first midterm Flashcards
Body language
gaze, breathing, gestures
Cohesion
Formal connectedness of sentences within discourse
Coherence
Semantic unity of sentences within a discourse
Functionalism
To understand the structure of discourse, we need to attend to
u World knowledge
u “Context”
Conversation
conversation –> talk –> discourse
Discourse analysis
How do we use linguistic information and what is being accomplished?
Formal
Unit of language above the sentence or the clause
Functional
The analysis of discourse is the analysis of language in use
Ordinary Language Philosophy
takes that the meaning of an expression is
its use - language is for social action
Speech Acts
J.L. Austin – How to do things with words
Rules allow people to identify acts
All utterances are speech acts
Constatives
Constatives: speech acts that can be either true or false
performatives
Performatives: speech acts that perform actions
Felicity conditions
The conditions that need to be met for the speech act to be happy
The felicity conditions
Propositional: the utterance formulates the action
Preparatory: speaker is socially sanctioned to perform act
sincerity: speakers intends to perform act, not trying to deceive
essential: nature of speech act
Typology of speech act
declarative = causes
assertive = believes
commisive = intends
expressive = feels
directive = wants
Locution
Illocutionary
perlocutionary
L = speaking of an utterance; its meaning
I = the speech act performed
P = effect of utterance on hearer
Conventional indirectness
speech act performed by questioning a felicity condition ex. could you help me?
Gricean’s Maxims
quantity: be informative
quality: no false statements
relation: be relevant
manner: don’t be obscure
People can flout or violate maxims
Flout = meant to be recognized
violate = meant to pass unnoticed
Conventional implicatures
meanings of utterances that arent overtly stated
Neo gricean view
Logical forms conform to literal meaning
Normative approach
is the way someone spoke or acted reasonable? what is the meaning?
Reasoning pragmatically
ex. does ‘kill’ and ‘cause to die’ mean the same thing?
Criticisms of speech act theory
anglocentric, mindreading, calculate semantics before pragmatic meaning
first order politeness
prescriptive - forms that express politeness ex. thank you
second order politeness
descriptive - linguistic expression that achieve politeness, not learnt words but social norms
Face
the positive social value a person claims for themselves which others assume
positive face
desire to be approved and admired
negative face
desire not to be imposed upon
face threatening acts
potential to damage positive or negative face of speaker, hearer or both
off vs on record
off is indirect, on is clear speech
positive politeness
speaker accommodates for hearers desire for admiration
negative politeness
speaker accommodates hearers negative face
