Meaning in English

Cyberpragmatics

"the analysis of how information is produced and interpreted within the Internet environment." Yus, 2011, P13 David Crystal (2010, p414) states that electronically-mediated communication (EMC) is the most 'inclusive'.

Meaning

'Meaning' is found in the context of 'communication' or 'interaction' between people

Politeness principle (Leech 1980)

'Minimise (all things being equal), the expression of impolite beliefs'. 'Maximise (all things being equal), the expression of polite beliefs'. e.g. A: We'll all miss Bill and Agatha, won't we? B: Well, we'll all miss Bill. Maxim violated: quantity Implicature: 'We won't miss Agatha'

Inductive or pragmatic inferences

'Probablistic' and which may change when more is learned about the 'signalled' information e.g. 'Meggie was in the tree.' (said to my daughter). Possible pragmatic inferences: a) I am happy/relieved. I have been looking for her. I'm referring to the tree in my garden. b) I am worried. It's dangerous for her to climb trees. I'm referring to the tree in my garden.

Performative verbs

(Promise, admit, resign, etc.) Describe the act that they perform (they simultaneously describe and perform ). Explicit speech acts

Linguistic Relativism

(weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) Language a person speaks has an influence on this person's cognition

Limitations of CA

- Can't cope with much of a language's word-stock - Problematic when applied to words functioning within an idiom or metaphor (e.g. 'living death') - Only accounts for paradigmatic relations

Applications of CA

- Explore words that stand in a sense relation in more detail (e.g. synonymy and shared semantic features - Compare what words grouped by a semantic field have in common - Explore culture differences

Proliferation of principles & maxims

- Generosity: Minimise benefit to self. Maximum benefit to others Offers to do something which benefits the hearer must be made as directly as possible. e.g. Let me wash the dishes. - Modesty: - Minimise expressions of self-praise - Maximise expressions of self-dispraise e.g. Please accept this small gift in recognition of your achievement. - Agreement: - Minimise disagreement with the hearer. - Maximise agreement with the hearer. e.g. A: English is a difficult language to learn. B: True, but the grammar is quite easy - Sympathy: - Maximise sympathy towards the hearer. - Minimise antipathy towards the hearer. - Irony: - 'Do help yourself!' (to someone who has done so unjustifiably and without invitation.) - Banter: - 'Stupid bitch!' (to a close friend.) - Consideration: (Pollyanna Principle - Minimise the hearer's discomfort/ displeasure. - Maximise the hearer's comfort/pleasure.

Politeness Strategies

- Say nothing (abandon the FTA completely) - perhaps H will recognise your need. - Off-record politeness strategies - indirect strategies, hints, vagueness , removing the imposition "Perhaps someone should have been more responsible." - On-record politeness strategies. Negative politeness - emphasising H's autonomy, expressing S's restraint and minimisation of imposition on H. This assumes some social distance or awkwardness in the situation. "I just wanted to ask if I could use your computer?" - Positive politeness - emphasising friendliness, appealing to a common goal (also: solidarity strategy). "You must be hungry, it's a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch?" - 'Bald on-record' - the most direct approach - may be used with some mitigating devices (e.g. 'please', questions tags, etc.). Commonly used by people who know each other well. 'You need a hand. Give me that!'

EMC facilitates because:

1. Dynamic Allows rapid movement and reorganisation of text quickly Use of colour, images and animation Multi-dimensional e.g. hyperlinks, permeable boundaries (scrolling down and up, side to side) 2. Instant 3. Interactive 4. Wide access (audience) 5. Free

Propositional relations Contradtictions

A combination of statements, ideas, or features which are opposed to one another. e.g. This girl is an orphan contradicts This girl has a father

Idiom

A common, often used expression that doesn't make sense if you take it literally.

The cooperative principle (CP)

A means of explaining how people can understand what is meant by what is said. For communication to be effective, participants need to be helpful and co-operative and expect that others are so too. Arises when the speaker flouts one of the four maxims of conversation

Sub-lexical meaning or componential analysis

A number of other terms are used for roughly the same enquiry - that is, deconstructing a word's meaning into meaning parts e.g. [female] [adult] [human] = 'woman' [male] [adult] [human] = 'man' Some approaches are basic and use binary notation (+/-) to indicate the presence or non-presence of the basic form (e.g. 'male' = [+male] and 'female' = [-male])

Principle of parsimony

A principle that states that the simplest explanation is preferred to more complex explanations.

Propositional relations Entailment

A proposition X entails a proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X e.g I am an orphan entails I have no father.

Semantic Anomaly

A semantically anomalous proposition is absurd in that it presupposes a contradiction (therefore it makes no sense to ask whether it is true or false) e.g. The orphan's father drinks heavily.

Propositional relations Ambiguity

A sentence is ambiguous when it has more than one sense e.g. We saw her duck. We saw her lowering her head? We saw a duck belonging to her?

Semantic Field

A shared general meaning - one meaning across many words

Polysemy

An individual word with several related meanings can be described as 'polysemic' or 'polysemous'.

Propositional relations Presupposition

Anyone who utters sentence X takes the truth of sentence Y for granted. e.g. My father is at home presupposes I have a father.

Antonymy: Complementary antonyms

Arrive/depart On/off One or the other (something on is therefore not off) No gradability

Sentence (formal definition)

Begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Grammatical definition: A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or, as in imperative sentences, understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb

Syntagmatic relations

Between expressions that occur next to one another. Syntagmatic relations contrast with paradigmatic relations

Antonymy: Gradable antonyms

Cold/hot Strong/weak On some kind of scale (lukewarm or freezing)

The degree of imposition

Context: mother to daughter. a) Shut the door, Kate. b) Do you think you could find the time to take those invitations to the printers?

Textual context

Contextual information plays a key role in the automatic interpretation of text. It has been argued that X is more effective... a) It has been argued that X is more effective, however ...

Conversational Implicature

Defined as implicatures that rely on principles governing conversation e.g. (Caroline to daughter looking at Facebook - 'Have you finished your essay yet?' Possible implicature: You should be studying at the moment, not looking at Facebook.

Situational context

Describes the reason why something is occurring and the appropriate behavior and actions associated with the situation 'She said it cost £10.' (Spoken statement)

Diexis

Diexis = pointing A set of words/expressions that take their referential meaning directly from the immediate situation of the utterance in which they are used.

Confirming Communicative Intention - Ostension

Drawing attention to the message we want to communicate through an act of ostension Can be analysed in terms of relevance theory.

Paradigmatic relations

Elements that can be substituted for each other

Non-propositional meaning

Emotive expressions that express feelings or emotions, but not propositions (e.g. take)

Pragmatic inferencing

Enriching the interpretation of an utterance beyond what is literally stated.

Inferencing

Enriching' the interpretation at a pragmatic level

The reduction of principles Sperber and Wilson (1986): Relevance Theory

Every utterance comes with a guarantee of relevance: A speaker can choose to be more or less explicit depending on his/her beliefs about the contextual and cognitive understandings the hearer brings to the communication. If people believe an utterance is relevant they can then select the context to which it would most logically apply

Principle of analogy

Expect now to be like the past. Exploit your knowledge of previous similar texts in interpretations. Assume all previous defaults operate unless the speaker indicates otherwise (basically assume everything is the same as your past interactions)

Propositional relations Paraphrase

Express the meaning of using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity. e.g. I am an orphan is a paraphrase of I am a child and I have no mother or father.

Fixed meaning

Fixed in a certain order, even if the phrase could be changed without harming the literal meaning e.g. all of a sudden

Why do words co-occur?

Grammatical reasons - a count noun, for example, is more likely to collocate with quantifying terms Phenomenological reasons - certain physical things, will be explained in terms of colour or other evident qualities Phraseological reasons - a whole range of different fixed, semi-fixed and idiomatic constructions

Grice's theory of conversational implicature

Grice (1975) developed an explanation of how competent language users manage to communicate effectively by reference to these 'rules' of conversation.

Phraseology

Group a number of phenomena having the aforementioned qualities to a greater/lesser degree

Antonymy: Converse antonyms

Husband/wife Buy/sell Describing some type of relationship in perspective to the other

Contextual inferencing Litotes/understatement

I wasn't born yesterday. I wasn't over-impressed with the speech. That wasn't such a bad meal I cooked. She's a little too young for the job. The employees were somewhat unenthusiastic about the move.

Contextual inferencing Hyperbole/overstatement

I'd rather kill myself than spend an hour in his company. The baby kept us awake all night. I have nothing to wear. Nobody understands me. We do it all for you.

Iconic

Iconic words would include: tick, miaow, or sniff. Also described as onomatopoeic in that their meaning and sound are related.

Implicatures

Implicatures are consequences of the inferred knowledge of the speaker.

Flouting a maxim

Intentionally using language in a way to convey more than what is literally said. - When speakers/writers flout a maxim, the meaning generated is intended to be apparent to the hearer/reader. e.g. A: How many potatoes did you peel? B: Millions.

Contextual inferencing Proverbs

It's no use crying over spilt milk. Let sleeping dogs lie. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Kinship terms

Kinship terms differ in different cultures and languages There are four potential meaning components in any kinship term: generation gender lineage (direct or sideways) related through mother or father?

EMC constrains because:

Lack of context Identity (who are you communicating with?) Paralinguistic and non-linguistic features may be absent Short status messages (Twitter, texts) Content (controlled by software - predictive text, language control) Explicit linguistic guidance (netiquette) This can lead to ambiguity and miscommunication.

Lingusitic Communication

Language is an 'established sign system' (Cruse, 2004). The elements of the system include: grammar words content words phrases clauses sentences texts (written and spoken)

Descriptive fallacy

Language is used solely to describe things in the world/some state of affairs.

Contextual inferencing Irony/Sarcasm

Let's keep the noise down to an uproar, please. That's all I needed. With friends like you, who needs enemies? I needed that news like a hole in the head.

Propositional content

Limitation on the nature of the state of affairs

Multi-word verbs

MWVs are common idioms - the meaning can't be predicted from the individual components e.g. make up = invent give in = surrender

Grice's Conversational Maxims

Maxim of quantity: Say as much, but no more or less, than is required for the current purposes of the conversation. Maxim of quality: Say only what you have evidence for. Maxim of relevance/relation: Be relevant. Maxim of manner: Be perspicuous (i.e. avoid obscurity, ambiguity, be brief and orderly).

Proposition

Meaning of the sentence Logical construct, which abstracts away from grammatical differences Do not belong to any particular language:

Deductive or logical inferences

Necessarily valid (similar to entailment). e.g. 'Meggie is a cat.' Inference: 'Meggie is an animal.'

EMC Language

Neither speech nor writing Displays characteristics of both depending on context/medium More than a 'hybrid of speech and writing' EMC is a 'genuine new medium' (Crystal 2010:415)

Non-linguistic features

Non-linguistic features also communicate meaning but are not dependent on language - for example gestures (fingers crossed) or facial expressions (smile).

Paralinguistics

Paralinguistics concerns the aspects of communication that do not involve words but which are used alongside spoken language - Eg. tone and pitch of voice.

Person deixis

Personal pronouns - He, she Possessive determiners - The kids are yours and mine. Reflexive pronouns -I was in a HURRY, so I washed the car myself.

Components of context

Physical context: place, time, participants. Social context: social roles/distance between participants. Linguistic context: sense, denotation and grammar + what has already been said in the utterance. Epistemic context: previous experience and knowledge of the world, culture, values, genre of utterance, register, similar discourse (mutual knowledge/shared beliefs/ common ground).

Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson 1987)

Positive face - the desire/want to be liked, approved of, accepted, connected, to be part of the group. Negative face - the desire/want to be independent, not to be imposed on by others, to have one's own space (NB: 'negative' here does not mean 'bad'). Face-threatening acts (FTAs) - saying something that might be a threat to the H's face (e.g. a request - may impose on the H). Politeness strategies - developed to deal with FTAs.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics could be said to answer "what does the speaker/writer mean by saying or writing that?" Speaker meaning & meaning in a specific situational interaction: i.e.: what a speaker means to convey when s/he uses a piece of language in that particular situation.

Propositional meaning

Propositional meaning of a word or an utterance arises from the relation between it and what it refers to

Semi-fixed expressions

Retain the same basic word order throughout. But some semi-fixed expressions can change some of their parts e.g. kick the bucket, separate meanings of words will not give the meaning of the whole idiom.

Wierzbicka's primes

See powerpoint slide

Semantics

Semantics could be said to focus on "what does the language mean?" Word meaning & sentence meaning in a general linguistic context but not in a particular situational context.

Corpus lingusitics British National Corpus, Sketch Engine

Site used for synchronic focus - 1980s and 1990s texts

Practical Applications of cyberpragmatics

Social/interpersonal communication Professional/Business Education: vast potential as an educational tool, can be a facilitator of literacy development, E-learning, Distance education - role of e-moderator, teaching and learning, communication between teacher and learner Development: access to information

Arbitrary

Some road signs such as 'roadwork ahead' are iconic, whereas others such as ' no parking' are more arbitrary.

Propositional Relations Tautology

Tautologies are: 'propositions which are necessarily true by virtue of their logical form' Also described as the saying of the same thing twice in different words. e.g. In my opinion, I think he is wrong.

Connoation

The attitudes and feelings associated with a word (deeper meaning)

Denotation

The dictionary definition of a word Similar to sense (both are context-independent)

Lexical ambiguity

The existence of multiple word meanings

Semiotics

The study of sign systems. A speaker or writer needs to convert a mental message to a form which can be thought of as a 'signal'. See table on lesson 1 (wont copy and paste)

Sense

The way words relate to each other within a language: it applies to words taken out of context (utterance/context-independent), as they are, for example, when they appear in a dictionary, e.g.: - shallow is the opposite of deep - colossal is another word for enormous, gigantic, huge

Homophones

These words have different spelling but the same pronunciation: (to)/two/too; flour/flower; tire/tyre

Homographs

These words have the same written forms only (i.e. same spelling, different pronunciation): wind; tear; bow

Speech acts

Things we do using language

Meronymy/Holonymy

This is a relationship for parts of a whole.

Reference

Utterance-bound Refers to meaning in context. Relationship between a word and a referent at the given context of utterance Context-dependent, largely variable

EMC Domains

Web Blogging/Vlogging Email Chatgroups IM EMC is better seen as written language which has been pulled away in some ways in the direction of speech than as spoken language which has been written down". Crystal 2010:415

Utterance

When a sentence is used in context The equivalent in written language can be referred to as a text. Can have several utterances for the same sentence (depending on context)

Linguistic Determinism

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think Language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought

CA and Semantic Primes

Wierzbicka (1996) claims there are a handful of words which are not only fundamental to any one language but are also universal

Collocation

Word co-occurrence. Not random/statistically significant co-occurrence Subconscious

Lexical Flexbility Vagueness

Words have flexibility of use depending on the given context of use (utterance). This is not to be confused with ambiguity (polysemy or homonymy). e.g. baby (until what age?) hill (how high?)

Lexical/content words

Words that have meaning (usually nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs)

Monosemy

Words that normally have only one meaning can be described as 'monosemic'.

Grammatical words

Words that serve a grammatical function rather than carry meaning (determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, modals, qualifiers, and question words)

Synonymy

Words with a similar sense are said to be synonymous. A many-to-one relationship.

Antonymy

Words with opposite meanings

Homonymy

Words with the same form (written and spoken), but with different meanings are called homonyms.

Contextual inferencing Idioms

You'll stick out like a sore thumb. That was bit below the belt. That's rubbing salt into the wound.

Locative expressions

e.g. 'The Guildhall is next door.'

Temporal deixis

e.g. now/then