Pragmatics Pr KESKES Saïd

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Pragmatics

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Pragmatics

Chapter one:

Definitions and background

Historical preamble

Definitions

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

Semantics and Pragmatics; Three approaches to Pragmatics

Regularity

Criticisms of pragmatics

Some Definitions of Pragmatics (versus Semantics, usually)

Exercises

Chapter two:

Deixis and distance

Deictic expression.

Person deixis

Spatial deixis

Temporal deixis

Deixis and grammar

Exercises

Chapter three:

Reference and inference

Referential and Attributive uses

Names and Referents

The Role of Co-text

Anaphoric reference

Exercises

Chapter four:

Presuppositions and entailments

Presuppositions

Presupposition and Entailment

Types of Presupposition

Projection Problem

Ordered entailments

Exercises

Chapter five:

Cooperation and Implicature

Grice and Conversational Implicatures

The cooperative principle

The conversational maxims

Hedges

Conversational implicature Generalized conversational implicatures

Scalar implicatures

Particularized conversational implicature

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Conversational and conventional implicature

Conversational implicatures` characteristics

Communicative intentions

Exercises

Chapter six:

Speech acts and events

Speech acts:

IFIDs

The “hereby” test

Felicity conditions:

The performative hypothesis:

Speech act classification:

Direct and indirect speech acts

Speech events

Locutionary acts The taxonomy of illocutionary acts (Bach and Harnish )

The Speech Act Schema (SAS)

Exercises

Chapter seven:

Politeness and interaction

Face and politeness phenomena

Face wants

Negative and positive face

Self and other: say nothing:

Say something: off and on record

.Positive and negative politeness strategies

Strategies

The politeness principle

Pre-sequences

Exercises

Chapter eight:

Conversation and preference structure

Conversation analysis

Pauses, overlaps, and backchannels

Conversational style

Adjacency pairs

Preference structure

Exercies

Chapter nine:

Discourse and culture

Discourse analysis

Coherence

Background knowledge

Cultural schemata

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Cross-cultural pragmatics

Exercises

Index

References

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List of tables and figures

TABLE4.1. Potential presuppositions

FIGURE 7.1 How to get a pen from someone else (following Brown and

Levinson 1987)

TABLE: The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures

(following Levinson 1983)

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Pragmatics

When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;

When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;

When he says no, he is not a diplomat.

When a lady says no, she means ‘perhaps’;

When she says perhaps, she means ‘yes’;

When she says yes, she is not a lady.

Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)

These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — although perhaps

politically incorrect, are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one

communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the

standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘no’

each has a perfectly identifiable meaning, known by every speaker of English (including not

very competent ones). However, as those lines illustrate, it is possible for different speakers in

different circumstances to mean different things using those words. How is this possible?

What's the relationship among the meaning of words, what speakers mean when uttering those

words, the particular circumstances of their utterance, their intentions, their actions, and what

they manage to communicate? These are some of the questions that pragmatics tries to

answer; the sort of questions that, roughly speaking, serve to characterize the field of

pragmatics.

First published Tue Nov 28, 2006

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Pragmatics; Definitions and background

In the late 1960s, two American tourists who had been touring Scotland

reported that, in their travels, they had come to a Scottish town in which

there was a great ruined cathedral. As they stood in the ruins, they saw a

small boy and they asked him when the cathedral had been so badly

damaged. He replied in the war. Their immediate interpretation, in the

1960s, was that he must be referring to the Second World War which had

ended only twenty years earlier. But then they thought that the ruins looked

as if they had been in their dilapidated state for much longer than that, so

they asked the boy which war he meant. He replied the war with the

English, which they eventually discovered, had formally ended in 1745.

Brown (1998)

In Gill Brown`s story, the American tourists and the Scottish boy seem to be using the

word war with essentially the same basic meaning. However, the boy was using the word to

refer to something the tourists didn`t expect, hence the initial misunderstanding.

Communication clearly depends on not only recognizing the meaning of words in an

utterance, but recognizing what speakers mean by their utterances. The study of what speakers

mean, or ‘speaker meaning’, is called pragmatics

Historical preamble

Although pragmatics is a relatively new branch of linguistics, research on it can be

dated back to ancient Greece and Rome where the term pragmaticus’ is found in late Latin

and pragmaticos’ in Greek, both meaning of ‘being practical’. Modern use and current

practice of pragmatics is credited to the influence of the American philosophical doctrine of

pragmatism.

Pragmatics began as a concern of and is now incorporated into the mainstream of

linguistics. The main contributors at first were philosophers: Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, and

Grice. In the early twentieth century developed his atomistic doctrine of meaning: sentences

were pictures or models of things in the world. This was taken up by the school, who declared

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sentences if they didn't state some verifiable fact. In the 1930s pragmatics began as a reaction

to these doctrines. Wittgenstein renounced his former position and showed that utterances

could be used to do many different things, and for a large class of sentences the meaning was

in the use.

Pragmatics as a field of linguistic inquiry was initiated in the 1930s by Morris, Carnap,

and Peirce, for whom syntax addressed the formal relations of signs to one another, semantics

the relation of signs to what they denote, and pragmatics the relation of signs to their users

and interpreters (Morris 1938). In this program, pragmatics is the study of those context-

dependent aspects of meaning which are systematically abstracted away from in the

construction of content or logical form.

The landmark event in the development of a systematic framework for pragmatics was

the delivery of Grice's (1967) William James lectures, a masterful (if incomplete) program

that showed how a regimented account of language use facilitates a simpler, more elegant

description of language structure. Since then, a primary goal of pragmatics has been the one

reflected in Bar-Hillel's celebrated warning (1971: 405): “Be careful with forcing bits and

pieces you find in the pragmatic wastebasket into your favorite syntactico-semantic theory. It

would perhaps be preferable to first bring some order into the contents of this wastebasket.”

More recently, work in pragmatic theory has extended from the attempt to rescue syntax and

semantics from their own unnecessary complexities to other domains of linguistic inquiry,

ranging from historical linguistics to the lexicon, from language acquisition to computational

linguistics, from intonational structure to cognitive science.

Practical concerns also helped shift pragmaticians' focus to explaining naturally

occurring conversations which resulted in hallmark discoveries of the Cooperative Principle

by Grice in1975 and the Politeness Principle by Leech in1983. Subsequently, Green (1989)

explicitly defined pragmatics as natural language understanding utterances .The impact of

pragmatism has led to cross linguistic international studies of language use which resulted in,

among other things, Sperber and Wilson's (1986) relevance theory which convincingly

explains how people comprehend and utter a communicative act.

J.L. Austin distinguished the sentence, the static grouping of words, from the utterance, the

particular use of it on one occasion. He also showed that, apart from obvious non-statements

such as questions and commands, there were many sentences that looked like statements but

were actually doing quite different jobs: these performatives included promising, naming,

judging, marrying, and many others. When you say I promise to be there you're not just

describing yourself as promising, you're actually doing the promising. In a marriage ceremony

or court verdict, saying certain words counts as performing a specific act. This speech act

theory was developed by John Searle after Austin's early death.

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H.P. Grice made the major contribution of showing that a lot of communication is not in the

words. The words give us encoded information about what the speaker's intention was. The

speaker intended to tell us something, and intended us to recognize that intention. The words

themselves can fall far short of the full meaning. He said there was a Cooperative Principle in

communication: give your hearers just the right information that is useful at that point in the

conversation, for the current purpose of that conversation. This principle unfolds into Grice's

maxims, of sticking to the truth, of saying not too much and not too little, of saying it in a

clear and brief way, and of making what you say relevant.

A lot of what we say violates these maxims, and Grice said that when this happens we look

for some ulterior intention the speaker must have had, in order to save the assumption that the

Cooperative Principle was still being followed. He called this implicature. So irony and

metaphor aren't literally true, evasive speech doesn't say as much as the speaker knows, and if

something doesn't seem relevant we look for a connexion that could make it so. The hearer

infers what the speaker intended by using that form of speech rather than the simplest and

most direct.

Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson are an anthropologist and a linguist who have developed

Relevance Theory, one of the main modern approaches to pragmatics. They postulate that

humans have a general cognitive principle of seeking the most relevant information to enable

them to update their beliefs and plan their actions. They call the quantity we seek to maximize

'relevance': it varies with the amount of new information we're given, and inversely with how

difficult it is to process it or get access to existing assumptions it's relevant to. They also say

we have a specific communicative principle of relevance, which is that we can assume that

overt communication, whether speech or some other act of attracting someone's attention to

something, is intended to be relevant, and not just relevant but significantly relevant: when a

speaker says something, it's intended to be worth the hearer's effort to process it. So a speaker

could say something direct: that's the cheapest and simplest way of communicating. When

instead they choose a roundabout or metaphorical or apparently unconnected thing to say,

they must have intended something extra in it to make it worth the hearer's extra effort.

The Anglo-American tradition of pragmatic study has been tremendously expanded and

enriched with the involvement of researchers mainly from the Continental countries such as

the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgium. A symbol of this development was the

establishment of the IPrA (the International Pragmatic Association) in Antwerp in 1987. In its

Working Document, IPrA proposed to consider pragmatics as a theory of linguistic adaptation

and look into language use from all dimensions (Verschueren, 1987). Henceforward,

pragmatics has been conceptualized as to incorporate micro and macro components (Mey,

1993).

Throughout its development, pragmatics has been steered by the philosophical practice

of pragmatism and evolving to maintain its independence as a linguistic subfield by keeping

to its tract of being practical in treating the everyday concerned meaning.

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Definitions

Pragmatics

As a sub-discipline of linguistics, pragmatics can be said to thematise the relationships

between language use and the language user in a situational context (cf. the adjective

"pragmatic" refers to the capacity of a social actor to adjust to situational circumstances).

Initially, pragmatics was mainly bracketed by analytical philosophy, as the first themes it

developed were indeed speech act theory and the study of principles of information exchange.

Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by the speaker

(or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has, consequently, more to do with the

analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those

utterances might mean by them selves. Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.

This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a

particular context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of

how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they`re talking to,

where, when, and under what circumstances. Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.

In many ways, pragmatics is the study of ‘invisible’ meaning, or how we recognize

what is meant even when it isn`t actually said or written. This approach also necessarily

explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an

interpretation of the speaker`s intended meaning. This type of study explores how a great deal

of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated. We might say that it is the

investigation of invisible meaning. Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated

than is said.

This perspective then raises the question of what determines the choice between the said

and the unsaid. The basic answer is tied to the notion of distance. Closeness, whether it is

physical, social, or conceptual, implies shared experience. On the assumption of how close or

distant the listener is, speakers determine how much needs to be said. Pragmatics is the study

of the expression of relative distance.

These are the four areas of study that pragmatics is concerned with. To understand how

it got to be that way, we have to briefly review its relationship with other areas of linguistic

analysis.

The facts with which pragmatics deals are of various sorts, including:

Facts about the objective facts of the utterance, including: who the speaker is, when

the utterance occurred, and where;

Facts about the speaker's intentions. On the near side, what language the speaker

intends to be using, what meaning he intends to be using, whom he intends to refer to

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with various shared names, whether a pronoun is used demonstratively or

anaphorically, and the like. On the far side, what he intends to achieve by saying what

he does.

Facts about beliefs of the speaker and those to whom he speaks, and the conversation

they are engaged in; what beliefs do they share; what is the focus of the conversation,

what are they talking about, etc.

Facts about relevant social institutions, such as promising, marriage ceremonies,

courtroom procedures, and the like, which affect what a person accomplishes in or by

saying what he does.

In a concluding statement, Pragmatics is that linguistic study which deals with the

aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, the addressee, and the

features of the context of utterances, such as the following:

*-Context of utterance

*-Generally observed principle of communication

*-The goals of the speaker

*-The treatment of given versus new information, including presupposition

*- Deixis

*-Speech acts, especially illocutionary acts

*-Implicature

*-The relation of meaning or function between portions of discourse or turns of

conversation

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

One traditional distinction in language analysis contrasts pragmatics with syntax and

semantics. Syntax is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are

arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed. This type of study is generally

takes place without considering any world of reference or any user of the forms. Semantics is

the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; that is, how

words literally connect to things. Semantic analysis also attempts to establish the relationships

between verbal descriptions and states of affairs in the world as accurate (true) or not,

regardless of who produces that description.

Pragmatics is the study of the relationship between linguistic forms and the users of

those forms. In this three-part distinction, only pragmatics allows humans into the analysis.

The advantage of studying language via pragmatics is that one can talk about people`s

intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (for

example, requests) that they performing when they speak. Two friends having a conversation

may imply some things and infer some others without providing any clear linguistic evidence

that we can point to as the explicit source of ‘ the meaning’ of what was communicated. The

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following example is just such a problematic case. I heard the speakers, I knew what they

said, but I had no idea what was communicated.

Her: So---did you?

Him: Hey---who wouldn`t?

Thus, pragmatics is appealing because it`s about how people make sense of each other

linguistically, but it can be a frustrating area of study because it requires us to make sense of

people and what they have in mind.

Semantics and Pragmatics

Three approaches to Pragmatics

In its most general sense, pragmatics studies the relation between linguistic expressions

and their users. The use of the term generally implies a dichotomy between language per se-

the language competence in the abstract- and the use that is made of that competence by

speakers and hearers. The distinction between semantics and pragmatics, therefore, tends to

go with the distinction between competence and performance.

This is to anticipate, however, debates on the relation of semantics to pragmatics which

have been prominent in the recent history of semantics. To a considerable extent, this focus of

interest on pragmatics has been due to the influence of the three philosophers – J. L. Austin, J.

R. Searle and H. P. Grice- all of whom have in some way championed a pragmatic approach

to meaning. In linguistics, too, there have been various challenges to the assumption that

competence can be studied in separation from performance, and purely formal theories of

language, such as transformational grammar, have suffered from a backlash. Twenty years

ago pragmatics, if it was mentioned at all, was regarded as a convention waste-bin to which to

consign annoying facts which did not fit theories. Now it is one of the more vigorous areas of

linguistic research.

Semantic is the level of linguistics which has been most affected by pragmatics, but the

relation between semantics (in the sense of conceptual semantics) and pragmatics has

remained a matter for fundamental disagreement. The central issue is: is it valid to separate

pragmatics from semantics at all? Three logically distinct positions in this debate can be

distinguished:

1. Pragmatics should be subsumed under semantics.

2. Semantics should be subsumed under pragmatics.

3. Semantics and pragmatics are distinct and complementary fields of study.

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Fig.1.1.

For ease of reference, I shall distinguish these three positions by the use of the following

terms: (1) SEMANTICISM, (2) PRAGMATICISM and (3) COMPLEMENTARISM.

At a very simple level, contention between the three positions above can be traced in an

ambivalence in the every day use of the verb mean. Of two major usages of this verb, one is

bivalent (‘X’ means ‘Y’) and one is trivalent (`s means ‘Y by X’). For example:

1) Donkey means ‘ass ’.

2) When Miss Trotwood said Janet! Donkeys! She meant by this remark that Janet was to

drive the donkeys off the lawn.

The second example is clearly concerned with meaning not just as a property of language, but

as a particular speaker`s use of language in a particular context. It is this latter use of meaning

which is pragmatic. The question is: is meaning (1) to be assimilated to meaning (2), or is

meaning (2) to be assimilated to meaning (1), or is each meaning distinct from the other?

We may note about meaning (2) that

i. it involves the speaker`s intention to convey a certain meaning which may, or may not,

be evident from the message itself.

ii. Consequently, interpretation by the hearer of this meaning is likely to depend on

context; and

iii. meaning, in this sense, is something which is performed, rather than something that

exists in a static way. It involves action (the speaker producing an effect on the hearer)

and interaction (the meaning being ‘negotiated’ between speaker and hearer on the

basis of their mutual knowledge).

The following then are outward criteria for judging whether a particular discussion of

meaning takes us into the realm of pragmatics:

(Pragmatics)

(Semantics) Semantics

Pragmatics

Semantics

Pragmatics

‘Semanticism’ ‘Complementarism’ ‘Pragmaticism’

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a) Is reference made to addressers or addressees, or (as I shall prefer to call them,

ignoring the speech/writing distinction) SPEAKERS or HEARERS?

b) Is reference is made to the INTENTION of the speaker or the INTERPRETATION of

the hearer?

c) Is reference is made to CONTEXT?

d) Is reference is made to the kind of ACT or ACTION (illocutionary force) performed

by means of or by virtue of using language?

If the answer to one of these questions is yes, there is reason to suppose that we are

dealing with pragmatics.

Regularity

Luckily, people tend to behave in fairly regular ways when it comes to using language.

Some of that regularity derives from the fact that people are members of social groups and

follow general patterns of behavior expected within a familiar social group, we normally find

it easy to be polite and say appropriate things. In a new unfamiliar social setting, we are often

unsure about what to say and worry that we might say the wrong thing.

Another source of regularity of language use derives from the fact that most people

within a linguistic community have similar basic experiences of the world and share a lot of

non linguistic knowledge. Let`s say that, in the middle a conversation, I mention the

information in (1)

(1) I found an old bicycle lying on the ground. The chain was rusted and the tires were

flat.

You are unlikely to ask why a chain and some tires were suddenly being mentioned. I can

normally assume that you will make the inference that if X is a bicycle, then X has a chain

and tires (and many other regular parts). Because of this type of assumption, it would be

pragmatically odd for me to have expressed (1) as (2).

(2) I found an old bicycle. A bicycle has a chain. The chain was rusted. The bicycle also

has tires. The tires were flat.

You would perhaps think that more was communicated than was being said and that you were

being treated as someone with no basic knowledge (i.e. as stupid). Once again, nothing in the

use of the linguistic forms is inaccurate, but getting the pragmatics wrong might be offensive.

The types of regularities just described are extremely simple examples of language in the

use which are ignored by most linguistic analyses.

Criticisms of pragmatics

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Some of the criticisms directed at pragmatics include these:

It does not have a clear-cut focus

Its principles are vague and fuzzy

It is redundant – semantics already covers the territory adequately

In defending pragmatics we can say that:

The study of speech acts has illuminated social language interactions

It covers things that semantics (hitherto) has overlooked

It can help inform strategies for teaching language

It has given new insights into understanding literature

The theory of the cooperative principle and politeness principle has provided insights

into person-to- person interactions.

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Some Definitions of Pragmatics (versus Semantics, usually)

Morris 1938. Semantics deals with the relation of signs to … objects which they may or do

denote. Pragmatics concerns the relation of signs to their interpreters.

By ‘pragmatics’ is designated the science of the relation of signs to their interpreters. (…)

Since most, if not all, signs have as their interpreters living organisms, it is a sufficiently

accurate characterization of pragmatics to say that it deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis,

that is, with all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the

functioning of signs.

Carnap 1942. If in an investigation explicit reference is made to the speaker, or, to put it in

more general terms, to the user of a language, then we assign it to the field of pragmatics. (…)

If we abstract from the user of the language and analyze only the expressions and their

designata, we are in the field of semantics. And if, finally, we abstract from the designata also

and analyze only the relations between expressions, we are in (logical) syntax.

Bar-Hillel 1954. I believe, therefore, that the investigation of indexical languages and the

erection of indexical language-systems are urgent tasks for contemporary logicians. May I

add, for the sake of classificatory clarity, that the former task belongs to descriptive

pragmatics and the latter to pure pragmatics (in one of the many senses of the expression)?

Stalnaker 1970. Syntax studies sentences, semantics studies propositions. Pragmatics is the

study of linguistic acts and the contexts in which they are performed. There are two major

types of problems to be solved within pragmatics: first, to define interesting types of speech

acts and speech products; second, to characterize the features of the speech context which

help determine which proposition is expressed by a given sentence. … It is a semantic

problem to specify the rules for matching up sentences of a natural language with the

propositions that they express. In most cases, however, the rules will not match sentences

directly with propositions, but will match sentences with propositions relative to features of

the context in which the sentence is used. Those contextual features are part of the subject

matter of pragmatics.

Katz 1977. [I] draw the theoretical line between semantic interpretation and pragmatic

interpretation by taking the semantic component to properly represent only those aspects of

the meaning of the sentence that an ideal speaker-hearer of the language would know in an

anonymous letter situation,… [where there is] no clue whatever about the motive,

circumstances of transmission, or any other factor relevant to understanding the sentence on

the basis of its context of utterance.

Gazdar 1979. PRAGMATICS = MEANING-TRUTH CONDITIONS. What we need in

addition is some function that tells us about the meaning of utterances. (…) The domain of

this pragmatic function is the set of utterances, which are pairs of sentences and contexts, so

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that for each utterance, our function will return as a value a new context: the context as

changed by the sentence uttered. (…) And we can treat the meaning of the utterance as the

difference between the original context and the context arrived at by utterance of the sentence.

[This applies to only] a restricted subset of pragmatic aspects of meaning.

Kempson 1988. Semantics provides a complete account of sentence meaning for the

language, [by] recursively specifying the truth conditions of the sentence of the language. …

Pragmatics provides an account of how sentences are used in utterances to convey

information in context.

Kaplan 1989. The fact that a word or phrase has a certain meaning clearly belongs to

semantics. On the other hand, a claim about the basis for ascribing a certain meaning to a

word or phrase does not belong to semantics… Perhaps, because it relates to how the

language is used, it should be categorized as part of … pragmatics …, or perhaps, because it

is a fact about semantics, as part of … Metasemantics.

Davis 1991. Pragmatics will have as its domain speakers' communicative intentions, the uses

of language that require such intentions, and the strategies that hearers employ to determine

what these intentions and acts are, so that they can understand what the speaker intends to

communicate.

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Fotion 1995). Pragmatics is the study of language

which focuses attention on the users and the context of language use rather than on reference,

truth, or grammar.

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Lycan 1995). Pragmatics studies the use of

language in context, and the context-dependence of various aspects of linguistic

interpretation. … [Its branches include the theory of how] one and the same sentence can

express different meanings or propositions from context to context, owing to ambiguity or

indexicality or both, … speech act theory, and the theory of conversational implicature.

The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy (Davies 1995). The distinction between semantics

and pragmatics is, roughly, the distinction between the significance conventionally or literally

attached to words, and thence to whole sentences, and the further significance that can be

worked out, by more general principles, using contextual information.

Carston 1999. The decoding process is performed by an autonomous linguistic system, the

parser or language perception module. Having identified a particular acoustic stimulus as

linguistic, the system executes a series of deterministic grammatical computations or

mappings, resulting in an output representation, which is the semantic representation, or

logical form, of the sentence or phrase employed in the utterance. (…) The second type of

cognitive process, the pragmatic inferential process (constrained and guided by the

communicative principle of relevance) integrates the linguistic contribution with other readily

accessible information in order to reach a confirmed interpretive hypothesis concerning the

speaker's informative intention.

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Bach 2004. Semantic information is information encoded in what is uttered — these are

stable linguistic features of the sentence — together with any extralinguistic information that

provides (semantic) values to context-sensitive expressions in what is uttered. Pragmatic

information is (extralinguistic) information that arises from an actual act of utterance, and is

relevant to the hearer's determination of what the speaker is communicating. Whereas

semantic information is encoded in what is uttered, pragmatic information is generated by, or

at least made relevant by, the act of uttering it.

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Exercises

1. Pragmatics is the study of how meaning and syntax are related in a language.

A. True

B. False

.

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Deixis and distance

‘Deixis’ is generally understood to be the encoding of the spatiotemporal context and

subjective experience of the encoder in an utterance. Terms such as I, here, now, and this –

the so-called ‘pure deictic terms’ – are heavily context dependent and represent a kind of

cognitive center of orientation for the speaker. What, for instance is here for me, may be there

for you. Clearly such terms pose problems in terms of both reference and meaning, and

standard accounts have attempted to find a middle ground between lexical and pragmatic

meaning.

The technical term deixis (pronounced like ‘day-icksis’) comes from the Greek word

meaning “showing” or “pointing” via language. Any linguistic form used to accomplish this

‘pointing’ is called deictic expression. The essential property of deixis is that it determines

the structure and interpretation of utterances in relation to the time and place of their

occurrence, the identity of the speaker and addressee, and objects and events in the actual

situation of utterance. For example, the referent of ‘that man over there’ cannot be identified

except in relation to the use of the expression by someone who is in a particular place on a

particular occasion. So too for ‘yesterday’ and many other deictic expressions. Deixis is

grammaticalized in many languages in the categories of person and tense: in English, for

example, the selection and interpretation of ‘I’ or ‘you’ is determined by the speaker`s

adoption of that role and by his assignment to another of the role of addressee; and the use of

a particular tense is determined (let us assume-it is far more complicated than this) in relation

to the moment of utterance. The demonstrative pronouns ‘this’ and ‘that’ and, in some of its

uses at least, the definite article ‘the’ are also deictic. So too are such temporal and locative

adverbs as ‘now’, ‘then’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘here’, and ‘there’. These are but the most immediately

obvious examples of deictic categories and deictic lexemes. In fact, deixis is all-pervasive in

the grammar and vocabulary of natural languages.

When you notice a strange object and ask, ‘What`s that?’, you are using a deictic

expression (‘that’) to indicate something in the immediate context. Deictic expressions are

also sometimes called indexicals. They are among the first forms to be spoken by very young

children and can be used to indicate people via person deixis (‘me’, ‘you’), or location via

spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’), or time via temporal deixis (‘now’, ‘then’). All these

expressions depend, for their interpretation, on the speaker and hearer sharing the same

context. Indeed, deictic expressions have their most uses in face-to-face spoken interaction

where utterances such as ‘I`ll put this here” are easily understood by the people present, but

may need a translation for someone not there.

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Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is tied to the speaker`s context, with the most

basic distinction between deictic expressions being ‘near the speaker versus ‘away from

speaker’. In English, the ‘near speaker’, or proximal terms, are ‘this’, ‘here’, ‘now’. The

‘away from speaker’, or distal terms, are ‘that’, ‘there’, ‘then’. Proximal terms are typically

interpreted in terms of speaker`s location, or deictic center, so that ‘now’ is generally

understood as referring to some point or period in time that has the time of the speaker`s

utterance at its center. Distal terms can simply indicate ‘away from speaker’, but, in some

languages, can be used to distinguish between ‘near address6ee’ and ‘away from both speaker

and addressee’. Thus, in Japanese, the translation of the pronoun ‘that’ will distinguish

between ‘that near addressee’ ‘sore’ and ‘that distant from both speaker and addressee’ ‘are’

with a third term being used for the proximal ‘this near speaker’ ‘kore’.

We can also explain whether movement is away from the speaker`s location ‘go’ or

toward the speaker`s location ‘come’. If you`re looking for someone and she appears, moving

toward you, you can say ‘here she comes!’ If, however, she is moving away from you in the

distance, you`re more likely to say (‘There she goes!’) The same deictic effect explains the

different situations in which you would tell someone to ‘Go to bed’ versus ‘Come to bed’.

Within a linguistic anthropological strand of enquiry, deixis is viewed as a linguistic

phenomenon which fundamentally challenges the view that language would be a self-

contained, autonomous system. The presence of deictic elements ties up an utterance with

contextually variable factors and such can even be argued to affect the meaning of other

lexical items in the co-textual vicinity.

Person deixis

The distinction just described involves person deixis, with the speaker (‘I’) and the

addressee (‘you’) mentioned. The simplicity of these forms disguises the complexity of their

use. To learn these deictic expressions, we have to discover that each person in a conversation

shifts from being ‘I’ to being ‘you’ constantly. All young children go through a stage in their

learning where this distinction seems problematic and they say things like ‘Read you a story’

(instead of ‘me’) when handing over a favorite book.

Person deixis clearly operates on a basic three-part division, exemplified by the

pronouns for first person (‘I’), second person (‘you’), and third person (‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’). In

many languages these deictic categories of speaker, addressee, and other(s) are elaborated

with markers of relative social status (for example, addressee with higher status versus

addressee with lower status). Expressions which indicate higher status are described as

honorifics. The discussion of the circumstances which lead to the choice of one rather than

another is sometimes described as social deixis.

A fairly well-known example of a social contrast encoded with person deixis is the

distinction between forms used for a familiar versus non-familiar addressee in some

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languages. This is known as the T/V distinction, from the French forms ‘tu’ (familiar) and

‘vous’ (non familiar), and is found in many languages including German and Spanish. The

choice of one form will certainly communicate something (not directly said) about the

speaker`s view of his or her relationship with the addressee. In those social contexts where

individuals typically mark distinctions between the social status of the speaker and the

addressee, the higher, older, and more powerful speaker will tend to use the ‘tu’ version to a

lower, younger, and less powerful addressee, and be addressed by the ‘vous’ form in return.

When social change is taking place, as for example in modern Spain, where a young

businesswoman (higher economic status) is talking to her older cleaning lady (lower

economic status), how do they address each other? Here the age distinction remains more

powerful than the economic distinction and the older woman uses ‘tu’ and the younger uses

‘Usted’.

In deictic terms, third person is not a direct participant in basic (I-you) interaction and,

being an outsider, is necessarily more distant. Third person pronouns are consequently distal

forms in terms of person deixis. Using a third person form, where a second person form

would be possible, is one way of communicating distance (and non-familiarity). This can be

done in English for an ironic or humorous purpose as when one person, who`s very busy in

the kitchen, addresses another, who`s being very lazy, as in

(1)Would his highness like some coffee?

The distance associated with third person forms is also used to make potential accusations (for

example, ‘You didn`t clean up’) less direct, as in (2a.), or to make potentially personal issue

seem like an impersonal one, based on a general rule, as in (2b.).

(2) a. Somebody didn`t clean after himself.

b. Each person has to clean up after him or herself.

Of course, the speaker can state such general ‘rule’ as applying to the speaker plus other(s),

by using the first person plural (‘we’), as in (3)

(3) We clean up after ourselves around here.

There is, in English, a potential ambiguity in such uses which allows two different

interpretations. There is an exclusive ‘we’ (speaker plus other(s), excluding addressee) and an

inclusive ‘we’ (speaker and addressee included). Some languages grammaticize this

distinction (for example, Fijian has ‘keimami’ for exclusive first person plural and ‘keda’ for

inclusive first person plural). In English, the ambiguity present (3) provides a subtle

opportunity for a hearer to decide what was communicated. Either the hearer decides that he

or she is a member of the group to whom the rule applies (i.e. an addressee) or an outsider to

whom the rule does not apply (i.e. not an addressee). In this case the hearer gets to decide the

kind of ‘more’ that is being communicated.

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The inclusive-exclusive distinction may also be noted in the difference between saying ‘let`s

go’ (to some friends) and ‘let us go’ (to someone who has captured the speaker and friends).

The action of going is inclusive in the first, but exclusive in the second.

Spatial deixis

The concept of distance already mentioned is clearly relevant to spatial deixis, where

the relative location of people and things is being indicated. Complementary English makes

use of only two adverbs, ‘here’ and ‘there’, for the basic distinction, but in older texts and in

some dialects, a much larger set of deictic expressions can be found. Although ‘yonder’ (more

distant from speaker) is still used, words like ‘hither’ (to this place) and ‘thence’ (from that

place) now sound archaic. These last two adverbs include the meaning of motion toward or

away from the speaker. Some verbs of motion, such as ‘come’ and ‘go’, retain a deictic sense

when they are used to mark movement toward the speaker (‘Come to bed!’) or away from the

speaker (‘Go to bed!’).

One version of the concept of motion toward speaker (i.e. becoming visible), seems to

be the first deictic meaning learned by children and characterizes their use of words like ‘this’

and ‘here’ (=can be seen). They are distinct from ‘that’ and ‘there’ which are associated with

things that move out of the child`s visual space (=can no longer be seen).

In considering special deixis, however, it is important to remember that location from the

speaker`s perspective can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporality away

from their home location will often continue to use ‘here’ o mean the (physically distant)

home location, as if they were still in that location. Speakers also seem to be able to project

themselves into other locations prior to actually being in those locations, as when they say

‘I`ll come later’ (=movement to addressee`s location). This is sometimes described as deictic

projection and we make more use of its possibilities as more technology allows us to

manipulate location. If ‘here’ means the place of the speaker`s utterance (and ‘now’ means the

time of the speaker`s utterance), then an utterance such as )4) should be nonsense.

(4) I am not here now.

However, I can say (4) into the recorder of a telephone answering machine, projecting that

‘now’ will apply to any time someone tries to call me, and not to when I actually record the

words. Indeed, recording (4) is a kind of dramatic performance for future audience in which I

project my presence to be in the required location. A similar deictic projection is

accomplished via dramatic performance when I use direct speech to represent the person,

location, and feelings of someone or some thing else. For example, I could be telling you

about a visit to a pet store as in (5).

(5) I was looking at this little puppy in a cage with such a sad look on its face. It was

like, ‘Oh, I`m so unhappy here, will you set me free?

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The ‘here’ of the cage is not the actual physical location of the person uttering the words (the

speaker), but is instead the location of that person performing in the role of the puppy.

It may be that the truly pragmatic basis of spatial deixis is actually psychological

distance. Physically close objects will tend to be treated by the speaker as psychologically

close. Also, something that is physically distant will generally be treated as psychologically

distant (for example, ‘that man over there’). However, a speaker may also wish to mark

something that is physically close (for example, a perfume being sniffed by the speaker) as

psychologically distant ‘I don`t like that’. In this analysis, a word like ‘that’ does not have a

fixed (i.e. semantic) meaning; instead, it is ‘invested’ with meaning in a context by a speaker.

Similar psychological processes seem to be at work in our distinctions between proximal

and distal expressions used to mark temporal deixis.

Temporal deixis

We have noted the use of the proximal form ‘now’ as indicating both the time

coinciding with the speaker`s utterance and the time of the speaker`s voice being heard (the

hearer`s ‘now’). In contrast to ‘now’, the distal expression ‘then’ applies to both past (6a.) and

future (6b.) time related to the speaker`s present time.

(6) a. November 22nd

, 1963? I was in Scotland then.

b. Dinner at 8:30 on Saturday? Okay, I`ll see you then.

It is worth noting that we also use elaborate systems of non-deictic temporal reference such

as calendar time (dates, as in (6a.)) and clock time (hours, as in (6b.)). However, these forms

of temporal reference are learned a lot later than the deictic expressions like ‘yesterday’,

‘tomorrow’, ‘today’, ‘tonight’, ‘next week’, ‘last week’, ‘this week’. All these expressions

depend for their interpretation on knowing the relevant utterance time. If we don`t know the

utterance (i.e. scribbling) time of a note, as in (7), on an office door, we won`t know if we

have short or long wait ahead.

(7) Back in an hour.

Similarly, if we return the next day to a bar that displays the notice in (8), then we still

be (deictically) one day early for the free drink.

(8) Free beer tomorrow.

The psychological basis of temporal deixis seems to be similar to that of special deixis.

We can treat temporal events as objects that move towards us (into view) or away from us

(out of view). One metaphor used in English is of events coming toward the speaker from the

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future (for example, ‘the coming week’, ‘the approaching year’) and going away from the

speaker to the past (for example, ‘ in days gone by’, ‘the past week’). We also seem to treat

the near or immediate future as being close to utterance time by using the proximal deictic

‘this’, as in ‘this (coming) weekend’ or ‘this (coming) Thursday’.

One basic (but often unrecognized) type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice

of verb tense. Whereas other languages have many different forms of the verb as different

tenses, English has only two basic forms, the present as in (9b.).

(9) a. I live here now.

b. I lived there then.

The present tense is the proximal form and the past tense is the distal form. Something having

taken place in the past, as in (10a.), is typically treated as distant from the speaker`s current

situation. Perhaps less obviously, something that is treated as extremely unlikely (or

impossible) from the speaker`s current situation is also marked via the distal (past tense) form,

as in (10b.).

(10) a. I could swim (when I was a child).

b. I could be in Hawaii (if I had a lot of money).

The past tense is always used in English in those if-clauses that mark events presented by the

speaker as not being close to present reality as in (11).

(11) a. If I had a yacht,..

b. If I was rich,..

Neither of the ideas expressed in (11) are to be treated as having happened in past time. They

are presented as deictically distant from the speaker`s current situation. So distant, indeed,

that they actually communicate the negative (we infer that the speaker has no yacht and is no

rich).

In order to understand many English conditional constructions (including those of the

form ‘Had I known sooner..’), we have to recognize that, in temporal deixis, the remote or

distal form can be used to communicate not only distance from current time, but also distance

from current reality or facts.

Deixis and grammar

The basic distinctions presented so far for person, spatial, and temporal deixis can all

be seen at work in one of the most common structural distinctions made in English grammar-

that between direct and indirect (or reported) speech. As already described, the deictic

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expressions for person (‘you’), place (‘here’), and time (‘this evening’) can be interpreted

within the same context as the speaker who utters (12a.).

(12) a. Are you planning to be here this evening?

b. I asked her if she was planning to be there that evening.

When the context shifts, as for example in (12), to one in which I report the previous

utterance, then the previous utterance is marked deictically as relative to the circumstances of

asking. Note that the proximal forms in (12a.) have shifted to the corresponding distal forms

in (12b.). This very regular difference in English reported discourse marks a distinction

between the ‘near speaker’ meaning of direct speech and the ‘away from speaker’ meaning of

indirect speech. The proximal deictic forms of a direct speech reporting communicate, often

dramatically, a sense of being in the same context as the utterance. The distal deictic forms of

indirect speech reporting make the original speech event seem more remote.

It should not be a surprise to learn that deictic expressions were all to be found in the

pragmatics wastebasket. Their interpretation depends on the context, the speaker`s intention,

and they express relative distance. Given their small size and extremely wide range of

possible uses, deictic expressions always communicate much more than what is said.

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Exercises

1. What kinds of expressions are used in this utterance (e.g. I= person deixis)?

I`m busy so you can`t stay here. Come back later.

2. What are the anaphoric expressions in this sentence?

Dr. Foster gave Andy some medicine after he told her about his headaches and she

advised him to take the pills three times a day until the pain went away.

3. Circle any deictic expression in the following sentences. (Hint: Proper names and noun

phrases containing "the" are not considered deictic expressions. Also, all sentences do not

include deictic expressions.)

1. I saw her standing there.

2. Dogs are animals.

3. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.

4. The name of this rock band is "The Beatles."

5. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

6. The Declaration of Independence was signed last year.

7. Copper conducts electricity.

8. The treasure chest is on the right.

9. These are the times that try men's souls.

10. There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.

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Reference and inference

In discussing deixis, we assumed that the use of words to refer to people, places and

times was a simple matter. Yet, as Lyons stated on the nature of reference, makes the

following point: 'it is the speaker who refers (by using some appropriate expression): he

invests the expression with reference by the act of referring' (1977). That is, words do not

refer to anything. People refer. We have to define reference as ‘’an act in which a speaker, or

writer uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or reader to identify something’’

(Widdowson, 1996.p17). Those linguistic forms are referring expressions, which can be

proper nouns (Shakespeare, Hawaii...). Noun phrases which are definite (the author, the

singer, the island...), or indefinite (a man, a woman, a beautiful place...), and pronouns (he,

her, it, them...). The choice of one type of referring expressions rather than another is based

on what the speaker assumes the listener knows already. In shared visual context, those

pronouns that function as deictic expressions (for example, take this, look at him) may be

sufficient for successful reference, but where identifications are difficult, the speaker uses

more elaborate noun phrases. Consider the following example: ‘’remember the old foreign

guy with the funny hat? ‘’

Reference is then related to the speaker’s goals (for example, to identify something) and

the speaker’s beliefs (i.e. can the listener be expected to know that particular ‘something’?) in

the use of language. The key process to achieve successful reference is called inference. An

inference is additional information used by the listener to create a connection between what is

said and what must be meant. 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. People can not refer to some entity or person without knowing

exactly which name would be the first word to use, we can even use vague expressions

relaying on the listeners ability to infer what referent we have in mind. Speakers even invent

names. There was one man who delivered packages to our office whose ‘real’ name I didn`t

know, but whose identity I could infer when the secretary referred to him as in (1).

(1) Mister Aftershave is late today.

The example in (1) may serve to illustrate that reference is not based on an objectively correct

(versus incorrect) naming, but rather on some locally successful (versus unsuccessful) choice

of expressions.

We might also note from example (1) that successful reference is necessarily

collaborative, with both the speaker and the listener having a role in thinking about what the

other has in mind.

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The study of reference is essentially a pragmatic theme. The focus is on how speakers

establish various types of linkage between their utterances and elements in a situational

context (e.g. objects, persons, etc.). One central question is the functioning of deictic

elements, sometimes called shifters (i.e. lexical items such as "I, you, here, now, there,

tomorrow, etc." whose referential meaning shifts with every new speaker or occasion of use).

Referential and Attributive uses

In 1966, Keith Donnellan distinguished referential from attributive uses of a definite

description. Instances of referential use are me saying the Bank Manager in order to draw

your attention to Adelaide, or, at the party, my talking to you of the woman near the garden

door-window as the Irish lady; instances of attributive use are instead me entering the bank,

asking at the Information Desk who is the Bank Manager, or, at the party, me inquiring

whether you know who is the Irish woman who brought the cake and whether you can

introduce me to her. What distinguishes the two cases is that in the referential use the

description aims at a specific thing, whereas the attributive use doesn’t.

It should be noted that not all referring expressions have identifiable physical referents.

Indefinite noun phrases can be used to identify physically present entity (this man) or to

describe entities that are assumed to exist, but are unknown (e.g. he wants to marry a woman

with a lots of money). Or entities that, as far as we know, do not exist (e.g. we’d love to find a

nine-foot-tall basketball player. In the first example we designate an entity that is known to

the speaker only in terms of its descriptive properties. The word ‘a’ can be replaced by the

word ‘any’ in this case. This is called an attributive use i.e. whenever, whatever fits the

description. This type is different from a referential use in which I have a person in mind, but

instead of using her name, I choose this expression because I think you would be more

interested in hearing that this woman has lots of money than she has a name.

Names and Referents

In reference, there is a basic ‘intention-to-identify’ and a ‘recognition-of-intention’ in

which there is collaboration. This process should mark not only between one speaker and one

hearer, but between all members of a community who share a common language and culture.

That is, there is a convention that certain referring expressions will be used to identify certain

entities. The belief that referring expressions can only designate very specific entities is false.

Thus, the nouns ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘sandwich’ do not strictly identify to one person or thing.

Here is an illustration:

A: can I look at your Chomsky?

B: yeah, it‘s over there on the table.

Given this context, the intended referent and the inferred referent would not be

Chomsky the person, but a book (notice the pronoun it). There is a pragmatic connection

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between proper nouns and object that will be conventionally associated with those names.

Thus, when the speaker uses a proper name referentially to identify any such object, he invites

the listener to make the expected inference (e.g. from name of writer to book by writer) and

thus shows himself to be a member of the same community as the speaker. So here, more is

being communicated than is said.

The Role of Co-text

In the discussion of many of the preceding examples, we emphasised the influence of

context. There are different kinds of context. One kind is described as linguistic context, also

known as co-text. The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the same phrase or

sentence. The surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we think the word probably

means. Our ability to identify intended referents depends not only on our understanding of

referring expression, but it is also aided by the linguistic material, or co-text, accompanying

the referring expression. In a given sentence or utterance (referent) we have a referring

expression and we have co-text. The latter limits the range of possible interpretations we

might have for a word like ‘Brazil’ (Brazil wins the world cup). So, reference is not solely

understood in terms of our ability to identify referents via the referring expression. In fact,

the referring expression provides a range of reference i.e. a number of possible referents. For

example: ‘the cheese sandwich’ referring expression is opened to many interpretations

because it has two co-texts:

(3) a. The cheese sandwich is made with white bread.

b. The cheese sandwich left without paying.

Co-text is just one linguistic part of the environment in which a referring expression is

used. The physical environment or context has a powerful impact on how referring

expressions are to be interpreted. The physical context of a restaurant, and perhaps even the

speech conventions of those who work there, may be crucial to the interpretation of (3).

Similarly, it is useful to know that a hospital is the context for (4 a.), a dentist office for (4 b.)

and a hotel reception for (4 c.) e.g.:

(4) a. The heart-attack mustn`t be moved.

b. Your ten-thirty cancelled.

c. A couple of rooms have complained about the heat.

These examples provide provides some support for an analysis of reference that depends

on local context and the local knowledge of the participants. It may crucially depend on

familiarity with the local socio-cultural conventions as the basis for inference (for example, if

a person is in the hospital with an illness, then he or she can be identified by nurses via the

name of the illness). These conventions may differ substantially from one social group to

another and may be marked differently from one language o another. Reference, then, is not

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supplying a relationship between the meaning of a word or phrase and object or person in the

word. It is a social act, in which the speaker assumes that the word or phrase chosen to

identify an object or person will be interpreted as the speaker intended.

Anaphoric reference

In most of our talk or writing, we have to keep track of who or what we are talking

about for more than one sentence of a single time and not only single acts of reference. As an

illustration, after the initial introduction of some entity, speakers will use more various

expressions to maintain reference like in:

(5) In the film, a men and a woman were trying to wash a cat. The man was holding the

cat while the woman poured water on it. He said something to her and then started

laughing.

In English, initial reference is often indefinite (a man, a woman, a cat). But in this

example, the definite phrases (the man, the woman, the cat) and the pronoun (it, he, her, they)

are examples of subsequent reference to already introduced references, known as anaphoric

reference, or anaphora ‘referring back’. So, the second (or subsequent) expression is the

anaphor and the first mention (or the initial expression) is the antecedent in technical terms.

The anaphoric reference is a process of continuing to identify exactly the same entity as

devoted by the antecedent. Moreover, there is sometimes reversal of the antecedent-anaphor

pattern that can be found at the beginning of stories like in the following examples:

(6) I turned the corner and almost slapped on it. There was a large snake in the middle

of the path.

We notice here that the pronoun ‘it’ is used first and is difficult to interpret until the whole

noun phrase is presented in the next line. This pattern is technically known as cataphora, and

is less common than anaphora. There are many expressions which are used for anaphoric

reference in English. The most typical forms are pronouns like (it). Sometimes the

interpretation requires us to identify an entity like in ‘’cook (?) for three minutes ‘’, and no

linguistic expression is present. This is called zero anaphora or ellipsis. Using zero anaphora

as a means of maintaining reference creates an expectation that the listener will be able to

infer who or what the speaker intends to identify. Here again, more is being communicated

than is said. Successful reference does not depend on literal or ‘grammatically’ correct

relationship between the properties of the referent and the referring expression chosen. The

key to making sense of reference is that in the pragmatic process speaker’s select linguistic

expressions with the intention of identifying certain entities and with the assumption that

listeners will collaborate and interpret these expressions as the speaker intended. Thus,

successful reference means that an intention was recognised, through inference, indicating a

kind of shared knowledge and hence social connection. The assumption of shared knowledge

is also crucially involved in the study of presupposition.

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34

Exercises

1. What kind of inference is involved in interpreting each of these utterances?

a. Teacher: You can borrow my Shakespeare.

b. Waiter: The ham sandwich left without paying.

c. Nurse: The hernia in room 5 wants to talk to the doctor.

d. Dentist: My eleven-thirty cancelled so I had an early lunch.

e. Yesterday, the White House announced the decision to lift all sanctions.

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Presuppositions and entailments

The pragmatic interest in the implicit meaning dimensions of language use has been

extended to include meanings which are logically entailed by the use of a particular structure.

Presuppositions are implicit meanings which are subsumed by a particular wording in the

sense that the interpretation of the latter is conditional upon the tacit acceptance of these

implicit meanings (cf. pre-supposition = "an assumption that comes before"). For instance, a

sentence such as "The Cold War has ended" presupposes that the existence of the entities it

refers to, in this case the "Cold War". The study of presuppositions therefore often

concentrates on meaning dimensions which are "taken for granted" in an utterance or a text

and hence this area of pragmatic research offers an instrument which is well-suited for

examining the links between language and ideology.

Presupposition and Entailment

Presupposition is what the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance.

Entailment, which is not a pragmatic concept, is what logically follows from what is asserted

in the utterance. Speakers have presuppositions while sentences, not speakers, have

entailments. Take a look at the example below:

Jane’s brother bought two apartments.

This sentence presupposes that Jane exists and that she has a brother. The speaker may also

hold the more specific presupposition that she has only a brother and her brother has a lot of

money. All these presuppositions are held by the speaker and all of them can be wrong.

In pragmatics entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of

one (A) requires the truth of the other (B).

For example, the sentence

(A) The president was assassinated. entails >>(B) The president is dead.

Presupposition

The concept of presupposition is often treated as the relationship between two

propositions. In the case below, we have a sentence that contains a proposition (p) and another

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proposition (q), which is easily presupposed by any listener. However, the speaker can

produce a sentence by denying the proposition (p), obtaining as a result the same

presupposition (q).

Debora’s cat is cute. (p)

Debora has a cat. (q)

When I say that Debora’s cat is cute, this sentence presupposes that Debora has a cat. In

Debora’ s cat is not cute. (NOT p)

the same thing holds true, that is, it presupposes that she has a cat. This property of

presupposition is generally described as constancy under negation. Basically, it means that

the presupposition of a statement will remain constant (i.e. still true) even when that statement

is negated.

Types of Presupposition

In the analysis of how speakers’ assumptions are typically expressed, presupposition has

been associated with the use of a large number of words, phrases and structures. These

linguistic forms are considered here as indicators of potential presupposition, which can only

become actual presupposition in contexts with speakers. The types of presupposition are:

1-Existential presupposition: it is the assumption of the existence of the entities named by the

speaker. For example, when a speaker says "Tom’s car is new", we can presuppose that Tom

exists and that he has a car.

2-Factive presupposition: it is the assumption that something is true due to the presence of

some verbs such as "know" and "realize" and of phrases involving glad, for example. Thus,

when a speaker says that she didn’t realize someone was ill, we can presuppose that someone

is ill. Also, when she says "I’m glad it’s over”, we can presuppose that it’s over.

3-Lexical presupposition: it is the assumption that, in using one word, the speaker can act as

if another meaning (word) will be understood. For instance:

Andrew stopped running. (>>He used to run.)

You are late again. (>> You were late before.)

In this case, the use of the expressions "stop" and "again" are taken to presuppose another

(unstated) concept.

4-Structural presupposition: it is the assumption associated with the use of certain words and

phrases. For example, wh-question in English are conventionally interpreted with the

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presupposition that the information after the wh-form (e.g. when and where) is already known

to be the case.

When did she travel to the USA? ( >> she travelled)

Where did you buy the book? (>> you bought the book)

The listener perceives that the information presented is necessarily true rather than just the

presupposition of the person asking the question.

5- Non- factive presupposition: it is an assumption that something is not true. For example,

verbs like "dream", "imagine" and "pretend" are used with the presupposition that what

follows is not true.

I dreamed that I was rich. (>> I am not rich)

We imagined that we were in London. (>> We are not in London)

6-Counterfactual presupposition: it is the assumption that what is presupposed is not only

untrue, but is the opposite of what is true, or contrary to facts. For instance, some conditional

structures, generally called counterfactual conditionals, presuppose that the information, in the

if- clauses, is not true at the time of utterance.

If you were my daughter, I would not allow you to do this. (>> you are not my daughter)

Indicators of potential presuppositions discussed so far are summarized in the following table:

Type Example Presupposition

existential The X >>X exists

factive I regret leaving >> I left

Non-factive He pretended to be happy >>He wasn`t happy

lexical He managed to escape >>He tried to escape

structural When did she die? >>She died

counterfactual If I weren`t ill, >> I am ill

Table 4.1. Potential presuppositions

Projection Problem

Yule has also called attention to the projection problem, which occurs when a simple

38

sentence becomes part of a more complex sentence. In this case, the meaning of some

presupposition (as a part) doesn’t survive to become the meaning of a more complex sentence

(as a whole).

a) Nobody realized that Kelly was unhappy

b) I imagined that Kelly was unhappy.

c) I imagined that Kelly was unhappy and nobody realized that she was unhappy.

Through these examples, we can observe that, when the speaker utters (a), we can

presuppose that she was unhappy and that, when she utters (b), we can presuppose that she

was not unhappy. However, when the speaker utters (c), we can't understand what the

speaker means by that utterance without a context because the two parts have an opposite

meaning. However, it does not mean that there are no situations in which the combination of

two simple sentences in a complex one can be possible. For example:

a. It’s so sad. Blaine regrets getting Laura pregnant. (>> Blaine got Laura pregnant)

b. Blaine regrets getting Laura pregnant, but he didn’t get her pregnant.

One way to think about the whole sentence presented in b is as an utterance by a person

reporting what happened in the soap opera that day. In the example above, when the speaker

utters he didn’t get her pregnant actually entails Blaine didn’t get her pregnant as a logical

consequence. Thus, when the person who watched the soap opera tells you that Blaine regrets

getting Laura pregnant, but he didn’t get her pregnant, you have a presupposition q and NOT

q. In this case, we can infer that Blaine thought he was the father of Laura’s baby, but, in fact,

he was not.

This shows that entailments (necessary consequences of what is said) are simply more

powerful than presuppositions (earlier assumptions). In the example below, the power of

entailment can also be used to cancel existential presuppositions.

The King of Brazil visited us. (The king of Brazil does not exist).

Ordered entailments

Generally speaking, entailment is not a pragmatic concept (i.e. having to do with the

speaker meaning), but it is considered a purely logical concept.

Observe the examples below:

1) Bob ate three sandwiches.

a) Something ate three sandwiches.

b) Bob did something to three sandwiches.

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c) Bob ate three of something.

d) Something happened.

When a speaker utters sentence 1, the speaker is necessarily committed to the truth of a

very large number of background entailments. On any occasion, in uttering 1, however, the

speaker will indicate how these entailments are to be ordered. That is, the speaker will

communicate, typically by stress, which entailment is assumed to be the foreground

entailments, or more important for interpreting intended meaning, than any others. For

example, when the speaker utters the following sentences, she indicates that the foreground

entailment, and hence her main assumption, is that Bob ate a certain number of sandwiches.

a) Bob ate THREE sandwiches.

b) BOB ate three sandwiches.

In B, the focus shifts to BOB, and the main assumption is that someone ate three

sandwiches. The stress in English functions to mark the main assumption of the speaker in

producing an utterance. As such, it allows the speaker to mark for the listener what the focus

of the message is, and what is being assumed.

A very similar function is exhibited by a structure called cleft construction in English,

as we can observe in the example below:

a) It was VICTOR that did the work.

b) It wasn’t ME who took your jacket.

In both the examples above, the speaker can communicate what she believes the listener may

already be thinking (i.e. the foreground entailment). In b, that foreground entailment

(someone took your jacket) is being made in order to deny personal responsibility. The

utterance in b can be used to attribute the foreground entailment to the listener(s) without

actually stating it (as a possible accusation).

40

Exercises

1. What is one presupposition of a speaker who says:

a. Your clock isn`t working.

b. Where did he find the money?

c. We regret buying that car.

d. The king of France is bald.

2. The following sentences make certain presuppositions. What are they? (The first one has

been done for you!)

1. The police ordered the minors to stop drinking.

Presupposition: The minors were drinking.

2. Please take me out to the ball game again.

Presupposition:

3. Valerie regretted not receiving a new T-bird for Labor Day.

Presupposition:

4. That her pet turtle ran away made Emily very sad.

Presupposition:

5. The administration forgot that the professors support the students. (Cf. "The

administration believes that the professors support the students," in which there is no

such presupposition.)

Presupposition:

6. It is strange that the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970.

Presupposition:

7. Isn't it strange that the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970?

Presupposition:

8. Disa wants more popcorn.

Presupposition:

9. Why don't pigs have wings?

Presupposition:

10.Who discovered America in 1492?

Presupposition:

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. Cooperation and Implicature

When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;

When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;

When he says no, he is not a diplomat.

When a lady says no, she means ‘perhaps’;

When she says perhaps, she means ‘yes’;

When she says yes, she is not a lady.

Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)

Grice and Conversational Implicatures

Herbert Paul Grice (b. 1913-d. 1988) emphasized the distinction Voltaire makes, in our

opening quotation, between what words mean, what the speaker literally says when using

them, and what the speaker means or intends to communicate by using those words, which

often goes considerably beyond what is said. I ask you to lunch and you reply, "I have a one

o'clock class I'm not prepared for." You have conveyed to me that you will not be coming to

lunch, although you haven't literally said so. You intend for me to figure out that by indicating

a reason for not coming to lunch (the need to prepare your class) you intend to convey that

you are not coming to lunch for that reason. The study of such conversational implicatures is

the core of Grice's influential theory.

Grice's so-called theory of conversation starts with a sharp distinction between what

someone says and what someone ‘implicates’ by uttering a sentence. What someone says is

determined by the conventional meaning of the sentence uttered and contextual processes of

disambiguation and reference fixing; what she implicates is associated with the existence to

some rational principles and maxims governing conversation (setting aside "conventional

implicatures" which we discuss below). What is said has been widely identified with the

literal content of the utterance; what is implicated, the implicature, with the non-literal, what it

is (intentionally) communicated, but not said, by the speaker. Consider his initial example:

A and B are talking about a mutual friend, C, who is now working in a bank. A asks B

how C is getting on in his job, and B replies: Oh quite well, I think; he likes his

colleagues, and he hasn't been to prison yet. (Grice 1967a/1989, 24.)

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What did B say by uttering "he hasn't been to prison yet"? Roughly, all he literally said of C

was that he hasn't been to prison up to the time of utterance. This is what the conventional

sentence meaning plus contextual processes of disambiguation, precisification of vague

expressions and reference fixing provide.

But, normally, B would have implicated more than this: that C is the sort of person

likely to yield to the temptation provided by his occupation. According to Grice, the

‘calculation’ of conversational implicatures is grounded on common knowledge of what the

speaker has said (or better, the fact that he has said it), the linguistic and extra linguistic

context of the utterance, general background information, and the consideration of what

Grice dubs the ‘Cooperative Principle (CP)’:

“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”. (Grice 1967a/1989, 26.)

The cooperative principle

Sometimes people happen to express things which, from a purely logical perspective,

have no communicative value since it expresses completely obvious information which

mostly create no continuation of communication. Expressions such as: “business is business”,

boys will be boys” and other pointless expressions are simply subsumed under what is labeled

tautologies. If they are used in a conversation, clearly the speaker intends to communicate

more than is said. However, when a listener hears such expressions, he or she has to assume

that the speaker is being cooperative and intends to communicate something. That something

must be more than just what the words mean. It is an additional conveyed meaning called an

implicature.

Implicatures are primary examples of more being communicated than is said, but in

order for them to be interpreted, some basic cooperative principle must be assumed to be in

operation.

The maxims

According to Grice, the CP is implemented, in the plans of speakers and understanding

of hearers, and he identified some of the communicational norms and showed how they are

involved in the reasoning that makes it possible for utterances to convey rather more than is

literally encoded in the underlying sentences. He proposed that four conversational

conventions or “maxims” could be regarded as the basis for cooperative principle (CP).

43

Quantity

o (supermaxim): Give the right amount of information: i.e

o (Submaxims):

Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current

purposes of the exchange).

Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Quality

o (Supermaxim): Try to make your contribution one that is true.

o (Submaxims):

Do not say what you believe to be false.

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Relation

o Be relevant.

Manner

o (Supermaxim): Be perspicuous.

o (Submaxims):

Avoid obscurity of expression.

Avoid ambiguity.

Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

Be orderly.

Frame whatever you say in the form most suitable for any reply that

would be regarded as appropriate; or, facilitate in your form of

expression the appropriate reply (added by Grice 1981/1989, 273).

Grice sees the principles governing conversation as derived from general principles

governing human rational cooperative action and he attributes to these principles an essential

role for the definition and the interpretation of conversational implicatures.

Grice does not suggest that this is an exhaustive list nor that equal weight should be

attached to each of the stated maxims. (The maxim of manner, for example, does not

obviously apply to primarily interactional conversation.) We might observe that the

instruction Be relevant seems to cover all the other instructions. However, by providing a

description of the norms speakers operate with in conversation, Grice makes it possible to

describe what types of meaning a speaker can convey by 'flouting' one of these maxims.

This flouting of a maxim results in the speaker conveying, in addition to the literal meaning of

his utterance, an additional meaning, which is a conversational implicature. As a brief

example, we can consider the following exchange:

(1) A: I am out of petrol.

B: There is a garage round the corner.

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In this exchange, Grice (1975: 51) suggests that B would be infringing the instruction Be

relevant if he was gratuitously stating a fact about the world via the literal meaning of his

utterance. The implicature, derived from the assumption that speaker B is adhering to the

Cooperative Principle, is that the garage is not only round the corner, but also will be open

and selling petrol. We might also note that, in order to arrive at the implicature, we have to

know certain .facts about the world, that garages sell petrol, and that round the corner is not a

great distance away. We also have to interpret A's remark not only as a description of a

particular state of affairs, but as a request for help, for instance. Once the analysis of intended

meaning goes beyond the literal meaning of the 'sentences-on-the-page', a vast number of

related issues have to be considered.

Hedges

We use certain types of expressions, called Hedges, to show that we are concerned

about following the maxims while being cooperative participants in a conversation. Hedges

can be defined as words or phrases used to indicate that we`re not really sure that what we’re

saying is sufficiently correct or complete. We can use ‘sort of’ or ‘kind of’ as hedges on the

accuracy of our statements, as in descriptions such as ‘His hair was kind of long’ or ‘The book

cover is sort of yellow’ (rather than ‘It is yellow’). These are examples of hedges on the

quality maxim. Other examples would include the expressions listed below that people

sometimes put at the beginning of their conversational contributions.

As far as I know......

Now correct me if I`m wrong, but…

I`m not absolutely sure, but…

We also take care to indicate that what we report is something we think or feel (not

know), is possible or likely (not certain), and may or could (not must) happen. Hence the

difference between saying ‘Jackson is guilty’ and ‘I think it`s possible that Jackson is guilty’.

In the first version, we will be assumed to have very good evidence for the statement.

As far as relation maxim is concerned; markers tied to the exception of relevance,

people tend to use in the middle of conversation; expressions like saying ''Oh! By the way!'' or

as to mention some importantly unconnected information during the conversation; and in

case they want to shift from the discussion; saying'' Anyway, well,'' marks people are bored

or they felt a no need in darling with non- relevant material and they want to stop.

The awareness of the expectation of manner may also lead speakers to produce hedges,

for instance;

(3) I don't know if this is clear at all, but.........

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These examples of hedges are good indications that the speakers are aware of the

maxims and they want to observe them and they also communicate the speakers' concern that

their listeners' judge them to cooperative conversational partners. In some circumstances

speakers may not follow the expectations of the cooperative principles, for instance; in

court rooms, classrooms, witness; in such situation; specialized institutional talk is

clearly different from conversation.

However, in conversation a speaker may opt out of the maxim expectation by using

some expressions such as 'no comment' in response to a question. In context they are not as

informative as it is required but they're naturally interpreted as communicating more than is

said. Such typical reaction of any hearer though the violation introduces the notion of

conversational implicature.

Conversational implicature

Unless participants adhere to cooperative principle and the maxims, in no way we can

assume that the required basic conversation is taking place, for instance;

(4)-John: Did you see Jane and Mary

-Robert: I saw Jane.

At the first instant; it appears that Robert is violating the requirement of the quantity

maxim, but after hearing Robert's response, John has to assume that Robert is cooperativing

ignoring the quantity maxim. Robert supposes that John would infer that who is not

mentioned was not seen. In such a case; Robert has conveyed more than he said via

conversational implicature.

We can represent the structure of what was said, with J (=Jane) and M (= Mary) as in

(5). Using the symbol +> for an Implicature, we can also represent the additional conveyed

meaning.

(5) John: J&M?

Robert: J (+> Not M)

We have to note that it is speakers who communicate meaning via implicatures and it is

listeners who recognize those communicated meanings via inference and selected inferences

are those which will preserve the assumptions of cooperation.

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Generalized conversational implicatures

I the case of example (4), particularly as represented in (5), no special background

knowledge of the context of utterance is required in order to make the necessary inferences.

The same process of calculating the Implicature will take place if Charlene asks Dexter about

inviting his friends Bella (=b) and Cathy (=c) to a party, as in (6a.), and gets the reply in (6b.).

The context is different from (4), but the general process if identifying the Implicature is the

same as in (5)

(6) a. Charlene: Did you invite Bella and Cathy? (b & c ?)

b. Mary: I invited Bella. (b +> Not c)

When no special knowledge is required in the context to calculate the additional conveyed

meaning, as in (4) and (6), it is called a generalized conversational implicature. One common

example in English involves any phrase with an indefinite article of the type ‘a/an X’, such as

‘ a garden’ and ‘ a child’ as in (7). These phrases are typically interpreted according to the

generalized conversational Implicature that:

an X+> not speaker`s X.

(7) I was sitting in the garden one day. A child looked over the fence.

The implicatures in (7), that the garden and the child mentioned are not the speaker`s, are

calculated on the principle that if the speaker was capable of being more specific (i.e. more

informative, following the quantity maxim), then he or she would have said ‘my garden’ and

‘my child’.

A number of other generalized conversational implicatures are commonly communicated on

the basis of scale of values and are consequently known as scalar implicatures.

Scalar implicatures

Certain information is always communicated by choosing a word which expresses one

value from a scale of values. This is particularly obvious in terms for expressing quantity, as

shown in the scales in (8), where terms are listed from the highest to the lowest values.

(8)< all, most, many, some, few>

<always, often, sometimes>

When producing an utterance, a speaker selects the words from the scale which is the

most informative and truthful (quantity and quality) in the circumstances, as in (9).

(9) I`m studying linguistics and I`ve completed some of the required courses.

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By choosing ‘some’ in (9), the speaker creates an Implicature (+> not all). This is one scalar

implicature of uttering (9). The basis of scalar Implicature is that, when any form of scale is

asserted, the negative of all forms higher on the scale is implicated. That is, in saying ‘some

of the required courses’, the speaker also creates other implicatures (for example, +>not most,

+> not many).

Particularized conversational implicature

In the preceding examples, the implicatures have been calculated without special

knowledge of any particular context. However, most of the time, our conversations take place

in very specific contexts in which locally recognized inferences are assumed. Such inferences

are required to work out the conveyed meanings which result from particularized

conversational implicatures. As an illustration, consider example (10), where Tom`s response

does not on the surface to adhere the relevance. (A simply relevant answer would be ‘Yes’ or

‘No’.)

(10) Rick: Hey, coming to the wild party tonight?

Tom: My parents are visiting.

In order to make Tom`s response relevant, Rick has to draw on some assumed knowledge that

one college student in this setting expect another to have. Tom will be spending that evening

with his parents, and time spent with parents is quiet (consequently +> Tom not at party).

Because they are by far the most common, particularized conversational implicatures

are typically just called implicatures. A further example, in which the speaker appears not to

adhere to (i.e. to ‘flout’) the maxim of manner, is presented in (11)

(11) Ann: Where are you going with the dog?

Sam: To the V-E-T.

In the local context of these speakers, the dog is known to recognize the word ‘vet’, and to

hate being taken there, so Sam produces a more elaborate, spelled out (i.e. less brief) version

of his message, implicating that he doesn`t want the dog to know the answer to the question

just asked.

In (12), Leila has just walked into Mary`s office and noticed all the work on her desk.

Mary`s response seems to flout the maxim of relevance.

(12) Leila: Whoa! Has your boss gone crazy?

Mary: let`s go get some coffee.

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In order to preserve the assumption of cooperation, Leila will have to infer some local reason

(for example, the boss may be nearby) why Mary makes an apparently non-relevant remark.

The Implicature here is essentially that Mary cannot answer the question in that context.

In addition to these fairly prosaic examples of implicatures, there are other more

entertaining examples, as in (13) and (14), where the responses initially appear to flout

relevance.

(13) Bert: Do you like ice-cream?

Ernie: Is the Pope Catholic?

(14) Bert: Do vegetarians eat hamburgers?

Ernie: Do chickens have lips?

In (13), Ernie`s response does not provide a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer. Bert must assume that

Ernie is being cooperative, so he considers Ernie`s ‘Pope” question and clearly the answer is

‘Yes’. So, the answer is known, but the nature of Ernie`s response also implicates that the

answer to the question was ‘Obviously, yes!’. An additional conveyed meaning in such a case

is that, because the answer was so obvious, the question did not need to be asked. Example

(14) provides the same type of inferencing with an answer ‘Of course not!’ as part of the

Implicature.

Conversational and conventional implicature

Conversational implicatures have the following characteristics:

i. They are cancelable:

… a putative conversational implicature that p is explicitly cancelable if, to the form

of words the utterance of which putatively implicates that p, it is admissible to add but

not p, or I do not mean to imply that p, and it is contextually cancelable if one can find

situations in which the utterance of the form of words would simply not carry the

implicature. (Grice, 1967b/1989, 44.)

ii. They are non-detachable:

… it will not be possible to find another way of saying the same thing, which simply

lacks the implicature in question, except where some special feature of the substituted

version is itself relevant to the determination of an implicature (in virtue of one of the

maxims of Manner). (Grice 1967a, 1989, 39.)

iii. They are calculable:

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The presence of a conversational implicature must be capable of being worked out; for

even if it can in fact be intuitively grasped, unless the intuition is replaceable by an

argument, the implicature (if present at all) will not count as a conversational

implicature. (Grice 1967a, 1989, 31.)

This last property is what Grice considers crucial for distinguishing between

conversational and conventional implicatures.

Conventional implicatures are generated by the meaning of certain particles like ‘but’

or ‘therefore.’ Consider the difference between (1) and (2):

1. He is an Englishman, therefore he is brave.

2. He is an Englishman, and he is brave.

3. His being brave follows from his being English.

According to Grice, a speaker has said the same with (1) as with (2). The difference is that

with (1) he implicates (3). This is a conventional implicature. It is the conventional meaning

of ‘therefore,’ and not maxims of cooperation, that carry us beyond what is said.

Grice's concept of conventional implicatures (which has antecedents in Frege; see Bach

1999b) is the most controversial part of his theory of conversation for many followers, for

several reasons. According to some, its application to particular examples runs against

common intuitions. By using the word ‘therefore’ is the speaker not saying that there is some

causal connection between being brave and being English? Isn't he saying and bot merely

implying that one's being brave follows from one's being English. Moreover, the category of

conventional implicatures blurs the distinction between what is said, usually conceived as

determined by the semantic conventions of language, and what is implicated, usually thought

of as a matter of inference as to a speaker's intentions in saying what he or she does.

Conventional sentence meaning contributes crucially to what is said, which is considered

essentially different from implicatures; but now we have the result that some elements of

conventional meaning do not contribute to what is said but to implicatures (albeit

conventional). Finally, it places the study of the conventional meaning of some expressions

within the realm of pragmatics (study of implicatures), rather than semantics, usually

conceived as the home of conventional meaning.

Among conversational implicatures, Grice distinguished between ‘particularized’ and

‘generalized.’ The former are the implicatures that are generated by saying something in

virtue of some particular features of the context, "cases in which there is no room for the idea

that an implicature of this sort is normally carried by saying that p." (Grice 1967a/1989, 37)

The above example of conversational implicature is, then, a case of particularized

conversational implicature. A generalized conversational implicature occurs where "the use of

a certain forms of words in an utterance would normally (in the absence of special

circumstances) carry such-and-such an implicature or type of implicature." (Ibid.). Grice's

first example is a sentence of the form "X is meeting a woman this evening." Anyone who

utters this sentence, in absence of special circumstances, would be taken to implicate that the

50

woman in question was someone other than X's "wife, mother, sister, or perhaps even close

platonic friend" (Ibid.) Being an implicature, it could be cancelled, either implicitly, in

appropriate circumstances, or explicitly, adding some clause that implies its denial.

Particularized conversational implicatures have a wide range of applications that Grice

himself illustrates: the informative use of tautologies, irony, metaphor, hyperbole, meiosis

and, in principle, any kind of non-literal use that relies in special circumstances of the

utterance can be explained in terms of them. But generalized conversational implicatures

apply to philosophically more important issues, in particular, to what, according to the

introduction to Logic and Conversation, was Grice's most important motivation: the issue of

the difference of meaning between logical constants of formal languages and their

counterparts in natural languages, or the alleged meanings of verbs like ‘to look like,’ ‘to

believe’ or ‘to know.’ Generalized conversational implicatures are also at the heart of Grice's

Modified Occam's Razor ("Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity," Grice

1967b/1989, 47), which has served as a criterion for distinguishing semantic issues from

pragmatic uses and for preferring, in general, an explanation in terms of implicatures rather

than a semantic one that postulates ambiguity.

Grice is probably best known in the philosophy of language for his theory of implicatures. It

is surely his most influential body of work for those parts of linguistics, psychology, cognitive

science and computer science that share philosophy's interest in language. His theory of

meaning, however, is indispensable for understanding his overall philosophical vision and his

‘big picture’ of language and communication. We will not explain this project, which consists

in part of ultimately reducing all semantic notions to psychological ones. But we will say a bit

about its central concept of ‘M-intentions,’ in order to develop an important aspect of his

pragmatic theory, the concept of a communicative intention.

Communicative intentions

Grice conceived that semantic notions like word and sentence meaning were ultimately based

on speaker's meaning, and this on speaker's intention, what he called M-intentions. What he

conceived as a study of the ontology of semantic notions has been received, however, as a

characterization of communicative intentions, the mental causes of communicative acts, and

those that the hearer has to understand for the communicative act to be successful.

So conceived, communicative intentions have these characteristic properties:

They are always oriented towards some other agent — the addressee.

They are overt, that is, they are intended to be recognized by the addressee.

Their satisfaction consists precisely in being recognized by the addressee.

These properties are already pointed out in the first version of Grice's M-intentions:

51

"A meant something by x" is (roughly) equivalent to "A intended the utterance of x to produce

some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention." (Grice 1957/1989,

220.)

Grice later reformulated this definition, giving rise to a hot debate about the precise

characterization of communicative intentions, mainly about two points:

i. Communicative intentions are intentions to produce some response on the part of the

addressee, but what kind of response, exactly, should this be? Suppose I tell you, "It's

raining." This act may have many results: perhaps you will hear the words, understand

their meaning, come to believe that it is raining, search for your umbrella, fail to find it

and grow angry, and finally become so angry you chew the rug. I may have planned

all of this, but more typically I will have had in mind that you be prepared for the

weather. But my communicative intention seems to be directed at a crucial subgoal. If

I get you to believe it is raining, your own rationality will take over and you will get

prepared. What I seem to aim at is changing your beliefs. It was this sort of response

that Grice took to be typical in his early work on meaning. But it is really more in line

with the spirit of his proposal that the crucial subgoal be to get the audience to believe

that the speaker believes that it is raining. That's really the change that language can

bring about; having gotten the audience that far, the speaker needs to hope that the

audience trusts his weather-knowledge, will take the steps to themselves believing in

rain, and then prepare adequately for the weather.

But even this rather modest subgoal may be too much to require for the success of the

communicative action qua communicative action. Suppose I say that it is raining, and

you hear me and understand the meaning of my words. But you don't think I am being

sincere; you don't believe that I believe what I said. But still, I have said it. My overall

plan to help insure that you don't get wet and catch cold may fail, but I do seem to

have succeeded in saying what I set out to say. It seems that the only new mental state

needed is the audience's recognition of the speaker's communicative intention; his

understanding of the speaker's utterance. This is what has been called ‘illocutionary

uptake’:

In the case of illocutionary acts we succeed in doing what we are trying

to do by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But

the ‘effect’ on the hearer is not a belief or a response, it consists simply

in the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker. (Searle 1969,

47.)

So the most common answer has been to follow Searle on this point and exclude

perlocutionary results, beyond uptake of this sort, from the content of communicative

intentions.

ii. Communicative intentions must be wholly overt:

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The understanding of the force of an utterance in all cases involves

recognizing what may be called broadly an audience-directed intention

and recognizing it as wholly overt, as intended to be recognized.

(Strawson 1964, 459.)

The exact formulation of this requirement has been a subject of intense debate, some

arguing for a reflexive (self-referential) definition, others for a potentially infinite but

practically finite number of clauses in the definition, with conceptual, logical or

psychological arguments. What seems to be a matter of consensus is that every covert

or even neutral (with respect to its intended recognition by the addressee) aspect of the

speaker's intention must be left out of the definition of communicative intentions.

A short but comprehensive way of concluding would be to say that the fulfillment of

communicative intentions consists precisely in being recognized by the addressee.

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Exercises

1. Which maxim does this speaker seem to be particularly careful about?

I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a wedding ring on his finger.

2. Which maxim is violated, thus resulting in an implicature?

Woman: Did you bring enough food for the party?

Man: I’d say that you made just the right amount-if a couple of hundred people show up.

A. Maxims of Quality

B. Grice's Maxim of Relation

C. Grice's Maxim of Quantity

3. Which maxim is violated, thus resulting in an implicature?

James: Do I look fat?

Leslie: Have you thought about working out or joining a health spa?

A. Maxims of Quality

B. Grice's Maxim of Relation

C. Grice's Maxim of Quantity

4. Do not say what you believe to be false.

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

A. Maxims of Quality

B. Grice's Maxim of Relation

C. Grice's Maxim of Quantity

5.Which maxim is violated, thus resulting in an implicature?

A: How are you today?

B: Well, my car is not working too good right now and to tell you the truth, I don’t have very

much money. In fact, I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills this month.

A. Maxims of Quality

B. Grice's Maxim of Relation

C. Grice's Maxim of Quantity

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55

Speech acts and events

We have been considering ways in which we interpret the meaning of an utterance in

terms of what the speaker intended to convey. We have not yet considered the fact that we

usually know how the speaker intends us to ‘take’ (or ‘interpret the function of’) what is said.

In very general terms, we can usually recognize the types of ‘action’ performed by a speaker

with the utterance. We use the term Speech act to describe actions such as ‘requesting’,

‘commanding’, ‘questioning’, or ‘informing’. We can define a speech act as the action

performed by the speaker with an utterance. If you say, I`ll be there at six, you are not just

speaking, you seem to be performing the speech act of ‘promising’.

Speech act theory was developed by the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin in the 1930s.

This latter gave lectures, twelve at all, at Harvard University in 1955. They were subsequently

published under the title How to Do Things with Words in 1962. The theory arises in reaction

to what Austin (1962:3) calls the Description Fallacy which states the view that a declarative

sentence is always used to describe some state of affairs, some fact which it must do truly or

falsely. (K. Malmkjaer. Second Edition. p. 486). Austin holds a different view in claiming that

there are many declarative sentences which do not describe, report, or state any thing and of

which it makes no sense to ask whether they are true of false. Uttering such sentences is part

of the doing of some action which would not normally be described as simply saying

something (Austin: 1962). For example, if someone works in a situation where a boss has a

great deal of power, then the boss’s utterance of the expression in (1) is more than just a

statement: (1) you’re fired. However, actions performed by utterances do not have to be as

dramatic and unpleasant, as in (1) which can be used to perform the act of ending this

employee’s employment. For instance, this group of utterances in (2) may have these

functions:

(2) a. You’re so nice…….(complement).

b. You’re welcome………( acknowledgement of thanks).

Such utterances Austin described as 'performatives' and the specified circumstances

required for their success he outlined as a set of 'felicity conditions' and the actions performed

by these utterances or performatives are generally called Speech Acts, and in English, they are

commonly given more specific labels, such as apology, complaint, complement, invitation,

promise, or request. These descriptive terms for different kinds of speech acts are

representatives of the speaker’s communicative intention which the speaker normally expects

that it will be recognized by the hearer. Both interlocutors are helped in this process by the

circumstances surrounding the utterance. These circumstances including other utterances are

called The Speech Event. In many ways it is the nature of the speech event which determines

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the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act. For example, in a

wintry day, the speaker reaches for a cup of tea, believing that it has been freshly made, take a

sip and produces the utterance in (3), it is likely to be interpreted as complaint: (3) this tea is

really cold. However, if the same utterance is uttered in a hot summer`s day and the speaker

was given a cup of iced tea by the hearer, it is likely to be understood as praise. (G.Yule, 2008.

p.48).

Speech acts:

It was the particular search for the (purely) constative (utterances which describe

something outside the text and can therefore be judged true or false) which prompted John L.

Austin to direct his attention to the distinction with so-called performatives, i.e. utterances

which are neither true or false but which bring about a particular social effect by being uttered

(e.g. "With this ring I thee wed" - by speaking the utterance you perform the act). For a

performative to have the desired effect, it has to meet certain social and cultural criteria, also

called felicity conditions.

Further on in his essay, Austin abandons the distinction between constatives and

performatives and replaced it by a new distinction between three different "aspects" of an

utterance against the background of a generalized claim that all utterances are really

performatives. This generalized claim is the key assumption of speech act theory. Austin took

this idea further, in claiming that the action performed by producing an utterance will consist

of three related acts. There is a locutionary act, (or locution), which is the act of uttering

some expression with particular sense and reference. In other words, it is the basic act of

utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression, for example, he said to me “shoot

her!” meaning by “shoot” shoot and by “her” her. But if someone has a difficulty in actually

forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance in a language because it’s

foreign or he is tongue- tied, for example, then you might fail to produce a locutionary act.

Producing “Aba mokofa” in English will not normally count as a locutionary act. (G. Leech,

T. Jenny, 1990. p. 173). The second dimension or the illocutionary act (Widdowson.2000.

p.62) is performed via the communicative force of an utterance because in most cases, our

production is not restricted just to well-formed utterances with no purpose. Rather we form an

utterance with some kind of function in mind. For instance, one might utter this utterance: I’ve

just made some coffee to make a statement, an offer, an explanation, or for some other

communicative purpose. This is also generally known as the illocutionary force of the

utterance. Nevertheless, an utterance with a function intending it to have an effect represents

the third dimension, the perlocutionary act. Depending on the circumstances the speaker

utters the preceding example on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect the

speaker intended (for example, to account for a wonderful smell, or to get the hearer to drink

some coffee). This is also generally known as the perlocutionary effect. (G. Yule, 2008.

p.48). Austin focuses just on the illocutionary act among the three dimensions because he

argues that the locutionary act and the perlocutionary act belong to the traditional approach

(G. Leech, T. Jenny, 1990, p.174). Indeed, the term “speech act” is generally interpreted quite

57

narrowly to mean only the illocutionary force of an utterance. This latter is what “counts as”.

The same locutionary act, as the following example (a) shows, can count as prediction (1), a

promise (2), or a warning (3). The utterance in (a), represent different illocutionary forces.

1. I’ll see you later.

a. (I predict that)

b. (I promise you that)

c. (I warn you that)

It appears from these examples that the same utterance can potentially have quite

different illocutionary forces (for example, promise versus warning) and in fact this is a

problem. In that how can speakers assume that the intended illocutionary force will be

recognized by the hearer? That question has been addressed by considering two things:

Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFID) and felicity conditions.

IFIDs

It is a description for the Illocutionary Force Indicating Device which is the most obvious

device for indicating the illocutionary force. It is an expression of the type shown in the

coming example where there is a slot for a verb that explicitly names the illocutionary act

being performed. Such a verb is called the performative verb (Vp). (Yule 2008, p. 49)

I (Vp) you that…….

In the preceding examples, “promise” and “warn” would be performative verbs and, if stated,

would be very clear IFIDs. Speakers do not always perform their speech acts so explicitly, but

they sometimes describe speech act being performed. When there is no performative verb

mentioned and this happen in most of the time, other IFIDs can be identified by word order,

stress, and intonation, as shown in this example in the different versions of the same basic

elements (Y-G)

You’re going!............ (I tell you Y-G)

You’re going?............. (I request confirmation about Y-G)

You’re going?............. (I ask you if Y-G)

While other devices, such as a lowered voice quality for a warning or threat, might be

used to indicate illocutionary force, the utterance also has to be produced under certain

conventional conditions to count as having the intended illocutionary force.

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The “hereby” test

One simple but crude way to decide whether a speech act is of such a kind that we can

aptly call it a performative is to insert the word “hereby” between subject and verb. If the

resulting utterance makes sense, then the speech act is probably a performative. For example,

“I hereby confer upon you the honourable degree of Bachelor of Arts…”

“I hereby sentence you to three months’ probation, suspended for a year…”

“I hereby appoint you Grandmaster of the Ancient, Scandalous and Disreputable Order

of Friends of the Hellfire Club …”

It is crude, because it implies at least one felicity condition – whatever it is to which

“hereby” refers. In the first example, “hereby” may refer to a physical action (touching on the

head or shoulder with a ceremonial staff or mace, say). In the second example it may refer to

the speaker’s situation – in sitting as chairman of the bench of magistrates. The third example

is my (plausible) invention – showing how all sorts of private groups (Freemasons, Rotarians,

even the school Parent Teacher Association) can have their own agreements, which give to

some speakers the power to enact performatives.

Felicity conditions:

These are conditions necessary to the success of a speech act. They take their name

from a Latin root –“felix” or “happy”. They are conditions needed for success or

achievement of a performative. Only certain people are qualified to declare war, baptize

people or sentence convicted felons. In some cases, the speaker must be sincere (as in

apologizing or vowing). And external circumstances must be suitable: “Can you give me a

lift?” requires that the hearer has a motor vehicle and is able to drive it somewhere and that

the speaker has a reason for the request. It may be that the utterance is meant as a joke or

sarcasm, in which case a different interpretation is in order.

Felicity conditions is a technical term used to describe certain expected or appropriate

circumstances, for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended. The

performance will be infelicitous (inappropriate), if the speaker is not a specific person in a

special context. For instance, a judge in a courtroom says:

I sentence you to six months in prison.

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Austin points out also that in every day context among ordinary people, there are pre-

conditions on speech acts (K.Malmkjaer, Second Edition. P, 487). There is what he called

general conditions on the participants, for example, that they can understand the language

being used and they are not play- acting. Then there are content conditions. For example, for

both a promise and a warning, the content of the utterance must be about a future event. A

further content condition for a promise requires that the future event will be a future act of the

speaker.

Preparatory conditions include the status or authority of the speaker to perform the

speech act, the situation of other parties and so on. So, in order to confirm a candidate, the

speaker must be a bishop; but a mere priest can baptize people, while various ministers of

religion and registrars may solemnize marriages (in England). In the case of marrying, there

are other conditions – that neither of the couple is already married, that they make their own

speech acts, and so on.

In the UK only the monarch can dissolve parliament. A qualified referee can caution a player,

if he or she is officiating in a match. The referee’s assistant (who, in the higher leagues, is also

a qualified referee) cannot do this. The situation of the utterance is important. If the US

President jokingly “declares” war on another country in a private conversation, then the USA

is not really at war. This, of course, happened (on 11 August 1984), when Ronald Reagan

made some remarks off-air, as he thought, but which have been recorded for posterity:

“My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will

outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” One hopes that this utterance also

failed in terms of sincerity conditions.

Sincerity conditions; at a simple level these show that the speaker must really intend

what he or she says. In the case of apologizing or promising, it may be impossible for others

to know how sincere the speaker is. Moreover sincerity, as a genuine intention (now) is no

assurance that the apologetic attitude will last, or that the promise will be kept. There are

some speech acts – such as plighting one’s troth or taking an oath – where this sincerity is

determined by the presence of witnesses. The one making the promise will not be able later to

argue that he or she didn’t really mean it. A more complex example comes in the classroom

where the teacher asks a question, but the pupil supposes that the teacher knows the answer

and is, therefore, not sincere in asking it. In this case “Can you, please, tell me X?” may be

more acceptable to the child than “What is X?” We can also use our understanding of sincerity

conditions humorously, where we ask others, or promise ourselves, to do things which we

think the others know to be impossible: “Please can you make it sunny tomorrow?”

Finally, there is the essential condition, which covers the fact that by the act of uttering

a promise, I thereby intend to create an obligation to carry out the action as promised. In other

words, the utterance changes my state from non-obligation to obligation. In addition, this

essential condition thus combines with a specification of what must be in the utterance

content, the context, and the speaker’s intentions, in order for a specific speech act to be

appropriately (felicitously) performed.

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The performative hypothesis:

One way to think about the speech acts being performed via utterances is to assume that

underlying every utterance there is a clause, containing a performative verb (Vp) which

makes the illocutionary force explicit. This is known as the performative hypothesis and the

basic format of the underlying clause is shown here: I (hereby) Vp you (that) U In this clause,

the subject must be first person singular (“I”), followed by the adverb “hereby”, indicating

that the utterance “counts as” an action by being uttered. There is also a performative verb

(Vp) in the present tense and in indirect object in second person singular (“you”). Examples

like (a1) and (a2) (normally without “hereby”), are used by speakers as explicit

performatives. Examples like (b1) and (b2) are implicit performatives, sometimes called

primary performatives. (K. Malmkjaer. p. 486).

a1- I hereby order you that you clean up this mess.

a2- I hereby tell you that the work was done by Elaine and myself.

b1- Clean up this mess.

b2- the work was done by Elaine and myself.

The really practical problem with any analysis based on identifying explicit performatives

is that, in principle, we simply do not know how many performative verbs there are in any

language. Instead of trying to list all the possible explicit performatives, and then, distinguish

among all of them, some more general classifications of the types of speech acts are usually

used.

Speech act classification

Some linguists have attempted to classify illocutionary acts into a number of categories

or types. David Crystal, quoting J.R. Searle, gives five such categories: representatives,

expressive, directives, commissives, and declarations. (Perhaps he would have preferred

declaratives, but this term was already taken as a description of a kind of sentence that

expresses a statement.)

Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance. As

the examples in (a), (b) illustrate, the speaker has to have a special institutional role, in a

specific context, in order to perform a declaration appropriately.

a- Priest: I now pronounce you husband and wife.

b- Jury Foreman: We find the defendant guilty.

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Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be

the case or not. Statements of fact, assertions, conclusions, and descriptions often illustrate

this as in these examples.

a-The earth is flat

b-Chomsky didn’t write about peanuts

Expressives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker feels. They express

psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, or sorrow. As

illustrated in (a), (b) and (c), they can be caused by something the speaker does or the hearer

does, but they are about the speaker’s experience.

a- I’m really sorry!

b- Congratulations!

c- Oh, yes, great, mmm, ssahh!

In using an expressive, thee speaker makes words fit the world (of feeling).

Directives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to get someone else to do

something. They express what the speaker wants. They are commands, orders, requests,

suggestions, and, as illustrated here, they can be positive or negative.

a-Gimme a cup of coffee. Make it black.

b-Could you lend me a pen, please?

c-Don’t touch that.

In using a directive, the speaker attempts to make the world fit the words (via the hearer).

Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some

future action. They express what the speaker intends. They are promises, threats, refusals,

pledges, and, as shown in these examples, they can be performed by the speaker alone or by

the speakers as a member of a group.

(a)- I’ll be back.

(b)- I’m going to get it right next time.

(c)- We will not do that.

Direct and indirect speech acts

We usually use certain syntactic structures with the functions listed beside them in the

following table:

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Structures functions

Did you eat the pizza? Interrogative Question

Eat the pizza (please)! imperative Command (request)

You ate the pizza. Declarative Statement

When an interrogative structure such as Did you...? Are they....? or Can we...? is used

with the function of a question, it is described as a direct speech act. For example, when we

don`t know something and we ask someone to provide the information, we usually produce a

direct speech act such as Can you ride a bicycle?

Compare that utterance with Can you pass the salt? In this second example, we are not

really asking a question about someone`s ability. In fact, we don`t normally use this structure

as question at all. We normally use it to make a request. That is, we are using a syntactic

structure associated with the function of a question, but in this case with the function of a

request. This is an example of an indirect speech act. Whenever one of the structures in the set

above is used to perform a function other than the one listed beside it one same line, the result

is an indirect speech act, i.e. whenever there is indirect relationship between a structure and a

function, we have an indirect speech act.

The utterance ‘You left the door open’ has a declarative structure and, as a direct speech

act, would be used to make a statement. However, if you say this to someone who has just

come in (and it`s really cold outside), you would probably want that person to close the door.

You are not using the imperative structure. You are using a declarative structure to make a

request. It`s another example of an indirect speech act.

It is possible to have strange effects if one person fails to recognize another person`s

indirect speech act. Consider the following scene. A visitor to a city, carrying his luggage,

looking lost, stops a passer-by.

Visitor: Excuse me. Do you know where Ambassador Hotel is?

Passer: Oh sure, I know where it is. (and he walks away)

In this scene, the visitor uses a form normally associated with a question (Do you

know...?), and the passer-by answers that question literally (I know..). That is, the passer-by is

acting as if the utterance was a direct speech act instead of an indirect speech act used as a

request for directions. Failure to recognize indirect speech acts can lead to some bizarre

interactions.

The main reason we use indirect speech act seems to be that actions such as requests

represented in an indirect way (Could you open that door for me?) are generally considered to

be more gentle or more polite in our society than direct speech acts (Open that door for me!).

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Exactly why they are considered to be more polite is based one some complex social

assumptions.

Speech events

An indirect request can be treated as being a matter of asking whether the necessary

conditions for a request are in place. For example, a preparatory condition is that the speaker

assumes the hearer is able to, or can, perform the action. A content condition concerns future

action, that the hearer WILL perform the action. Because a request is an imposition by the

speaker on the hearer, it is better, in most social circumstances, for the speaker to avoid a

direct imposition via a direct request. When the speaker asks about preconditions, no direct

request is made. Utterances produced in this kind of situation are looked at as speech event. A

speech event is an activity in which participants interact via language in some conventional

way to arrive at some outcome. It may include an obvious central speech act such as “I don’t

really like this”, as in a speech event of “complaining”, but it will also include circumstances

leading up to and subsequently reacting to that central action. In most cases, a “request” is not

made by means of a single speech act suddenly uttered.

Requesting is typically a speech event, even without a central speech act of request like

in “Do you have a minute?” as a “pre-request”, allowing the receiver to say that she’s busy

or that she has to be some where else. The usefulness of speech act analysis is in illustrating

the kinds of things we can do with words and identifying some of the conventional utterance

forms we use to perform specific actions. However, we do need to look at more extended

interaction to understand how those actions are carried out and interpreted within speech

events.

Locutionary acts

Like Austin, but unlike Searle, Bach and Harnish argue for the concept of locutionary

acts: acts of using sentences with "a more or less definite ‘sense’ and a more or less definite

‘reference,’" in Austin's words. They are more explicit than Austin, and argue that

determining what someone has (locutionarily) said by uttering a sentence amounts to

determining

i. the operative meaning of the sentence uttered

ii. the referents for the referring expressions

iii. the properties and relations being ascribed

iv. the times specified

With this information the hearer identifies what a speaker has said, at the locutionary level.

From a contemporary perspective, the most remarkable point here is, in our opinion, that they

see the determination of the locutionary act by the hearer, not as a matter of merely decoding

the conventional meaning of the sentence uttered, but as a matter of inference that has to be

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based on linguistic meaning plus contextual information concerning the speaker's intentions.

Grice did not claim that what a speaker said was determinable without consideration of the

speaker's intentions; quite the contrary. But he was not particularly explicit about the way it

was done, and the received view, anyway, has been that inference was exclusive to the

‘calculation’ of implicatures.

The distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts of saying also offers Bach

and Harnish a useful conceptual tool for treating potentially problematic cases of discordance

between utterance content and speaker's intentions, such as slips of the tongue, false

referential beliefs, and irony.

To go from the locutionary to the illocutionary content, if there is any, the hearer has to

infer the communicative intention of the speaker, and to do that, the hearer needs more

information. Among other things, the hearer will have to make use of the Communicative

Presumption (CP) that they state as follows:

The mutual belief in the linguistic community CL to the effect that whenever a member

S says something in L to another member H, he is doing so with some recognizable

illocutionary intent. (Bach and Harnish 1979, 61.)

The taxonomy of illocutionary acts

Bach and Harnish accept most of Searle's (1975a) critiques of Austin's taxonomy as well as

his criteria for grouping illocutionary acts in terms of basic illocutionary intentions and

expression of mental attitudes; but they make some amendments. To begin with, they discard

Searle's class of declarative illocutionary acts (basically covering Austin's explicit

performatives), because they take them to be basically assertives or constatives (see Searle

1989, Bach and Harnish 1992 for a further discussion of this issue). Then, the communicative

illocutionary acts are (Bach and Harnish 1979, ch. 3):

constatives, that express a speaker's belief and his desire that the hearer forms a

similar one.

directives, that express some attitude about a possible future action by the hearer and

the intention that his utterance be taken as reason for the hearer's action.

commissives, that express the speaker's intention to do something and the belief that

his utterance obliges him to do it.

acknowledgments, that express feelings toward the hearer (or the intention that the

utterance will meet some social expectations regarding the expression of feelings).

Bach and Harnish make a distinctions between communicative illocutionary acts, the category

to which these four types belong, and the category of conventional illocutionary acts, which

they take to be fundamentally different. Communicative acts are acts performed with certain

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communicative intentions whose recognition by the hearer is necessary for the acts to be

successful. In conventional acts, on the other hand, no communicative intention need be

involved. Success is a matter of convention, not intention. Conventional acts determine and

produce facts of institutional nature, if performed according to conventions that do not require

any communicative intention on the part of the speaker and, a fortiori, neither its recognition

on the part of any hearer. Among conventional acts, Bach and Harnish (1979, ch. 6)

distinguish between two classes:

effectives, that when produced by the appropriate person in appropriate circumstances

produce a change, a new fact in an institutional context; an example might the

President of the United States statement that he vetoes a piece of legislation.

verdictives, do not produce facts, but determine facts, natural or institutional, with an

official, binding effect in the institutional context; an example is a jury's verdict of

guilt; it does not create the fact of guilt, but settles the issue of guilt in a binding way.

The SAS

The Speech Act Schema (SAS) gives the form of the required inference by the hearer to

understand fully the speaker's utterance from the meaning of the sentence used to the

perlocutionary act performed, using, besides linguistic information, a system of

communicative and conversational presumptions, together with contextual mutual beliefs.

Bach and Harnish think that inference is involved, from the beginning, in the determination of

the locutionary act. The next step is to infer the literal illocutionary intentions and from here,

in the simplest case, go for the (intended) perlocutionary ones, if any. Roughly, an

illocutionary act is literal when its propositional content coincides with the content of the

locutionary act, and the force of the former is within the constraints imposed by the latter.

But it may happen that the literal illocutionary act cannot be taken as a reasonable thing to

have been done by the speaker in some specific circumstances (say, the literal claim is false

and obviously so), and the hearer has to search for another non-literal act. Someone speaks

non-literally when she does not mean what she says but something else instead.

It can also be the case that the speaker is doing more than merely performing a literal act. She

means what she says but she means more. The hearer will have to infer the indirect act being

performed. It must be noticed that indirect acts can also be based on non-literal acts. Then the

SAS extends to account for the intentional perlocutionary effects of the speech act.

Bach and Harnish's SAS offers a detailed study of the structure of utterance interpretation as

an inferential process. Taken as an attempt of unification of the two main roots of pragmatics,

it can be considered as the closing of the ‘Classic Pragmatics' period and the transition from

‘philosophical’ pragmatics to linguistic and psychological pragmatics. They can be still

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located within far-side pragmatics but their clear idea of the role of pragmatic ‘intrusion’ in

the determination of what is said is announcing the arrival of near-side pragmatics.

Exercises 1.

For each sentence, label its intent and its

grammatical form. Then use that

information to decide if it is direct or

indirect and if it is literal or nonliteral.

Direct sentences: inform + declarative seek information + interrogative

change behavior + imperative

Intent:

to inform,

to seek

information,

or

to change

behavior

Grammatical

form:

declarative,

interrogative,

or

imperative

Direct

or

Indirect

Literal or

Nonliteral

1. Speed limit is 55. (highway sign)

2. Do not exceed 55.

3. Don’t even think of speeding.

4. You walk into your friend’s apartment

and it is dark. To get your friend to

turn on some lights, you say, “Are

you raising mushrooms in here?”

5. A proud mother says to her friend,

“Do you know that my son Marvin

won the spelling bee at his grade

school?”

6. Janet Jackson receives frequent unwanted phone calls from Justin Timberlake, who has a

mad crush on her. Janet, who wants Justin to stop bothering her, says the following to

him:

a. Go jump in the Pacific, Justin.

b. I hate being pestered by a man I

can never respect.

c. Do you think I enjoy being

harassed every moment of my life

by a leech?

d. Mr. T, your calls are a source of

annoyance to me.

e. Do not ever, ever call me again.

7. Lynn Cheney wants to inform her husband Dick that he has ketchup stains on his tie and

says the following:

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a. You spilled something on your tie.

b. Are you aware there are ketchup

spots on your tie?

c. When did you start advertising for

Heinz, Ricardo?

d. Take a look at what happened to

your tie.

e. The new polka dots on your tie are

ever so becoming.

8. Francine wants to find out from Jolene the name of Jolene’s date and says the following:

a. You haven’t told me your date's

name, Jolene.

b. Why, Jolene, who is this heavenly

creature?

c. I haven’t had the pleasure of

meeting your escort.

d. By any chance, has lover boy here

got a name?

e. What's your boyfriend’s name,

Jolene?

2. Someone stands between you and the TV set you`re watching. So you decide to say one of

the following. Identify which would be indirect speech acts.

a. Move! c. Could you please sit down?

b. You`re in the way. d. Please get out of the way.

3. Examine sentences 1-5 and discuss in each case how the speaker could be using the

sentence indirectly. For example: The bill comes to $10.29. This sentence is in the declarative

mood. Either it is true that the bill comes to $10.29, or it is false. But one can imagine a

situation where someone uttering this sentence (a waiter) could be taken as requesting

someone else (a customer) to pay the sum of $10.29. That is, it is appropriate on hearing this

sentence for the hearer not just to take note of the amount of the bill, but to do something (pay

the bill). This is therefore an instance of indirection: performing one act (requesting) by way

of another act (stating).

1. I'm hungry.

2. The children are asleep.

3. Are you done yet?

4. What time is it?

5. Is that the radio again?

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4. I don’t know if John married Helen.

A. Direct speech act

B. Indirect speech act

5. Please take out the garbage.

A. Direct speech act

B. Indirect speech act

6. Classify this sentence: sentence type, speech act, and direct or indirect (only choose

three answers).

It sure is a beautiful day.

A. Declarative:

B. Interrogative:

C. Imperative:

D. Assertion

E. Question

F. Directive

G. Indirect

H. Direct

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Politeness and interaction

Our speech and communication are determined by our social relationships. A linguistic

interaction is necessarily a social interaction. There are various factors in interaction which

relate to the social distance and closeness of interlocutors. Some of these factors are

established prior to an interaction and hence are largely external factors. They typically

involve the status of the participants, based on social values tied to such things as age and

power. For example, speakers who see themselves as lower status in English-speaking

contexts tend to mark social distance between themselves and higher status speakers by using

address forms that include a title and a last name, but not the first name (for example, Mrs

Clinton, Mr Adams, Dr Dang). A wide range of interactions (mostly with strangers) is taken

where the social distance determined by external factors is dominant. However, there are

other factors, such as amount of imposition or degree of friendliness, which are often

negotiated during an interaction these are internal to the interaction and can result in the

initial social distance changing and being marked as less, or more, during its course. These

internal factors are typically more relevant to participants whose social relationships are

actually in the process of being worked out within the interaction. Both types of factors,

external and internal, have an influence not only on what we say, but also on how we are

interpreted. In many cases, the interpretation goes beyond what we might have intended to

convey and includes evaluation such as “rude” and “inconsiderate”, or “considerate” and

“thoughtful”. The investigation of that impact is normally carried out in terms of politeness.

(G. Yule, 2006. p. 134)

Face and politeness phenomena

The pragmatic interest in the communication of indirect speech acts, in particular, as

well as the interest in the social-relational aspects of and situational constraints on information

exchange, more generally, is at the basis of an interest in face and politeness phenomena.

One entrance to the study of politeness phenomena can indeed be built around the observation

that language users often depart from the conditions of optimal information exchange because

a failure to do so would result in an amount of lost face. For instance, a "white lie" can be

described as a linguistic strategy through which a speaker intentionally and covertly violates

the maxim of quality so as to "spare the feelings" of the person s/he addresses or in order to

save his/her own face. It is on the basis of observations that some pragmaticists have proposed

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to complement Grice's cooperative principle and its four maxims of information exchange

with a politeness principle and attendant maxims. A politeness perspective can also be

detected in the analysis of many indirect speech acts. For instance, the use of an indirectly

formulated request such as ‘(son to dad) Are you using the car tonight?’ Counts as a face-

respecting strategy, among other reasons, because it leaves room for the interlocutor to refuse

by saying ‘Sorry, it`s already been taken’ (rather than the more face-threatening ‘You may not

use it’). In this version of politeness, speaker and hearer face are simultaneously attended to.

By far the most influential theory of politeness phenomena is that of P. Brown and S.

Levinson, Their theory is based on a particular interpretation of E. Goffman's writings on the

role of "face" in social interaction (Brown & Levinson 1987:63):

Our notion of 'face' is derived from that of Goffman and from the

English folk term, which ties up face notions of being embarrassed or

humiliated, or 'losing face'. Thus face is something that is emotionally

invested, and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced, and must be

constantly attended to in interaction. In general, people cooperate

(and assume each other's cooperation) in maintaining face in

interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability

of face.

According to Brown & Levinson, one can subsequently distinguish between two types

of face wants: positive face and negative face. Positive face refers to the desire to be

appreciated as a social person. Negative face refers to the desire to see one's action unimpeded

by others. Corresponding to these two face-types, language communities develop strategies to

attend to positive and negative face wants. These strategies are referred to as positive and

negative politeness strategies. With particular reference to negative face wants, Brown &

Levinson have developed the concept of a face threatening act to refer to verbal acts which

intrinsically threaten face and may therefore require face-redressive action. According to

Brown & Levinson, there is a direct correlation between the amount of face work speakers put

in and particular situational variables: (a) power, (b) social distance and (c) the gravity of the

imposition (cf. a request to borrow someone's car usually involves more face-work than a

request to use that person's pencil).

Brown & Levinson predominantly see face wants in individualistic terms. Their speaker

is a rational model person, who, when interacting, adopts rational goals of which s/he is

conscious. The underlying assumption is that the behavior of interactants displays a sensitivity

towards a satisfaction of mutual face wants. In contrast, one may stress the situational

diversification of systems of politeness as well as their conventional nature. Brown &

Levinson are preoccupied with "losing face", but there is hardly an equivalent discussion of

"gaining face". This choice of metaphor has been criticized as ethnocentric.

Politeness

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The idea of “polite social behaviour”, or etiquette, within a culture suggests that it is

possible to treat politeness as a fixed concept. It is also possible to specify a number of

general principles for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture. Some of

these might include being tactful, generous, modest, and sympathetic toward others.

Normally, participants are aware of such norms and principles that they exist in the society at

large. Within an interaction, however, there is more narrowly specific type of politeness at

work. In order to describe it, the concept of face is needed here. As a technical term, face

means the public self-image of a person. It refers to that emotional and social sense of self

that every one has and expects every one else to recognize. Politeness, in an interaction, can

then be defined as the means employed to show awareness of and consideration for another

person’s face. In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in situations of social distance or

closeness. Showing awareness of another person’s face when that other seems socially distant

is often described in terms of respect or deference. Showing the equivalent awareness when

the other is socially close is often described in terms of friendliness, camaraderie, or

solidarity. The first type might be found in a student’s question to his teacher, shown as (1.a.),

and a second type in the friend`s question to the same individual as in (1b.).

(1) a. Excuse me, Mr Buckingham, but can I talk to you for a minute?

b. Hey, Bucky, got a minute?

It follows from this type of approach that there will be different kinds of politeness associated

(and marked linguistically) with the assumption of relative social distance or closeness. In

most English-speaking contexts, the participants in an interaction often have to determine, as

they speak, the relative social distance between them, and hence their “face wants”.

Face wants

In this discussion, the participants involved in interaction are considered as not living in a

context which has created rigidly fixed social relationships. Within their everyday social

interactions, people generally behave as if their expectations concerning their public self-

image, or their face wants, will be respected. If a speaker says something that represents a

threat to another individual’s expectations regarding self-image, it is described as a face

threatening act. Alternatively, given the possibility that some action might be interpreted as a

threat to another’s face, the speaker can say something to lessen the possible threat. This is

called a face saving act.

Imagine a late night scene, where a young neighbour is playing his music very loud and

an older couple are trying to sleep> one of them, in (2), proposes a face threatening act and

the other suggests a face saving act.

(2) Him: I`m going to tell him to stop that awful noise right now!

Her: Perhaps you could just ask him if he is going to stop soon because it`s getting

a bit late and people need to get to sleep.

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Because it is generally expected that each person will attempt to respect the face wants

of others, there are many different ways of performing face saving acts.

Negative and positive face

We have both a negative and positive face. (Note that ‘negative’ doesn`t mean ‘bad’

here, it`s just the opposite of ‘positive’.) A person`s negative face is the need to be

independent and free from imposition. A person`s positive face is the need to be connected, to

belong, to be a member of the group. So, a face-saving act that emphasizes a person`s

negative face will tend to show defence, emphasize the importance of the other’s time or

concerns, and even include apology for the imposition or interruption (I`m sorry to bother

you...; I know you`re busy, but...). This is also called negative politeness. A face-saving act

that emphasizes a person`s positive face will show solidarity and draw attention to a common

goal (Let`s do this together.....You and I have the same problem, so...) This is also called

positive politeness.

Ideas about the appropriate language to mark politeness differ substantially from one

culture to the next. If you have grown up in a culture that have directness as a valued way of

showing solidarity, and you use direct speech acts ( Give me that chair!) to people whose

culture is more oriented to indirectness and avoiding direct imposition, then you will be

considered impolite. You, in turn, may think of the others as vague and unsure of whether

they really want something or are just asking about it (Are you using that chair?) In either

case, it is the pragmatics that is misunderstood and, unfortunately, more will be

communicated than is said.

Understanding how successful communication works is actually a process of

interpreting not just what speakers say, but what they ‘intend to mean’. We`ll explore other

aspects in the following chapters.

Self and other: say nothing:

By taking a simple speech event and mapping out the different interpretations associated

with different possible expressions used within that event, the relevance of the relationship

between these politeness concepts and language use can be seen. For example you arrive at an

important lecture, pull out your note book to take notes, but discover that you don’t have

anything to write with. You think that the person sitting next to you may provide the solution.

In this scenario, you are going to be “self”, and the person next to you is going to be “other”.

Your first choice is whether you say something or not. You can, of course, rummage in

your bag, search rather obviously through your pockets, go back into your bag, without

uttering a word, but with the vague attention that your problem will be recognized. This “say

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nothing” approach may or may not work, but if it does, it’s because the other offers and not

because the self asks, as in (2).

(2) Self: (look in bag)

Other: (offers pen) Here, use this.

Many people seem to prefer to have their needs recognized by others without having to

express those needs in language. When those needs are recognized, as in (2), then clearly

more has been communicated than was said.

Say something: off and on record

Even if you decide to say something, you don’t actually have to ask for anything. You

can (perhaps after your search through your bag) simply produce a statement of the type in

(3a.) or (3b.).

(3) a. Uh, I forgot my pen.

b. Humm, I wonder where I put my pen.

These, and other similar types of statement, are not directly addressed to the other. The other

can act as if the statements have not even been heard. They are technically described as being

off record. In casual descriptions, they might be referred to as “hints”. Once again, off record

statements may or may not succeed (as a means of getting a pen), but if it does, it will be

because more has been communicated than was said. In contrast to such off record statements,

you can directly address the other as a means of expressing your needs. These direct address

forms are technically described as being on record. The most direct approach, using

imperative forms such as those in (5), is known as bald on record. The other person is directly

asked for something.

(5) a. Give me a pen.

b. Lend me your pen.

These bald on record forms may be followed by expressions like “please” and “would you?”

which serve to soften the demand and are called mitigation devices. There are, consequently,

some social circumstances where using a direct command as a bald on record expression is

considered appropriate among social equals. However, generally speaking, bald on record

expressions are associated with speech events where the speaker assumes that he or she has

power over the other (for example, in military contexts) and can control the other's

behaviour with words. In every-day interaction between social equals, such bald on

record behaviour would potentially represent a threat to the other's face and would

generally be avoided. Avoiding a face threatening act is accomplished by face saving acts

which use positive or negative politeness strategies.

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Positive and negative politeness strategies

A positive politeness strategy leads the requester to appeal to a common goal, and even

friendship, via expressions such as those in (6).

(6) a. How about letting me use your pen?

b. Hey, buddy, I’d appreciate it if you'd let me use your pen.

These on record expressions do represent a greater risk for the speaker of suffering a refusal

and may be preceded by some 'getting to know you' talk, of the kind presented in [7],

designed to establish the necessary common ground for this strategy.

[7] Hi. How's it going? Okay if I sit here? We must be interested in the same crazy

stuff. You take a lot of notes too, huh? Say, do me a big favor and let me use one of your

pens.

However, in most English-speaking contexts, a face saving act is more commonly

performed via a negative politeness strategy (G. Yule, 2008. p. 64).

It is worth noting that negative politeness is typically expressed via questions, even

questions that seem to ask for permission to ask a question (for example, 'Might l ask .. .? ')

On the surface, such questions present an opportunity for the other to answer in the

negative to the question without the same refusal effect of responding with a negative to a

direct, bald on record imperative. (This distinction is an important motivation for the

distinction between direct and indirect speech acts, discussed already.)

Even more relevant for our concern with the pragmatics of language in use, the availability

of the bald on record form, as well as off record forms, means that the use of a face-saving on

record form represents a significant choice. The choice of a type of expression that is less direct,

potentially less clear, generally longer, and with a more complex structure means that the speaker

is making a great effort, in terms of concern for face (i.e. politeness), than is needed simply to get

the basic message across efficiently.

These observations are summarized in figure 7.1.

Strategies

The tendency to use positive politeness forms, emphasizing closeness between speaker and

hearer, can be seen as a solidarity strategy. This may be the principal operating strategy among a

whole group or it may be an option used by an individual speaker on a particular occasion.

Linguistically, such a strategy will include personal information, use of nicknames,

sometimes even abusive terms (particularly among males), and shared dialect or slang

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expressions. Frequently, a solidarity strategy will be marked via inclusive terms such as 'we'

and 'let's', as in the party invitation in (8)

How to get a pen from someone else

Say nothing (but search in bag) Say something

On record Off record

( ' I forgot my pen')

Face saving act Bald on record

('Give me a pen')

Positive politeness Negative politeness

('How about letting me use your pen?') ('Could you lend me a pen?')

FIGURE 7.1 How to get a pen from someone else (following Brown and Levinson

1987)

(8) Come on, let's go to the party. Everyone will be there. We'll have fun.

The tendency to use negative politeness forms, emphasizing the hearer's right to freedom,

can be seen as a deference strategy (G. Yule, 2008.p. 66). It can be the typical strategy of a whole

group or just an option used on a particular occasion. A deference strategy is involved in what is

called 'formal politeness'. It is impersonal, as if nothing is shared, and can include

expressions that refer to neither the speaker nor the hearer (for example, 'Customers may not

smoke here, sir'). The language associated with a deference strategy emphasizes the speaker’s

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and the hearer's independence marked via an absence of personal claims, as in [9], an alternative

version of the party invitation in (8).

(9) There's going to be a party, if you can make it. It will be fun.

These general types of strategies are illustrated here via utterances which are actually central

to the speech event (for example, invitation). Face saving behaviour; however, is often at work well

before such utterances are produced, in the form of pre-sequences.

The politeness principle

The politeness principle is a series of maxims, which Geoff Leech has proposed as a way

of explaining how politeness operates in conversational exchanges. Leech defines politeness as

forms of behaviour that establish and maintain comity. That is the ability of participants in a

social interaction to engage in interaction in an atmosphere of relative harmony. In stating his

maxims Leech uses his own terms for two kinds of illocutionary acts. He calls representatives

“assertives”, and calls directives “impositives”.

• Each maxim is accompanied by a sub-maxim (between square brackets), which is of

less importance. These support the idea that negative politeness (avoidance of discord) is

more important than positive politeness (seeking concord).

• Not all of the maxims are equally important. For instance, "Tact" influences what we

say more powerfully than does "Generosity", while "Approbation" is more important than

"Modesty”.

• Note also that speakers may adhere to more than one maxim of politeness at the same

time. Often one maxim is on the forefront of the utterance, with a second maxim being

invoked by implication.

• If politeness is not communicated, we can assume that the politeness attitude is absent.

Leech s̀ politeness maxims tend to go in pairs as follows

1. Tact maxim: (in impositives and commisives)

a-Minimize cost to other [b- Maximize benefit to other]

2. Generosity maxim: (in impositives and commisives)

a- Minimize benifits to self [b- Maximize cost to self]

3. Approbation maxim: (in expressive and assertive)

a- Minimize dispraise of other [b- Maximize praise of other]

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4. Modesty maxim: (in expressive and assertive)

a- Minimize praise of self [b- Maximize dispraise of self]

5. Agreement maxim: (in assertive)

a- Minimize disagreement between self and other [b- Maximize agreement between self and other]

6. Sympathy maxim: (in assertive)

a- Minimize antipathy between self and other [b- Maximize sympathy between self and other]

However, Robin Lakoff (1973) has summarised politeness in three maxims:

1. Don't Impose

2. Give Options

3. Make your receiver feel good

(Robin Lakoff 1973)

Pre-sequences

As already suggested, the concept of face saving may be helpful in understanding how

participants in an interaction inevitably understand more than is said. The basic assumption,

from the perspective of politeness, is that face is typically at risk when the self needs to

accomplish something involving other. The greatest risk appears to be when the other is put in a

difficult position. One way of avoiding risk is to provide an opportunity for the other to halt

the potentially risky act. For example, rather than simply make a request, speakers will often

first produce what can be described as a pre-request. A pre-request is a pair of turns understood

as a preliminary to the main course of action. For example, "guess what"-"what" (as a

preliminary to an announcement of some sort) or "what are you doing"-"nothing" (as a

preliminary to an invitation or a request). An example is presented as [10], along with one

analysis of the structure of this interaction. (G. Yule, 2006. p. 135)

(10) Her: Are you busy? (= pre-request)

Him: Not really. (=go ahead)

Her: Check over this memo. (= request)

Him: Okay. (= accept)

The advantage of the pre-request element is that it can be answered either with a 'go-

ahead' response, as in (10), or with a 'stop' response, as in (11).

(11) Him: Are you busy? (= pre-request)

Her: Oh, sorry. (=stop)

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The response in (11) allows the speaker to avoid making a request that cannot be granted at

the time. Understanding that it is a response to a pre-request also allows us to interpret the

expression ‘sorry’, not only as an apology about being busy, but also as an apology about

being unable o respond to the anticipated request.

There is, however, a general pattern of pre-requests actually being treated as requests and

being responded to, as in (12), with the (unstated, hoped for) action being performed.

(12) Her: Do you have a spare pen?

Him: Here. (hands over a pen)

This ‘short-cut’ process of going from pre-request to granting of request helps explain the

literal oddness of common pattern in (13).

(13) Her: Do you mind if I use your phone?

Him: Yeah, sure.

As literal response, ‘Yeah’ or ‘Yeah, sure’ would be the equivalent of ‘I do mind’ and

wouldn’t count as allowing use of the phone. However, theses forms are normally interpreted

as a positive response, not to the pre-request, but to the unstated request.

Pre-sequences are also commonly used in making invitations. As illustrated in [14], with a 'go

ahead', and [15], with a 'stop', inviters tend to ask a pre-invitation question and receivers tend to

recognize their function.

[14] Him: What are you doing this Friday? (= pre-invitation)

Her: Hmm, nothing so far. (= go ahead)

Him: Come over dinner. (= invitation)

Her: Oh, I’d like that. (=accept)

[15] Him: Are you doing anything later? (= pre-invitation)

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Her: Oh, yeah. Busy, busy, busy. (= stop)

Him: Oh, okay. (=stop)

Children often use pre-announcements to check if their parents are willing to pay attention, as in

example [16].

[16] Child: Mom, guess what happened? (= pre-announcement)

Mother:(Silence)

Child: Mom, you know what? (- pre-announcement)

Mother: Not right now, Jacy, I’ m busy. (= stop)

In example [16], there are two pre-announcements, neither of which receives a 'go-ahead'.

The initial pre-announcement is met with silence, which is generally interpreted as a 'stop'. The

child's second attempt must be based on an interpretation that the parent did not hear the first

attempt. The final response has to be interpreted as a 'stop', but noticeably it is expressed, in

face-saving terms, as a postponement.

Throughout this discussion of politeness in interaction, we have been assuming a well-known

and easily recognizable structure for the interaction. That structure must now be analyzed

because it is our comfortable familiarity with its regularity that allows a great deal to be

communicated that is never said.

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Exercises

1. In these examples is the speaker appealing to positive or negative face?

a. If you`re free, there`s going to be a party at Yuri`s place on Saturday.

b. Let`s go to the party at Yuri`s place on Saturday. Everyone is invited.

2. Identify the given pre-sequences

1 A: Hey, I was just ringing up to ask if you were going to Jim’s party

B: Yes I thought you might

A: Heh heh

B: Yey, do you need a ride?

A: Yeah thanks

2 A: Do you have hot chocolate?

B: mmhmm

A: Can I have hot chocolate with whipped cream?

B: Sure

3 A: What’cha doin’?

B: Nothin’

A: Wanna drink?

4 A: I forgot to tell you the two best things that happened to me today.

B: Oh cool – what were they?

A: I got a B+ on my math test … and Jenny invited me to her party

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Conversation and preference structure

'Speak when you're spoken to!' the Queen sharply interrupted

her.

'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was

always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when

you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for

you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything.'

Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass

Pragmatics is the study of what speakers mean when they say something, and how

hearers understand it. Part of the meaning of a sentence is constant, and comes from the words

used in it and how they are arranged. However, there is more to pragmatics than just

understanding the context in which something is said. It also refers to the rules, including

knowing what context you need to provide to the listener, the rules that frame language

interactions, and what is socially appropriate.

Conversational abilities are an important part of our pragmatic skill set. Even before we

can talk we start to learn about the rules of conversation. When parents speak baby talk

('parentese' or 'motherese') to their infants, they do so in a very structured way. They use

exaggerated pitch changes, to engage the infant's interest and highlight that 'these sounds that

I'm making now are important. They articulate more carefully than they do with older children

and other adults, to help the baby understand which sounds are important in their language.

And they treat the interaction as a real conversation, keeping up a turn taking format; even if

the baby doesn't respond, the pause between the parent's utterances is exactly what it would be

if they were in conversation with an adult. This last aspect of parentese is an important part of

training children in holding conversations, and indeed, children can take turns in a conversation

and make fake words that 'sound right' before they ever speak their first word.

As we grow older we learn more rules about the form that conversation should take;

questions are followed by answers, long pauses are demands for more speech on your part, and

a hundred other little unspoken rules of language. All of these are part of pragmatics. It can be

quite painful to talk to someone who does not recognize the turn-taking nature of conversation,

who pauses too long before responding, or who fails to indicate that they are still planning to

say more by interjecting an 'um' or an 'ah' into their speech.

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Conversation analysis

Conversation analysis (commonly abbreviated as CA) is the study of talk in interaction

(both verbal and non-verbal in situations of everyday life). CA generally attempts to describe

the orderliness, structure and sequential patterns of interaction, whether institutional (in school,

a doctor's surgery, court or elsewhere) or in casual conversation.

Inspired by ethnomethodology (e.g. Harold Garfinkel and Erving Goffman), CA was

developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and his

close associates Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Today CA is an established method

used in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology. It is

particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive

psychology, as well as being a coherent discipline in its own right. Recently CA techniques of

sequential analysis have been employed for instance by phoneticians to explore the fine

phonetic detail of speech (Kelly and Local 1989).

The use of the term “conversation” to label this disciplinary movement is sometimes

considered to be misleading. For instance, one of CA’s principal practitioners, Emanuel

Schegloff, has more recently identified “talk-in-interaction” as CA’s topic. Perhaps for this

same reason, others (e.g., Jonathan Potter) who use CA methods identify themselves as

discourse analysts (DA), though that term was first used to identify researchers using methods

different from CA (e.g., Levinson, 1983), and still identifies a group of scholars larger than

those who use only CA methods.

'Conversation analysis' is an approach to the study of social interaction that focuses on

practices of speaking that recur across a range of contexts and settings. The early studies in this

tradition were based on the analysis of English conversation. More recently, however,

conversation analysts have begun to study talk in a broader range of communities around the

world.

Conversation is discourse mutually constructed and negotiated in time between speakers -

it is unplanned and informal - cook 1989

From all we have discussed so far it is quite clear that conversation is a discourse type

that contains several discourse strategies that are of interest to pragmatics. Every piece of

conversation consists of some acts that represent the speaker’s intention and our efforts in

discovering and evaluating those acts/discourse strategies amount to efforts in pragmatics.

There are many metaphors used to describe conversation structure. For some,

conversation is like a dance, with the conversational partners coordinating their

movements smoothly. For others it's like traffic crossing an intersection, involving lots of

alternating movement without any crashes. However, the most widely used analytic

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approach is based, not on dancing (there's no music) nor on traffic flow (there are no traffic

signals), but on an analogy with the workings of a market economy. In this market, there is a

scarce commodity called the floor which can be defined as the right to speak. Having

control of this scarce commodity at any time is called a turn. In any situation where control is

not fixed in advance, anyone can attempt to get control. This is called turn-taking. Because it is

a form of social action, turn-taking operates in accordance with a local management system that

is conventionally known by members of a social group. The local management System is

essentially a set of conventions for getting turns, keeping them, or giving them away. This

system is needed most at those points where there is a possible change in who has the turn.

Any possible change-of-turn point is called a Transition Relevance Place, or TRP. Within any

social group, there will be features of talk (or absence of talk) typically associated with a TRP.

(K. Malmkjaer, 2004. p. 118), (G. Yule, 2008. p. 72).

Pauses, overlaps, and backchannels

Most of the time, conversation consists of two, or more, participants taking turns, and

only one participant speaking at any time. Smooth transitions from one speaker to the next

seem to be valued. Transitions with a long silence between turns or with substantial overlap

(i.e. both speakers trying to speak at the same time) are felt to be awkward. When two people

attempt to have a conversation and discover that there is no ' flow ', or smooth rhythm to

their transitions, much more is being communicated than is said. There is a sense of distance,

an absence of familiarity or ease, as in the interaction shown in [1] between a student and his

friend's father during their first meeting.

[I] Mr. Strait: What's your major Dave?

Dave: English—well l haven't really decided yet.

(3 seconds)

Mr. Strait: so—you want to be a teacher?

Dave: No—not really—well not if l can help it.

(2.5 seconds)

Mr. Strait: What—//Where do you— go ahead

Dave: I mean it's a—oh sorry //1 em—

As shown in [1], very short pauses (marked with a dash) are simply hesitations, but

longer pauses become silences. The silences in [1] are not attributable to either speaker

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because each has completed a turn. If one speaker actually turns over the floor to another and

the other does not speak, then the silence is attributed to the second speaker and becomes

significant. It's an attributable silence. (S. C. Levinson, 1989. p. 299).

(2) Jan: Dave I`m going to the store.

(2 seconds)

Jan: Dave?

(2 seconds)

Jan: Dave—is something wrong?

Dave: What? What`s wrong?

Jan: never mind.

Silence at a TRP is not as problematic for the local management system as overlap. If the

expectation is that only one person speaks at a time, then overlap can be a serious problem.

Returning to example [1], the final two lines illustrate overlaps, conventionally marked by a double

slash (//) at the beginning of the overlapping talk. Typically, the first overlap occurs as both

speakers attempt to initiate talk. In accordance with the local management System, one speaker

will stop to allow the other to have the floor. However, for two speakers who are having difficulty

getting into a shared conversational rhythm, the stop-start-overlap-stop pattern may be repeated.

The type of overlap shown in [1] is simply part of a difficult first conversation with an

unfamiliar person. There are other kinds of overlap and they are interpreted differently. For

many (often younger) speakers, overlapped talk appears to function like an expression of

solidarity or closeness in expressing similar opinions or values. But the effect of the

overlapping talk creates a feeling of two voices collaborating as one, in harmony.

(3) Min: Did you see him in the video?

Wendy: Yeah—The part on the beach

Min: Oh my God// he was so sexy

Wendy: he was so cool

Min: And the waves // crashing around him!

Wendy: yeah that was really wild!

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In example (3), overlap communicates closeness. In example (4), overlap

communicates competition.

(4) Joe: When were in

// power las— wait CAN I FINISH?

Jerry: that`s my point I said—

In example (4), the speakers may appear to be having a discussion, but they are, in

fact, competing for the floor. The point at which overlap occurs is treated as an

interruption and the first speaker actually has to make a comment about procedure (with a

louder voice, shown by the capital letters in ‘CAN I FINISH?’) rather than about the topic

of conversation.

By drawing attention to an expectation that he should be allowed to finish, the

speaker in (4) is appealing to some of the unstated ‘rule’ of conversation structure. Each

potential speaker is expected to wait until the current speaker reaches a TRP. The most

obvious markers of a TRP are the end of structural unit (a phrase or clause) and pause.

Notice that, in (4), the first speaker has uttered ‘when they were in –‘ at the point where

the second speaker begins to talk. There is no pause and it is not the end of a phrase or a

clause. This is a clear interruption and breaks the 'rules'.

Normally, those who wish to get the floor will wait for a possible TRP before jumping in. Of

course, those holding the floor in a competitive environment will avoid providing TRPs. To

do so, they must avoid an open pause at the end of a syntactic unit. As illustrated in (5), the

speaker fills each of his pauses (‘um’ or ‘uh’), which are placed inside, not at the end of,

syntactic units. (Just prior to this turn, another speaker had attempted to take the floor, so the

speaker in (5) seems concerned to protect his turn.)

(5) I wasn’t talking about--um his first book that was--really just like a start and so—uh

isn`t—doesn`t count really.

Another type of floor-holding device is to indicate that there is a larger structure to your

turn by beginning with expressions of the type shown in (6)

(6) a. There are three points I`d like to make—first.....

b. There is more one way to do this—one example would be...

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c. Didn`t you know about Melvin? –oh it was last October...

d. Did you hear about Cindy`s new car?—she got it in...

The expressions in (6a.) and (6b.) are associated with discussions of facts or opinions

whereas those in (6c.) and (6d.) are preludes to storytelling. In all cases, they are used to get

the regular exchange of turn process suspended and allow one speaker to have an extended

turn. Within extended turn, however, speakers still expect their conversational partners to

indicate that they are listening. There are many different ways of doing this, including head

nods, smiles, and other facial expressions and gestures, but the most common vocal indications

are called backchannel signals, or simply backchannels. Some of these are present in Mary`s

conversations to (7).

(7) Caller: if you use your long distance service a lot then you`ll

Mary: uh-uh

Caller: be interested in the discount I`m talking about because

Mary yeah

Caller: it can only save you money to switch to a cheaper service

Mary: mmm

These types of signals ('uh-uh', 'yeah', 'mmm') provide feedback to the current speaker that

the message is being received. They normally indicate that the listener is following, and not

objecting to, what the speaker is saying. Given this normal expectation, the absence of

backchannels is typically interpreted as significant. During telephone conversations, the

absence of backchannels may prompt the speaker to ask if the listener is still there. During

face-to-face interaction, the absence of backchannels may be interpreted as a way of

withholding agreement, leading to an inference of disagreement. In conversation, silence is

significant and will be interpreted as meaningful.

Conversational style

Many of the features which characterize the turn-taking System of conversation are

invested with meaning by their users. Even within a broadly defined community of

speakers, there is often sufficient variation to cause potential misunderstanding. For

example, some individuals expect that participation in a conversation will be very active,

that speaking rate will be relatively fast, with almost no pausing between turns, and with

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some overlap or even completion of the other's turn. This is one conversational style. It

has been called a high involvement style. It differs substantially from another style in which

speakers use a slower rate, expect longer pauses between turns, do not overlap, and

avoid interruption or completion of the other's turn. This non-interrupting, non-imposing

style has been called a high considerateness style.

When a speaker who typically uses the first style gets into a conversation with a

speaker who normally uses the second style, the talk tends to become one-sided. The active

participation style will tend to overwhelm the other style. Neither speaker will necessarily

recognize that it is the conversational styles that are slightly different. Instead, the more

rapid-fire speaker may think the slower-paced speaker just doesn't have much to say, is

shy, and perhaps boring or even stupid. In return, he or she is likely to be viewed as noisy,

pushy, domineering, selfish, and even tiresome. Features of conversational style will often

be interpreted as personality traits.

Adjacency pairs

Pairs of utterances in talk are often mutually dependent; a most obvious example is that a

question predicts an answer, and that an answer presupposes a question. It is possible to state

the requirements, in a normal conversational sequence, for many types of uperances, in terms

of what is expected as a response and what certain responses presuppose. Some examples

might be:

Utterance function Expected response

Greeting greeting

Congratulation thanks

Apology acceptance

Inform acknowledge

Leave-taking leave-taking

Pairs of utterances such as greeting-greeting and apology-acceptance are called adjacency

pairs. The mutual dependence of such utterances is underlined by the fact that we can only be

absolutely sure of the function of the initiating utterance (the first pair-part as it is usually

called) when it is contextualised with the response it gets (the second pair-part), and vice versa

(thus 'hello' in English could be a greeting, a request to a telephone caller to identify

themselves, or an expression of surprise: 'Hello! What's this here?'). In example (8) the

imperative first pair-part can be classified functionally as an informing move, in light of the

acknowledging second pair-part it receives:

(8) (On a train)

Ticket collector: (inspecting passenger's ticket) Change at Peterborough.

Passenger: Thank you.

(Author's field notes)

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The utterance of a first part immediately creates an expectation of the utterance of a second

part of the same pair. Failure to produce the second part in response will be treated as a significant

absence and hence meaningful. There is substantial variation in the forms which are used to fill

the slots in adjacency pairs, but there must always be two parts.

(9)First Part Second Part

A: What's up? B: Nothin' much.

A: How's it goin'? B: Jus' hangin' in there.

A: How are things? B: The usual.

A: How ya doin'? B: Can't complain.

The examples in (9) are typically found in the opening sequences of a conversation. Other types of

adjacency pairs include a question-answer sequence a thanking-response and a request-

accept. Not all first parts immediately receive their second parts. However, it often happens that a

question-answer sequence will be delayed while another question-answer sequence intervenes.

The sequence will then take the form of Q1-Q2-A2-A1, with the middle pair (Q2-A2) being

called an insertion sequence. Although there appears to be a question (Q2) in response to a

question (Q1), the assumption is that once the second part (A2) of the insertion sequence

is provided, the second part (A1) of the initial question (Q1) will follow. This pattern is

illustrated in (10)

(10) Agent: Do you want the early flight? (= Q1)

Client: What time does it arrive? (= Q2)

Agent: Nine forty-five (= A2)

Client: Yeah - that's great (= A1)

An insertion sequence is one adjacency pair within another. Although the

expressions used may be question-answer sequences, other forms of social action are

also accomplished within this pattern as shown in (11). There is a pair which consists of

making a request—accepting the request (Q1-A1), with an insertion sequence of a question-

answer pair (Q2-A2) which seems to function as a condition on the acceptance (A1) being

provided.

(11) Jean: Could you mail this letter for me? (Req. 1)

Fred: Does it have a stamp on? (Q2)

Jean: Yeah. (A2)

Fred: Okay (Acc. 1)

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The delay in acceptance created by the insertion sequence is one type of indication that not

all first parts necessarily receive the kind of second parts the speaker might anticipate.

In order to see how delay is locally interpreted, we need some analytic terms for what is

expected within certain types of adjacency pairs.

Adjacency pairs are of different types. Some ritualized first pair-parts may have an

identical second pair-part (hello - hello, happy New Year – happy New Year), while others

expect a different second pair-part (congratulations - thanks). Equally, a second pair-part such

as thanks will presuppose quite a wide range of first pair-parts (offers, apologies, informing

moves, congratulations, commiserations, etc.). Other first pair-parts have various possibilities

and generate further expectations too; take, for example, invitation:

(12) A: Would you like to come over for a drink tomorrow?

B: Yes, that would be nice. (Accept)

Yes, if it could be after six. (Accept with condition)

No. (Reject)

We probably react against the bald No answer; politeness codes demand a more elaborate

structure for the response:

(13) B: Thanks very much, but I'm afraid I'm booked up tomorrow night, what about…etc

We can segment the polite refusal of the invitation into appreciation ('thanks very much'),

softener (I'm afraid'), reason ('I'm booked up') and face-saver ('what about . . . '). This pattern

'would typically be found between adult friends, colleagues, etc. in informal but polite

situations. More intimate situations may well omit the 'softener'. Each of these elements will

have several possible realizations, and these can be practiced in language learning in a

systematic way.

Different roles and settings will generate different structures for such adjacency pairs, and

discourse analysts try to observe in natural data just what patterns occur in particular settings.

Scarcella and Brunak (1981) compared native and non-native speakers' strategies for giving

informal invitations. The native speakers prefaced their invitations (e.g. 'I was wondering, uh,

we're having a party . . . '), while the non-natives were sometimes too formal or too blunt (e.g.

'I would like to invite you to a party'; 'I want you to come in a party'). Similarly, it seems that

native speakers usually preface disagreement second pair-parts in English with partial

agreement ('yes, but. . . ‘) and with softeners (Pearson 1986). This sort of observation has direct

implications for the design of role play and similar activities and what linguistic elements need

to be pre-taught, where learners are instructed to behave in ways specified by the activity and

where the goal is a simulation of 'real life' discourse.

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Preference structure

Adjacency pairs are not simply contentless noises in sequence. They represent social

actions, and not all social actions are equal when they occur as second parts of some pairs.

Basically, a first part that contains a request or an offer is typically made in the expectation

that the second part will be an acceptance. An acceptance is structurally more likely than a

refusal. This structural likelihood is called preference. The term is used to indicate a

socially determined structural pattern and does not refer to any individual’s mental

or emotional desires. In this technical use of the word, preference is an

observed pattern in talk and not a Personal wish. (S. C. Levinson, 1989. p. 333).

Preference structure divides second parts into preferred and dispreferred social acts.

The preferred is the structurally expected next act and the dispreferred is the

structurally unexpected next act. (The general patterns are presented in Table 8.1.)

First part Second part

Preferred Dispreferred

Assessment

Invitation

Offer

Proposal

Request

agree

accept

accept

agree

accept

Disagree

Refuse

Decline

Disagree

Refuse

TABLE: The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures (following Levinson

1983)

In considering requests or offers as first parts, acceptance is the preferred and refusal is the

dispreferred scond part. In examples (14a.-d), the responses in each second part all represent

preferreds. Thus, acceptance or agreement is the preferred second part response to a request

(14a.), an offer (14b.), an assessment (14c.), a proposal (14d.), or an invitation (14e.)

(14) First part Second part Preferred Dispreferred

Request Can you help me? (accept) Sure (refuse)

Offer Want some coffee? ( accept) Yes, please (decline)

Assessment Isn't that really great? (agree) Yes, it is (disagree)

Proposal Maybe we could go for a walk (agree) That'd be great (disagree)

Invitation Why not join us tonight? (accept) I’d love to ( refuse)

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To get a sense of how expected these preferred second parts are in the examples in (14), imagine each of the

first parts being met with silence. We might say that in any adjacency pair, silence in the second part is

always an indication of a dispreferred response.

Indeed, silence often leads the first speaker to revise the first part in order to get a second part that is not

silence from the other speaker. This may be clearer via an example, such as (15), where Jack s̀ silence in

response to Sandy`s comment prompts Sandy to restate her assessment. Jack then agrees (a preferred) with

Sandy`s assessment.

(15) Sandy: But I'm sure they'll have good food there

(1.6 seconds)

Sandy: Hmm - I guess the food isn't great

Jack: Nah - people mostly go for the music

Notice that Jack`s silence occurs where he would have had to produce a disagreement (i.e.

dispreferred response) regarding Sandy`s assessment. Non-response communicates that the

speaker is not in a position to provide the preferred response.

However, silence as a response is an extreme case, almost risking the impression of non-

participation in the conversational structure. Generally speaking, when participants have to

produce second part responses that are dispreferred, they indicate that they are doing something

very marked.

In example (16), the first speaker has made a statement that the second speaker appears to

disagree with. Agreement would be the preferred second part, eliciting a response such as

‘Yeah’ or even ‘I think so’. The second speaker (Julie) finds herself in the position of producing

a dispreferred.

(16) Cindy: S chiropodists do hands I guess.

Julie: Em—well—out there—they they mostly work on people’s feet.

Julie’s dispreferred second part is marked with initial hesitations, as if it is difficult to perform

this action (essentially correcting the other). There is a delay (‘em’, plus pause) in getting

started and the actual statement which indicates disagreement only comes after a preface

(‘well’), an appeal to the views of others (‘out there’), and a stumbling repetition (‘they they’).

Even the statement contains an expression (‘mostly’) which makes the information less

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challenging to the claim in the first part. The overall effect is that this speaker is presenting

herself a having difficulty and is unwilling to have to say what is being stated.

Hesitations and prefaces are also found in dispreferred second parts to invitations, as shown in

(17).

(17) Becky: Come over for some coffee later.

Wally: oh—eh—I’d love to—but you see—I—I’m supposed to get this finished—you

know.

As is often the case, the expression of a refusal (a dispreferred second) can be

accomplished without actually saying ‘no’. Something that isn’t said nevertheless gets

communicated in (17). After a preface (‘Oh’) and a hesitation (‘eh’), the second speaker in (17)

produces a kind of token acceptance (‘I’d love to’) to show appreciation of the invitation. Then,

the other’s understanding is invoked (‘you see’) and an account is presented (‘I’m supposed to

get this finished’) to explain what prevents the speaker from accepting the invitation. There is

also a meaning conveyed here that the speaker’s circumstances are beyond his control because

of an obligation (‘I’m supposed to’) and, once again, the inviter’s understanding (‘you know’)

is invoked.

The pattern’s associated with a dispreferred second in English are presented as a series of

optional elements in (18).

(18) How to do a dispreferred examples

a. delay/ hesitate pause; er; em; ah

b. preface well; oh

c. express doubt I’m not sure; I don’t know

d. token Yes that’s great; I’d love to

e. apology I’m sorry; what a pity

f. mention obligation I must do X; I’m expected in Y

g. appeal for understanding you see; you know

h. make it non-personal everybody else; out there

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i. give an account too much work; no time left

j. use mitigators really; mostly; sort of; kinda

k. hedge the negative I guess not; not possible

The overwhelming effect of a dispreferred is that more time and more language are used

than in a preferred. More language essentially represents more distance between the end of the

first part and the end of the second part. From a pragmatic perspective, the expression of a

preferred (in response to an offer or invitation, for example) clearly represents closeness and

quick connection. The expression of a dispreferred, as mapped out in (18), would represent

distance and lack of connection. From a social perspective, it is easy to see why participants in

a conversation might try to avoid creating contexts for dispreferreds. One obvious device for

accomplishing this is to use those pre-sequences at the end of chapter 7. The best way to avoid

a dipreferred second is not to get to the point where a first part of the pair is uttered. It must

follow, then, that conversations between those who are close familiars will tend to have fewer

elaborate dispreferreds than conversations between those who are still working out thir social

relationship. The amount of talk employed to accomplish a particular social action in

conversation is a pragmatic indicator of the relative distance between the participants.

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Exercises

1. Identify the adjacency pairs in the given dialogs

1 A: May I have a bottle of beer?

B: Are you 21?

A: No

B: No

2 B: I ordered some paint from you a couple of weeks ago

A: Yuh

B: And I wanted to order some more – the name’s Boyd

A: Yes // how many tubes would you like, Sir?

B: // An-

B: Uhm, what’s the price now, eh, with VAT, do you know?

A: er, I’ll just work that out for you

B: Thanks

(10.0 s)

A: Three Dollars nineteen a tube, Sir

B: Three nineteen is it?

A: Yeah

B: Eh, yes uhm, jus- justa think, that’s what thre nineteen, that’s for the large tube, isn’t

it?

A: Well yeah it’s the thirty-seven CCS

B: Er, Hmm, I tell you what – I’ll just uh call you back – I have to work out how many I’ll

need. Sorry I did- wasn’t sure of the price, you see

A: Okay

2. Where the conversation takes place, what objects are present, and what actions are taking place.

A. Physical context

B. Epistemic context

C. Linguistic context

D. Social context

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Discourse and culture

The emphasis in the preceding chapter was on the sequential structure of conversation,

particularly on aspects of the turn-taking procedures for control of the floor, with less attention

paid to what speakers had to say once they got the floor. Having gained the floor, speakers have

to organize the structure and content of what they want to say. They have to package their

messages in accordance with what they think their listeners do and do not know, as well as

sequence everything in a coherent way. If those speakers decide to write out their messages,

creating written text, they no longer have listeners providing immediate interactive

feedback. Consequently, they have to rely on more explicit structural mechanisms for the

organization of their texts. In this expanded perspective, speakers and writers are viewed

as using language not only in its interpersonal function(i.e. taking part in social interaction), but

also in its textual function (i.e. creating well-formed and appropriate text), and also in its

ideational function (i.e. representing thought and experience in a coherent way). Investigating

this much broader area of the form and function of what is said and written is called discourse

analysis.

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis covers an extremely wide range of activities, from the narrowly focused

investigation of how words such as 'oh' or 'well are used in casual talk, to the study of the

dominant ideology in a culture as represented, for example, in its educational or political

practices. When it is restricted to linguistic issues, discourse analysis focuses on the record

(spoken or written) of the process by which language is used in some context to express

intention.

Naturally, there is a great deal of interest in the structure of discourse, with particular attention

being paid to what makes a well-formed text. Within this structural perspective, the focus is

on topics such as the explicit connections between sentences in a text that create cohesion, or on

elements of textual organization that are characteristic of storytelling, for example, as

distinct from opinion expressing and other text types.

However, within the study of discourse, the pragmatic perspective is more specialized. It

tends to focus specifically on aspects of what is unsaid or unwritten (yet communicated) within

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the discourse being analyzed. In order to do the pragmatics of discourse, we have to go beyond

the primarily social concerns of interaction and conversation analysis, look behind the forms

and structures present in the text, and pay much more attention to psychological concepts

such as background knowledge, beliefs, and expectations. In the pragmatics of discourse, we

inevitably explore what the speaker or writer has in mind.

Coherence

The key concept of coherence (‘every thing fitting together well’) is not something that exists in

words or structures, but something that exists in people. It is people who ‘make sense’ of what

they read or hear. They try to arrive at an interpretation that is in line with their experience of the

way the world is. Indeed, our ability to make sense of what we read is probably only a small part

of that general ability we have to make sense of what we perceive or experience in the world.

My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That

colour doesn’t suit her. She consists of three letters. However, a letter isn’t as fast as a

telephone call.

You may have found when you were reading this example that you kept trying to make what

they hear or read fit some situation or experience that would accommodate all details (involving

a red car, a woman and a letter). If you work at it long enough, you may indeed find a way to

incorporate all those disparate elements into a single coherent interpretation. In doing so, you

would necessarily be involved in a process of filling in a lot of gaps that exist in the text. You

would have to create meaningful connections that are not actually expressed by the words and

sentences. This process is not restricted to trying to understand ‘odd’ texts. In one way or

another, it seems to be involved in our interpretation of all discourse.

It is certainly present in the interpretation of casual conversation. We are continually taking part

in conversational interactions where a great deal of what is meant is not actually present in what

is said. Perhaps it is the ease which we ordinarily anticipate each other’s intentions that makes

this whole complex process seem so unremarkable. Here is a good example, adapted from

widowson (1978)

Her: That’s the telephone.

Him: I’m in the bath

Her: O.K.

There are certainly no cohesive ties within this fragment of discourse. How does each of these

people manage to make sense of what the other says? They do use the information contained in

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the sentences expressed, but there must be something else involved in the interpretation. It has

been suggested that exchange s of this type are best understood in terms of the conventional

actions performed by speakers in such interactions. Drawing on concepts derived from the study

of speech acts, we can characterize the brief conversation in the following way.

She makes a request of him to perform action.

He states reason why he cannot comply with request.

She undertakes to perform action.

If this is a reasonable analysis of what took place in the conversation, then it is clear that

language-users must have a lot of knowledge of how conversation works that is not simply

‘linguistic’ knowledge.

Generally, what language users have most in mind is an assumption of coherence, that

what is said or written will make sense in terms of their normal experience of things. That

'normal' experience will be locally interpreted by each individual and hence will be tied to the

familiar and the expected. In the neighbourhood where I live, the notice in [1a.] means

that someone is selling plants, but the notice in [1b.] does not mean that someone is selling

garages.

[I] a. Plant Sale

b. Garage Sale

Although these notices have an identical structure, they are interpreted differently. Indeed, the

interpretation of [1b.], that someone is selling household items from their garage, is one

that requires some familiarity with suburban life.

This emphasis on familiarity and knowledge as the basis if coherence is necessary because

of evidence that we tend to make instant interpretations of familiar material and tend not to see

possible alternatives. For example, the question presented in (2) is easily answered by many

people.

(2) How many animals of each type did Moses take on the Ark?

If you immediately thought of ‘two’, then you accessed some common cultural knowledge,

perhaps even without noticing that the name used ’Moses’ was inappropriate (‘Noah’ is the

appropriate name). We actually create a coherent interpretation for a text that potentially does not

have it.

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We are also unlikely to stop and puzzle over ‘a male and a female (what?)’ as we read

about the accident reported in (3).

(3) A motor vehicle accident was reported in front of Kennedy Theatre involving a male

and a female.

We automatically ‘fill in’ details (for example, a male person driving one of the motor vehicles)

to create coherence. We also construct familiar scenarios in order to make sense of what might

first appear to be odd events, as in the newspaper headline in (4).

(4) Man Robs Hotel with Sandwich

If you create an interpretation for (4) that had the sandwich (perhaps in a bag) being used as if it

was a gun, then you activated the kind of background knowledge expected by the writer (as

confirmed by the rest of the newspaper article). You may, of course, have created a quite

different kind of interpretation (for example, the man was eating the sandwich while robbing the

hotel). Whatever it was, it was inevitably based on what you had in mind and not only what was

said in the ‘text’ in (4).

Background knowledge

A particular good example of the processes involved in using the background

knowledge was provided by Sanford & Garrod (1981), who presented readers with a

short text, one sentence at a time. Their text begins with the following two sentences.

John was on his way to school last Friday.

He was really worried about the math lesson.

Most people who are asked to read these sentences report that they think john is

probably a schoolboy. Since this piece of information is not directly stated in the text, it

must be an inference. Other inferences, for different readers, are that john is walking or

that he is on a bus. These inferences are clearly derived from our conventional

knowledge, in our culture, about ‘going to school’, and no reader has ever suggested that

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john is swimming or on a boat, though both are physically possible, if unlikely,

interpretations.

Last week he had been unable to control the class.

One encountering this sentence, most readers decide that John is, in fact, a teacher and

that he is not very happy. Many report that he is probably driving a car to school. Then

the next sentence is presented.

It was unfair of the math teacher to leave him in charge.

Suddenly, John reverts to his schoolboy status, and the inference that he is a teacher

is quickly abandoned. The final sentence of the text contains a surprise.

After all, it is not a normal part of the janitor’s duties.

This type of text and manner of presentation, one sentence at a time, is rather

artificial, of course. Yet the exercise involved does provide us with some insight into the

ways in which we ‘build’ interpretations of what we read by using a lot of more

information than is presented in the words on the page. That is, we actually create what

the text is about, based on our expectations of what normally happens. In attempting to

describe this phenomenon, researchers often use the concept of a ‘schema’ or a ‘script’.

A schema is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exists in

memory. We were using our conventional knowledge of what a school classroom is like,

or a ‘classroom schema’, as we tried to make sense of the previous example. We have

many schemas (or schemata) that are used in the interpretation of what we experience

and what we hear or read about. If you hear someone describe what happened during a

visit to a supermarket. You already have a ‘supermarket schema’ (food displayed on

shelves, arranged in aisles, shopping carts and baskets, check-out counter, and other

conventional features) as part of your background knowledge.

If there is a fixed, static pattern to the schema, it is sometimes called a frame. A

Frame is a remembered or recalled structure retrieved from our memory when we are presented

100

with a new situation. (Minsky, 1975) This structure is adaptable to fit reality, if need be.

A frame’s basic structure is made of “slots” which may be filled in with expressions, called

“fillers”. For instance, ‘kitchen’, ‘bathroom’, ‘bedroom’, etc are slots of a frame representing a

‘house’.

Similar in many ways to a schema is a script. A script is essentially a dynamic

schema. That is, instead of the set of typical fixed features in a schema, a script has a

series of conventional actions that take place. Scripts, as a concept, deal with event

sequencing and incorporate ‘a standard sequence of events that describes a situation.’ (Schank

& Abelson, 1977). The understanding of a newspaper story about car accidents is one

application of a script, in the sense that it provides the ability to answer questions about the

story itself. Examples would be: Who was killed? How? Was anyone hurt? You have a script

for ‘Going to the dentist’ and another script for ‘Going to the movies’. We all have

versions of an ‘Eating in a restaurant’ script, which we can activate to make sense of the

following discourse.

Trying not to be out of the office for long, Suzy went into the nearest place, sat

down and ordered an avocado sandwich. It was quite crowded, but the service was

fast, so she left a good tip. Back in the office, things were not going well.

On the basis of our restaurant script, we would be able to say a number of things about

the scene and events briefly described in this short text. For example, although the text

doesn’t have this information, we would assume that Suzy opened a door to get into the

restaurant, that there were tables there, that she ate the sandwich, then she paid for it, and

so on. The fact that information of this type can turn up in people’s attempts to

remember the text is further evidence of the existence of scripts. It is also a good

indication of the fact that our understanding of what we read doesn’t come directly from

words and sentences are on the page, but the interpretations we create, in our mind, of

what we read.

Indeed, crucial information is sometimes omitted from important instructions on the

assumption that everybody knows the script. Think carefully about the following

instructions from a bottle of cough syrup.

Fill measure cup to line

and repeat every 2 to 3 hours.

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No, you’ve not to just keep filling the measure cup every 2 to 3 hours. Nor have

you to rub the cough syrup on you neck on your hair. You are expected to know the

script and drink the stuff from the measure cup every 2 to 3 hours.

Clearly, our understanding of what we read not only based on what we see on the

page (language structures). To understand more about the connection between these two

things, we have to take a close look at the workings of the human brain.

Cultural schemata

Everyone has had the experience of surprise when some assumed component of an event is

unexpectedly missing. It is almost inevitable that our background knowledge structures, our

schemata for making sense of the world, will be culturally determined. We develop our cultural

schemata in the contexts of our basic experiences. For some obvious differences (for example,

cushions instead of chairs), we can readily modify the details of a cultural schema. For many other

subtle differences, however, we often don’t recognize that there may be a misinterpretation based

on different schemata. In one reported example, an Australian factory supervisor clearly assumed

that other factory workers would know that Easter was close and hence they would all have a

holiday. He asked another worker, originally from Vietnam, about her plans.

You have five days off. What are you going to do?

The Vietnamese worker immediately interpreted the utterance in terms of being laid off

(rather than having a holiday). Something good in one person’s schema can sound like

something bad in another’s.

Cross-cultural pragmatics

The study of differences in expectations based on cultural schemata is part of a broad area of

investigation generally known as cross-cultural pragmatics. The concepts and terminology

provided so far provide a basic analytic framework, but the realization of those concepts may

differ substantially from English

- there might even be a cultural preference for NOT saying what you believe to be the

case (vs. the cooperative principle, different quantity or quality maxims)

- different turn-taking mechanisms in different cultures

- different interpretations of speech acts e.g., American style of complimenting creates

embarrassment for Native Americans (perceived as excessive) or perceived as an apology

by Japanese listeners (and thus impossible to accept)

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To look at the ways in which meaning is constructed by speakers from different cultures will

actually require a complete reassessment of virtually everything we have considered so far in

this survey. The concepts and terminology may provide a basic analytic framework, but the

realization of those concepts may differ substantially from the English language examples

presented here.

When we reviewed the cooperative principle and the maxims, we assumed some kind of

general middle-class Anglo-American cultural background. What if we assumed a cultural

preference for not saying what you know to be the case in many situations? Such a preference

is reported in many cultures and would clearly require a different approach to the relationship

between the maxims of quality and quantity in a more comprehensive pragmatics.

When we considered turn-taking mechanisms, we did not explore the powerful role

of silence within the normal conversational practices of many cultures. Nor did we include a

discussion of a socially prescribed 'right to talk' which, in many cultures, is recognized as the

structural basis of how interaction proceeds.

When we explored types of speech acts, we did not include any observations on the

substantial differences that can exist cross-culturally in interpreting concepts like

‘complementing’, ‘thanking’’, or ‘apologizing’.

The study of these different cultural ways of speaking is some-times called contrastive

pragmatics. Examples:

Speech acts

- In English offers can be made in the form of questions (‘Would you like another

beer?’), this is not used in Polish (instead: direct suggestion)

- Anglo-American apologies for an offence include acknowledgement of fault, Japanese

ones do not (preferring to offer a remedy)

- Anglo-American apologies for refusing an invitation have precise explanation, Japanese

ones remain vague

Politeness

- Javanese: achieve harmony and peaceful relations by concealing feelings, wants and

thoughts (pretense)

- Anglo-American: ‘white lies’ so as not to offend someone

- Polish/German: honesty valued as a sign of friendship, no well-meaning lies

- Japanese speakers avoid confrontation (never say ‘you’re wrong’, ‘that’s not true’)

When the investigation focuses more specifically on the communicative behaviour of non-

native speakers, attempting to communicate in their second language, it is described as

interlanguage pragmatics. Such studies increasingly reveal that we all speak with what might be

called a pragmatic accent, that is, aspects of our talk that indicate what we assume is

communicated without being said.

103

104

Exercises

1. In the study of discourse understanding, what are scripts?

2. Background knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer.

A. Physical context

B. Epistemic context

C. Linguistic context

D. Social context

3. The social relationship and setting of the speakers and the hearers.

A. Physical context

B. Epistemic context

C. Linguistic context

D. Social context

105

References

Ann K. Farmer & Richard A. Dermers (2001), A Linguistics Workbook

(4th

edition), The MIT Press.

Brown & Yule (1988), Discourse Analysis, Cambridge University press.

Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics -Second Edition- (2005).

K. Green, Sheffield Hallam, University, Sheffield, UK. Elsevier Social

Sciences.

Fromkin & Rodman (1998). An Introduction to Language (6th ed.)

Geoffrey Leech (1983). The Principles of Pragmatics. Longman Group

Ltd.

Geoffrey Leech (1981). Semantics (2nd

Edition). Pelican Books.

George Yule (2008). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

George Yule (2006). The Study of Language. Cambridge University

Press.

Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

H.G.Widdowson (2000). Linguistics. Oxford University Press.

John Lyons (1997). Language and Linguistics (An Introduction).

Cambridge University Press.

Kirsten Malmkjaer (2006). The Linguistics Encyclopaedia (Second

Edition). Routledge Publication.

Levinson Stephen C. (1985). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.

Levinson C. Stenphen. The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell

References Online.

Michael McCarthy (2000). Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers.

Cambridge University Press.

106

N.E.Collinge (1990). An Encyclopaedia of Language. (Language,

Meaning and context: pragmatics by Geoffrey leech and Jenny Thomas

(p. 173)).

Patrick Griffiths (2006). An Introduction to English Semantics and

Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press.

Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. (1986a). Relevance: Communication

and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Internet

www. blackwellreference.com

http://ifla.uni-stuttgart.de/~jilka/index.hml

www.linguistics.org

www.nou.edu.ng

www.pragmatics.mht “What is pragmatics?”by Shaozhong Liu

http://www.shunsley.eril.net/armoore/

www.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.com

www.wikepidia.com

H:\Dr_ Shadia Y_ Banjar-speech act -fichiers

H:\Shadia's Page REFERENCE AND INFERENCE_fichiers

H:\Shadia's Page POLITENESS AND INTERACTION_fichiers

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Index Chapter one: Definitions and background

Historical preamble

Definitions

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

Semantics and Pragmatics; Three approaches to Pragmatics

Regularity

Criticisms of pragmatics

Some Definitions of Pragmatics (versus Semantics, usually)

Chapter two: Deixis and distance

Deictic expression.

proximal terms

distal terms

deictic center

Person deixis

honorifics

social deixis.

exclusive ‘we’

inclusive ‘we’

Spatial deixis

psychological distance.

Temporal deixis

Deixis and grammar

Chapter three: Reference and inference

reference

referring expressions

Referential and Attributive uses

attributive use

referential use

Names and Referents

intended referent

inferred referent

pragmatic connection

The Role of Co-text

linguistic context or co-text.

physical environment or context

Anaphoric reference

anaphoric reference, or anaphora ‘

anaphor

antecedent.

zero anaphora or ellipsis.

Chapter four: Presuppositions and entailments

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Presuppositions

Presupposition and Entailment

Types of Presupposition

potential presupposition

1-Existential presupposition:

2-Factive presupposition:

3-Lexical presupposition:

4-Structural presupposition

5- Non- factive presupposition:

6-Counterfactual presupposition

Projection Problem

Ordered entailments

background entailments.

foreground entailments,

cleft construction

Chapter five: Cooperation and Implicature

Grice and Conversational Implicatures

The cooperative principle

tautologies.

implicature.

The maxims

conversational conventions or “maxims”

Quantity

Quality

Relation

Manner

Hedges

Conversational implicature

Generalized conversational implicatures

Scalar implicatures

Particularized conversational implicature

Conversational and conventional implicature

Conversational implicatures have the following characteristics:

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Communicative intentions

Chapter six: Speech acts and events

'performatives'

'felicity conditions'

Speech Acts,

The Speech Event

Speech acts:

locutionary act

illocutionary act

illocutionary force

perlocutionary act.

perlocutionary effect

IFIDs

performative verb

The “hereby” test

Felicity conditions:

general conditions

content conditions.

Preparatory conditions

sincerity conditions.

essential condition

The performative hypothesis:

explicit performatives.

implicit performatives; primary performatives

Speech act classification:

Declarations

Representatives

Expressives

Directives

Commissives

Direct and indirect speech acts

direct speech act.

indirect speech act.

Speech events:

Locutionary acts

The taxonomy of illocutionary acts (Bach and Harnish )

constatives,

directives,

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commissives,

acknowledgments,

communicative illocutionary acts,

conventional illocutionary acts,

effectives,

verdictives,

The Speech Act Schema (SAS)

Chapter seven: Politeness and interaction

Face and politeness phenomena

positive face

negative face.

face wants,

face threatening act

face-redressive action

Face wants

face threatening act.

face saving act.

Negative and positive face

negative politeness.

positive politeness.

Self and other: say nothing:

“say nothing” approach

Say something: off and on record

off record.

“hints

on record.

bald on record.

mitigation devices.

.Positive and negative politeness strategies

positive politeness strategy

negative politeness strategy

Strategies

solidarity strategy.

deference strategy

The politeness principle

1. Tact maxim: (

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2. Generosity maxim

3. Approbation maxim:

4. Modesty maxim:

5. Agreement maxim

6. Sympathy maxim:

Pre-sequences

pre-request.

pre-invitation

pre-announcements

Chapter eight: Conversation and preference structure

Conversational abilities

Conversation analysis

turn-taking.

local management system

Transition Relevance Place,

Pauses, overlaps, and backchannels

overlap

attributable silence.

backchannel signals, or backchannels.

Conversational style

high involvement style.

high considerateness style.

Adjacency pairs

first pair-part

second pair-part

insertion sequence.

appreciation

softener

reason

face-saver

disagreement second pair-parts

Preference structure

preference

Preference structure

preferred

dispreferred

Chapter nine: Discourse and culture

interpersonal function

textual function

ideational function

Discourse analysis

Coherence

Background knowledge

schema

frame.

script

Cultural schemata

cultural schemata

Cross-cultural pragmatics

cross-cultural pragmatics.

contrastive pragmatics.

interlanguage pragmatics

pragmatic accent

Study questions

References

Index

List of tables

TABLE 4.1. Potential presuppositions

FIGURE 7.1 How to get a pen from someone else (following Brown and

Levinson 1987)

TABLE: The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures

(following Levinson 1983)