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UNIT 1
INTRODUCTION TO PRAGMATICS
For the development of this Subject, we will follow the book by George Yule, Pragmatics (OUP, 1996) , although explanations and examples will be brought from authors such as Beaugrande, Leech, Levinson, and others in the bibliography.
1. The domain of pragmatics 2. Why do we need pragmatics? 3. The pragmatics wastebasket 4. The communicative principle 5. Defining pragmatics 6. Areas of study 1. The domain of pragmatics
We are studying linguistic pragmatics. This is a dimension of a more general semiotic investigation, which includes non-verbal systems such as pragmatic approaches to the theatre, painting, sculpture, cinema, etc.
Linguistic pragmatics studies people’s use of language, a form of behaviour or social action. Thus the dimension which the pragmatic perspective is intended to give insight into is the link between language and human life in general. Hence, pragmatics is also the link between linguistics and the rest of the humanities and social sciences. Pragmatics has been given the task of trying to solve many problems connected to areas such as ethnomethodology (conversation); philosophy (argumentation); applied linguistics (in the field of education); computer software and design; anthropology; ethnography; psychiatry and psychology; rhetoric; media sciences; educational sciences, and so on. But what distinguishes pragmatics from other disciplines is that it places its focus on the language users and their conditions of language use.
Most definitions of pragmatics have been inspired by Charles Morris ’s famous definition of pragmatics as ‘the study of the relation of signs to interpreters’ in 1938, following earlier work by Charles S. Peirce. In Morris’s words, ‘ syntax studies the relationship of signs to other signs’; and semantics deals with ‘the relations of signs to the objects to which signs are applicable’.
Names related to pragmatics are Ockham and Locke. Forerunners of pragma- linguistics are not only Peirce and Morris but also Mead, the Vienna Circle, the philosophy of the current language, Wittgenstein, Apel, Habermas, Klaus, the symbolic interactionism, Austin, Ryle, Grice, and Searle. And, in the most abstract classical definitions of signification, from Aristotle to Agustin and Roger Bacon there are pragmatic elements.
One could image that the proper domain of pragmatics would be what Chomsky has called performance , that is, the way the individual user went about using his or her language in everyday life. The practice of performance would then be defined in contrast to the user’s abstract competence , understood as his or her knowledge of the language and its rules (described in a generative-transformational grammar). Nowadays
the pragmatic component is seen by many linguists as a necessary component of an adequate theory of linguistic competence.
This is the traditional distinction to contrast pragmatics with syntax and semantics: Syntax studies how words are arranged in sequences. No interest in any world of reference or any user of the forms. Semantics studies how words connect to things. It is concerned with truth. Lexical and sentence semantics are distinguished. Pragmatics is the study of the relationship between linguistic forms and the users. It is about how people make sense of each other linguistically.
2. Why do we need pragmatics?
Pragmatics is needed if we want a fuller, deeper and generally more reasonable account of human language behaviour. (1) A. I just met the old Irishman and his son, coming out of the toilet. B. I wouldn´t have thought there was room for the two of them. A. No, silly, I mean I was coming out of the toilet. They were waiting.
Linguists say that the first sentence is ambiguous. In real language uses, ambiguity exists only in the abstract (with exceptions).
(2) Also ambiguous are: Flying planes can be dangerous The missionaries are ready to eat The policeman stopped drinking by midnight
3. The pragmatics wastebasket
In the late fifties and early sixties, the emphasis was on formal reasoning and abstract symbolism; linguistics was thought of as an algebra of language. They tried to apply mathematical methods to phenomena of daily life. Chomsky , is his earliest attempts, separated the syntax from the semantics, the content of the language. Language could be described on the syntactic level, without the level of meaning, just as algebraic formulas. His famous example (1957):
(3) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Syntactically correct, but semantically nonsense. For syntacticians, meaning considerations were left in the semantics ‘waste-basket’.
Chomsky later on said that words could be assigned certain traits, called ‘selection features’, that would guide their possible coexistence with other words. But semantics remained an abstract, descriptive science; its favourite concern was the conditions under which a sentence was true or false, although semanticists were not interested in that e.g. certain parts of a sentence remain true, regardless of whether the entire sentence is true or false: (4a) Jones regretted that he had to pay alimony to Bessie (4b) Jones did not regret that he had to pay alimony to Bessie
- More gets communicated than is said. Listeners can make inferences.
- The expression of relative distance. Physical, social, or conceptual closeness implies shared experience.
PRAGMATICS
speaker users’s meaning listener
context inferences distance
a) The importance of the context
Typically, in any communicative act, there are three sorts of context to observe: The situational, the background knowledge, and the co-textual.
The situational context is the immediate physical co-presence, the situation where the interaction is taking place at the moment of speaking.
The background knowledge context is that of assumed background knowledge, which can be cultural general knowledge and shared interpersonal knowledge, acquired through previous verbal interaction or joint activities and experiences, and it includes privileged personal knowledge about the interlocutor.
The co-text is the context of the text itself. Grammatical (reference, substitution and ellipsis) and lexical cohesion hold texts together. The most important kind of grammatical cohesion is reference , which is the act of using referring expression to refer to referents in the context. Lexical cohesion is realized through collocations, repetitions, synonyms, antonyms, etc.
In contrast to strictly grammatical or syntactic thinking, pragmatic thinking is context-bound. No matter how natural our language facilities or how convention-bound their use, as language users we always operate in contexts.
The paradox of pragmatics is that language users must employ conventional, linguistic means to express what cannot be expressed directly, by means of natural signs. The invisible working of the mind, the intentions of the speaker and hearers cannot be immediately expressed, in a ‘natural’ way, but must be coded in ‘non-natural’ carriers. The paradox is solved by the fact that those carriers themselves (the ‘media’, in the proper sense of the word) are being ‘conventionalized’ through use. Language is developed socially , its use is governed by society rather than by individual speakers.
Only the pragmatics of the situation gives meaning to one’s words. Thus, one and the same utterance can obtain completely different, even diametrically opposed effects; well-known phenomena such as irony, sarcasm, metaphor, hyperbole and so on show us the richness and diversity of the life behind the linguistic scene. In the following example, what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated:
(7) It’s a long time since we visited your mother
The meaning of this utterance changes when it is said at a coffee table or while standing in front of the hippopotamus enclosure at the local zoo.
(8) Telephone conversation:
A. So can you please come over here again right now? B. Well, I have to go to Edinburgh today, sir A. Hmm. How about this Thursday? For this conversation to make sense we must take into account many conditions, presuppositions, implicatures and other factual and contextual circumstances: this Thursday; the place: they are not in Edinburgh; A is giving orders. All these ‘facts’ (spatial, temporal and social relationships) are dealt with not on their ‘face value’, as ‘bare facts’, but as elements determining, and being part or, a pragmatic context. Facts are not part of the semantic content. They imply contextual assumptions. [An implicature is something which is implied in conversation, that is, something that is left implicit in actual language use.]
Some researches: Malinowski, Firth and M. Halliday
- Malinowski:
Malinowski in 1946, studying primitive cultures, made an enormous contribution in identifying the fundamental semantic roles of the contexts (he differentiated between the pragmatic function and the magical function; he described some uses of language in conversation as 'phatic communion'). Malinowski coined the terms “ Context of situation ” (1923) and “ Context of culture ”: Both terms are necessary for a full understanding of texts. He needed more than the immediate context and added information about the total
cultural background: history of fishing, traditions, significance in the culture; ritual or practical, etc.
South Pacific Islands: Kiriwinian language. Very different culture from the Western World: they lived mainly by fishing and gardening.
He wanted to expound his ideas about that culture to English people. In his texts, he adopted various methods:
Free translation (intelligible)
Literal translation (unintelligible)
Then he added commentaries : placing the text in its living environment: THE FISHING CONTEXT. Not linguistic but which included the total environment: verbal and situational. He describes the fishing expedition: the return of the canoes, the interaction with each other while arriving at the shore, and so on.
TENOR MODE
In the context of situation, the register variables or diatypes are:
field: what is going on in the text.
tenor: the social role relationships played by interactants.
mode: the role language is playing
The Field of a text is ‘what is going on’, ‘what the text is about’. It has to do with the focus of
the activity in which we are engaged. The topic of the situation may be ‘football, sex, a game of cards’, etc. Time and place are important factors.
The Tenor is the social role relationships played by interactants. It refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the (communicative) participants, their statuses and roles : ‘student/lecturer’, ‘customer/salesperson’, ‘friend/friend’, etc. Role relationships can be seen as a complex of three simultaneous dimensions (with continua from informal to formal situations):
DIMENSIONS CONTINUA
a) power equal ------------ unequal
b) contact frequent -------- occasional
c) affective involvementhigh ------------- low
The Mode is the role language is playing in the interaction. It deals with the channelling of communication, and thus with the texturing of information flow from one modality of communication to another: ‘speech, writing, phone, SMS messages, e-mail, web pages, letters, radio, CD, television, film, video, DVD’, etc. The mode also says something about what the text achieves in terms persuasive, expository, and didactic categories, and the like.
b) Distance (Yule, Deixis and distance, chapter 2)
The interpretation of deictic expressions depends on the context , the speaker’s intentions, and they express relative distance. They communicate much more than is said.
Deixis means ‘pointing’ via language. The Deictic is that linguistic form that relates to the HERE AND NOW , linking the thing referred to to its verbal and situational context. We distinguish the following types of deictic expressions:
a) nominal (personal pronouns, possessives, and demonstratives) b) spatial (here, there) c) temporal (now, then, yesterday, tomorrow, today...)
c) Inference in action (Yule, Reference and inference, chapter 3)
Since there is no direct relationship between entities and words, the listener’s task is to infer correctly which entity the speaker intends to identify by using a particular referring expression.
Reference is an act in which we use linguistic forms to enable the listener to identify something.
The immediate recognition of a referent represents something shared, something in common, and hence social closeness. Linguistic forms, or referring expressions are proper nouns, noun phrases and pronouns. Reference is necessarily a collaborative work and the choice of referring expressions is based on what the speaker assumes the listener already knows: (9) Mr. Aftershave is late today
Endophoric Reference : Making sense of the following example requires an inference to make an anaphoric connection. This inference depends on assumed knowledge:
(10) We had Chardonnay with dinner. The wine was the best part
The interpretation of the referring expressions is aided by the linguistic material, or co-text, accompanying them, as in (11) ‘Spain won the World Cup’ (see ‘co-text’ above). The physical environment, or context (see ‘context’ above), is perhaps more easily recognized as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions are to be interpreted. For example, this utterance said in the context of a hotel reception: (12) ‘A couple of rooms have complained about the heat’.
6. Main areas of pragmatics that we are going to study 1. Prior knowledge 2. Presuppositions 4. Speech acts 5. Politeness 3. Conversation implicatures 6. Conversation structure
