PRAGMATICS 3

CH 7: POLITENESS AND INTERACTION

 Linguistic interaction is also social interaction.

 
External factors (prior to interaction) influence
our behaviour.
and so do
Internal factors (may change during interaction).
Arrange these in order of politeness:
(least polite first)
Set the table!
Could you please set the table?
Set the table, will you?
Would you mind if i asked you to set the table?
Can you set the table?
 POLITENESS

A term often used when we talk about politeness is face. Face is

awareness of other person’s self image. We show either
distance/respect or friendliness/solidarity.
 
FACE WANTS = A person’s expectations that their public self
image will be respected.
Face threatening act = something that represents a threat
to another individual’s public self image. (Avoid orders).

Face saving act = avoidance of a potential threat to a

person’s self image. (Use questions).
 NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FACE

Negative face = our right to independence of

action and our need not to be imposed upon by
others.

Positive face = our need to be accepted and

liked by others and our need to feel that our
social group shares common goals; our need to
be connected.
Negative politeness = geared towards
preserving the negative face of other people;
shows awareness of other’s need for
independence.
Positive politeness = preserving the positive
face; emphasizing that both speaker and hearer
want the same thing.
How to make people see your needs:
 
Say nothing but let action speak.
Talk to yourself.
Ask someone, bald on record or use mitigating
devices (please).
Let’s look at an example:
You want to borrow someone’s stapler. How
do you go about it?
Say nothing but act. Look around for one,
handle your papers.
Say something, either off record (ie. talking to
yourself) or on record (ie. addressing someone)

Lend
Lend me
me Lend me your stapler,
your
your stapler.
stapler. please.
=Bald
=Baldon
onrecord
record
Words that soften demands like please are
called mitigating devices. If these are not
present , we talk of bald on record.

See Yule p. 66, How to borrow something from

someone.
Positive politeness strategies; appeal to solidarity:
It would be really nice of you if I could borrow your…
 

Negative politeness strategies; awareness of other’s

right not to be imposed upon: I know you probably
need it yourself, but could I possibly use…
Strategies:
Solidarity strategy: emphasizes closeness to
addressee. Involves personal information, first
names, nicknames etc . We, let’s, dialect,
nicknames.
Deference strategy: emphasizes the non-
personal. Formal politeness.
 ACTS AND PRE-ACTS

Sometimes we need to prepare the addressee

for what is to come, so we have pre-requests,
pre-invitations, pre-announcements.
- Are you busy?
- Are you doing anything on Saturday?
- Want to hear something interesting?
CHAPTER 8: CONVERSATION AND PREFERENCE STRUCTURE

Conversational analysis (CA)

How do we manage to conduct a conversation?
 
Floor: the current right to speak in a conversation.
Turn: the person who is speaking has the turn.
Turn-taking : the shift between speakers.
Transition Relevance Place (TRP): a possible point
where a change of speakers occur.
Overlap should be avoided, but also too long
pauses (= attributable silence).
TRPs occur at the end of a unit. You can avoid
letting other speakers in by having no open
pauses at the end of a syntactic unit, or indicate
a longer structure:
- There are several comments I’d like to make on
this…
 Turn-yielding signals

prosody
syntax
semantics
 
8/10 turn-takings take place without simultaneous
talking.
 
 
 
 
 Back-channels

m, m-hm, yeah, yes, that’s right

sentence completion
brief restatements
(request for clarification)
 

 
 
 Back-channels

- are not turn-claiming

- encourage the current speaker to go on
- signal the listener’s active participation
- express agreement, acceptance, under-standing
- can occur almost anywhere in the current
speaker’s turn
- are both speaker and situation specific
 
Listeners are rarely silent for more than 15
seconds. Therefore the absence of back
channels is significant.
 CONVERSATIONAL STYLE

High involvement style vs High considerateness

style. These may not be identified as different
conversational styles but as different personal traits.
 
In conversations we find adjacency pairs, such as
greetings:
Hi!
Hi!
 
Questions and answers:
When did Wendy leave ?
Yesterday

Invitation and acceptance:

Would you like to come for a coffee?
Sure! Love to!
 
Apology and acceptance:
I’m so sorry!
That’s OK.
Request for favour and granting:
- Could I please borrow your pen?
- Yes, of course.
 PREFERENCE STRUCTURES
In adjacency pairs there is one preferred answer,
the preference structure.
This is the most frequent response. Agree and
accept are preferred to disagree, refuse and
decline.
This is one reason why pre-sequences are so
common.
 CH. 9 DISCOURSE AND CULTURE

In discourse analysis you talk about three different

functions;
 
Interpersonal function: deals with personal
interaction.
Textual function: deals with what makes a text well-
formed.
Ideational function: deals with thought and
experience.
 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The study of language with reference to the

social and psychological factors that influence
communication.

What makes a text well-formed? The links that

create cohesion. Discourse analysis deals a lot
with text-specific features – story telling, debate,
news reporting.
The pragmatic element focuses on what is
unsaid or unwritten, but communicated. It is
interested in background knowledge, beliefs and
expectations. What did the speaker/writer have
in mind?
 
 COHERENCE

Coherent language (whether written or spoken)

makes sense to the listener and provides the clues
as to how the text is to interpreted.
 
Background knowledge includes:
SCHEMATA: knowledge patterns of situations, also
contains FRAMES (=fixed patterns of how we
assume things to be). Eg. What do we expect to
find in a library, in a supermarket.
SCRIPT – knowledge pattern of sequences of
events, eg. what happens when we go to the
movies, when we get on a bus, when we go to
the public baths.
 
 CULTURAL SCHEMATA

= schemata based on knowledge of a particular culture.

 
CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS; differences in expectations
based on cultural schemata.
 
CONTRASTIVE PRAGMATICS; the study of different cultural
ways of talking.

INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS; learner pragmatics

Pragmatic accent .