Scarica Pragmatics: Context, Meaning, and Communication - Prof. Zurru e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!
Pragmatics Pragmatics is a discipline that takes into consideration the relationship between context, meaning and language. Pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the exchange. What is context? Context is a dimension that turns language from a code into a means of communication. It allows the speaker to reduce in explicitness their utterances. Thanks to it the speaker can be implicit, the hearer will be able to understand the implied meaning. Context is made up by the co-text (only part that contains linguistic information), knowledge of the world (knowledge of how things go in the world) and situational context (the situation in which the interaction takes place). What is co-text? Co-text is a dimension of the context. It’s the only dimension that is related to the linguistic elements (while KOW and situational context are made up by non-linguistic elements). The co-text is everything that it’s being said and a change in it can change the entire communicative exchange and the intended meaning of utterances. What is KOW? The knowledge of the world is one of the three dimensions of context (the other two are co-text and situational context). It’s made up by non-verbal/non-linguistic elements. KOW refers to our knowledge of how things usually go in the world. It’s divided in two categories: Cultural (it’s open access knowledge that we share with our community, can be acquired through school and music) and interpersonal (we acquire it through conversations with other people, it can include knowledge about the interlocutor. What is the situational context? The situational context is the situation taking place around the conversation and includes non-verbal, verbal and extralinguistic information. It’s made up by different variables, the most important ones are topic (it may affect grammar and style), setting (time, both referred as synchronic and diachronic, place in which the conversation is taking place), participants (every individual brings their personal identity into the conversation), medium (written, spoken, written to be spoken, etc.), and text-type (email, SMS, political speech, oral exam). What is the relationship between context and meaning-making? Context and meaning-making are strictly connected for three reasons: utterances in isolation from a context have many potentials (an utterance can mean the opposite of its prepositional meaning outside context, like with banter and irony), humans tend to reduce in explicitness (it’s crucial to reduce the meaning potential so the hearer will be able to get the implied meaning), the context influences the way we communicate allowing us to know what is appropriate to say and how to say it. What is the difference between linguistic and communicative competence? Hymes argued that the linguistic competence is the knowledge of a language as a formal system, namely knowing the rules of grammar (phonology, syntax, semantics and morphology), for example the knowledge of Latin acquired in Italian high schools. The communicative competence both includes the linguistic competence and the rules of use, how to communicate, knowing what is appropriate to say and what is not and sharing information in an appropriate way. Communicative competence is strictly related to the knowledge of the culture. What is deixis? Deixis describes our position in the world through linguistic elements. It allows the speaker to reduce in explicitness, but to understand what it’s being referred to is crucial sharing the same situational context and background knowledge. The main types of deixis are personal (I, you), time (now, later), spatial (here,
there), psychological use of spatial (to describe something that is close or far away from the speaker in an emotional way), discourse deixis (I bet you didn’t here ‘this’ story). Coherence and cohesion These two elements are linked to the co-text. A text has to show both coherence (namely it has to show thematic and logical progression, a topic needs to be developed logically within a text) and cohesion (namely the correct lexical and grammatical connections between different sentences of the same text). There are two types of cohesion and they are used to create the structural unity of a text: grammatical (reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction) and lexical (repetition and lexical reiteration). Substitution Substitution is a grammatical cohesive device used by speakers to avoid useless repetitions. The main substitutes are auxiliar verbs (do, can, etc.) and words like “so”, “one”. A: Do you have an Apple device? B: No, I don’t have one, but I wish I did. Instead of saying: No, I don’t have an Apple device, but I wish I had an Apple device. Ellipsis Ellipsis is a grammatic cohesive device that is used to avoid useless repetition. Speakers will consider the co-text enough for the hearer to retrieve the missing piece. When repetition is used instead of ellipsis usually an implied meaning is created: Mark cleaned the dishes and the table. Repeating “and Mark cleaned the table” would underline that is Mark doing those things while other people are not doing anything. Exophora and Endophora They two are types of references. Exophora refers to elements outside the text, mentioned for the first time. It’s also known as intertextuality and can be cultural, so it refers to something that is shared by a community, or interpersonal, namely it includes knowledge of the other interlocutor and shared knowledge in the KOW of the speakers. Endophora refers to items within the same text. It’s called cataphora when the reference is right-dislocated and anaphora when it’s left-dislocated. Dimension of lexical meaning Lexical meaning in a conversation has more dimensions, its meaning can be renegotiated in context by participants. The dimensions of lexical meanings are: Denotation: namely the dictionary definition of a word. Connotation: cultural/social connotations that go with the denotational meaning (grey day). Collocation :words have a collocational range (make a promise, not do a promise). It’s related to the concept of expectations. Idiomatic expressions: idioms are fixed expressions which exploit the connotation of a word. They have to be contextualized to be understood. Semantic field: Words can be grouped together based on their denotation, connotation, collocation and their idiomatic meaning shared. Use of synonyms, antonyms, hyponymy and hypernyms are strategies to create semantic fields. Value-free VS value-loaded words Value-free words are words that don’t pass judgements. Co-text and semantic fields turn value-free into value-loaded words and they can both bring negative or positive connotations. However, some words have a negative connotation even outside a specific context. The word “war” has a negative connotation but putting it in a context can turn it into a positive one, like in the example “War on cancer”. Value free words can be turned into value-loaded words through associative endophora.
People must have the right intentions: athletes that want to play volleyball and a trainer that wants to train. Searle conditions Searle, following Austin’s speech act theory, stipulated 3 conditions to have a felicitous exchange. Preparatory conditions: prepare the ground for the conversation to take place, if they’re not fulfilled (if the speaker doesn’t have authority or if the action is not performable), the act is null. Essential conditions: constitute the basis to have a certain speech act, for example the knowledge of the same language. Sincerity conditions: related to the interactant’s intents, they must have the intention to be truthful. 1-In a felicitous/successful exchange, the speaker will be able to employ indirect speech acts and the hearer will understand the implied illocutionary force of utterances, so that they can perform the intended perlocutionary effect. 2-Only those utterances which have a right to be performed (they can be performed) will see their intended perlocutionary effect fulfilled. Felicity/preparatory/essential/sincerity conditions are related to background knowledge and have non- linguistic, communicative significance; they can be relied on to grasp the intended meaning of an utterances. Social and cultural dimension of speech acts The use of speech acts varies according to social factors and it’s cultural bounded. In many cultures indirectness is a sign of politeness. The use of certain words like “Could” and “please” rule out the possibility of an utterance to be direct, because the grammatical function and the communicative intent don’t overlap. Indirectness is used in social situation to keep a certain distance and formality and it’s also used by people who have authority. Culture is part of the encyclopaedic background knowledge, so different cultures have different ways to encode reality. The illocutionary force of an utterance can have very different intended meanings based on the cultural dimension. The utterance “How fat you are!” is considered a praise in the Indian culture, while it’s disrespectful and offensive in the Italian one. That’s why to have a good communicative competence is crucial to know about the culture, to identify what’s proper to say and what’s not. Conversation Analysis (how can we define a communicative exchange as a conversation?) Conversation has been defined as a process of negotiation and cooperation between interactants. Through the analysis of different conversations, Cook established how to distinguish a stretch of talk from a conversation. The latter one, to be defined as so, needs certain features. 1-It’s not necessitated by a practical task, 2-unequal relationships are suspended, 3-the number of participants is small, 4-turns are short, 5-talk is not for an audience. Therefore, a university lecture can’t be considered as a conversation. Conversation Analysis (general findings) Conversation analysis allowed Cook to recognize some general features that usually occur during a conversation. We can distinguish turn-taking, namely how the speakers manage their turn in conversation (different cultures have different ways to deal with how to hold the floor, when to start talking and till which degree is fine to overlap). Transition relevance place is the moment in which a change in the speaker occurs, if not managed properly interruptions(occur on purpose) and overlaps(occur by mistake) take place. Adjacency pairs Adjacency pairs are frequently occurring pairs of utterances, related to the concept of expectations. The adjacency pairs are greeting-greeting, question-answer, goodbye-goodbye. A disruption of a pair creates an implied meaning. For example, not respecting the structure question-answer can lead to the conclusion
that the interlocutor is eluding the question replying with another question (the only exception is an insertion sequence in which the interlocutor replies with another question to gather more information before being able to answer). Transactional and interactional speech acts. Brown and Yule classify two macro-functions of talk: transactional and interactional. The first one refers to the transmission of factual information(asking for directions on the street). Interactional refers to the human need to maintain social cohesion,to leave the channel of communication open(talking about the weather at the bus stop). The extreme pole is phatic communion, namely opening the channel of conversation only to socialize, no other purpose. Most of the conversations are a mixture of the two functions. Sequences The sequences that frequently occur in conversation are: Pre-sequences: they prepare the ground for a following sequence. They’re a politeness strategy and usually they’re interactional. An example is pre-invitations. Insertion sequence: sequence that is used to gather more information or as a time-filler before replying to a question. They can be both interactional and transactional. Opening and closing sequence: they’re interactional, they’re used to open/close a conversation. No new information is added, they make sure the conversation has a positive development/end. The Cooperative principle Grice argued that people in social situations tend to cooperate during a conversation unless they have a reason to not do it. To be cooperative interactants must follow 4 maxims: Quantity: be as informative as it’s required Quality: don’t say what you believe to be false. Relevance:Be relevant. Manner:Avoid obscurity and ambiguity. Maxims can be floated(speaker decides not follow the maxim, they expect the hearer to decode the implied meaning) or violated(speaker lies and doesn’t want the hearer to know). What does Grice mean when he talks about conventional implicatures? A conventional implicature is a type of implied meaning that is created with certain linguistic elements. They create an automatic meaning at the pragmatic level. An example is the use of "and” and “but”: “She’s poor and happy” create the conventional implicature that she’s happy because she’s poor; “she’s poor but happy” instead create the conventional implicature that she’s happy despite the fact she’s poor. A single word can create subtle nuances of meanings which are conveyed implicitly. What does Grice mean when he talks about non-conventional implicatures? Non-conventional implicatures are conversational implicatures created by utterances in a specific context, they’re not attached to specific linguistic elements. To be defined as conversational implicatures they need to have certain features: Calculability: they must be universally calculable. Context-dependence: they’re meaning depends on the context and can’t be intended without it. Non-detachability: changing the linguistic shape of the utterance the implied meaning can still be the same. Cancellability: they can be cancelled by adding new information, without creating ambiguities. Other types of implicatures. The standard implicature is the use of an indirect speech act for no particular reason except for considering the situational context and the background knowledge enough for the hearer to retrieve the implied meaning. (A man falls on the street and gets a cut)
B can still cancel the conversational implicature of her utterance(“She’s seeing someone in NY”). If B’s answer was “No, she’s not single anymore”, cancelling it would create anomalies. Cancellability differentiate conversational implicatures from other intended meanings, namely entailments and conventional implicatures, because the other two can’t be nullified without creating anomalies. Non-detachability: Conversational implicatures are tied to the meaning not to the form. This means that even if we change the shape of the utterance, but the intended meaning is the same, the meaning won’t change. Examples: A:Have you cleaned the table and washed the dishes? B:I’ve cleaned the table. This implies that B hasn’t washed the dishes. If B had answered “I’ve taken everything off the table” the conversational implicature would still be the exact same: B hasn’t washed the dishes. Violate the maxims When speakers violate the maxims they deliberately decide to not cooperate, without signalling it to the hearer, that can be deceived. An example is in the case of a black lie: A: Where’s Carl? B: Carl is at his family house. If Carl is not there, and B knows, B is violating the maxim of quality, he’s lying to cover Carl. Although not all violations are blameworthy, like in the case of white lies (telling children that Santa Claus exists). Opting-out the maxims Speakers opt-out the cooperative principle when they’re unable to cooperate, not because they don’t want to but because they can’t. When opting-out, the speaker makes it clear to the hearer with utterances like “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question” (while with violating a maxim the aim of the speaker is to deceive the hearer). This happens for example with doctors that are not allowed to spread personal information of their patients, so they can’t cooperate because of external reasons. Clash maxims Maxims in certain situations can clash together. A speaker is forced to break one to respect another. A:Where is Carl? B:He’s out. A:Out where? B:Somewhere In the example, the maxim of manner (avoid ambiguity) clashes with the maxim of quality (say what you believe to be true). B decides to not lie to A, so he must make the two maxims mentioned clash. No maxim was violated in the example because B wasn’t trying to deceive A. Sperber and Wilson Relevance Theory Sperber and Wilson as a response to Grice’s Cooperation Principle stipulated the Relevance theory. They took into consideration 1 of the 4 maxims, relevance, and they revolved the entire theory around it. They argued that the degree of Relevance depends on: Contextual effects: if what is being said add new information or strengthen/weaken an old assumption is considered relevant. Processing effort: contextual effects cost mental efforts. The higher the processing effort is, the less relevant the information will be. The explicature is the process of reconstructing the missing links between what is said and what is implicated. Relevance, in their theory, has different degrees: high, medium and non-existing relevance. Politness (Leech) Linguistic strategies that speakers use to show a positive attitude towards the hearers, the aim is to maintain good social relations. He explained that people flout the maxims of the CI for politeness’ sake. The Tact Maxim: minimize cost to other, maximize benefit to other.
The Generosity Maxim: minimize benefit to self, maximize cost to self. The Approbation Maxim: minimize dispraise of other, maximize praise of other. The Modesty Maxim: minimize praise of self, maximize dispraise of self. The Agreement Maxim: minimize disagreement between self and other, maximize agreement The Sympathy Maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other, maximize sympathy. The general principle states that you should minimize the impolite beliefs and maximize polite beliefs. Face Threatening Acts (Brown and Levinson) Their theory revolves around the concept of face, in order to socialize correctly interlocutors must show awareness of people’s face (namely their public self-image). Communication aims at saving face, so we avoid performing Face Threatening acts (acts that threaten the hearer’s positive or negative face). Positive face is our desire to be treated with respect and to be accepted in a group. Negative face is our desire from people to respect our boundaries and freedom (so not being imposed to do something). They laid down a polite-impolite scale, showing what is most polite and what is most impolite to do. The most polite is “don’t do the FTAs”. If we need to do that, we have two choices: “off-record” and “on- record". When you do an FTA off-record you do it indirectly, so you allow people to pretend to not have understood your illocutionary force, even if you are flouting the maxim of quantity in the meantime. This will save both the speaker and hearer’s face. When you do an FTA on-record with redress the focus is on paying attention to the hearer’s positive face, creating closeness and solidarity, appealing to friendship. To do that, speakers make references to shared knowledge, expressing sympathy and approval, politically correct language and pseudo-agreements. When you do an FTA on-record without redress it’s being very impolite because you’re using an imperative without any mitigation, a very direct speech act. “Shut the door”, “Come with me to the post office”, they sound like an imposition, and they threaten the negative face of the hearer. They have to do what the speaker asked if they don’t want to lose face. They can be oriented to save the hearer’s face sometimes, when they don’t show grammatical performativity, so the benefit is for the hearer, the imposition is small and pleasant. It’s syntactically an imperative, but not communicatively (“Take a biscuit!”).
