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Morris “Foundations of the Theory of Signs” (1938) SEMIOTICS include : SYNTAX : Sign ↔ sign SEMANTICS : Sign<-> meaning PRAGMATICS: Sign ↔ users Explaining context is a very difficult task Inevitably , different pragmatic perspectives, schools or branches have appeared and they deal with one specific aspect of context. This multiplicity has generated a feeling of lack of unity within the pragmatic pradigm ALTERNATIVE LABELS FOR PRAGMATICS
1. A perspective (Reyes, 1990; Nuyts, 1992)
2. A number of approximations (Borutti, 1984)
3. A dimension (Eco, 1987)
4. A pre-paradigm (Alcaraz, 1990)
Chomsky was against pragmatics “pragmatic ideas are too elemental, vague and lacking explicative power” PRAGMATICS provides a general cognitive, social and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage, accounting for the dynamics of language and language use, as is reflected in the premise that meaning is not given but rather dynamic and negotiated in context. (Anita Fetzer)
UNIT 3 : THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT IN LANGUAGE USE
KEY WORD IN PRAGMATICS: CONTEXT
Goodwin & Duranti( 1992) Rethinking Context The methaphor of the boat, if we speak with a boat, the context is the sea. How the boat moves etc depends on the quality of the sea, if we change the sea the boat will be affected.
EX ; - Would you like some coffee? - Coffee would keep me awake
Context 1 Tom and Ann are students who are about to spend the whole night studying pragmatics. ( she's accepting it → she would love to have some coffee(since that would help her in her study)
Context 2 Tom and Ann are an old couple who are about to go to bed → Ann meand that see would not like to have coffee( since that would prevent her from sleeping)
Ex : - It's cold in her CONTEXT 1 : Tom and Ann are in the living room. Tom asks Ann whether she'd like to eat dinner in the living room or in the kitchen. What does Ann mean to communicate? Sentence meaning is different from speaker's meaning CONTEXT 2 : Ann and Tom are in the living room. What does Ann mean to communicate? Sentence meaning is different from speaker's meaning. GRIFFITHS (2006) The essential difference between sentences and utterances is that sentences are abstract, not tied to context, whereas utterances are identified by their contexts. This is also the main way of distinguishing between semantics and pragmatics. If you are dealing with meaning and there is no context to consider, then you are doing semantics, but if there is a context to be brought into consideration, then you are engaged in pragmatics. Pragmatics is interested in the role of context in communicating the speaker's meaning, and hence context plays a central role in pragmatic research. Why we need contextual information...
1. This is agood match ( you need context because there are polisemic words)
2. I decided to get married on Thursday
3. The talk was too long ( it depends on context, what is too long without a context?)
4. When Susan comes we'll leave (who is we? )
5. I've got nothing to wear. (not nothing only nothing appropiate)
6. It will take some time to fix your car ( longer that you would expect )
PRAGMATICS; language in contextual It does NOT analyze the meaning of words as in semantics, but the speaker's intended meaning of whole utterances. Context, intentions and shared knowledge are the keywords. Also cultural implications play an important role. A: I have a 14 year old son B: Well that's right A: I also have a dog B : Oh. I'm sorry It would be hard to catch it, unless you know that A, is trying to rent an apartment from B and B, does not accept pets. U.M. QUASTOFF (1998) “Context”, in Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics A good account of CONTEXT should answer at least the following question :
1. How do discourse participants decide which elements of physical or verbal
surroundings or mental knowledge are relevant for the production or interpretation of an utterance. In other words, what has become “contect” during a particular act of communication? TRADITIONAL VIEW OF CONTEXT IN PRAGMATICS
Besides, pragmatics aims at explaining how hearers choose which information they access and how (and why) they decide when to stop processing contextual information. IMPLICATIONS FOR OUR PICTURE OF UNDERSTANDING
1. Understanding an utterance involves considerably more that simply knowing the
language
2. The possible interpretations are determined, on the one hand, by the meaning of the
sentence uttered, and on the other by the available contextual information.
3. The hearer's task is to choose, from all the possible interpretations, the actual, intended
one
4. The task of an adequate pragmatic theory is to explain how people do that.
New Information-> Contextual Information -> Relevant conclusion Not linguistic example
- New information (visual input): A yellow Mercedes is parked near our department
- Contextual information: a. Professor smith, who supervises my thesis, owns a yellow Mercedes b. Professor Smith usually takes the bus to the university c. Only when he intends to stay at university till late in the evening does he drive his car to university (since there are no late buses returning to where he lives)
- (^) Relevant conclusion: This evening I will be able to discuss with him at length how my thesis is progressing. We do this every time, linguistically and not linguistically. We have to combine contextual information and new information to get a relevant conclusion or an interpretation. Linguistic Example
- New information (verbal information):
- Tom: So… Did you like the film you were going to see last night?
- Mary: John was also at the cinema
- Contextual information (encyclopedic information)
- Mary has just got divorced
- (^) Her husband is called John
- She and her husband can’t stand each other
- When they meet they argue a lot
- She gets depressed when she meets him
- Contextual implications
- Mary probably argued with John and got depressed
- Someone who argues doesn’t have a good time
- (^) She didn’t like going to the cinema UNIT 4: GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE Grice is very important. He wrote an article that is the most quoted article in the history of pragmatics. He is a philosopher, one of those people that were called “ordinary language philosophers”. He is one of the philosophers who worked into “LOGIC”. He thought language was not logic. Communication is not explainable in terms of logic. Logic cannot explain communication. Opposition between:
- Formal philosophers interested in:
- The sentence as a source of meaning
- Whether the meaning of a sentence can be deduced from its semantic content
- (^) Theorists of use (ordinary language philosophers) such as Grice and Wittgenstein
Grice’s main contributions to pragmatics:
- The role of intentionality (successful communication requires the identification of intentions). Example: “You’re going” – Asking, advising, informing, confirming and threatening.
- Communication as a cooperative task between interlocutors (who are regarded as rational beings). Grice in “Logic and conversation” (1975) Our talk exchanges are characteristically cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes a common purpose or at least a mutually accepted direction (Grice 1975: 45) Grice’s COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE “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” -> To be cooperative, people have to follow a number of MAXIMS.
- Conversation works – even when we don’t say what we mean
- Why it works so well fascinated philosopher Paul Grice. He wondered about conversations such as this:
- Jack: You’ve got a mountain to climb
- Lily: It’s better than a slap in the face
- (^) Grice wondered just how we make
3. APPROBATION MAXIM
4. MODESTY MAXIM
5. AGREEMENT MAXIM
6. SYMPATHY MAXIM
Ways in which maxims may not be followed
- INFRINGING A MAXIM The speaker fails because of imperfect linguistic performance (e.g. being a non-native speaker)
- OPTING OUT OF THE CP AND ITS MAXIMS Unwillingness to cooperate due to legal or ethical reasons (e.g. “I’m sorry but I promised not to say anything about this matter”)
- (^) FLOUTING A MAXIM (Flouting ->IMPLICATURES) Intention to communicate despite an apparent lack of cooperation (generates implicatures )
- VIOLATING A MAXIM Intention not to cooperate
SOME ISSUES AND CRITICISM
-Do we really need a cooperative principle (CP)? No, they think that we need a theory of communication -Does the CP explain communication? -Why four maxims? -Are they inter-culturally valid? -Does it account for explicit communication? -Do we really go through the tiring mental process that Grice suggested for the derivation of implicature? -Does Grice explain why an interpretation is selected? UNIT 5 – RELEVANCE THEORY Dan Sperber – French anthropoligist and Deirdre Wilson : English linguist. The book that contains the theory is RELEVANCE : COMMUNICATION AND COGNITION (1986, second revised edition : 1995)
Relevance theory is about pragmatics specially on the side cognitive pragmatics : interested in how is produced and interpretated language. Cyberpragmatics is a cognitive pragmatics rounded in relevance theory.
Pragmatics – Cognitive pragmatics – relevance theory – cyberpragmatics The best idea of relevance theory is that is a theory of language it also claims that all human cognition is relevant.
Human cognition → verbal communication → communication through other means (internet, ads)
For those writers communication is only a sophisticated wayof searching for relevance.
TYPICAL TASKS OF HUMAN COGNITION
- To filter the information from outside that does not seem to be interesting (worth the attention). Our cognition has specialized in selecting only what we suppose interesting. If we play attention to everything around us we would get mad.
- (^) To update the general picture of the world that we all have (but is different from person to person). Constantly learning and learning. Everybody has a single different picture of the world. There is a great deal of overlapping.
- To identify underlying intentions and attitudes in the activities of those who are near us.
- To combine the new information which arrives at the individual’s mind with the information already stored there.
- To select from context only the information which is relevant to obtain interesting conclusions. We have and ability to select from context only the information which is relevant for obtaining interesting conclusions. These general things are used in communication.
Main objective of relevance theory “to identify underlying mechanisms, rooted in human psychology, which explain how humans communicate with one another” (Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition , page 32)
AIMING AT THE HIGHEST RELEVANCE
- The task of the SPEAKER: To design his/her utterance (or nonverbal behavior) in such a way that the interpretations he/she intends is finally selected by the hearer. We have to choose what utterance is better to communicate what we want to communicate. SPEAKER’S THOUGHT:
- Possible devised utterance 1
- Possible devised utterance 2
(Interpretation b) They have split up (Interpretation c) They are now married This provides a picture of the speaker as communicating utterances with degrees of more or less likely interpretations, and the task of the hearer is to select the correct interpretation among all the possible interpretations of the same utterance in a specific context. BASIC IDEAS IN RELEVANCE THEORY a. Every utterance has a variety of possible interpretations, all compatible with the information that is linguistically encoded. “She’s no longer my girlfriend” has a number of possible interpretations (a-b-c), all of them compatible with this utterance and all of them are possible in the context in which it is uttered. b. Not all these interpretations occur to the hearer simultaneously; some of them take more effort to think up. Interpretation (b) takes less effort to arrive at than interpretation (a) and (c) because “splitting up” is the most typical reason why a woman stops being a man’s girlfriend c. Hearers are equipped with a single, general criterion for evaluating interpretations.
We are so fast at evaluating interpretations that we don’t even feel that there are alternative interpretations (a) and (c) when we select interpretation (b) as the most likely one.
d. (^) This criterion is powerful enough to exclude all but one single interpretation, so that having found an interpretation that fits the criterion, the hearer looks no further.
Once we select (b) as the most likely interpretation, we don’t consider the possibility that there might be other interpretations such as (a) and (c).
Information coming from physical context RELEVANCE MOST OF THE INFORMATION FROM THE PHYSICAL WORLD IS NOT INTERESTING… BUT SOME CALLS OUR ATTENTION a. (^) I am walking towards my house and I see smoke coming out of one of the windows. b. I am walking in the street and I see a man holding a gun.
c. I look at the sky and see many black clouds approaching. But I don’t have an umbrella. d. I am walking in the street and I suddenly see my girlfriend/boyfriend kissing another man/woman
Information coming from physical context Information already stored in our minds RELEVANCE Situation: [the bell in my house rings]
- Someone has rung the bell.
- The bell in my house has rung
- The person ringing is not a dwarf (he or she can reach the bell)
- There is no electricity cut.
- The electricity company has not gone bankrupt.
- (^) Nobody has stolen my ring.
- I’ve paid my last electricity bill. All the thoughts that are possible in a specific situation form the person’s COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENT Information coming from physical context Information already stored in our minds RELEVANCE Information “exuded” by other people Information communicated intentionally If we are satisfied with an interpretation we stop, if we don't we follow. The more context we access the more effort we use. The human mind is selfish because we do not want to spend effort without a reward. Putting more context is demanding. A: Fancy a whisky? A: Fancy a whisky? B : No, thanks B: I am a Muslim Little effort More effort : (A has to retrieve from context the information that Muslims do not drink alcohol, in order to get the implicature that B does not want whisky) Little satisfactory answer More satisfactory answer(more relevant answer) (B simply rejects the whisky) (B rejects the whisky and, at the same time, tells A the reason why he does not want it) (dibujo)
WE NEED CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION TO DETERMINE THE INTENDED EXPLICIT
INTERPRETATION OF AN UTTERANCE
He has taken enough from her. Expressing : Jim has endured enough abusive treatment from Mary I've eating. Expressing : I've eating dinner tonight Your knee will take time to heal. Expressing: Your knee will take a substantial amount of time to heal The water is boiling. Expressing : The water is very hot ( not necessarily strictly at boiling point) WE NEED CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION TO DETERMINE THE INTENDED IMPLICIT OR IMPLICATED INTERPRETATION OF AN UTTERANCE
x : We need your written report now y : I've been very busy recently. Implicating : I haven't written the report yet
x: Nice cat! Is it male or female? Y: It's three-coloured Implicating : The cat is female x: Are you going to the part on Saturday? Y: My parents are away this weekend Implicating: I can't go because when my parents are away it's me that has to lok after our grand- mother Tom: Shall we go to a pub for a drink? Ann: I've got a ton of exams to mark Intended explicit content : Ann has a lot of examinations to mark Intended implicit content : Ann can't go to a pub for drink. Intended context: Background knowledge : “Someone who has a lot of exams to mark does not normally want to go to a pub” Tom : So...Did you have a good time with me tonight? Ann: Tom...You are the sunshine of my life! Intended explicit content : None Intended implicit content : You are the only person who cheers me up, who stops my life from being dull, who puts joy in my life. Intended context: Background knowledge: Mental search fro those qualities of “sunshine” which can be applied, in a metaphoric way, to Tom regarding his relationship with Ann.
Tom : Do you like your steak? Ann: It's raw!
Intended explicit content : The steak Ann is having is undercooked Intended implicit content : Ann does not like the steak Intended context: Background knowledge: “Someone who is served an undercooked steak, does not usually like the steak”
COMPREHENSION
(GUIDED BY A CRITERION OF RELEVANCE)
THE MODULARITY OF MIND (Fodor)
Language module apprehends a grammatical sequence
Identification of the logical form of the utterance (NO CONTEXT
Inferential PRAGMATIC ENRICHMEN T (CONTEXT IS
Reference assignment Disambiguatio n Free
PROPOSITIO
N
EXPRESSED
BY THE
UTTERANCE
EXPLICIT
CONTENT
EXPLICATUR
E
IMPLICIT
CONTENT
IMPLICATUR
E
CENTRAL
PROCESSOR
[BRAIN]
LANGUAGE
MODULE
Only processes linguistic inputs (only
PERCEPTUA
L MODULE
Only processes visual inputs (only activated
C. She was feeding the birds in the square. (Pigeons)
- (^) Red hair, red car, red apple, red tomato, red eyes, etc. (Understood to denote different shaed of red covering different aspects of an object)
- Cut the grass, cut my hair, cut the cake, etc. (Understood to denote different manners of cutting involving different instruments)
EXAMPLES OF “CONCEPTUAL BROADENING”
- I was born with a square mark on my foot.
- Antonio’s bedroom is a dump.
- We entered a pub, but we left since it was empty.
- Peter is a magician. He has prepared a delicious meal almost with no ingredients.
- (^) I’ve got a thousand things to do this morning.
- Don’t worry. I’ll be ready in two minutes.
- This steak is raw. EXAMPLES OF “CONCEPTUAL NARROWING”
- Everybody got drunk.
- I’ve got nothing to wear for the party.
- Maria has a brain.
In certain contexts what the speaker intends to communicate
A WORD
UTTERED
BY A
SPEAKER IN
A CONTEXT
In certain contexts what the speaker intends to communicate
- The cinema is some distance from here.
- The boy has a temperature.
- (^) It will take some time to fix this car.
- Antonio drinks too much. A BROADER CONCEPT THAN THE ONE LEXICALIZED. She refers to a referent, her daughter, who is not a princess, and therefore the concept [princess] is broader since it also includes women who are not princesses but are pretty, charming, etc.
I am delighted with my daughter. She is a princess
A NARROWER CONCEPT THAN THE ONE LEXICALIZED. She refers to a referent, her daughter, who is narrower than the lexical concept of princess, since the concept [princess] only convers a sub-group of princesses: those who are pretty, charming, etc.
[ Juan told Sara not to take the umbrella to the restaurant because he was sure it was not going to rain. However, when leaving the restaurant it’s pouring down ]. Sara: Don’t take the umbrella because I am sure that it is not going to rain. CONTEXTUAL SOURCE E: Speaker’s nonverbal communication, either vocal (tone, intonation…) or visual (smile, gestures, wink…) Ross: [ To Rachel ] Anyway, if you don’t feel like being alone tonight, Joey and Chandler are coming over to help me put together with my new furniture. Chandler: [ smiling, with a clear ironic tone of voice ] Yes, and we’re veeery excited about it! ( Friends , season 1, episode 1) CONTEXTUAL SOURCE F: Lexical or grammatical choices by the speaker which work as linguistic cues about the speaker’s ironic intention. [ Tomás sees that his wife is trying to put a vase on a shelf and offers to help her. When he tries to put the vase there he drops it and it breaks into thousands of pieces ] Wife: A NIVE FAVOUR you’ve done me!!! [Joe has been a close friend of Jim’s. Nevertheless, Joe betrayed some secrets to a business rival]. “Joe is a fine friend”.
- Facial expressions must be controlled when inappropriate to the setting (yawning during a presentation).
- Paralanguage All those non-verbal cues to be found in a speaker’s voice (intonation, tone of voice, pitch…).
- Proxemics The study of the use of personal space. Hall (1968) classified space on the basis of how that space is used in interactions; he proposed the categories public, social, personal and intimate.
- (^) Haptics The study of touching behaviour. Whether it be a physician’s touch in the examination room, a lover’s soft caress, or the town bully’s malevolent battery, touch intimates certain details about the nature of the relationship.
- Environmental details The appearance of one’s surroundings provides contextual cues for the interactions therein as well as the potential for personality attributions of one sort or another on the person or persons responsible for that appearance. Details of spatial organization, size and volume of space, arrangement and selection of objects, lighting, colour, temperature, and noise all have discernible effects on nonverbal behaviour.
- Chronemics Chronemics, or the study of the use and perception of time, is another nonverbal communicative phenomena that varies widely across cultures. Being punctual is held in high regard in many cultures, and to keep someone waiting can be seen as a personal insult.
General intercultural problems concerning NVC (Poyatos 1994)
- The realization of the nonverbal behaviour is different in both cultures.
- (^) The nonverbal behaviour is typical of one culture and does not exist in other culture.
- The nonverbal behaviour is the same in both cultures but the meaning ascribed to it is different in each culture
- The nonverbal behaviour is the same in both cultures but it has more variants and extended meanings in one culture than in the other.
-MOST COMMON FORMS OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
METAPHOR
Ideas from different domains are either explicitly, in the case of simile (e.g., “My love is like a red, red rose”), or implicitly compared (e.g., “Our marriage is a roller-coaster ride”). METONYMY A salient part of a single knowledge domain is used to represent or stand for the entire domain (e.g., “The White House issued a statement”). IDIOMS A speaker’s meaning cannot be derived from an analysis of the word’s typical meanings (e.g., “John let the cat out of the bag about Mary’s divorce”). PROVERBES Speakers express widely held moral beliefs or social norms (e.g., “The early bird captures the worm”). IRONY A speaker’s meaning is usually, but not always, the opposite of what is said (e.g., “What lovely weather we’re having” stated in the midst of a rainstorm). HYPERBOLE A speaker exaggerates the reality of some situation (e.g., “I have ten thousand papers to grade by the morning”). UNDERSTATEMENT A speaker says less than is actually the case (e.g., “John seems a bit tipsy” when John is clearly very drunk). OXYMORON Two contradictory ideas/concepts are fused together (e.g., “When parting is such sweet sorrow”) INDIRECT REQUESTS Speakers make requests of other in indirect ways by asking questions (e.g., “Can you pass the salt?”), or stating a simple fact (e.g., “It seems cold in here” meaning “Go close the window”). -SOME ISSUES CONCERNING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
