DISCOURSE AND

PRAGMATICS
 What is Pragmatics?

The study of meaning in relation to

the context in which a person is
speaking or writing.
- Background knowledge context
- Cooperative principle
- Cross-cultural pragmatics
Language, context and Discourse
The context of what someone says
is crucial to understanding and
interpreting the meaning of what
being said.
- Physical context
- Social context
- Mental worlds and roles of the
people involved in the
interaction
Language, context and Discourse
The key aspects of context that are
crucial to the production and
interpretation of discourse.
- Situational context
- Background knowledge context
- Co-textual context
(Cutting, 2002: 3)
 Language, context and Discourse
Meaning is not something that is
inherent in the words alone. Making
meaning is a dynamic process,
involving the negoitation of meaning
between speaker and hearer, the
context of utterance (physical, social,
linguistic), and the meaning potential
of an uttereances (Thomas, 1995: 22)
 Speech Act and Discourse
By using language, we also perform
acts, they are giving orders, making
requests, giving warnings, or giving
advice.
It means that we do the things that go
beyond the literal meaning of what we
say.
 Speech Act and Discourse
Three kinds of acts (Austin, 1962):
1. Locutionary act
2. Illocutionary act
3. Perlocutionary act
 Speech Act and Discourse

Bus driver : “This bus won’t move

until you boys move in out of the
doorway.”
 Speech Act and Discourse
Direct and indirect speech act

Sometimes when we speak we do

mean what we say. Often we do,
however, say things indirectly.
 Speech Act and Discourse
Direct and indirect speech act

A : Can I take your order now

please?
B : Can I have nine nuggets and
chips with sweet and sour sauce and
a can of Pepsi thanks?
 Speech Act and Discourse
Felicity conditions and Discourse

There are a number of conditions that

must be met for a speect act to ‘work’
1. There must be a generaly accepted
procedure for succesfully carrying out
the speech act.
 Speech Act and Discourse
The communication must be carried
out by the right person, in the right
place, at the right time with a certain
intention or it will not ‘work’.
 Speech Act and Discourse
Rules versus principles
 Speech Act and Discourse
Presupposition and discourse

Presupposition is the common ground

that is assumed to exist between
language users such as assumed
knowledge of a situation and/or of the
world.
 Speech Act and Discourse
Presupposition and discourse

1. Conventional presupposition
2. Conventional presupposition
 The Co-operative Principle and Discourse
People assume that there is a set of
principles which direct us to a
particular interpretation of what
someone says, unless we receive some
indication to the contrary.
Four sub-principles or maxims, they
are:
Maxims of quality, quantity, relation,
and manner.
Flouting the co-operative principle
On some occasions speakers flout the
co-operative principle and intend their
hearer to understand this; that is, they
purposely do not observe the maxim,
and intend their hearer to be aware of
this.
 Flouting the co-operative principle
Librarian : [raises his eyes, looks at the student with no facial
expression]
Student : Hi. Could you check for me whether I have any books to
collect?
Librarian : [swipes the student’s card, clears his throat, wipes his nose
with a tissue, glances at the computer screen, turns to the shelf to get
a book, then another book]
Student : Any more?
Librarian : [turns and gets a third book, stamps them all with the
return date]
Student : Is that all?
Librarian : Are you going to borrow all the books in the library?
Student : OK . . I see . . Thank you very much.
 Flouting the co-operative principle
Differences between flouting and violating maxims

Flouting a maxim is if the speaker do not observe a maxim but has no

intention of deceiving or misleading the other person.
Violating a maxim is if there is a likehood that they are liable to
mislead the other person.
Infringe a maxim is if the speaker when they fail to observe a maxim
with no intention to deceive.
Opt out a maxim is if the speaker may, for ethical or legal reasons,
refuse to say something that breaches a confidentiality agreement they
have with someone, or is likely to incriminate them in some way.
 Flouting the co-operative principle
Overlap between maxims

An utterance may be both unclear and longwinded, flouting the

maxims of quality and quantity at the same time (Cutting, 2002).
Equally it may be socailly acceptable, and indeed preferred, to flout a
maxim (such as quality) for reasons of tact and politeness.
Cross-cultural pragmatics and discourse
Communication across cultures

Different langages and cultures often have different ways of dealing

with pragmatic issues (Wierzbicka, 2003).

Cross-cultural pragmatics
Different pragmatics norms reflect different cultural values which are
reflected in what people say and wha they intend by what they say in
different cultural settings (Wierzbicka, 2003).
Cross-cultural pragmatics and discourse
Pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics
Pragmalinguistics is the study of the more linguistic end of pragmatics
where we consider the particular resources which a given language
provides for conveying particular illocutions.
The study of speech acts in relation to typical linguistic structures.

Sociopragmatics is specific local conditions of language use, that is the

pragmatic performance of speech acts in specific social and cultural
contexts.
Cross-cultural pragmatics and discourse
Cross-cultural pragmatic failure
The failure to convey or understand a pragmatic intention in another
language and culture (Thomas, 1983).
- The sociopragmatic failure
- The pragmalinguistic failure
 Conversati0nal implicature and discourse
Conversational implicature refers to the inference a hearer makes
about a speaker’s intended meaning that arises from their use of
literal meaning of what the speaker said.
Hearer’s draw on the conventional meanings of words, the co-
operative principle and its maxims, the linguistic and non-linguistic
context of the utterance, items of background knowledge and the fact
that all of these are available to both participants and they both
assume this to be the case.
 Conversati0nal implicature and discourse
Conventional and particularized conversational implicatures
Conventional implicatures derive the implicature with no particular
context.
Particularized conversational implicatures derive from particular
context, rather than from the use of the words alone.

Scalar implicatures
They are derived when a person uses a word from a set words that
express some kind of scale of values.
 Politeness, face and discoourse
Politeness and face are important for understanding why people
choose to say things in a particular way in spoken and written
discourse.
Lakoff (1973) proposes three maxims of politeness, they are ‘don’t
impose’, ‘give options’, and ‘make your hearer feel good’.
 Politeness, face and discoourse
Involvement and independence in spoken and written discourse
Involvement refers to the need people have to be involved with others
and to show this involvement; that is a person’s right and need to be
considered a normal, contributing, supporting member of society; n
other words, to be treated as a member of a group.

Choosing a politeness strategy

Deciding on a choice of politeness strategy needs a number of
coniderations, they are how socially close or distant we are from our
hearer; how much or how little power the hearer has over us; how
significant what I want is to me, and to the person I am talking to.
 Face and Politeness across Cultures
The face and politeness varies from society to society and from culture
to culture.
 Politeness and Gender
Holmes (1995), “Overrally, women are more polite than men, it also
depends on what we mean by ‘polite’ as well as which women and
men are being compared and what setting or community of practice
the interaction occurs in; that is, the particular local conditions in
which the man or woman is speaking (Cameron, 1998).
 Face-threatening Acts
Some arcts ‘threaten’ a person’s face.
- Mitigation devices (Fraser, 1980)

The use of a ‘pre-sequence’

A : Are you doing anything after work? (a pre-sequence)
B : Why are you asking?
A : I thought we might go for a drink. (an indirect speech act)
B : Well, no, nothing in particular. Where would you like to go?
Politeness and Cross-cultural pragmatic failure
- The use of insertion sequence

A : I am dying for a drink (an off-record invitation)

B : Yes, it’s really hot, isn’t it? (an off-record rejecting of the
invitation)
Politeness and Cross-cultural pragmatic failure
What may be a face-threatening act in one culture may not be seen
the same way in another.
Thank YOu
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