Pragmatics and Discourse – Joan CUTTING PDF

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LINGUA INGLESE I – SCHEMI PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE – JOAN CUTTING A1 CONTEXT AND CO-TEXT Introduction to pragmatics and discourse: Pragmatics and discourse analysis have much in common: they both study context, text, function. The meaning of the words in context and the socio-psychological factors influencing communication, as well as the knowledge of time and place

Pieces of spoken or written discourse

Speakers’ purpose in speaking (Speech act theory describes what utterances are intended to do)

Discourse analysis differs from pragmatics in its emphasis on the structure of the text (conversation analysis examines conversation structure) . Pragmatics differs from discourse analysis in the importance given to the social principle of discourse (it takes a socio-cultural perspective on language usage).

The context: there are 3 sorts of context: 1. Situational context  it’s the physical space around the interlocutors, the situation where the interaction is taking place at the moment of speaking ( i.e. The English Struwwelpeter , a book that contains moralistic, humorous tales about naughty children who are punished for their bad behaviour; the poem is meant to be read to a child who can look at the book in front of them). 2. Background knowledge context: cultural (general knowledge that small groups of people carry with them, about areas of life; these social groups are known as communities of practice). Interpersonal (specific knowledge acquired and shared among the participants through previous verbal interactions). 3. Co-textual context  known as the co-text; it’s the context represented by the words within the text.

Language can be used to refer to entities in the context: this act is known as reference, and the linguistic forms are the referring expression (while the entity being referred to is the referent). These referring expression are called deixis : -> person deixis: use of expressions to point to a person (I, you, we, she…)  Place deixis: words used to point to a location (there, here, this, that…)  Time deixis: expression used to point to a time (then, now…) There are 2 types of references: Exophora ( referent mentioned for the first time) Endophora ( referent already mentioned within the same text); it avoids using repetitions Anaphora, pointing to a referent mentioned in the preceding text

Cataphora, pointing to a referent that is going to be mentioned in the following text

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When a referring item refers to entities in the background knowledge, that have obviously been mentioned in a previous conversation or text, we call this intertextuality. Within the text, words relate to each other through cohesion. We have a grammatical cohesion through, for instance, endophora, but also: substitution -> it avoids repetitions (i.e. “one, ones” instead of the nouns); these are not part of reference ellipsis -> missing words that you can retrieve from the context. Another type of cohesion is lexical cohesion, through: Repetition -> they have a stylistic effect Synonym -> word that means the same or almost the same of another Superordinates -> (i.e. “flower” instead of “chrysanthemums”; it’s not a synonym) General word -> it’s a higher level of superordinate (i.e. general nouns: stuff, thing, place, person…).

A2 SPEECH ACTS At the beginning of the ‘60ies there were some scholars which started to point out the function and mechanism of language. Austin (1962) defined speech acts as the actions performed in saying something. Speech Act Theory said that the action performed when an utterance is produced can be analysed on 3 different levels: 1) The 1st level of analysis is the words themselves. This is the locution, “what is said”, and the act of saying something is the locutionary act; 2) The 2nd level is what the speakers are doing with their words: this is the illocutionary level, the specific purpose that speakers have in their mind; 3) The last level is the result of the words, the effect produced on the hearer: perlocutionary effect. Searle (1976) classified speech acts grouping them in macro-classes:  DECLARATIONS: expressions that change the state of thing (i.e. I declare, I pronounce, I sentence…)  REPRESENTATIVES: words expressing what the speaker believes to be true (i.e. I like, I describe, I claim…)  COMMISSIVES: acts expressing the speaker’s intention of performing an action in the future (i.e. I promise, I offer, I threaten, I refuse…)  DIRECTIVES: expression used to make the hearer do something ( i.e. I command, I request, I invite, I forbid (you)…)  EXPRESSIVE: words expressing or displaying what the speaker feels (i.e. I apologize, I praise, I congratulate…) In order for speech acts to be successfully performed, certain felicity conditions must be respected: o The context and the roles of participants must be recognized by all parties o The action must be carried out completely (it must be feasible!) for Austin o The persons must have the right intentions o The hearer must hear and understand the language for Searle o The speakers must not pretend or play-acting (must be sincere)

Speech acts can be either direct or indirect: the first want to communicate the literal meaning of the words express (and so the form, the literal meaning, corresponds to the function). The second want to communicate a different meaning from the apparent surface meaning (the form does not coincide with the function). These one are part of everyday life. 2

Speech acts are also related to society, in the sense that often we tend to use indirectness for different reasons: in most Englishness it is associated with politeness (while directives, that is imperatives, appear sometimes as rude or intrusive). But it also depends on the formality of the context and the social distance (differences of status, age, roles, class…). Speech acts are very much cultural bound: the ways of expressing speech acts vary from social group to social group, from culture to culture. Sometimes these conventions can cause communication difficulties. We can find limitations of the Speech Act Theory: we often find that there is an overlap (one utterance can fall into more than one macro-classes); then, for the “messiness” of everyday spoken language it is difficult to put an utterance in any of the classifications (i.e. “you know” has a lack of semantic content); the same goes for incomplete sentences. Finally, we can note that, over and above speech acts, there are 2 main macro-functions of talk: 1. Transactional: function that language has in the expression of content and the transmission of factual information (i.e. a policeman giving directions to a traveller) 2. Interactional: function of express social relations and show solidarity (phatic communion, language with no information content) Most talk has a mixture of the 2 functions.

A3 CONVERSATION When we talk about speech acts, we talk about utterances isolated from each other. But language does not exist in isolation: when dialogues are linked between each other we talk about conversation, which occurs in sequences of related utterances. There are 2 approaches to looking at the structure of the discourse: 1. Exchange structure 2. Conversation analysis 1: it is the approach taken by Sinclair and Coulthard, who study a classroom conversation. They said that a lesson can be broken down into 5 levels of structure, or ranks: a) The act is the lowest level (they’re very general and cover the “messiness of spoken language”: you know, I mean…) b) These act tend to carry out a fixed order of moves (IRF: initiation from the teacher, response from the student, follow-up that is teacher’s comment on the pupils answer) c) The combination of moves is the exchange (=chain of moves in the interaction) d) Exchanges combine to make the transaction e) The combination of transactions is the lesson (highest rank) Limitations of IRF: it does not accommodate easily to the real-life pressures and unruliness of the classroom; besides, it reflects the traditional teacher-centred classroom (-> the teacher has long turns and the students short turns in response but cannot interrupt); this approach is finally rarely used today because it was explicitly restricted to classroom discourse, and the structure is not typical of everyday talk (one person is in a position of power over the others); but it has been applied also to TV quiz show (vedi: Who wants to be a Millionaire?) 2: this approach differs from exchange structure because it starts with the conversation itself and lets the data dictate its own structure (it does not look at the discourse as a predetermined sequence). Conversation is the discourse mutually constructed and negotiated in time between speakers; it’s usually informal and unplanned. A talk can be classed as conversation when:  It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task  Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended 3

  

The number of participants is small Turns are quite short Talk is primarily for the participants ( not for an outside audience!)

Patterns of Conversation Analysis:  Cooperation in conversation is managed by all participants through turn-talking -> only one person speaks at a time. A point in a conversation where a change of turn is possible is the Transition Relevance Place (TRP); when a speaker does not wait until the TRP, this is called an interruption. When a hearer predicts that the turn is about to be completed and he comes in before it, this is an overlap. A pause in a conversation which carries meaning is an attributable silence. For those who do not know each other well, a long non-attributable silence can fell awkward.  In conversation there is a relation between acts, and a pair of utterances is known as “adjacency pairs”: in this, each first part has a preferred and a dispreferred response For instance: question  answer offer  acceptance proposal  agreement complaint apology

they tend to be refusals and disagreements

 In conversation certain sequences emerge: Pre-sequences, which prepare the round for a further sequence (i.e. pre-invitations, pre-requests, pre-announcements: “I’ve got 2 tickets for the concert…”, “are you busy now…?”, “you’ll never guess!”) Insertion sequence (within the adjacency pair) Opening (greetings) and closing sequences Limitations of CA: it is a qualitative (not a quantitative) approach; it does not consider sociolinguistic aspects of interaction or the background context. But there is an approach to discourse analysis which considers both the structure and the social aspects of interaction: interactional sociolinguistics  it focuses on the fact that social groups have their own ways of expressing meaning with their language.

A4 THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE Verbal exchanges tend to run more smoothly and successfully when the participants follow certain social conventions: these are the conversational maxims of the Cooperative Principle (Grice). 1. Maxim of quantity  it says that the speakers should be as informative as required (they should give neither too little information nor too much) 2. Maxim of quality  it says that the speakers are expected to be sincere, to be saying something that they believe corresponds to reality 3. Maxim of relation  it says that the speakers are supposed to be saying something that is relevant to what has been said before 4. Maxim of manner  it says that speakers should be brief and orderly, and avoid ambiguity and obscurity When speakers appear not to follow the maxims but they expect hearers to appreciate the meaning implied, we say that they are flouting the maxims; so the speaker assumes that the hearer knows that his words shouldn’t be taken at face value and that they can infer (deduce) the implicit meaning. 4

1. Flouting quantity  the speaker seems to give too little or too much information (i.e. “how do I look?” “your shoes are nice” : she’s not impressed with the rest of what he’s wearing) 2. Flouting quality  they may say something that does not represent what they think; they could exaggerate as in the hyperbole (i.e. “I could eat a horse”) ; they could use a metaphor; they could use irony and banter (while sarcasm is a form of irony usually intended to hurt) “an apparently friendly way of being offensive”: the speaker express a positive sentiment and implies a negative one

“an offensive way of being friendly”: the speaker express a negative sentiment and implies a positive one

3. Flouting relation  speakers expect that the hearers will be able to imagine what the utterance did not say and make the connection between the utterance and the preceding one(s) (i.e. “there’s somebody at the door” “I’m in the bath”) 4. Flouting manner  they appear to be obscure A speaker can violate a maxim when he knows that the hearer won’t know the truth and will only understand the surface meaning of the words (he deliberately supplies insufficient information). If a speaker violates the maxim of quantity , he do not give enough information to know what is being talked about.¹ By violating the maxim of quality, speakers are not sincere (they tell a lie)². A sp. could violate the m. of relation distracting the hearer or changing topic³; finally violating the m. of manner a sp. says everything except what the hearer wants to know (avoiding giving a brief answer)⁴. Example: “how much did that dress cost, darling?” 1: “less that the last one” 2: “35 euro” 3: “let’s go out tonight” 4: “Uhm maybe a tiny fraction of my salary” Other forms of non-observance of maxims: to infringe it and to opt out it. Because of their imperfect linguistic performance

unwillingness to cooperate, although they do not want to appear uncooperative (i.e. a priest refusing to repeat information given in confidence)

Limitations: different cultures, countries and communities have their own ways of observing and expressing maxims . Examples: in the USA the question “how are you?” expects the answer “Fine”; any interlocutor that gives a full description of their state of health would be violating the maxim of quantity. Besides, there is often an overlap between the 4 maxims and it can be difficult to say which one is operating. Sperber and Wilson say that all maxims can be reduced to the one of relation, because relevance is a natural feature of all exchanges (we assume that everything we read and rear contains utterances that make sense). They also propose the Relevance Theory and say that conversational implicature is understood by hearers by selecting the relevant features and recognizing whatever speakers say as relevant to the conversation. The degree of relevance is governed by contextual effects and processing effort. The first includes such thing as adding new information ( the more contextual effects, the greater the relevance). As far as the second, the less effort it takes to recover a fact, the greater the relevance.

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But this theory has limits: the fact that they feel that their principle accounts for Grice’s maxims, it loses its explanatory force. Besides, it says nothing about interaction and does not include cultural or social dimensions.

A5 POLITENESS When we talk about ‘politeness’ in pragmatics we do not refer to the social rules of behaviour (such as letting people go first through a door), but to the choices that are made in language use, those linguistic expression that give people space and show a friendly attitude to them. Brown and Levinson analysed politeness and said that, in order to enter into social relationship, we have to show an awareness of the face (the public self-image): speakers should respect each others’ expectation regarding self-image and avoid Face Threatening Acts (FTA). When FTA are unavoidable speakers can redress the threat with: - negative politeness, that respects the hearers’ negative face (the need to be independent) - positive politeness, which attends the positive face (the need to be accepted and liked by the others) For example, let’s imagine that you’re in a resource centre trying to find a particular website but you don’t manage to find it. You would like one of your fellow students to help you. You can avoid FTA and say nothing at all. On the other hand, you can say something: - You can do the FTA off record: you ask for help indirectly, using an indirect speech act (“oh I wonder where that website is”) . This strategy enables speakers to address particular people but giving them options and retreating behind the literal meaning of the words. Hearers usually know what it implied, but they have the freedom to respond to it or to ignore it, without losing face (=the speaker is not imposing much at all) - You can do the FTA on record: the speaker makes a request, offer, suggestion or invitation in an open and direct way, using direct speech acts (“Lisa, tell me the address for that website…”). Speakers can use a negative politeness or a positive politeness: Neg. politeness strategies demonstrate the distance between interlocutors. Speakers avoid imposing by emphasising the importance of the other’s time, using apology and hesitation or a question giving the opportunity to say no (i.e. “feel free to come to my party if you have got the time”). Often, the greater chance that the speaker offers the hearer to say ‘no’, the more polite is.

Pos. politeness strategies aim to demonstrate closeness and solidarity, making people feel good. We can find the use of solidarity strategies, knowledge of personal information, nicknames, gossip (i.e. “I know you hate parties Lisa, but come anyway! We’ll all be there, come on!)

The politeness strategies sometimes conflict with the Cooperative Principle. Speakers can violate cooperative maxims if they want to show positive politeness (i.e. telling a lie), or may also choose to opt out of them to show negative politeness (i.e. giving more info than is required). According to Leech, politeness has 6 maxims:  The tact maxim focuses on the hearer and says ‘minimise cost to other’ and ‘maximise benefit to other’ (“could I interrupt you just for a second…?”) pair  The generosity maxim focuses on the speaker and says ‘minimise benefit to self’ and ‘maximise cost to self’ (“could I copy down the website address?”)  The m. of approbation says ‘minimise dispraise to other’ and ‘maximise praise to other’ (“you’re pair very efficient and make notes of everything, so…”)  The modesty maxim says ‘minimise praise of self’ and ‘maximise dispraise of self’ (“oh I’m so stupid, I didn’t make a note of that address…)  The m. of agreement says ‘minimise disagreement between self and other’ and ‘maximise agreement between self and other’ 6



The sympathy maxim says ‘minimise antipathy between self and other’ and ‘maximise sympathy between self and other’

Cruse proposes another maxim: consideration (minimise discomfort/displeasure of other, maximise comfort/pleasure of other). One utterance can also contain both positive and negative politeness (i.e. “could you be a pal and give me a lift at home? Don’t bother if you’re not going my way”). Politeness is a pragmatic phenomenon. It lies not in the form and the words themselves but in their function; a sentence can be polite in the form, but not in its intention. Politeness is not the same as deference (= polite form expressing distance and respect for people of a higher status - tu/Lei, du/Sie). It is influenced by elements of the context. There are 2 situational context factors influencing the way make a request: the imposition (‘the greater the imposition, the more indirect the language is’) and the formality of the context (‘greater the formality , the more indirect the language is’). The choice of the politeness formulations depends on the social distance between the speakers: when there is social distance, there is more indirectness; where there is less social distance, there is less indirectness. The variables are degree of familiarity and differences of status, age, roles, class. Finally, the whole issue of politeness and language is cultural-bound. For instance, Br...