language in conversation e.g. Meet me here a week from now with a stick this big (temporal and spacial center of orientation) + use of discourse markers (pragmatic markers, pragmatic particles, discourse particles) => facilitating the production and reception of discourse by assigning its individual parts their relevance and weight in the context e.g. Honestly, ... (attitude marker); However (contrastive textual marker) => Explicit level of metapragmatic awareness

Searle - speech acts

Searle classifies speech acts as 1. Declarations = words and expressions that change the world by their utterance (I declare, I resign, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife) 2. Representatives = the words state what the speaker believes to be the case (describing, insisting, predicting) 3. Commissives = the words commit the speaker to future action (promising, ofering, vowing) 4. Directives = the words are aimed at making the hearer do something (commanding, inviting, requesting) 5. Expletives = the words state what the speaker feels (apologizing, praising)

Pragmatic competence

Semantics => concerned with vocabulary teaching Syntax => can be broadly equated with the grammatical rules taught vocabulary and grammar => can be taught in a relatively formal and structured way at word and sentence level, isolated from any reference to the speaker/ writer or listener/ reader Pragmatic competence => 'a set of internalised rules of how to use language in socio-culturally appropriate ways, taking into account the participants in a communicative interaction and features of the context within which the interaction takes place' (Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000: 19) Pragmatic competence involves both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competences (Leech, 1983; Thomas, 1983). Pragmalinguistics refers to knowledge of the range of options available for performing various pragmatic actions Sociopragmatics refers to the knowledge of how to select an appropriate choice given a particular goal in a particular setting Grammatical competence ≠ Pragmatic competence e.g. difference between speaker-orientated requests (Can I?) and hearer-orientated (Can you?) might not be immediately apparent to learners

Sentence, Utterance and Proposition

Sentence = well-formed string of words put together according to the grammatical rules of a language; Sentence meaning (semantics) Utterance = the use of a particular piece of language by a particular speaker on a particular occasion; Utterance meaning, speaker meaning (pragmatics) Proposition = a sentence which is uttered to make a statement and which can be True or False, may be known, believed, doubted, asserted or denied, and may be held constant under paraphrase and translation. Ex. It's raining

Politeness and context

Situational context 2 situational context factors influence making of requests A. Size of imposition: e.g. I couldn't borrow $30, could I? vs. Give me 5 cents! B. Formality of the context = the greater the formality the more indirect the language is Student to student in the hall: Hang on - I haven't finished! at a seminar: I wonder if I might just finish what I am trying to say. Social context -social distance & power relation between speakers Variables that determine SD: degree of familiarity and differences of status, roles, age, gender, education, class, occupation and ethnicity => Employment of hedges and mitigation Could I ask a question in relation to that? Cultural context The British put more emphasis on negative politeness than other cultures do e.g. Cuba - friends shouldn't show any distance (thank you is unacceptable!) Use of maxims of tact and generosity differs from country to country e.g. Japanese student writes to professor: This is draft of chapter 4. Please read it and comment on it. (not observing the maxim of tact, but observing the sympathy maxim) e.g. the British reject praise in the form of personal compliment (minimising praise of self), while the Japanese accept a compliment graciously

Cultural dimension

Speech acts vary from culture to culture "How fat you are!" in India means to congratulate or praise someone, in England this is considered offensive Chinese greeting: Hello, have you had your lunch?

Relevance Theory

States that all maxims can be reduced to the maxim of relevance Maxim of quantity- say enough relevant information Maxim of quality - give sincere relevant information Maxim of manner - say unambiguous relevant information

Maxims

The Cooperative Principle consists of four maxims 1. The Maxim of Quantity: say enough, but don't say too much 2. The Maxim of Quality: Say only what you have reason to believe is true. 3. The Maxim of Relation: Say only what is relevant 4. The Maxim of Manner: Be brief, clear and unambiguous A speaker can observe a maxim, violate, flout, or opt them out

Pragmatic Acts in Context

The background of the social behaviour that conversation such as pragmatic interacting represents = the actors in the conversation fulfill roles on the common 'social scene' o Not just sharing or agreeing on a common ground, but fighting about issues thought to be 'common' o MISUNDERSTANDING oPragmatics establishes the common scene within the societal context => a 'battle' for domination is going on => our acting is determined by what the scene can afford and by what we can afford on the scene=> but not only does the scene determine our acting, our actions determine and reaffirm the existing scene = > our acting is a situated action = an action made possible and afforded by and in a particular situation, on a particular scene

Corporus elements

The frequency of a word or a phrase in different contexts is an important part of its description => Good starting point as it gives a good basis for evaluating the profile of a specific word, structure or expression in relation to a norm Provides an indication of both the presence (and absence) of items in a particular language variety e.g. the frequency lists for the top 25 words of the spoken component of the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE) Highlighting potential pragmatic similarities /differences between British and Irish English Frequency lists can be generated for recurrent strings or sequences as well (you know, I think, I don't know, I don't think, know what I mean) A keyword can be described as a word (or cluster of words) which occurs with unusual frequency in a given text or set of texts when compared to a reference corpus (more frequently, or less frequently) A word or cluster of words may be found to occur much more frequently than would otherwise be expected (a positive keyword) or much less frequently (a negative keyword) Keywords are identified on the basis of statistical comparisons of word frequency lists derived from the target corpus and the reference corpus. A concordance is an index to the places in a text where particular words and phrases occur The software programmes used to generate concordances present results in a Key Word in Context (KWIC) format, which features a node word, surrounded by the co-text, words that occur before and after it Corpus users can normally specify the number of words to the left and to the right of the search word that are displayed as part of the output

Politeness and conversation

The generally accepted model is that of the 'perfect consumer', one who knows his/her place in the market, one who understands that nothing is free but that in order to get something one has to give something in return, and that the giving and the returning must proceed in an orderly, societally acceptable fashion.

Implications and implicatures

The term implicature defines a logical relationship between two propositions proposition 1=p proposition2=q you do your homework, I'll take you out to dinner If you do your homework, I'll take you out to dinner p implies q (logical) however, non-p does not imply non-q it doesn't imply that if I take you out to dinner every time you need to have your homework done. (conversational) logical implication doesn't correspond with conversational implicature- what we understand by "implies" in everyday life. Logical or semantic implication = if p implies q than every time p is true q must also be true ***It implicates but does not imply

Speech Acts

The theory of speech acts is a pragmatic theory, it involves an intention on the part of the speaker and inference on the part of the hearer. I'm a little cold - in order to understand a speaker's utterance, we must know what sort of act the speaker intended to perform. J.L. Austin gives a theory of speech acts - addresses the problem of truth-conditional sentences and declares that there are utterances that can be analyzed in terms of truth conditions and ones that cannot. ex. She walked out (true) When did we hear from him last? (question- no truth condition assigned) Constatives- declarative utterances expressing some state of affairs Performatives- used to perform an act *test if an utterance is a performative by putting the word hereby ex. I hereby promise, apologize Explicit performatives: the type that satisfies the hereby test Implicit performatives: the type that has a declarative form or constative form but is in fact performative ex. I'm sorry Both performatives and constatives are used to perform the illocutionary act - the act of saying something is itself to perform a certain kind of act Performative Hypothesis - Every sentence has a performative verb in its deep structure. Sit down - I command you to sit down I'm cold - I tell you that I am cold

Pragmatics

The use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society. Pragmatics is needed if we want a fuller, deeper and a more reasonable account on human language behavior. - to explain how the same content is expressed different contexts ex. I've got a headache also defined as the study of the relationship between context and meaning

Scalar Implicature

The utterance of a given value on a scale will implicate that, as far as the speaker knows, no higher value applies It's cool outside (It's not freezing) I ate most of the pizza (I didn't eat all of the pizza)

Two main macro functions of talk

Transactional function: languages function to transmit factual information (giving directions, giving instructions) Interpersonal function: language used to express social relations and maintain cohesion (no informational content) most talk has a mixture of these functions

Violation and Flouting of maxims

Violating a maxim means to intentionally generate a misleading implicature example: A: Does your dog bite? B: No *dog bites his hand when person A pets him" A: You said he doesn't bite B: That's not my dog -violation of the maxim of quantity Flouting is a case of metaphor, irony, sarcasm, hyperbole etc. You are so clever! (To someone who has done something stupid)

Grammatical Cohesion

When a referring expression links with another one in the same co-text it's called a grammatical cohesion as it meshes the text together

Intertextuality

When a referring item refers to entities in the background knowledge, that have been mentioned previously it's called INTERTEXTUALITY Ex. That was great "That" can refer to a cultural background knowledge (an athlete winning a medal) or interpersonal knowledge (husband having romantic dinner with wife)

Discourse

any unit of connected speech or writing longer than an utterance/sentence Two approaches to looking to discourse structure: Exchange structure - the analysis starts with a model and sees how real data fits it/the conventional patterns that occur when people are talking unequal power balance Teacher:asks questions; directive: "You've got to put them on this map.", commissive: "I'll leave you to get on with it!" Conversational analysis - analysis starts by observing real data and describes what patterns emerge/speakers take turns when they interact; what speakers say dictates the type of answer expected

Teaching pragmatics

short term goals -raising awareness -noticing strategies -building receptive pragmatic competence long term -building awareness -building more receptive pragmatic competence and strategies

Deixis

if the referring expression points to the referent in the context Deictic elements: pointers ex. To the left (whose left?) There are three types of Deixis: person, place and time The personal pronouns I, you, he, she, we they (person deixis) - they are used to point to a person Special or place deixis are words used to point to a location: demonstrative adverbs (there, here) demonstrative adjectives and pronouns (this, that, these, those) Time deixis are expressions used to point to a time such as next day, then, now, next week, now look

Corpus Data (Pragmatics in use)

language corpora = large database of naturally occurring spoken and written language available on a computer for empirical study which provide the researcher with access to naturally-occurring data COCA= The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 400+ million words, the largest corpus of English containing 20 million words of spoken and written American English collected between 1990-2009 BNC = The British National Corpus: 100+ million words, spoken and written language from a wide range of sources designed to represent current British English MICASE = Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English: 1.8 million words, contains 200 hours of spoken discourse recorded in academic settings LCIE = The Limerick Corpus of Irish English: 1 million words LIBEL CASE = The Limerick and Belfast Corpus of Academic Spoken English: 1 million words, spoken data collected in two universities in Ireland

Sequences

§CA - a conversation has a structure - certain sequences / stretches of utterances: pre-sequences, insertions and opening and closing sequences §Pre-sequences - prepare the ground/signal the type of utterance to follow (e.g. pre-invitations, pre-requests and pre-announcements) A: Do you know that French film? B: Yes A: Do you wanna go see it tonight? B: Sure. §Insertions - a pair embedded within other adjacency pairs A: Do you know that French film? B: Yes A: Do you wanna go see it tonight? B: What time does it start? A: 8:30pm B: Sure. §Opening structures - contain a greeting, an enquiry after health and a past reference A: Hi, how are you? B: Not bad §Closing structures - ending a conversation with a farewell/ pre-closing sequence (British and American) A: Anyways, I have to go B: See you A: See you tomorrow

Conversation

§Conversation is discourse mutually constructed and negotiated in time b/w speakers / usually informal and unplanned §Cook (1989) talk can be classed as conversation when: - it is not primarily necessitated by a practical task - any equal power of participants is partially suspended -the number of participants is small -turns are quite short - talk is primarily for the participants not for the outside audience §The first interaction among students is a conversation/informal, unplanned, not for an outside audience, not necessitated by a practical task, Ss are just socializing, just two Ss, very short turns §Classroom transactions, doctor-patient interviews are not conversations / lack the properties listed before

Contrasting conditions

§Pragmatics views the world as a world of language users §Metapragmatics (in the second sense) studies the conditions that allow us to use our language or prevent us from using it, or from using it adequately => it investigates what the user actually can and normally will say. In any culture or group of language users there are certain principles that the members of the culture, the users of the language, agree on as working guidelines in their language practice. Presupposition An utterance needs a context to be correctly interpreted e.g. The cat is on the mat. (there is a cat on some mat) The cat is on the mat! ( Quick! Joey is doing it again - get him off Aunt Euphemia's mat!) Found: grey cat/ lost since July/ phone 491-7040 Metapragmatics: not only record what people say but figure out why they say them the way they do e.g. MOVING OUT OF country. Everything must go. Husband, dog, microwave, tv, appliances. Great deals. Call Ori, 312-404

Adjacency pairs

•CA - conversations contain pairs of utterances = adjacency pairs •The utterance of one speaker makes a certain response of the next speaker very likely - preference structure •Dispreferred responses - refusals and disagreements •No response - hearer did not hear/ not paying attention/ refuses to cooperate

Cooperation and conversation

▫Cooperative Principle - universality of cooperation - the way cooperation is realized in different cultures ▫Violating the maxim of quantity may be acceptable in certain cultures and contexts, given certain conditions E.g. not mentioning the name of the person I know (does not always lead to the implicature that I do not know the person's name = as in police interrogation) ▫People across cultures will obey certain rules of collaboration in order to make conversation happen ▫Some cultures are inherently geared toward verbal confrontation (e.g. Jewish East Coast Americans described by Tannen 1984), others are extremely adverse to such conflicts and prefer silence to a heated, tendentially interesting (but alaso potentially face-damaging) conversation. ▫Still, there is also a deliberate flouting of all cooperation where the interlocutors want to have a fight=>sacrifice politeness and cooperation to a hgher objective ▫Haviland (1997): 'dialogue' between 10 native speakers of Zinacantec ▫ => very low degree of conversational cooperation: no turns are taken or respected => cases like these make it difficult to postulate the existence of a universally valid "principle" that would prescribe the same kind of cooperation in language for everybody in every culture and community ▫

Conversation analysis

✘Conversation analysis - a 'bottom-up' approach: starting with the conversation itself, it lets the data dictate its own structure ✘CA views conversation as a process/ a linear ongoing event that unfolds little by little/ cooperation b/w speakers along the way ✘CA is different from discourse analysis (DA) ✘DA takes concepts and terms from linguistics and examines their role in real data ✘CA takes real data and examines the language and demonstrates that conversation is systematically structured

Limits of Conversation Analysis

✘One criticism of CA is that it does not take into account pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of interaction/ the background context/ how and why people say what they say, the components of the situation, occupation and gender of participants ... ✘CA focuses only on sequential progression of interaction, the way each utterance is shaped by the previous one ... ✘CA sees context as something created in talk, rather than talk as something created by context The conversation does not exist within a social vacuum => conversation structures are connected to structures of social institutions and societies, and conventions of everyday actions is determined by wider social structures

Limitations of IRF (initiation, response and follow-up)

✘The IRF model does not accommodate easily all classroom discourse structure ✘There are case when the Ss are not responding; Ss are asking their friends to help them with the response; respond to question with a question ✘Another limitation is that this model reflects the usual teacher-centered classroom/nowadays lessons are more interactive (pair and group work) The structure of classroom interaction is not typical of everyday talk/ it is typical of formal and ritualistic transactions/ unequal power balance/ trails, interviews, doctor-patient exchange, etc But even in such formal interactions this pattern is not always observede.g. The patient wants to avoid answering what he ate because he stole it/ replies with a question (British TV series, Casualty)

Interactional Sociolinguistics

✘This approach takes into account the discourse and social aspects of interaction, i.e. the pragmatic and sociolinguistics aspects of interaction as well as adjacency pairs, turn-taking and sequences/ situational context/ the context of shared knowledge/ grammar/ social structure and cultural patterns ✘Social groups have their own ways of expressing meaning with their language=> language relates to context through 'contextualisation cues'=> linguistic features that indicate the aspects of the context relevant to what the speaker means

Conversation patterns

✘Turn taking ✘Cooperation in conversation is managed by all participants through turn-taking ✘In most cultures only one speaker speaks at a time/ speakers take turns ✘Differences in culture about when the new speaker can start/ whether the new speaker can interrupt and overlap, when can speakers pause and for how long, the length of a turn/ how speakers indicate they have finished ✘Japanese don't interrupt/ Indians (North America) - 2 seconds pause b/w turns/ Latin American - a fraction of a second pauses