1

UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN
Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación
Departamento de Filología Inglesa

GRAMÁTICA INGLESA: DISCURSO Y SEMÁNTICA

Topic 1: LANGUAGE AS A COMMUNICATIVE SYSTEM An outline

Set reading:
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; pp. 101-112,
228-236).

1.1. Language as a system of signals

'A language is merely one special variety of code [i.e.] an arbitrary, prearranged set of
signals' (Gleason, 1970: 374). From this, it follows that 'the science of linguistics deals, in its
strictest delimitation, only with this aspect of communication': the study of this code or
system of signals. So language is a two-level semiotic system (Allerton, 1979: ch. 2): its
signs have got both 'expression' (i.e. form), and 'content' (meaning) (Hjelmslev's terms 1).
They are arbitrary, discrete, i.e. distinct, and their combinations are linear, i.e. they involve
sequencing along a particular dimension (time for speech, left-to-right or right-to-left for
writing).
Eggins (2004: 19), in her turn, does not see language as a bi-unique two-level
semiotic system because it possesses an intermediate level, namely “lexico-grammar” which
differentiates language from typical two-level systems. The following diagram summarizes
her views:

CONTENT meanings Semantics

wordings (words & structures) Lexico-grammar

EXPRESSION

sounds / letters Phonology / Graphology

1
Danish linguist, founder of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen (1931). In his structural theory of language,
Glossematics, he developed the semiotic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern linguistics.

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Departamento de Filología Inglesa

A system of communication consists of various parts (Scott et alii, 1968: 4, 5-6): 'the
substance, manifested by some material means, [and] the allocation of the signals to the
various messages which the system can convey; these messages relate to [one specific]
situation. [...] In the study of spoken language the part concerned with the substance is called
phonetics and the part concerned with messages or meanings is called semantics.' In the
spoken medium the substance receives the name of phonemes, whereas in the written
medium the segments are called graphemes. The patterns which these segments form are
what we know as words.
This has also been explained by postulating the so-called 'double articulation' of the
expression plane (Martinet, 1960): 'the units on the lower level of phonology (the sounds of
a language) have no function other than that of combining with one another to form the
higher units of grammar (words).' (Lyons, 1968: 54).
Finally, a similar emphasis on communication can be noticed in the view on language
held by Functional Grammar: 'a language is a system for making meanings: a semantic
system, with other systems for encoding the meanings it produces' (Halliday, 1994: xvii).

1.2. The process of communication

In his treatment of the process of communication, Gleason (1970: ch. 23) lists various
elements or components, all of them constituting the concern of the so-called
'Communication Theory', as essential to any communication exchange, whether linguistic or
non-linguistic in nature. From this perspective, he notes, 'communication is a much broader
process than language'. The list includes: 'A code, an arbitrary, prearranged set of signals.
[...] A channel, some medium by which the signals of the code are conveyed. [...] The
process of encoding, by which certain signals in the code are selected and put into the
channel. [...] An encoder, the person or device which performs the process of encoding. The
process of decoding, by which the signals are identified, [...] A decoder, the person or device
by which the process of decoding is performed.' (op. cit., p. 374).
Two important notions for Communication Theory are the capacity of a code and the
actual amount of information transmitted, closely connected with the previous one. Gleason
notes in this respect: 'A measure of the amount of information which a code can convey is
obviously related to the number of alternative signals. [...] The amount of information
increases as the number of alternatives increases.' (op. cit., p. 375).
Finally, another concept commonly used by the Theory is 'redundancy', i.e. the
unused capacity of a code. In conveying a certain message the encoder may decide to make a

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Departamento de Filología Inglesa

partial use of the code, that is to say, choose some of the signals only. Gleason (1970: 379)
warns the reader not to confuse this term with repetition and defines it as 'the difference
between the theoretical capacity of any code and the average amount of information
conveyed.'

1.3. Pragmatics and communication: the Cooperative Principle

As has been stated above, communication is the main business of language; seen from this
perspective, language is a code or system of signals used to express ideas ('ideational'
function), maintain social relations ('interpersonal' function) and establish links with itself
and with the situation in which it is used ('textual' function).
It is precisely the study of the communicative force of linguistic utterances that
constitutes the main concern of Pragmatics. One basic principle ruling over communication
is the Cooperative Principle, formulated by Grice (1975: 45): '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.' And this philosopher of language
explains its significance as follows: 'Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a
succession of disconnected remarks, [...] They are characteristically, to some degree at least,
cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common
purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose or
direction may be fixed from the start [...] or it may evolve during the exchange; [...] But at
each stage, some possible conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally
unsuitable.' (op. cit., p. 45).
This situation would result from a violation of some of the maxims of the
Cooperative Principle: 'quantity' ('make your contribution as informative as is required'),
'quality' ('try to make your contribution one that is true'), 'relation' ('be relevant'), and
'manner' ('be perspicuous'). But a speaker may 'flout' a maxim, that is, he or she may disobey
it openly or 'may blatantly fail to fulfill it'. This situation gives rise to a 'conversational
implicature'. To put it in other words, an apparently irrelevant, inadequate or inappropriate
utterance may hide some implications; therefore the listener is expected to infer some
information from indirect utterances. In consequence, 'though some maxim is violated at the
level of what is said, the hearer is entitled to assume that that maxim, or at least the
Cooperative Principle, is observed at the level of what is implicated.' (op. cit., p. 52).

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Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación
Departamento de Filología Inglesa

The following schema summarizes some of the foregoing ideas:

1st participant (speaker) implies sth. (implicature)

2nd participant (listener) infers sth. (inference)

1.4. Speech Acts:

1.4.1. Definition
Speech acts, also called 'language acts' or 'linguistic acts', are utterances of sentences, i.e.
'acts of verbal behaviour (spoken or written). When a person performs a speech act, that
person at one and the same time utters a particular utterance, namely a locutionary act'
(Quirk et alii, 1985: 804).

1.4.2. History
In 1955 Austin initiated the analysis of speech acts in a series of lectures delivered at
Harvard University and published later on in 1962 (How to Do Things with Words (1975, 2nd
edition). Austin proposed an initial distinction between 'performative' utterances and
'constative' utterances which has a bearing on the subject.
A performative sentence is one in which 'the issuing of the utterance [i.e. the act of
saying something] is the performing of an action' (op. cit., p. 6): e.g. 'I bet you fifty pounds
he will be the winner'. As Levinson (1983: 228) puts it, 'these sentences are not used just to
say things, but to do things'.
A constative is an utterance which simply expresses a statement, or states something
as a fact, or reports states or affairs: e.g. 'Yesterday I met an old friend at the faculty'.
Unlike constative utterances, which can be true or false, performative
sentences/utterances can be felicitous or infelicitous, that is, they may actually entail the
performance of an action or not. Austin formulated a number of conditions or principles that
are to be met by performatives in order to succeed or be 'happy', the so-called 'felicity
conditions'.

1.4.3. Felicity conditions for happy performatives

They are definite rules to be observed by happy performatives. In order to make a promise,
christen a ship, give property, etc. and accomplish the corresponding action, the utterance
should meet certain conditions, e.g. that you really intend to do what was promised, that you
are the person appointed to christen the ship, etc.

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The technical formulation of these conditions, as presented in chapters 3 and 4 of

Austin's monograph, is as follows:
a) 'There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect,
the procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain
circumstances.' (p. 26).
b) 'The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the
invocation of the particular procedure invoked' (p. 34).
c) 'The procedure must be executed by all the participants correctly.' (p. 36).
d) 'The procedure must be executed by all participants completely.' (p. 36).
e) 'A person participating in and so invoking the procedure must in fact have [the] thoughts,
feelings, or intentions [appropriate to the performance of the action] and the participants
must intend so to conduct themselves.' (p. 39).
f) 'The participants must so conduct themselves subsequently.' (p. 39).
If we do not observe the first four conditions, then the act in question is not
successfully performed at all, that is, it does not come off ('misfires'). Alternatively, if the
last two rules are not obeyed, the act is achieved but it is an abuse of the procedure ('abuses').

1.4.4. Types of speech acts

'Locutionary' act: it is 'the act of saying something' (Coulthard, 1985: 18), the speaker's
utterance.
'Illocutionary' act: 'an act performed in saying something' (op. cit., p. 18). It is 'a
speech act identified with reference to the communicative intention of the speaker' (Quirk et
alii, 1985: 804). In performing this type of act, we shall be making statements, asking
questions, issuing commands, etc.
'Perlocutionary' act: 'the act performed by or as a result of saying' (Coulthard, 1985:
18). The term thus refers to 'the effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of the audience'
(Austin, 1975: 101).
It is now convenient to make it clear that one usually performs these three types of
act simultaneously: 'it is not Austin's intention to suggest that in speaking one has the option
of performing one or other of these acts' (Coulthard, op. cit., p. 18).

1.4.5. Illocutionary acts

As envisaged by Searle (1972), illocutionary acts consist of three different components:
'propositional meaning', 'illocutionary force' and 'function indicating device'.

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The first concept refers to the content of the utterance or its meaning. Thus examples
like 'Mary will pass her Maths exam', 'Will Mary pass her Maths exam?', 'I hope that Mary
will pass her Maths exam' express the same propositional meaning, although their
illocutionary force is different - statement, question, and expression of a wish, respectively.
Searle notes that the type of illocutionary force of a speech act is marked by means of
the so-called 'function indicating device', which includes word order, stress, intonation,
punctuation, the mood of the verb and 'performative' verbs. For example in the expression 'I
apologize for being late', the illocutionary force is clearly conveyed by the performative
verb, while in 'John, tell them to keep quiet', two characteristic function indicating devices
used are stress and intonation.
Austin (1975: 151-164) classifies illocutionary forces (and their corresponding
performative verbs) into five general types: 'verdictives' (giving a verdict, making an
estimate, etc.): e.g. 'acquit', 'convict', 'estimate','analyse'; 'exercitives' (exercising of powers,
rights or influence): e.g. 'appoint', 'vote', 'order', 'urge', 'warn'; 'commissives' (typified by
promising or undertaking): e.g. 'intend', 'plan', 'promise', 'undertake'; 'behavitives' (related to
attitudes and social behaviour): e.g. 'thank', 'congratulate', 'apologize'; 'expositives' (used in
order to fit our utterances into the course of a conversation): e.g. 'affirm', 'deny', 'accept',
'argue'. Other classifications of illocutionary acts are those by Searle (1979) and Bach and
Harnish (1979).
But linguistic expressions can be performative without including any overt, i.e.
explicit, performative verb; these are called 'implicit' or 'primary' performative utterances
(Austin, op. cit., p. 69): cf. 'I shall be there' vs. 'I promise that I shall be there'.

1.4.6. Indirect speech acts

In this type of linguistic acts, the speaker or writer makes use of a syntactic type of sentence
(e.g. affirmative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative) whose meaning is different from the
illocutionary force conveyed by the uttering of the sentence. Thus in 'Can you reach the salt?'
the sentence meaning is a question, while the utterance meaning is a request.
In a monographic paper, Searle (1975) defines indirect speech acts as sentences 'that
contain the illocutionary force indicators for one kind of illocutionary act [and] can be
uttered to perform, in addition, another type of illocutionary act' (p. 59). This, he notes,
typically occurs in uses of language like hints, insinuations, irony and metaphor. And he
adds: 'The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the
speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else. [...] In indirect

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speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of
relying on their mutually shared background information' (op. cit., pp. 60-61).
Hence a close relation can be established between indirect speech acts and the
Cooperative Principle, since they usually constitute violations of some of its maxims,
especially relation and manner, though the CP is observed at the level of what is implicated.

References
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Morphology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. (pp. 1-17).
Austin, J. (1975). How to Do Things with Words. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University
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Bach, K. and R. Harnish (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge,
MA.: The MIT Press.
Coulthard, M. (1985). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. 2nd edition. London:
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Eggins, S. (2004). An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2nd edition. London:
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Gleason, H. (1970). An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart
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Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Chs. 3, 5).
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Searle, J. (1975). “Indirect Speech Acts”. P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and
Semantics, vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press; 59-82.

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Searle, J. (1979). Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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