UNIT 1 – INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction.

This is a relatively ‘young’ discipline, being the wastebasket of linguistics (Yule, 1996).Austin
(1962) defined some basic principles of Pragmatics on his How to do things with words
During the 70’s the interest in the discipline grew enormously in relation to what people ‘do
with words’. In the 80’s pragmatics came into the linguistic ‘arena’ and was defined as
meaning in use or meaning in context. It is related to Chomsky’s ‘performance’.Most
recently, there have been two approaches to pragmatics:

1. “Speaker meaning” what we mean when we speak by focusing on the

producer of the message and taking a more social view of the discipline.

2. “Utterance interpretation” this approach focuses on the receiver of the message

and takes a more cognitive view of the discipline.

A more balances definition is considering it as meaning in interaction.Thomas (1995):

“Meaning is not something which is inherent in the words alone, nor is it produced by the
speaker alone, nor by the hearer alone. Making meaning is a dynamic process.”

2. Levels of meaning.

There are three levels meaning:

1. Abstract meaning: what a word, phrase, sentence, etc. could mean ‘in theory’.

2. Contextual meaning: we assign sense or reference to a word, phrase or sentence

(utterance meaning of the message). This is what the speaker actually means.

3. Force: it is the speaker’s communicative intention.

Contextual meaning is the first level of speaker meaning.

Force is the second level of the speaker meaning.

E.g. the best nails here! [force: persuasion; contextual meaning: a beauty room]
Sometimes understanding fails (especially if there are ‘deictics’).The interaction between
sense and reference provides the basis for the resolution of pragmatic meaning. A notice
saying Out of Order laying on the floor near a coffee machine and a chair with a pile of
books on it could mean:

1 – The machine is not working.

2 – books are not yet arranged in any particular order.

There are numerous cases of structural ambiguity:

E.g. The Bishop walked among the pilgrims eating their picnic lunches:

1 – The pilgrims were eating.

2 – The bishop ate lunches.

Sometimes we can understand contextual meaning but not force:

E.g. “is that your car?”

1 – Yes/no question.

2 – Admiration.

3 – Scorn.

4 – Request for a lift.

5 – A complaint that the vehicle is obstructing access to some place.

Both levels, contextual meaning and force are closely related but they are not inseparable
and we should not confuse them.
Take this sentence as object of analysis:

“Sarah, it’s Diana. Derek’s concert is tomorrow at eight” (an answer-phone message after
not being at home for a few days):

Sentence meaning 1 – the performance of Derek is tomorrow at eight.

2 – the concert that Derek wants to go is tomorrow at eight.

Contextual meaning 1 – an expected hearing of the voice message from Sarah.

Force 1 – a reminding for Sarah.

2 – response to a question.

3 – excuse for not meeting Sarah.

3. Defining Discourse Analysis.

“It is the study of real language in use”.Brown and Yule, 1983.

“The study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use” (Fasold, 1990).

“Discourse refers to language in use, as aa process which is socially situated” (Candlin,

1997).

Da embraces both formal and functional approaches: “the term discourse analysis is very
ambiguous. Roughly speaking, it refers to attempts to study the organization of language
above the sentence or above the clause and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such
as conversational exchanges or written texts. DA is also concerned with language in use in
social contexts” (Slembrouck, 2005).

Discourse studies are essentially multidisciplinary (van Dijk, 2002). They cross the Linguistic
border into different and varied domains.

DA is studied not only by linguists, but also by communication scientists, literary critics,
philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, political scientists, etc.
 4. Origin and brief history of Discourse Analysis.

The Chomskian Generative School (Syntactic Structures, 1957).

20th century emergence of other schools supporting the belief that a good linguist description
should go beyond the sentence:

● Functionalism.

● Cognitive Linguistics.

● Sociolinguistics.

● Text linguistics.

● Discourse Analysis.

It is difficult to distinguish one from the other, especially Text Linguistics and Discourse
Analysis.TL is a more formal approach; text internal factors (coherence and cohesion).

DA is a more functional approach; text external factors (acceptability, informativity,

situationality and intertextuality – De Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981).

These are the common tenets of interrelated disciplines:

- Language use is necessarily social.

- The description of language must account for the real facts of language.

- Linguistic structures should be closely linked to the conditions of language use.

- Language is natural and necessary, vague and inaccurate.

5. Approaches to DA.

Current research flows from different academic fields. Discourse and DA are used to mean
different things by different researchers.

Leech (19839 and Schifrin (1994) distinguish between two main approaches:

● The formal approach discourse is defined as units of language beyond the

sentence.
 The functional approach discourse is defined as language in use.

Harris (1951) was the first linguist who used the term ‘discourse analysis’ and he was a
formalist.

Schiffrin (1994) integrates both the formal and functional approaches:

Discourse as ‘utterances’, i.e, ‘units of linguistic production’ (whether spoken or written)

which are inherently contextualized.

Discourse is multimodal because it includes not only the purely linguistic content but also
other semiotic systems (i.e. body language).
UNIT 2: THE CONTEXT

2.1. Context or co-text.

- The Pearsons are on Coke.

Three possible interpretations They are drinking coke

They use cocaine

They have solid – fuel heating

- It’s cold.

Three possible interpretations A weather forecast

Mom to little son (referring to weather)

Customer to waiter (referring to coffee)

Intention Give information

Take your coat!

Complaint / request

2.1.1. Origins of the term ‘context’.

In 1923, Malinowsky coined the term “context of situation”.

“Exactly as the reality of spoken or written languages, a word without linguistic context is a
mere figment and stands for nothing by itself, so in the reality of a spoken living tongue, the
utterance has no meaning except in the context of situation”.

Firth elaborated the concept of ‘context’ in his 1950 paper Personality & Language in
Society.

- The relevant features of participants, persons, personalities

o The verbal action of the participants.

o The non-verbal action of participants.

- The relevant objects

- The effect of the verbal action

The term ‘context’ is very common but “elusive of definition” (Widdoson, 2004:32).In 1985,
Halliday & Hassan established what they call the ‘context of situation’ which can be
described in terms of a simple conceptual framework of three headings (1989):

- The field of discourse refers to what is happening, to the native of the social action
that is taking place.

- The tenor of discourse refers to who is taking part, the native of the participants, their
status and role.

- The mode of discourse refers to what part the language is playing, the organization
of the text, the channel (written, spoken or combination).

Mey (1993) defined ‘context’ as “surroundings in the widest sense”. Sperber & Wilson (1995)
defined ‘context’ as a “psychological construct, a subset of the hearer’s assumptions about
the world.”

2.1.2. Types of context.

Context involves three different dimensions:

a) Situational context refers to the time, the place where language is used. That is, the
immediate physical environment surrounding both speaker and hearer.

E.g. It’s a long time since we visited your mother.

Possible contexts

Context A – married couple in their living

Context B – married couple in the zoo, in front of the hippos

He/she comes in all her vastness.

Possible contexts Context A – a TV reporter talking about a ship, but the camera shows
the Queen Mother
- Background knowledge that help us to “construct meanings” that speakers belonging to
other cultural communities might not share.

E.g:

A – How is your new tennis partner?

B – He has much in common with John McEnroe.

A – Good server?

B – Bad temper.

- Interpersonal or mutual knowledge is the knowledge speaker and hearer share. Because
they share this knowledge, they can take things for granted that another interlocutor is
unlikely to understand.

E.g: If he hadn’t fallen out of bed, I’d never have found out about it!

Another important aspect of the context is the setting. Setting refers to the time and place of
a speech act and in general, to the physical circumstance […]

Scene, which is different from setting, designates the “psychological setting” or the cultural
definition of an occasion as a certain type of scene” (Hymes, 1974:55).

We do not experience language in isolation – if we did we would not recognize it as a

language but always in relation to a scenario, some background of persons and actions and
events from which the things which are said derive their meaning.

2.1.3. Towards a comprehensive definition of context.

- Co-text refers to the linguistic context in which a particular utterance occurs. For
example, in adjacency pairs such as the following:

• A: Are you coming to the cinema? (Yes/no question)

• B: I’ve got an exam tomorrow.

- The identification of the co-text has to do with the disambiguation of references:

• A: I went with Francesca and David.

• B: Uhuh?

• A: Francesca’s room-mate. And Alice – a friend of Alice’s from London. There were six of
us. Yeah, we did a lot of hill walking.

Co-text is dynamic: contexts are constructed continuously during the course of a

conversation.

• A*: Are we having classes tomorrow?

• B: It’s el Pilar.

* If B is a Spanish student, he will understand the answer. Otherwise, he will not.

Context relationship with language is bilateral. In other words, we can understand the text
thanks to context but we can also guess the context from the text.

Halliday & Hassan (1989:37) provides the following examples where, as speakers of
English, we can make inferences about the context of situation:

- Once upon a time… (fairy tale)

- This to certify that… (legal document)

- Four hearts (card games)

- On your marks (sportive competition)

- 30 please (order in a shop)

- Just a trim, is it? (at a hairdresser’s)

- Rail strike (rail workers having a strike; headline)

- 348-1929 (Id code; serial number)

- Sea slight on a low swell (weather prediction)

- Hands up (ask for volunteers)

- Hands up all those who’ve finished (classroom)

- Add the eggs one at a time (recipe)

- From here, a short walk takes you to the fountain (tourist guide)

- Remove battery holding down bolts (instructions)

2.2. Deixis.

Deixis comes from Greek. It refers to a particular way in which certain linguistic expressions
are dependent on the context in which they are produced or interpreted.

Deictic expressions derive part of their meaning from their context of utterance.

E.g. I am here now.

- The phenomenon of deixis has been of considerable interest to philosophers,

linguists and psychologists natural languages (face-to-face interaction).

- As people take turns, the referents ‘I, you here, there, this, …’ systematically switch
too – difficulty for children in language acquisition.

- In simple terms, deixis is organized around a ‘deicitic centre’ (the speaker) and
his/her location in space and time at the time of speaking although the location of the
addressee is also taken into account, forming a two-centred system.

- Proximal (this, here, now) Vs. distal (that, there, then) in terms of speaker’s location.

2.2.1. Personal deixis.

- Pronoun and verb agreement.

- 1st personal encodes the participation of the speaker and temporal and spatial deixis
are organized primarily around the location of the speaker/addressee at the time of
speaking:

• Speaker inclusion (1st person).

• Addressee inclusion (2nd person).

- As far as it is known all languages have 1st and 2nd person pronouns but not all
have 3rd person pronouns.

2.2.2. Time deixis.

Now, tomorrow, ten years ago, this week, this November, etc. take as the deictic centre the
speaker’s location in time at the time of the utterance.

The most pervasive aspect of temporal deixis is ‘tense’.

2.2.3. Spatial deixis (place deixis).

Deictic adverbs like ‘here’ (including speaker) and ‘there’ (remote from spaker) are the most
direct examples of spatial deixis.

Other spatial deictics are ‘this’ and ‘that’ (some languages have a three-way distinction, e.g.
Latin or Spanish).

Spatial deixis is also frequently encoded in verbal roots or affixes, with a typical basic
distinction between “motion towards speaker” (e.g. come) and “motion away from the
speaker (e.g. go).

2.2.4. Discourse deixis.

In a spoken or written discourse, it is frequent to refer to earlier or forthcoming segments of

the discourse (e.g. in the previous/next paragraph).

Since a discourse unfolds in time, it is natural to use temporal deictic terms (next) although
spatial terms are also frequent (in this chapter).

2.2.5. Social deixis.

- This includes “honorifics”: Madame, Your grace.

- Honorifics include the speaker’s social relationship to another person (usually the
addressee but not always), on a dimension of rank.

- There are two main kinds of honorifics:

a) Referent honorifics: where the honour party is referred to. E.g. Usted, você, etc.

b) Nonreferent honorifics: we can signal respect without referring to the ádrese by

choosing between different lexical and gramatical options. E.g. Japanese, Korean or
Javanese.
2.3. Reference.

This is the act of using language to refer to entities in the context is known as reference: an
act in which the speaker uses linguistic forms to enable the hearer to identify something.

These linguistic forms are known as referring expressions and enable the hearer to identify
the entity being referred to, which is in turn known as the referent (the speaker’s person in
the real world).

E.g. I went with Francesca and David.

Deixis and reference are closely related. Deictic terms help the hearer to identify the referent
of a referring expression through its spatial or temporal relationship with the situation of
utterance.

Apart from deictics, there are other types of words and phrases that can be referring
expressions:

- Proper names (e.g. Aristotle, Paris): these name persons, institutions and objects
whose reference is clear as opposed to common nouns (e.g. a philosopher, a city).

- Singular definite terms (e.g. the woman standing by the table) or indefinite (a man
was in here looking for you last night).

The choice of one type of referring expression rather than another seems to be based on
what the speaker assumes that the listener already knows.

• Take this! Look at him!

• Remember the old foreign guy with the funny hat?

2.3. Reference.

Succesful reference is: - collaborative

- inference plays an important role

E.g. Mister Aftershave is late today.

- A: Who is that?

- B: It’s me (doorphone, no video).

Co-text (linguistic environment) and context (physical environment) are essential in
assigning reference.

- The cheese sandwich is made with white bread.

- The cheese sandwhich left without paying.

- Your ten-thirty just cancelled (hotel reception)

- The heart attack mustn’t be moved (the person who suffers from a heart attack)

2.3.1. Types of reference.

Referring to the context outside: exophora.

When there is no previous mention of the referent in the text, we call it exophoric reference.

When a referring item refers to entities in the background knowledge (whether cultural or
interpersonal), that have been mentioned in previous conversations or texts, it is known as
intertextuality (de Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981).

When we refer to the co-text we can speak of cohesion.

- When the referring expressions refer to items within the same text, we call it
endophoric reference.

• A: I went with Francesca and David (exophoric reference).

• B: Uhuh?

• A: Francesca’s room mate. And Alice’s (exophoric ref.) – a friend of Alice’s from London.
There were six of us. Yeah, we did a lot of hill walking (endophoric ref.)

- When a referring expression links with another referring expression within the co-text,
we say it is cohesive with the previous mention of the referent in the text. This is part of what
is known as grammatical cohesion.
Endophora also avoids unnecessary repetition.

• Example 1a vs 1b.

There are two types of endophora:

- Anaphora (repetition) the pronouns link back to something that went before in the
preceding text. E.g. them and this (more frequent).

- Cataphora (anticipation) The pronouns link forward to a referent in the text that
follows. It can be a stylistic choice, to keep the reader in suspense as to who or what is
being talked about.

2.4. Grammatical and lexical cohesion.

a) Grammatical cohesion - Endophoric reference is only one form of grammatical

cohesion.

- There are not other forms that are not part of reference:

• Substitution.

• Ellipsis.

2.5. Presuppositions and entailment.

Speakers assume certain information is already known by their listeners. Such information
will generally not be stated communicative economy and clarity.

“All John’s children are wise” presupposes that:

- “John has children”

- “John has more than one child”

Presupposition and entailment describe two different aspects of this kind of information.

A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an

utterance background assumptions.
Speaker, not sentence, have presuppositions.

E.g. a) Have you given up Linguistics?

b) You have studied Linguistics before.

c) Did you enjoy your dinner?

d) You have had dinner.

e) I don’t regret leaving London.

f) I left London.

An entailment is something that logically follows from what is asserted in an utterance.

Sentences, not speakers, have entailments.

E.g. Mary’s brother has bought three horses.

Presuppositions - A person called Mary exists.

- She has a brother.

Entailments - Mary’s brother bought something.

- He bought three animals.

- He bought two horses.

- He bought one horse.

- And other similar logical consequences.

Let us look back at historical background and semantic presupposition:

• Presupposition originated with debates in philosophy, related to the nature of

reference, referring expressions, logical theory and truth conditions (Frege, 1892; Russel,
1905; Strawson, 1952).

• Frege (1892) was the first philosopher in recent times to pose the question of
presuppositions:

E.g. “Kepler died in misery” presupposes “Kepler designates something, i.e. the word
‘Kepler’ has a referent”.

• Russell (1905) disagreed with Frege’s theory because he argued there were
sentences that lacked proper referents but they could still be meaningful like: “The King of
France is wise”.

• In general terms, we find a substantial agreement about the definition of

presupposition in the philosophical tradition and later on, in semantics, where they also deal
with truth or falsity:

E.g. “Presupposition is what remains valid even if the sentence is negated” (Asher, 3321).

These are some examples from the definition:

A) John managed to stop in time.

John stopped in time (entailment)

John tried to stop in time (presupposition)

B) John didn’t manage to stop in time.

John tried to stop in time (presupposition).

≠ John stopped in time (entailment).

Constancy under negation makes a basic distinction between presupposition and entailment.

Presuppositions seem to be tied to particular words – or aspects of surface structure. These

linguistic items that generate presuppositions are called presupposition – triggers (Levinson,
1983: 179).

Kartunnen has collected 31 kinds of such presupposition – triggers. Levinson (1983:181-85)

lists a selection from these as indicators of different types of presuppositions:

A) Proper names or definite descriptions: existential presuppositions:

- John’s brother has just got back from Texas John has a brother

B) Factive verbs: they are factual presuppositions:

- She didn’t realize he was ill He was ill.

- We regret telling him We told him.

Other factive predicates would be know, be sorry that, be proud that, be indifferent than, be
glad that, be sad that, be aware that, be odd that.

• In non-restrictive relative clauses, the information that is in commas do not affect the rest of
the sentence. E.g. Hillary, who climbed the Everest in 1953, was the greatest explorer of our
day.

• Implicative verbs: manage.

• Change of state verbs: stop, start, continue:

- John stopped/didn’t stop smoking John had been smoking.

• Iteratives: again:

- The fyling saucer came/didn’t come again The flying saucer had come before.
• Temporal clause:

- Before Strawsson was born ever; Frege noticed presuppositions Strawsson was
born.

All of them represent lexical presupposition.

• Strucutural presuppositions:

- Cleft sentences, pseudo-clefts

It was/wasn’t Henry who kissed Rosie Someone kissed Rossie.

What John lost was his wallet John lost something.

-Wh- questions When did she die? She died.

• Counterfactual presuppositions: counterfactual conditionals:

- If I weren’t ill I’m ill.

• Non-factive presuppositions:

- He pretended to be happy He wasn’t happy.

- Other non-factive predicates: dream, imagine.

However, a strictly truth-conditional definition fails on several counts (Mey, 2002, 184-85):

1) First, there is more to sentences than the abstract truth value they carry.

2) Second, sentences, when spoken, cannot be considered in isolation from the

speaker (s) and listener (s), who are relevant factors in any situation of language use.
According to Levinsson (1983) semantic presuppositions also pose two important problems:

- Defeasibility in certain contexts (both the co-text and the background knowledge
context), presuppositions are liable to evaporate. For example:

Factive verb ‘know’ - John doesn’t know that Bill came (Bill came)

- I don’t know that Bill came ≠ Bill came.

Before clauses (time adverbials) - Sue cried before she finished her thesis

- Sue finished her thesis.

- Sue died before she finished her thesis.

- ≠ Sue finished her thesis.

- The projection problem is related to the behaviour of presuppositions in complex

sentences, where they also disappear.

Compare A and B:

a) John didn’t cheat again John had cheated before.

b) John didn’t cheat again if indeed he ever did ≠ John had cheated before.

Compare C and D:

c) Nobody realized that she was ill she was ill .

d) Imagine that Kelly was ill and nobody realized that she was ill ≠ She was not ill.
To sum up, semantic theories of presupposition are not viable because semantics is
concerned with invariant stable meanings and presuppositions are not invariant or stable
(Levinson, 1983: 204).

• The notion of pragmatic presupposition was introduced by the philosopher Stalnaker in an

influential article (1977) and further developed by the same Stalkaner and others
(Kartunnen, 1974; Gauker, 1998, etc.)

• Pragmatic presuppositions have been defined as assumptions shared by the interlocutors,

which from the background of their ongoing discourse (Stalnaker 1973, 1974) mutual
knowledge or common ground.

• This set of assumptions shifts as new sentences are uttered.

• Some if not all of these shared background assumptions have linguistic markers: thus
Stalnaker (1973) (followed among others, by Soames, 1989) has spoken of presupposition
requirements or presupposition triggers (Levinson, 1983; Van de Sandt, 1988).

E.g. a. My wife is a dentist.

b. I have a wife.

• The mutual knowledge condition is far too strong.

E.g. a) I’m sorry I’m late, I’m afraid my car broke down

b) The speaker has a car

• Presuppositions may have information uses (Karttunen 1974, Stalnaker 1974). The
required presupposition still may not be included among the beliefs shared by the
interlocutors. It may be new information for the listener, who will ‘accommodate’ the
presupposition by adding it to the shared background beliefs (Lewis, 1979).
E.g. a) Are you going to lunch?

b) No, I’ve got to pick up my sister.

• Stalkaner (1974), Kartunnen (1974) and Gauker (1998) thus talk about informative
presuppositions and presupposition accommodation.

E.g. I’m sorry. I’m late. My car broke down

- The speaker presupposes he has a car.

- The interlocutor(s) might have known so in advance (it was part of their mutual
knowledge) and they take it for granted.

- The interlocutor(s) might not know the speaker has a car but accommodate this new
piece of information into their background knowledge, generally accepting it as true
(although not necessarily).

E.g. “We regret that children cannot accompany their parents to the commencement
exercises” (Gauker, 1998).

- The point is that Children cannot be accompanied by their parents.

- Parents have to accommodate this new piece of information into their background
knowledge.

- By putting it that way, the speaker acknowledges that this news might be disappointing to
some interlocutors.

• Such informative uses of presuppositions are also frequent with persuasive purposes (e.g.
in the press, in advertisements, political speeches, etc.

• It is more difficult to question something that is communicated only implicitly (via

presuppositions) than openly.

E.g. Political discourse and the press:

- “ The moral and civil unity of the nation is also rooted in and held fast, by religious life
and belonging to the Catholic Church (Romano Prodi, 9-9-97).

- “Romano Prodi basically said in Loretto that we are united because we are Catholics”
(La Stampa, 9-9-97).
E.g. Advertising:

- “Carlsberg, possibly the best beer in the world.”

This is a generalization (open statement; invitation)

People’s common knowledge or belief that the purpose of every advert, is to emphasize the
merits of specific products or services.

- “L’Oreal, because you worth it.”

The best product for the best one. It is connected to the idea of self-esteem (strong
statement).

There is a common background assumption of self-esteem.

To sum up, presuppositions are the result of complex interactions between semantics and
pragmatics.” (Levinson, 1983: 225) hybrid account.

“We conclude that presupposition remains, ninety years after Frege’s remarks on the
subject, still only partially understood” (ibid).

a) John regrets that he failed the exam (fact – semantic presupp.)

b) John doesn’t regret that he failed the exam (pragmatic presupp.)

c) John doesn’t regret having failed, because in fact he passed

• The cat is on the mat There is a cat [semantic presup]

There is a mat

- Utterer: owner. [pragmatic presup]

- Intention: Warning, description, etc.

c) Found: Gray Cat There is a cat [semantic]

d) Phone: 491-7040 The cat is gray

- Utterer: Owner. [pragmatic]

- Intention: Get the cat back.

- Place: a lamppost for example.

Pragmatic presupposition is holistic including the situation and the context, while the
semantic one (truth conditional account of presuppositions) only deals with the truth that is
beyond the utterance.

Pragmatic presuppositions do not only concern knowledge, whether true or false: they
concern expectations, desires, interests, claims, attitudes towards the world, fear, etc (Caffi,
1994: 3324).

Practice (exercise 4):

The existence of Marcie. [semantic]

Another trigger of presupposition (one more sheet).

- Marcie thinks that they share the same knowledge about Polonius (intertextual reference of
Hamlet).

Participants: Linus and Marcie who are classmates. [pragmatic]

Place: at school.

Intention: To give the message that she doesn’t want to give him another sheet of paper.

Background assumption: people don’t like to lend things.

Practice (exercise 5):

a) If somebody asks: what went wrong? What is the immediate presupposition and how
it is confirmed?

He or she supposes that something wrong has happened. “Shocking facts and figures”.

b) What presuppositions are contained in the words “the slightest interest”?

It implies that if you are a legislator, you will read it, and otherwise if you are interested on in
health and hospital insurance you will. Experts are not addressed.

c) To understand this ad, do we rely mostly on its semantic or on its pragmatic

presuppositions?

Pragmatic presupposition because the writer takes for granted the reader knows ‘Blue
Cross’.

d) Which of the presuppositions you have discovered are semantic, which are
pragmatic?

Wh- questions are semantic presuppositions, such as the title, which is the trigger (‘What
went wrong?).

“She arrives the conclusion that the…” (fact) is a semantic presupposition.

Practice (exercise 6):

What background knowledge does it assume for its readers?

There is a quite specific vocabulary. It is assuming shared cultural knowledge and subfield
knowledge.

The text makes no concession to those who do not understand the reference of the
specialized vocabulary. Why do you think this happens?
Because this article is targeted to people who like sports and know about the issues and
topics related to.

Practice (exercise 7):

It has failed the shared knowledge between the writer and the reporter.

Practice (exercise 8):

1) You have taken at least a cup of coffee.

2) That he has just hit you before.

3) That he has asked something to you (Semantic).

4) You have read that article once before.

5) Trigger You have taken time to make the drawing.

6) You put the paper somewhere.

UNIT 3 SPEECH ACTS

3.0. Introduction.

Speech Act theory: initially developed by Austin (How to do things with words, 1962).
Different lectures were put together and published in Oxford University and Harvard, and
after his death, this volume was published.

- Austin: the “father of pragmatics”.

- First to challenge the descriptive fallacy: the only function of language was that of making
true or false statements (truth conditional semantics). Linked to the field of logic.

- His contention: language is not merely for saying, but also for doing.

- Before Austin’s challenge to truth-conditional semantics, logical positivists (Bertrand

Russell) held the view that the only meaningful statements were those which could be
empirically tested.

E.g. The king of France is bald. (In a time there wasn’t a king of France, it would be
meaningless. In Austin’s view it has meaning).

If we take the following examples from the point of view of the logical positivism approach,
they could be simply meaningless, do we consider them meaningless? In terms of logic they
are meaningless because invisible cars do not exist, so it is false and the same happens
with came out of nowhere – if you take it literally. The second example below, you cannot
sleep all the time, and this person is speaking, not sleeping, so it is false. In terms of logical
positivism, they would be false and meaningless.

E.g. An invisible car came of nowhere, hit my car and vanished.

I sleep all the time, doctor

Russel Austin

Everyday language was an imprecise and deficient tool of communication, full of ambiguities
and contradictions, and needed to be refined. People manage to communicate very
well with language just the way it is, and without serious difficulty.

Speech Act Theory (later developed by Searle (disciple of Austin)

3.1. The performative hypothesis.

In Austin’s view there was some declarative sentences that could be not either true or false,
this truth and falsity conditions were simply irrelevant. Because these sentences were not
describing, they were aimed to perform, to do things. Examples:

- I bet you six it will rain tomorrow.

- I hereby christen this ship by Queen Elizabeth II.

- I declare war on…

- I apologize.

- I object.

- I bequeath you my Picasso.

• They are not used to say things but to do things.

• Austin termed these special sentences and the utterances realized by them performative
(utterances which are Speech acts).

Syntactically, performatives seem to share three common features:

- They are declarative sentences in present simple.

- The subject is always the first person pronoun – referring to the speaker(s).

- Performative verbs will take the adverb “hereby”.

E.g. I hereby declare you Mayor of Canterbury.

‘Hereby’ can be used in order to test for performative utterances by inserting it:

- I hereby jog ten miles on Sundays.

However, these distinctive features are not so clear…

E.g. I betted you five pounds.

• Performative verbs can be used non-performatively.

E.g. You are hereby warned.

• The subject is not necessarily the 1st person pronoun.

E.g. Guilty!

• Sometimes there are cases that do not contain a verb at all.

It is possible to distinguish two kinds of performatives (Levinson, 1983; Thomas, 1995:47):

a) Explicit performatives that speakers use when they want to be unambiguous.

b) Implicit performatives they carry out an action but using other devices such as mood,
adverbs, intonation, etc.

- Shut the door (I order you to shut the door).

- I’ll be there without fail (I promise I’ll be there).

- Therefore,… (I conclude that…).

There is a second problem has to do with this distinction between constatives and
performatives. Constatives could be also expanded into explicit performatives if prefixed with
a formula like “I hereby state that”:

- I’m alone responsible.

- I state that I am alone responsible.

The performative/constative dichotomy was untenable. No real incompatibility between
utterances being truth-bearers (constatives) and simultaneously performing actions
(performatives).

Austin claimed that there is a whole family of speech acts of which constatives and the
various performatives (metalinguistic [object, apologize, deny, promise], ritual [sentence,
absolve, baptize], collaborative [bet] – Thomas, 1995) are just particular members.

3.2. Felicity conditions.

- Performatives cannot be true or false, however, they can go wrong if the necessary
conditions for them to be successful do not take place.

-These conditions are termed felicity conditions (if constatives have true conditions,
performatives have felicity conditions). (Felicity must be understood in terms of
appropriateness)

Austin distinguished three categories of felicity conditions:

a) First category has two parts:

a. 1. There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect.

a. 2. The circumstances and persons must be appropriate.

(E.g. a procedure could be a wedding, I declare you husband and wife, the ritual that in order
to be successful we need these conditions. In terms of a wedding, we need a priest; we
need a couple that are not prevented from marriage.

b) Second category: The procedure must e executed (i) correctly and (ii) completely.

(E.g if the priest asks the other person if you want to marry, you have to answer ‘I do’, and if
you say ‘ok’, you have to follow a ‘formula’.

c) Third category:

c.1. The persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions.
c.2. If consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant parties must do it.

(E.g. In a wedding the person is supposed to be wishing to get married, a shotgun wedding,
would be legally binding; and then, the second part, consummating marriage, for instance).

>> If these conditions are not fulfilled, the act will be infelicitous.

E.g. I hereby divorce you. (not an act of divorce here in Spain, so the condition that is not the
conventional procedure, you are not capable of divorce somebody. In Muslins society, you
are the husband and you say this to your wife it is fulfilled, but not in other cultures. Just
uttering this message does not perform the act of divorcing.

Curate: “Will thou have this woman to thy wedded wife… so long as both shall live?”

Bridegroom: “Ok, why not?” It is an infelicitous act, not fulfilled ‘b’ category, because the
procedure is not uttered properly she doesn’t say ‘I do’.

Speaker: “I bet you ten pounds she will fail again”. (‘Bet’ is other example of performative, it
is collaborative. If there is no answer on the part of the hearer, do we have a bet? If there is
not an uptake that the other accept the bet, ‘ok, I’m on’. It is not completely, b.2. category is
not fulfilled in this collaborative process, you need two parts involved in a bet. )

- The precise felicity conditions of an act depend of the act being performed, on its
nature.

- Misfires (Austin): those cases when there is a mismatch between the act and the
circumstances and the act is not fulfilled.

Felicity conditions are preconditions on speech acts:

a) General conditions on the participants: that they can understand the language being used,
that they are not play-acting or being-nonsensical.

b) Content conditions: for example, for both a promise and a warning, the content of the
utterance must be about a future event. Further condition for a promise: future act of the
speaker.

c) Preparatory conditions for a promise are significantly different from those for a warning.
- For a promise, the event will not happen by itself and the event will have a beneficial effect.

- For a warning, it is not clear that the hearer knows that the event will occur, the speaker
does think the event will occur and the event will not have a beneficial effect.

d) Sincerity conditions:

- Promise the speaker genuinely intends to carry out the future action.

- Warning the speaker genuinely believes that the future event will not have a beneficial
effect.

e) Essential condition: the utterance changes the speaker state from non-obligation
(promise) or from non-informing to informing (warning).

3.3. Utterances as acts: locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary.

When we utter a sentence, we are also performing actions.

Austin isolates three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed:

- Locutionary act the utterance of a sentence (the actual words uttered).

- Ilocuitionary act (illocutionary force) the force or intention behind the words
(promising, offering, warning, etc.)

- Perlocutionary act (perlocutionary effect) the consequence or effect on the hearer(s).

E.g. shoot him!

- Locutionary act: “shoot him”

- Ilocutionary act: an order or advice, urging the addressee to shoot him.

- Perlocutionary effect: the addressee might shoot that person.

E.g. Is that your car?

- Locutionary act: “Is that your car”

- Ilocutionary force: a complain, a warning, in order to check if he’s the owner of the
car.

- Perlocutionary effect: the addressee is expected to give an answer or if he is a

police agent he might impose a fine for the speaker.

The same words can be used to perform different speech acts (“Is that your car”)

The different words can be used to perform the same speech acts.

E.g. the speech act of requesting someone to close the door:

- Shut the door!

- Could you shut the door?

- Did you forget the door?

- Put the wood in the hole.

- Were you born in a barn?

- What do big boys do when they come into a room, Johnny?

3.3. Speech acts classification.

Searle (1975) developed taxonomy of illocutionary acts where he distinguished five main
macro-classes:

a) Representatives or assertives the speaker states what he/she believes to be the

case (describing, claiming, insisting, predicting, concluding, etc.) E.g. It was a warm sunny
day.

b) Directives the speaker aims at making the hearer do something (commanding,

ordering, requesting, inviting, forbidding, suggesting, etc.) E.g. Don’t touch that!; Could you
lend me a pen, please?

c) Commisives the speaker commits him/herself to future action (promise, offering,

threatening, refusing, vowing, volunteering, etc). E.g. I’’ll help you if you have any problems.

d) Expressives the speaker states what he/she feels. They express psychological states
and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy or sorrow (apologizing, praising,
congratulating, deploring, regretting, etc.). E.g. I feel I should have apologised for my
behaviour.

e) Declaratives or declarations the speaker changes the world by the very utterance of
the words. E.g. I hereby declare you husband and wife.

3.4. Direct and indirect speech acts.

Direct speech acts are those where a speaker wants to communicate the literal meaning that
the words conventionally express. There is a direct relationship between the form and the
function.

- [Imperative form] Get me one order.

- [Declarative form] I am hungry statement.

- [Interrogative form] Do you like tuna? question.

Indirect speech acts are those where a speaker wants to communicate a different meaning
from the apparent surface meaning. The form and function and not directly related:
- [Interrogative form] Would you get me a sandwich? request.

- [Declarative form] It’s hot in here request (open the window).

- [Imperative form] Come for a walk with me invitation.

The classification of utterances in categories is difficult, as long as much of what we say

operate on both levels and often have more than one of the macro-functions.

E.g. “I’ve been seen Rivers. Which reminds me, he wants to see you, but I imagine it’ll be all
right if you dump your bag first.”

* He wants to see you (declarative request; indirect speech act)

Statement describing River’s wishes

Order or a suggestion to the hearer

3.5. Speech acts and society.

A) Social dimension:

Apparently (because of politeness), most speech acts we produce every day would be
indirect according to Searle’s distinction.

In English, directives are more often expressed as interrogatives than imperatives. E.g.
“Thank you not for not smoking.”

There are factors that can make speakers use indirect directives:

- Lack of familiarity.

- Reasonableness of the task.

- Formality of the context.

- Social distance (differences of status, roles, age, gender, education, class,

occupation and ethnicity).

Power and authority those of the less dominant role tend to use indirectness.

Speech acts and their linguistic realizations are also culturally bound and it varies from
country to country.

E.g. How fat you are! (praising, criticizing).

India: weight is an indicator of prosperity

Britain: slim beautiful

Differences in speech conventions (direct/indirect) can also cause difficulties cross-culturally.

E.g. (from Cuba)

A = Bristish woman B= Cuban woman

A: Is Mr. Pérez there?

B: Yes, he is.

A: Em… Can I speak to him, please?

B: Yes, wait a minute.

E.g. Where are you going?

- Chinese: friendly greeting

- British person: intrusive (disrespectful) question

Chinese greeting British greeting

“Hello, have you had your lunch?” “Hi, a bit colder today”

“Specific differences between languages in the area of so-called ‘indirect’ speech acts are
motivated, to a considerable degree, by differences in cultural norms and cultural
assumptions, and the general mechanisms themselves are culture-specific” (Wierzbicka,
1991: 62).

Intercultural or cross-cultural pragmatics:

a) Interlanguage pragmatics: a branch of pragmatics which specifically discusses how

non-native speakers comprehend and produce a speech act in a target language and how
their pragmatic competence develops over time (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993; Kasper, 1995).

b) Categorization of speech acts: one utterance can fall into more than one macro-class
(overlap).

c) Another problem is the apparent ‘messiness’ (chaos) of everyday spoken language.

• Fillers: “so there you go”, “you know”, “so” (bueno, pues aqui estamos). They say very little
and they are very difficult to classify in terms of the speech acts taxonomy. Interactional,
socially cohesive function.

• Backchannels and feedback: (really? Uh uh) they show we are listening to our interlocutor
and encouraging them to continue talking.

• Incomplete sentences: as in “but she didn’t do the – er –no.”

When we talk, we do not produce isolated utterances but there are more utterances
produced by the interlocutors involved:

- Speech event an activity, in which participants interact via language in some

conventional way to arrive at some outcome. It may include an obvious central act (e.g. “I
don’t like this”, as a speech event of complaining) but it will also include other utterances
leading up to and subsequently reacting to that central action (speech event of requesting –
directive).
Likewise, the same speaker can produce a larger piece of discourse than a single utterance,
which can include many speech acts but which, taken as whole form of a macro-speech act.

E.g. political speeches:

Macro-speech act: persuading people to vote for her/his political party.

Informing stating

Finally, over and above speech acts, there are two main macro-functions of talk (Brown and
Yule, 1983):

- The transactional function is the one we use to transmit factual information.

- The interactional function is the one involved in expressing social relations and
personal attitudes, showing solidarity and maintaining social cohesion.

In fact, most talk has a mixture of both functions: a cline from the purely transactional to the
purely interactional:

- At the extreme end of the transactional.

- At the extreme end of the interactional: phatic communion, we use language not to
communicate but to be friendly and show a readiness to talk.

3.8. Speech acts and power: CDA.

The idea of speech acts, ‘uttering as acting’, is central to what Fairclough calls CLS (Critical
Language Study). CLS analyses social interactions in a way in which focuses upon their
linguistic elements, and how language affects and is affected by the system of social
relationships (1989:9).

The work of Fairclough presents a comprehensive attempt to develop a theory of CDA which
links discourse, power and social structure.

Discourse is a three-dimensional concept, which involves texts, discourse practices

(production, distribution and consumption of texts) and social practices (power relations,
ideologies, hegemonic struggles).

Individuals are not usually free to manipulate language to achieve their goals, but they are
constrained by social conventions.

People do not have equal control in interactions because there are inequalities of power.

Requests and power • Indirect requests leave the power relations implicitly.

• The grammar of a request can express varying degrees of indirectness.

UNIT 4: CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

1. Introduction.

• We are going to study two approaches at the structure of discourse.

a) Exchange structure studies the conventional overall patterns that occur when people
are talking.

b) Conversation analysis studies the way what speakers say dictates the type of answer
expected, and that speakers take turns when they interact.
There is a different approach: exchange structure starts with a model and sees how real
data fits it, whereas conversation analysis starts by observing real data and describes what
patterns emerge and after that, they develop a theory.

2. Exchange structure.

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and the Birmingham School of discourse analysis.

They studied primary school lessons and found a regular structure.

They studied primary school lessons and found a regular structure.

According to the Birmingham School, there are five ranks or levels:

- The act is the lowest rank. Acts are defined by their interactive function. They cover
the messiness of spoken discourse.

- Their categories include, for example:

‘Marker’ as in ‘well’, ‘OK’ and ‘Right’.

‘Acknowledge’ (backchannels).

‘Cue’, as in ‘hands up’ and ‘Don’t call out’.

‘Evaluate’, as in ‘good’ and ‘interesting’.

Hence acts tend to be carried out in a fixed order of moves:

- Basic moves: initiation (teacher), response (student) and follow-up (teacher’s

comment).

- The combination of moves in the IRF structure is known as exchange. Exchanges

can combine to make the transaction.
- Each exchange consists on two moves: initiation and response.

If we take as example of conversation a lesson, we could study different transactions.

Moreover, there are certain limitations of IRF (initiation-response-…):

- It does not accommodate easily to the real life and unruliness of the classroom.

- It reflects the traditional teacher-centred classroom.

- Contrarily to the previous case, there are learner-centred classes, in which there is
much interactions between students and the teacher and there are learners’ initiations.

The IRF approach as described here is rarely used today.

The structure of classroom transactions is not typical of everyday talk but more of ritualistic
nature (interviews, trials, doctor-patient exchanges).

4.2. Conversation analysis.

CA takes a ‘bottom-up’ approach: starting with the conversation itself and it lets the data
dictate its own structure.

CA can be seen as a process Linear, ongoing event that implies negotiation and
cooperation between speakers.

CA originated within Sociology with the work of Garfinkel (1967,74) and his approach known
as ‘Ethnomethodology’ and then it was applied by Sacks and Schegloff.
Ethnomethodological research suggests that knowledge is neither autonomous nor
decontextualized; it avoids idealizations and argues that that what speakers produce are
categories that are continuously adjusted according to whether the anticipation of an actor is
confirmedly another action or not. These categories are called typifications. Language of one
typification is social conduct.

Conversation is a way of using language socially, of doing things with words together with
other persons (Mey, 2001).

One of the main assumptions of CA is that interaction is structurally organized:

• The core of CA is the explorational sequential structures of social action, that is, the
patterns that emerge as interaction unfolds.

The basic unit of the conversation is the turn:

A) In normal western-type conversations, people do not speak at the same time: they
just wait for their turn.

B) Yielding the right to speak or the “floor” to the next speaker constitutes a turn.

C) How do people allocate turns to each other? By turn-taking mechanisms.

Turns normally occur at certain well-defined junctures in conversations; such points are
called ‘transition relevant places’ (TRPs):

- Natural breaks (pauses, endings, etc).

There are different mechanisms that are part of turn-management system (or local
management system): unwritten conventions about talking turns that are known by members
of a social group.

- When the hearer predict that the turn is about to be completed and they come before
it is, this is an overlap.
- Sometimes overlap exists when there is absence of familiarity and the interaction
does not flow smoothly.

- Other kind of overlap expresses solidarity or closeness, as well as opinions or

values.

- Overlap may also communicate competition when people are having a discussion.

- In a competitive environment, these holding the “floor” will avoid providing TRPs:
avoid pauses and fillers.

- Another type of “floor” holding device is to indicate that it is a larger structure.

- Passives: unwritten cultural agreement about the acceptable length of passives if one
speaker turns over the floor to another and the other does not speak then that silence is
attributable to the second speaker and becomes significant.

- Backchannels: vocal indications that provide feedback that the message is being
received.

Adjacency pairs are two subsequent utterances constituting a conversational exchange

(Sacks & Schegloff):

- Given the 1st part, the 2nd is expectable.

- Each part has a preferred and a dispreferred response. This is a preference

structure.

Conversation is more than just combining pairs in sequences. The coherence principle is
stronger than the notion of paired adjacency.

Dispreferred responses are linguistically marked (preferred responses are unmarked).

Dispreferred seconds (refusals or disagreements) exhibit one or more of the following

features (Levinson, 1983: 334):

- Delay of delivery pause, use of a preface, self-interruptions, self-repairs (e.g. ‘What I

really want to say is…’).
- Prefaces markers of dispreferreds like Uh and Well, er, apologies, hesitation in
various forms (‘I don’t know’, ‘but’).

- Accounts carefully formulated explanations for why the dispreferred act is being
done.

- Declination component, characteristically indirect or mitigated (hedges).

- Preferred reponse: simple-structured second part.

There are also other sequences dealing with CA:

A) Pre-sequences certain utterances are felt to be ‘precursors’ to something else.

Pre-sequences include attention getters (‘hey, ‘excuse me’), pre-announcements (‘guess
what’), pre-invitations (e.g. ‘are you doing anything tonight?), pre-threats (‘watch it’),
pre-request (‘I wonder if…’, ‘do you have any chance…’, ‘are you busy…’?).

B) Insertion sequences we may speak of ‘nested adjacency pairs. The pairs occur
embedded within other adjacency pairs which act as macro-sequences.

C) Repairs it is a device for a correction of misunderstandings, mishearings or

non-hearings. We may distinguish self-initiated repair and other-initiated repair. According to
Levinson (1983: 341), the preference ranking on the repair system is as follows (see
example 14)

i. Self-initiated, self-repair in own turn.

ii. Self-initiated, self-repair in transition space.

iii. Other-initiatied, other-repair in next turn.

iv. Other-initiation of self-repair in next turn.

D) Opening and closing sequences conventional openings tend to contain the greeting,
an enquiry after health and a past reference (as in ‘how did it go last night?). Closings tend
to have a pre-closing sequence (long and drawn out on occasion) rather than just ending
with a farewell. Special features in the opening and closing sections of different classes of
verbal interchanges: overall organization patterns

a. Telephone conversations: Openings (summons-answer adjacency pairs), first topic

slot (announcemente by the caller of the reason for the call) and prototypical closings
(making of arrangements, giving of regards to family members, use of markers (OK, so, all
right) organized in passing turns and final exchange of terminal elements (bye, cheers, take
care).
There are certain limitations for CA:

- Lack of sistemacity not exhaustive list of all adjacency pairs, or a precise description
of how adjacency pairs or TRPs might be recognized (Eggins & Slade, 1997).

- CA does not take into account sociolinguistic aspects of interaction. For CA analysts,
text (co-text) is context. The drawback is, as Fairclough (1989: 12) says, “conversation does
not exist within in social vacuum. Conversation structures are connected to structures of
social institutions and society: interactional sociolinguistics.

4.3. Interactional Sociolinguistics.

The interactional sociolinguistic approach to DA is multidisciplinary: it concerns the study of

the relationship between language, culture and society and has its roots in Anthropology,
Sociology and Linguistics.

Interactional sociolinguistics brings to the front the situational context and the context of
shared knowledge about speakers, their histories and their purpose in speaking.

A crucial concept is that of “contextualization cues” (see handout).

Examples of contextualization cues include intonation or any prosodic choices,

conversational code-switching, lexical or syntactic choices, style switching and facial and
gestural signs. These cues may be different across cultures or across social groups
misunderstandings if contextualization conventions are different (see example).

Goffman’s contribution to Interactional Sociolinguistics:

- Focus on physical co-presence rather than on social groups.

- The self is a social construction (face shows the positive social value a person claims
for himself).
Other important concept is that of frame: social actors organize their experience in terms of
recognizable activities (a business meeting, a lecture, a game of chess, etc) which are the
frames through which people structure experience.

People from different groups have different ways of showing that they are joking or serious,
flirting, showing concern, acting apologetic, etc.

Interactional sociolinguistics and conversation analysis have become together now (Ochs,
Schegloff and Thompson, 1996) with analysts looking at the relationship between grammar
and social interaction, within the larger schemes of human conduct and the organization of
social life.

Unit 5: The Cooperative Principle

It is concerned with how we get from what the speaker says towards what the speaker
means. Grice: how the hearer gets from what speakers say (expressed meaning) to what it
is meant (implied meaning). (=illocutionary act in Austin’s terms)

‘Bridging’ assumptions; social contract or form of cooperation social norms of behaviour. We

subconsciously abide by these conventions, they are not ‘rules’ as such.

Cooperative Principle and maxims

- The maxims are the shared conventions by speakers.

- The general principle: “make your 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 quoted in Levinson 1983:33).

- It can be divided into four maxims:

1) The maxim of Quantity:

- Try to 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.

E.g. Well, to cut a long story short, she didn’t get home till two. (speaker is abiding by the
maxim of quantity)

2) The maxim of Quality:

- Do not say what you believe to be false, be sincere.

- Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

E.g.

A: I’ll ring you tomorrow afternoon then.

B: Erm, shall be there as far as I know, and in the meantime have a word with Mum and dad
if they’re free. Right. Bye-Bye then sweetheart.

A: Bye-bye, bye.

3) The maxim of Relevance (which will later give rise to the Theory of Relevance) is make
your contribution relevant. Aka maxim of Relation.

A: I mean, just going back to your point, I mean to me an order form is a contract. If we are
going to put something in then let’s keep it as general as possible.

B: yes

4) The maxim of manner is be ‘perspicuous’ (=be clear in meaning) and specifically:

- Avoid obscurity, avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly.

E.g. Thank you Chairman, just to clarify one point. There is a meeting of the Police
Committee on Monday and there is an item on their budget for the provision of their camera.

Observing and flouting the maxims

1 - Observing the maxims

Husband: Where are the car keys?

Wife: They’re on the table in the hall.

Quantity: right amount of information, enough.

Quality: it is clearly expressed.

Relevance/relation: directly addressing the answer

Manner: there is clarity.

There is not level of additional meaning, what is said is what is meant.

2 – Non-observing the maxims: ways of failing to observe a maxim:

2. 1. Flouting a maxim.

2. 2. Violating a maxim.

2.3. Infringing a maxim.

2.4. Opting out of a maxim.

2.5. Suspending a maxim.

2.1. Flouting a maxim

A flout occurs when a speaker blatantly (openly, conspicuously) fails to observe a maxim,
not with any intention of deceiving or misleading, but with the deliberate intention of
generating an additional meaning: ‘conversational implicature’.

a) Flouting quantity.

Example 1

A: Well, how do I look?

B: Your shoes are nice…

In the example quantity maxim is flouted, answering the question with implied additional
meaning; you imply that your clothes, hair, etc. isn’t nice.

Example 2

A: how are we getting there?

B: well we’re getting there in Dave’s car.

B is not including A in the answer. It is not enough information, but what is implied is that you
are not coming with us.

b) Flouting the maxim of quality. (=don’t tell lies, or things you lack evidence)

b.1. By saying something that obviously does not represent what they think.

Example 1 (to a shop assistant)

“I’ll go away and think about it and maybe come back later.”

Imply meaning is that you don’t like the product, clothes, etc.

Example 2

When Sir Maurice Bowra was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, he was….

Speaker is not saying what he thinks, the speaker knows that the speaker is going to be able
to add that meaning, we don’t want to take you, you are not the right candidate.
Example 3:

A: Would you like to go out with me tonight?

B: Sorry I’m tired.

You are not deceiving because the intentions are very clear. Flouting is when the hearer can
get to the implied meaning, you are able to interpret or decode the message thanks to
implicatures.

b.2 By exaggerating as in hyperboles.

Examples:

A: I could eat a horse.

or

A: I’m starving.

b.3. By using a metaphor: “my house is a refrigerator in January”

b.4. Conventional euphemisms:

“I’m going to wash my hands” I’m going to urinate.

b.5. Irony and banter.

According to Leech ‘irony is an apparently friendly way of being offensive (mock-politeness),

while banter is an offensive way of being friendly (mock-impoliteness). Sarcasm is like irony
but intended to hurt.

Example:

Irony: This is a lovely undercooked egg you’ve given me. Yummy!

Banter: you’re nasty, mean and stingy. How can you give me only one kiss? Bant can be
used as a tease or filtration.

c) Flouting the maxim of relation.

Example:

A: So what do you think of Mark?

B: His flatmate’s a wonderful cook.

Example:

A: Have you made your bed today?

B: Today is quite lovely and sunny, isn’t it?

Example:

A: there’s somebody at the door.

B: I’m in the bath.

d) Flouting manner.

e.g. appearing to be obscure to exclude a third party.

Example:

Mother: where are you off to?

Father: I was thinking of going out to get some of that funny white stuff for somebody.

Mother: Ok, but don’t be long –dinner’s nearly ready.

White stuff and somebody: are vague references; and white stuff refers to ice cream, he is
trying to surprise the child and he doesn’t guess what they are talking about.

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c) Violating a maxim • Quiet or unostentatious non-observance of a maxim. If a

speaker violates a maxim s/he “will be liable to mislead” (Grice, 1975: 49).

• The speaker knows that the hearer will not know the truth and will only understand the
surface meaning of the words. They intentionally generate a misleading implicature.

Not all violations are blameworthy:

- To a child of five “Mummy’s gone on a little holiday because she needs a rest”,
rather than “Mummy’s got away to decide whether she is going to divorce or not” [white lite].

In many cultures, if one does not know the hearer very well, part of polite behaviour.

d) Infringing a maxim: as result of imperfect linguistic performance (a child or a foreigner),

cognitive disability, drunkenness, nerves, etc.

- Opting out of a maxim when the speaker indicates unwillingness to cooperate for legal or
ethical reasons.

- Suspending a maxim under certain circumstances ir as oart of certain events there is no

expectation on the part of any participant that maxims will be fulfilled. Let’s explore some
cases: maxim of quality in the case in funeral orations by excluding and obituaries, when
some unfavourable aspects are omitted; poetry suspends the Manner maxim, because it
does not aim for conciseness, clarity and lack of ambiguity; in speedy communication via
telegrams, or notes, the quantity maxim is suspended; in jokes, there is a suspension of
several maxims because of its features such as ambiguity or vagueness of meaning.

Grice distinguishes two types of implicature

I) Conventional implicature same implicature, regardless of context.

II) Conversational implicature implicature varies depending on context.

There are relatively few examples of conversional implicatures, which include even, even,
therefore and yet (Levinson).

Conversational implicature arises only in a particular context of utterance (“Great, that’s

really great! That’s made my Christmas!” – someone has opened a present).

There is a bit a misunderstanding witm implicature and inference.

- To imply is to hint, suggest or convey some meaning indirectly by means of

language.

- To infer is to deduce something from eveidence.

5.4. Properties of implicature.

In Logic and Conversation, Grice discussed six tests for distinguishing semantic meaning
from implied meaning.

Grice (1975) listed six distinct properties of implicatures.

Thomas(1974) sums them up into four properties:

- Non-detachability and non-conventionality some aspects of meaning are semantic

and can be changed or removed by relexicalization or reformulation.
- Implicature changes However, conversational implicature may become the meaning
of a lexical item (e.g. “company restructuration” meaning “massive dismissals”, “creative
accounting” meaning “cheating”).

- Calculability the implicature conveyed in one particular context is not random.

Possible to spell out the steps the hearer goes through in order to calculate the intended
implicature.

- Defeasibility an implicature can be cancelled.

5.5. Limitations of Grice’s theory.

Sometimes an utterance has a range of possible interpretations. How do we know when a

speaker is deliberately failing to observe a maxim and hence that an implicature is intended?

How can we distinguish between different types of non-observance?

Maxims overlap or difficult to distinguish.

The maxims are not equally important, and relevance seems to be inevitable. For Sperber &
Wilson (1995), Grice’s maxims can be reduced to one overriding principle: relevance.

The mechanisms for calculating an implicature: comparison; exact opposite or an

implicature, which is no way related.

There are certain cross-cultural differences between different languages.

Implicature changes implicatures are the property of utterances, not of sentences. The same
words can carry different implicatures on different occasions (i.e. depending on the context
where they are uttered).
UNIT 6: POLITENESS THEORIES.

6.0. Introduction.

It does not refer to social behaviour but to choices made in language use (i.e. the linguistic
expressions used to give people space and show a friendly attitude to them).

There are two main theories:

- Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987) Politeness: some universals in language usage.
Cambridge: CUP.

- Leech (1983): Principles of Pragmatics. Harlow: Longman.

o Politeness Principles and its maxims.

6.1. Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness: the concept of face.

In order to enter into social relationships, we have to acknowledge and show an awareness
of face (derived from Goffman, 1967 – from English “losing face” – i.e. be embarrassed).

Face refers to public self-image.

The content of face can differ in different cultures but the notion itself seems to be universal.
Aspects of face Negative the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions
be unimpeded by others (non-imposition, personal space). E.g. orders vs requests.

Positive the want of every member that his wants to be desirable to be at least some others
(what is important for us is important for others, to be liked, need to feel accepted and
appreciated by others). E.g. compliments.

In general, people cooperate in maintaining face in interaction. Cooperation is based on the

mutual vulnerability of face.

Face can be ignored in cases of social breakdown (e.g. quarrel) but also in cases of urgent
cooperation (e.g. an accident) or in the interests of efficiency (e.g. during a surgical
operation).

6.2. Face-threatening acts (FTAs).

These are certain illocutionary acts are liable to damage or threaten another person’s face:
‘face-threatening acts’ (FTAs).