Seminar 6. LAT-23. Theoretical Part.

Read the material of Lecture 7 (on Moodle) and answer the following questions:
1. Intentionality as a standard of textuality.
Intentionality includes the intentions of the producers of the text. In the most immediate sense of
the term “intentionally”, the producer intends the language configuration under production to be
a cohesive and coherent text in order to attain, his/her goals. To some degree, cohesion and
coherence could themselves be regarded as operational goals without whose attainment other
discourse goals may be blocked. However, text users normally exercise tolerance towards
products when certain conditions, notably in casual conversation, make it hard to uphold
cohesion and coherence altogether.
In a wider sense of the term, “intentionality” designates all the ways in which text producers
utilize texts to pursue and fulfill their intentions. An extensive body of research has been devoted
to intentions in various disciplines, e.g. sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc. The function of
texts is seen somewhat differently in these fields.
Sociologists would explore the use of texts in “speech exchange systems” where participants
interact and allot speaking turns. Psychologists would emphasize the text producer’s intention to
guide the consciousness of the hearer.
Philosophers have argued that a text producer who means something by a text “intends the
utterance” of the text to produce some effects in an audience by means of the recognition of this
intention.
Linguistics has been most profoundly affected by the philosophical
approach, laboring over the question of how intentions are in fact correlated with the format in
sense of utterances. J. Searle in “Speech Acts” proposes that Grice’s account of intention and
meaning be amended because it fails to respect the significant influence of conventions and
intended effects. Searle builds upon Austin’s work “How to do things with words” to develop the
notion of “speech acts”, i.e. actions, performed intentionally or conventionally by uttering a text.
He distinguishes:
(a) utterance acts as the simple uttering of words or sentences;
(b) prepositional acts as the use of content and reference;
(c) illocutionary acts as conventional activities accomplished
by discourse, e.g. promising, threatening, etc.:
(d) perlocutionary acts as the achieving of effects on text
receivers, e.g. alarming or convincing them.
2. Principles of corporation in communication. Maxims of quality, quantity, relations,
manner.
The principle of corporation is stated as “make your conversational contribution such as is
required, at the state at which it
occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged”. Cooperation would be clearly demanded in situations where someone is
in need of advice or assistance.
The maxim of quantity is given as “Make your contribution as
informative as (but not more informative than) is required.” Being ‘informative’ would involve
giving someone new or unpredictable knowledgewhen occasion arises.
The maxim of quality is concerned with truthfulness: “Do not say what
you believe to be false, or that for which you lack adequate evidence.” This standard is more
rigorously applied to scientific texts than to conversation, but even in the latter, it is generally
regarded as a social obligation. Disregard for truthfulness may be motivated by the intention of
concealing one’s own actions.
The maxim of relations is simply “Be relevant”. Relevance could have
at least two aspects:
1) what kinds of knowledge are related to a given topic; or
2) what kinds of knowledge would be useful in -attaining some goal. “Be perspicuous” has been
restated as “be such that the intentions you have for what you say are plainly served”. This
restatement looks back to Grice’s original account of intentional meaning, adding a stipulation of
clarity.
The maxim of manners includes
1) “Be perspicuous”, which means, “be such that the intentions you have for what you say are
plainly served”.
2) “Avoid obscurity of expression”. Here, the potential obstacle to
communication lies in the phase of mapping already selected and organized content onto surface
expression, rather than in making the selection itself.
However, a text producer might have motives for obscurity, such as the attempt to appear
learned.
3) “Avoid ambiguity”. Although many natural language expressions could have different senses
under different conditions, ambiguity obtains only when it cannot be decided which sense is
actually intended. If multiple senses are in fact intended, the term “polyvalence” can be used.
While the processing of polyvalence is no doubt arduous, ambiguity has the additional
annoyance of expending effort on materials neither intended nor useful.
Consequently, participants hasten to eliminate ambiguity by regulative action, usually by
paraphrasing the content into a non-ambiguous format.
4) “Be brief’. While the maxim of quantity concerns how much you say, brevity concerns how
much you take to say it.
5) “Be orderly”, i.e. “Present your materials in the order in which they are required”. Obvious
illustrations would be the normal ordering strategies for mentioning events and situations.
3. Planning a text/conversation.
Since discourse is definable as a situation or event sequence in which various participants
present texts as discourse actions, one can consider communication through discourse as an
instance of interactive planning.
For example, your plan might require inducing beliefs in others so that they will be helpful in
bringing about your goal. This plan would be problematic if those beliefs were contrary to
available evidence, or not based on evidence at all.
4. Acceptability as the text receiver’s attitude.
Together with intentionality, Beaugrande and Dressier introduce the notion of acceptability as
the text receivers’ attitude in communication, that the given set of occurrences should constitute
a cohesive and coherent text having some use or relevance for the receiver. In other words, text
receivers must accept a language configuration as a cohesive and coherent text capable of
utilization. It involves readers’ inferencing activities that illustrate how text receivers support
coherence by making their own contributions to the sense of the text.
Like intentionality, acceptability includes a tolerance range for such minor discontinuities or
disturbances as illustrated in the above-given examples, provided that continuity can he restored
by reasonable problemsolving. If acceptability is restricted, communication can be diverted. It is
accordingly taken as a signal of non-cooperation if a text receiver raises questions about
acceptability when the text producer’s intentionality is obviously in effect.
In a wider sense of the term, “acceptability” would subsume acceptance as the active willingness
to participate in a discourse and share agoal. Acceptance is thus an action in its own right and
entails entering into discourse interaction, with all attendant consequences. Refusing acceptance
is conventionally accomplished by explicit signals.
5. Modality as a pragmatic category of text:
- Sentence, verbal;
- Epistemic and deontic modal.
When considering modality it is useful to distinguish between two parts: the dictum, i.e. what is
said, and the modus, that is, how it is said.Modality implies the speaker’s cognitive, emotive, and
/or volitive attitude about what is said. The idea of differentiating an utterance into dictum and
modus was first suggested by the French scholar Charles Bally (1955). This idea got its further
development in “the theory of speech acts”.
For example, a sentence could have the following dictum: It is hot outside. This dictum could be
paired with various types of mode.
In linguistics, modals are expressions broadly associated with notions of possibility and
necessity. Traditionally, studies of modality distinguish between;
1. sentence modality, which deals with sentence types, such as declarative (a statement),
imperative (a command), interrogative (a question), optative (a wish), exclamatory (an
exclamation), etc.:
2. verbal modality, which deals with the modal verbs and the mood of verbs.
However, modals have a wide variety of interpretations which depend not only on the particular
modal used, but also upon where the modal occurs in a sentence, the meaning of the sentence
independent of the modal, the conversational context, and a variety of other factors. Many
different kinds of modal interpretations have been observed and studied, resulting in a variety of
typologies. Yet, there are two main types of modality in modern English: epistemic and deontic.
Epistemic modals are used to indicate the possibility or necessity of some piece of knowledge. In
the epistemic use, modals can be interpreted as indicating inference or some other process of
reasoning involved in coming to the conclusion stated in the sentence containing the modal.
However, epistemic modals do not necessarily require inference, reasoning, or evidence. One
effect of using an epistemic modal (as opposed to not using one) is a general weakening of the
speaker’s commitment to the troth of the sentence containing the modal. However, it is disputed
whether the function of modals is to indicate this weakening of commitment, or whether the
weakening is a by-product of some other aspect of the modal's meaning.
6. The role of image in the text.
In a literary text, the author’s communicative intention and his subjective modality interact. As it
has been mentioned, modality implies the speaker’s cognitive, emotive, and /or volitive attitude
about what is said. Any literary text, irrespective of its genre or trend, represents a unique and
aesthetic image of the world, created by the author according to his communicative intention and
his modality. Hence, the subjective (i.e., intention and modality) is an organizing axis of a
literary work, for, in expressing his or her vision of the world, the author represents reality in the
way that he/she considers to be
most fitting. However, being the product of the author’s imagination, a literary work is always
based upon objective reality, for there is no source that feeds one’s imagination other than
objective reality. A literary work is thus an image of a target fragment of extralingsiistic realty,
arranged in accordance with the author’s subjective modus, i.e. through his vision of the world.
The interaction and co-existence of subjective and objective factors find their realization in the
stratification structure of the text, that is, in its multilayered constitution. An image is always
somebody’s creation. In other words, as image has not only its object but also its creator, the
author. It implies the following:
1. First, an author, in setting out to recreate a fragment of reality,
recreates those features of it, which seem to him to be most essential. In doing this he is guided
by his own consciousness and his modality.
2. Secondly, the object, i.e. referential extra linguistic reality, is neutral to the observer, whereas
the image of reality created by the author is not. This leads to deeper penetration into the essence
of the target object, resulting in creating its new, subjective image, which is different from its
origin. Such an associative cognition of the objective world is conditioned, first, by cultural
consciousness of people and secondly, by the man’s ability of metaphorical thinking and his
individual, subjective-evaluative vision of things.
Thus, any image of reality in a literary text contains both - objective and subjective features. Yet,
it is the author’s communicative intention and his subjective modality that represent the
organizing axis of a literary work.