Scarica Pragmatics critical discourse analysis e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!
Pragmatics, saltare la parte riguardo ai corpora
Introduzione al corso
La cultura è l’insieme di ciò che diamo per scontato, il nostro modo di interpretare le cose. All’interno della cultura vi è l’ideologia ovvero l’insieme di idee che decidiamo di condividere riguardo a cosa è giusto e cosa è sbagliato.
First things first
Linguistic and social behaviors are based on commonalities, regularities, routines, which are shared, recognizable (subconsciously), accepted by members of a given community. They are so easy recognizable that by observing the way people talk or believe, we recognize the mas representative of a given culture, we understand their provenience by their expression. Being aware of what belongs to a specific culture to a given context is called the ethnographic dazzle, it means a good impression, the interpretation through which we see the other person. The idea of recognizability is lead to the idea of stereotype, an idea of generalazation. The overail of it is so strong that instances of deviation from it are considered as eccentricities. We consider things as possible but uncommon, abnormal but the stereotype stays the same. we distinguish what is part of the stereotype and what not is included in the notion of culture.
What is culture?
Our concept of culture is what is actually called High culture that is something you can learn because is something that is taught relevant to a restricted body of knowledge (literature, arts, folkore, music, artefacts etc) usually related to a very specific portion of time. Everyday culture progress thanks to people activity that are worthwhile investigated and studied. Culture is a shared system of beliefs, values, customers, ways of life, what goes on without being said, explained.
Some examples of culture:
Property and how to respect it
Marriage
Taboos
Trials
Religion
Poor\Rich
Initiation celebration for young men Female adornments Courtship practices (the more you like a person the more you show respect in italian culture, in United States for example the invitation is the first step) What is appopriate for women and for men, now the bounderies are less strict Adulteries, passional homicides, homosexuality, suicide, psychosis, deseases that were not recognized. The idea of culture has rule-making characteristics, is implicit in all sorts of human of conceptualizing reality (civilization, roles, relationship, practices, products).
- Screaming in public places, it is considered bad, why? we don’t know
- Rain: is it positive or negative? It’s how our perception goes
- Eating meat: is it good or not?
- 2 o’ clock in the morning: is it early or late?
- Classical music: is it interesting or boring? it is considered high culture, if you don’t have the competence to having a point of view about it, it is because you find it boring.
- Eating stuff with your finger: good or bad?
- Is poetry better than prose or song lyrics? A filter superimposed by culture.
A systematic definition
Series of parameters (which influence our sense of reality)
To make sense of what goes on around us to interpret what is happening A systematic definition Culture provide us a series of parameters /guidelines (which influence our sense of reality):
- To understand and interpret what goes on around us ( ex. train delay: it is something normal for us; on the contrary, a person coming from the jungle wouldn’t understand it);
- which bias our response to stimuli coming from the external reality, both in: a) cognitive terms (in order to understand what something is – ex. “What is a delay?”)
cellular phone even if it is something not at all necessary. Money is bad, rich people are perceived as not good we don’t represent ourselves with money. It’s something in our culture, for other people capital is not a system of belief if you’re rich God is blessing you and poor are responsible for their sense while in our culture is our fault (religious interpretation). These are in unconsciously adopted.
- External behaviors: (i.e. language, gestures, customs, routines, patterns, habits). Politeness is very much related to culture, when we speak with someone we try not to hurt the other person, in some culture they want to be effective and to give just the information without asking if they are kind.
- Products (literature, folkore, art and artefacts) also our notations are cultural products because our way to write (from left to the right and using specific symbols)
Beliefs-values
They are used to stereotype reality. On the bases of some stereotype we can recognize
- Roles, relationships, practices, products (teachers, teachers-student, teaching, homework; artist, artist-public-critics, artistic creation, work of art)
- “Groups” (the rich, the poor, foreigners)
- Taboos (to avoid because it violates general principles or hurt people), adultery, violence, death, blasphemy, money, cannibalism, excrement. Taboos can be used to stereotype groups. There are some different roles, scripts, relatioships you can recognize according to different contexts. We respect the roles. Homework is a cultural product we follow a model to do it. We use the best possible handwriting for example. In our culture artists seem to have some sort of power, we consider them if they have something special, extra correspect to us. We respect the opinion of critics above all modern art. For the design of these stereotypes rationality has a major role than emotion. It’s not very problematic, this type is legitimated and we need it. It can be considered as a facilitator for us, we know how appropriately behave
Culture also contains stereotype to create groups, this type is dangerous and problematic because you attach to groups some qualities that are not always there, we associate some connotation to groups. Rich people are bad people. By stereotyping groups we discriminate people. Discrimination is always problematic because is based on emotion that we activate when we don’t want to do serious consideration we consider the surface our own reaction. The discrimination of some groups is based on taboos, bringer of taboos are no good and on emotion: I like or I don’t like.
The third type is taboos are kind of arbitrariorly established. Adultery is considered the worst thing ever while in United States is natural for them, people who adopted divorce stay friends. Nudity is considered in our culture bad especially in television while violence is presented every minute. Nudity could take you to have dangerous thoughts that can cause rapes and so on while in other countries where is normal they have less rapes for example. Violence in our culture is allowed and nudity is considered much worse today. In the Italian context death is associated to sex, she’s been killed and raped, there are 2 different things death is very much bad. Also Swear words and profanities are considered wrong. Cannibalism in certain situation manage you to survive, or also in some cultures is a common thing and even positive while for us is impossible to justify. It’s not easy define taboos is based on both rationality and also emotion, in order to explain why something is good or not we need taboos.
Hall 1982. The triad of culture
- Technical culture: Consciously learned, based on concerned with identification/definition of concepts, regularities related to objective truths\artefacts (art, music architecture, etc. food and drinks, vegetables vs. fruit visible behavior, language): it is taught
- Formal culture: Expression of an accepted way of doing things subconsciously acquired via experience with exposition to given rituals, customs, routines, styles of discourse, of dress, good manners, etc.) it can be analyzed and taught (level of politeness, cooperation)
- Informal culture: Out-of-awareness level to which we respond emotionally related to illocutionary level (i.e. expression of surprise, shock, solidarity, desire etc.). The Grammar of Englishness
- Greetings: weather speak
- Grooming-talk
- Bonding-talk
casual, unforced manner, although is always best to wait for the other person to take the initiative.
Gossiping: invasion of someone else’s privacy (not your own or your interlocutor’s) as a pragmatic facilitator. The more distant from you the subject of gossip (i.e. celebrities), the wider the circle of people with whom you may gossip.
The guessing game rule: never ask\say directly, find indirect ways\helpful clues to enquire\inform about your interlocutor’s\your private sphere. Ex:
- Driving to the city center has become a nightmare! Do you drive to work?
- No, usually I walk there
- So, you work in the neighborhood
- Yes, at the hospital
- Oh the hospital, you’re a doctor, then?
- No, I’m a nurse The reciprocal disclosure rule: Principle of symmetry, reciprocate with a comparably personal disclosure(Fox): place information about yourself to make interlocutors reciprocate with similar information
- I usually don’t watch tv, but when I do I usually watch very old movies
- I like old movies myself!
Bonding talk
Language used to create positive\amicable context to facilitate interaction
Female-bonding: counter-compliment rule: cooperative\complementing rituals:
- Opening compliment (+ self-deprecation\modesty) followed 2a. By counter- compliment+ self-deprecation (usually through witty\ amusing self-critical remarks) 2b. or acceptance + embarrassment + counter-compliment\switch topic
- I like your new haircut\Your hair looks great mine’s so boring
- Oh no... My hair’s terrible! I wish I had it short like you
- Well... thank you... your is very nice too! Accepting compliments without counter-complementing or self-deprecation “would be regarded as impolite, unfriendly and arrogant. Fox Male Bonding the ‘Mine’s Better than Yours’ rule: (seemingly) competitive rituals (often mitigated by undercurrent of humor)
- Statement in praise of something (Mine: my car, football team, political party, type of beer, etc.)
- Countering statement challenging the first assertion (both when you are being sincere and also when you agree with your interlocutor)
- I like this beer
- You should try this one…
- I have a Japanese car…
- Why would anyone buy a Japanese car, when you could have a BMW for that price
Amicable context:
- Proscription of (real\sincere) boasting, earnestness, zeal
Prescription of humor (i.e. irony, understatement, self-monkey, or polite hypocrisy, both in counter-compliment rituals and MIBTY rituals) to stress
Example
- Informal level: Pick up your clothes! No filter between what you think and what you say. It’s the formal culture when we use direct speech.
- Formal level: Please, pick up your clothes or would you mind pick up your clothes? Everything that corresponds to good manners is more acceptable
- Technical level: I’ve already asked you twice… I’m not asking a third time. Forcing someone to repeat something in our culture is bad so according to technical culture repetition is less accepted the more you go to North. The grammar of Englishness: Conversation codes
explanation. i.e. Bombing countries for peace, killing people for the sake of religion. Dropping bombs can be both right and wrong for different reasons.
- Hegemonic ideology (ighimonic): Dominant in terms of power, influence, prestige, established political correctness etc. i.e. “Trump is a bad politician”. If you hear that you don’t have to show or prove it, it’s something that is there, evident according to the dominant ideology. They keep repeating things and they seem universally shared.
- Non-hegemonic ideologies: in some case are more shared than the hegemonic ones, but requiring justification in order to be acceptable (I’m not racist but since I was robe by an immigrant…). If the person was robe by an Italian he would not have the necessity to say I’m not anti-italian. It’s something less shared so it is not say at loud voice because it doesn’t correspond to hegemonic ideology. In many contexts we use the maxims of agreement and approbation
Hegemonic ideology-power
- Institutions like school can control ideology, higher educations (Government, business, university managers, teachers etc.). Example Slavery is something presented from the beginning in America, Europe, Asia, Africa but we study only that the responsible countries were USA and UK. Institution established that democracy is the best possible way.
- Media : information programs, news programs/newspapers entertainment programs, etc. They have an important role to establish hegemonic ideology
- Intellectuals : producers of cultural products in one domain (in which they are experts in a very specific domain but they give you opinion and take siders \position in other domains (politics, social issues, etc.) They convince you when they talk.
- Think tanks : Organizations which main function is to do research on political, economic, social matters. They do DETA presented by way that influence hegemonic ideologies. The interpretations of the DETA is not completed objective.
Dynamic between ideologies
Some ideologies are born together something that is new and something against what is new.
Doxa: General knowledge of the world, framework for interpreting things including also divergent views “cultural background”:
- Tradition bound. Influenced by social order and system (school, family, media)
- Implicit, subconscious and accepted (fully naturalized and unquestionable)
- Perceived as the only “natural” and “normal” way of dealing with reality objects
(Every community\domain has its own doxa)
Heterodoxy: Doxa is wrong. Specific ideology, opposing\ruling out diverging views
- Explicit and conscious (and possibly polemical) challenge to the doxa (counterclaiming elements of the doxa).
Orthodoxy: For it heterodoxy is wrong while Doxa is right. Specific ideology, opposing\ruling out divergent views
- Explicit and conscious (polemical and aggressive) counterclaim to the heterodoxy defensive of the doxa.
- Systematic organization of elements of the doxa
- Explicity presenting itself as the only possible (not only natural as was the case with doxa) position among others. Ex: Doxa: Traditional medicine- Heterodoxy: alternative medicine (homeopathy), Orthodoxy: Traditional (scientifically proven) medicine. It’s the natural way of things as a circle that’s a way to progress. These 3 parameters are ways that influence the development of a new ideology. Communication Forms, Types, Functions The dixies are not always clear and ambiguous. It works in very same way for all cultures the only thing that changes is language. Communication is influenced by the channel of communication: the MEDIUM, both oral and written. Oral: Highly context-based, very much context based even in the case of fake communication for example movies, it’s written and then acted out. To fully comprehend you need to be there. It can be Informal or Formal. The most relevant register when we talk and it depends on the purpose. Informal produces only what we think, it comes out the way we concede it, unrehearsed. It is based on the situation of context better the interpersonal one.
Texts are constructed in different ways in order to the audience. There are three groups, targets of readers experts, not yet experts and non-experts. When you are writing something of a given topic you are an expert or you present yourself if you were one. Also when you write for a future expert you can’t use a standard language and also when you refer to lame man who are not interesting to know something about a certain domain.
Referential text
To expert : It’s informative, they exchange an information form
To novice (future expert) : It’s educational, textbooks, resource books to notice
To layman : It’s a popularization (when you write for someone who has no competence about a certain domain for example science or media discourse)
Persuasive text
They have to convince you about something not inform, you don’t need lots of information but only the parts that are relevant for what you are looking for.
To expert : Argumentative text, academic discourse (tesi)
To novice : Promotional not just informative they present stuff to be appealing, true information plus appealing (they can’t emphasis an aspect as advertising)
To layman : Advertising (we know that it contains lies, it’s the all purpose of advertising, fake is the soul of advertising.)
Normative text
Give order
To expert: the laws, status, codes are text for them that only expert could really understand, matter for experts who make them relevant for a specific audience
To novice: For anglophone cultures Legal texts are simplify by contracts and institutional discourse. In Italy the general idea is that everyone should know and understand.
To layman: Signs, signals, instruction
Conditions for credibility
When you’re going to read or listen the text you perceive it only if it makes sense and it’s relevant to me, it has to be credible. In utilitarian language there should be two ideas:
- Adequacy condition : You have to perceive the concept as something that makes sense, you have contextual elements to understand if a sentence is meaningful.
- Acceptability condition : The speaker should look as sound as competent and considered as an authorial source of information. Example Donald Trump even if he says something who has sense we don’t respect his opinion either. Appropriacy has to do with the concept of adequacy Given texts given meanings
- On the basis of text-external features: Genre stick to the conventional way, stay to the convention to be appropriate. Given genres presuppose given contexts (audience, purposes, contents, roles, expectations)
- On the basis of text-internal features: Text type
In persuasive texts are kind of tricky, it’s the writer to decide what is persuasive. It’s going to sound persuasive if it respects two principles: Reasonableness, it can be subjective if it is justified but in general something is reasonable if it respects some parameters:
- geometrical\logical. What is formal logic depends on what we take for granted, if you manage to present things respecting the conclusion in Italy is presented as reasonable
- Anthropological\rhetorical the principle of what is reasonable basing on who share a concept, if you like a person or not. Or we take things for granted and we repeat them as true according to our ideology, our cultural context but it’s a fake reasonableness.
- Critical, a text is reasonable if it’s objective and if we show that if it is acceptable including other points of view.
Argumentation
How to use what is accessible through culture (doxa, cultural knowledge) and ideologies, you should introduce evidence that are in favor and against to make a point by balancing emphasizing the points in favor rhetorically neutralizing the objections of who is against.
Information accessible
When you need to present stuff according to argumentation you need to refer also to what is not in line on what you’re saying because it would not be informative but propaganda. The same happens when you have an argumentative text if it contains only positive aspects it would be advertising. Our ideological orientation makes us choose a point to say instead of another. There are some strategies. News vs. facts When you tell facts they become news. Information is the result of the process of linguistic and cognitive codification, conferring form, structure, order, logical and chronological interrelatedness (before-after, cause-effect) to co- occurring, interacting or even possibly random portions of reality. When you conform order to something without it for instance a dream you can remember it, we artificially impose order. In order to make things objective we have some parameters:
- Evidence (extra linguistic reality), we make comparison
- Pseudo-evidence (witness to the extra linguistic reality, people talking about\reporting evidence, texts about extra linguistic reality in ways which range between efficiency (what makes the text comprehensible) and effectiveness (to make the text appealing). The effectiveness In order to create it we need some elements we usually find in advertisement
- Use unusual stylistic choices: orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic, pragmatics. Expression that you remember. It flouts the maxim of manners very often the purpose is to be remembered.
- Intertextuality ( What else? You’re worth it ) it’s very often use to make something effective, if there’s an expression you have never seen and without explanation, implicit and you understand you feel part of it. Another example are quotations.
- Interactional features in texts meant to be engaged you need to feel included as the text is written for you. That’s a matter of engaging, first second person engaging markers etc. render more much convincing.
- The use of Multimodal (linguistic + visual elements). If you see books and dictionary words are presented through 3 different modalities (a picture to make the context easier to process, tables and numbers).
Affiliation
It’s something you can use to filter negative reactions. In any kind of community context one of the most important element to make you acceptable for your interlocutor is to make yourself reliable and deserved to be taken in consideration. Not as simple individual but as being member of a specific group of people, friends, family and so on. You can introduce as for example Sarah’s brother, gives information to make yourself recognizable by the interlocutor to collocate you in a frame, you affiliate yourself to a more specific community of reference. There are 2 possible ways to represent affiliations Mark of affiliation texting independent, external that are an introduction about yourself (profiles and acknowledgements that are credits to people who support you and the primary function to show the personal sphere you want to be perceived). Citations and bibliographical references text-internal resources , provide pieces of information about the context. They are quite subconsciously performed, natural because everytime we talk we always mention something that we have witness, speeches, ideas, we report something already performed. You can use rhetorical discourses consciously. The most effective way to convey affiliation to a school of thought is credibility
- Co-authorship (il relatore della tesi). It’s not always possible there are very specific ways, it’s difficult to achieve it when it’s not possible show closeness through citations and biographical references.
Not text-internal strategy but manifest of ideological orientation.
Typical text-internal resources to trace affiliation to a given tradition are:
- Citations: mentions of a previous author’s claims lexicalized within the text. We use them to show we had research and we give importance
- Biographical references: mention of published texts relevant for the current piece or research, usually in parenthesis (text\author data of publication or ...) then listed in the references\ bibliography section.
In Academic Discourse there are some rules, the disciplinary consensus we cannot say wherever we want. The concept of advancement of knowledge implies the introduction of new claims proving the knowledge was uncompleted. Citations can be used to mitigate the thread, writers use a sprinkling of citations to filter a point of view and to reinforce the meaning I want to convey.
- Interactional resources : Involve the reader into the text, stemming from the awareness of a participating audience, writers show solidarity, cooperation and interaction by rhetorically representing themselves and the audience through evalutative or engaging strategies representing the writers’voice and involving the reader. In practical terms : Interactive resources (guiding the reader through the text) how to be perceived as competent is some case is about to know how use the language
- Transition markers : express relations between main clauses, to connect (In addition, but, thus)
- Frame markers : Refer to discourse act, sequences, stages (finally, to conclude, my purpose, let me introduce)
- Endophoric markers : refer to information in other parts of the text (noted above, see in figure 5)
- Code glosses : elaborate propositional meanings, reformulation
- Evidentials : refer to the source of the information used to emphasize credibility of a claim (according to x, according to data)
Interactional resources
- Personalization
- Self-mentions: explicit reference to author (I we my our)
- Engagement markers: build relationship with the reader
Transition markers
We connect piece of information through transition markers to activate meanings. Mainly conjunctions and adverbial phrases. They can be realized through various markers: addition, alternative, comparison, cause-effect, contrastive, emphasis, time, place.
Coordinating Correlative Transition And, also, besides, in addition to
Both, and not, only, but also and…too
Additionally, besides,by the way, furthermore, in addition moreover
Addition markers : Associating meanings as if they were comparable. You present things as very much similar.
The film was long and beautiful
This is not only wrong, but also difficult to understand for this is both wrong and hard to understand.
Alternative markers : comparable but mutually exclusive.
This film was long rather than beautiful
This is either wrong or difficult to understand.
It’s not the content but it’s the way we present the meaning that make the interlocutor interpret reality.
Markers of comparison : Expliciting meanings by comparing them with other meanings.
On the one hand this film is very long, on the other , it is very beautiful.
I consider a word that is hard to understand as it were wrong
Markers of condition : Introducing meanings depending on given conditions
The film will probably be beautiful unless it is too long
Whether or not you find it hard to understand ha says it is wrong
Logical progressive markers : pointing to a given effect starting to a given cause
Logical regressive markers : pointing to a given cause starting to a given effect
Logical markers of contrast : But, Although,
Examples:
Regressive : it was snowing because it was very cold
Progressive : it was snowing so it was very cold
Contrast : it was snow even though it wasn’t very cold
It was snowing even though it was very cold. When we hear something like that we tend to attach a meaning even if actually we know that it snows at 0 degrees. In our mind we connect logical meanings through markers.
