Pragmatics Flashcards
Pragmatics ?
Words and phrases can have a literal meaning or a pragmatic meaning. A pragmatic meaning is an underlying meaning which is implied by what is actually said.
“Are you wearing those shoes tonight?” implies that the speaker doesn’t like the shoes by only asking if they are going to be worn.
Social Conventions in Pragmatics
Sometimes it is more polite to speak pragmatically instead of being to direct or explicit.
Grice’s maxims (there’s four)
Quantity: saying too much or too little
Quality: saying something that is untrue
Manner: communicating in an obscure way
Relation: changing the subject or being irrelevant
Positive and Negative politeness
Positive: assumes there is a good relationship. Involves shared dialect, informal grammar and lexis to emphasise solidarity with friends.
Negative: assumes there is not a good relationship. Involves more formal lexis and grammar to emphasise social distance and gain respect
Brown and Levison’s politeness theory
-we present a persona
-we try to be liked and accpeted
-we are polite and friendly to others
-we hope to get what we want
Face (Positive and Negative)
a view of oneself which one expects to be respected. Anything which goes against the face is a face threatening act (FTA)
Positive face is the need to be liked and respected
Negative face is our right to not be imposed upon
Deixis
When understand a word, phrase of sentence requires context.
Some sentences in english are impossible to understand if we don’t know who is speaking about whom, where and when.
e.g. “you’ll have to bring that back tomorrow because they aren’t here now”
Deictic expressions
Can only be understood with knowledge of context.
Example: “you’ll have to bring that back tomorrow because they aren’t here now”
that, tomorrow, they, here, now are deictic expressions because we can only know what these words are referring to with prior knowledge of the circumstances.
Antecedent and Anaphora (Anaphoric referencing)
“can i borrow your book”
“yes, it’s on the table”
Anaphoric referencing is referring to the noun already mentioned using a pronoun or determiner.
The first mention is the antecedent
Cataphoric referencing
using a pronoun or determiner to refer to the noun that will be mentioned later (in the same sentence or the next sentence)
Presupposition
what the speaker assumes is already known by the listener. Speakers design their linguistic messages on the basis of what their listeners already know.
inference (in pragmatics)
The process of reaching a conclusion from known facts or evidence
Reference (in pragmatics)
When the speaker or writer uses a linguistic form to enable a listener to identify something.
Example: a man, whose name is unknown, being referred to as kronenbourg Terry because he is frequently seen drinking kronenbourg.
Volume (in pragmatics
Loudness can show excitement, anger, or status.
Quiet might be a politeness strategy.
Stress
Every word or phrase has a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. This is called natural changing.
Intonation
how the same words can differ in meaning because of how you say them. In social situations, it is important to get these right in order to convey meaning
Rhythm
similar to stress. prepared speech is likely to be more rhythmic
Locutionary Act
saying something (the locution) with a certain meaning in the traditional sense
Illocutionary Act
the performance of an act of saying something (instead of the general act of saying something). The illocutionary force is the speaker’s intent. Illocution is what is done by saying something. A true ‘speech ac’. e.g. informing, ordering, warning, undertaking
Perlocutionary Act
speech acts that have an effect on the feelings, thoughts or actions of either the speaker or the listener. they seek to change minds. “i am sure that you’ll agree”
Declarations (Searle’s 1969 five illocutionary/perlocutionary points)
Change the state of the world in an immediate way. They declare something.
Assertives (Searle’s 1969 five illocutionary/perlocutionary points)
Commit the speaker to something being the case. The different kinds are: suggesting, putting forward, etc
Expressives (Searle’s 1969 five illocutionary/perlocutionary points)
express how a speaker feels about the situation. The different kinds are: thanking, apologising, welcoming and deploring
Directives (Searle’s 1969 five illocutionary/perlocutionary points)
Try to make the addressee perform an action. The different kinds are: asking, ordering, requesting, inviting, advising and begging
Commissives (Searle’s 1969 five illocutionary/perlocutionary points)
Commit the speaker to doing something in the future. The different kinds are: promising, planning, vowing, betting, opposing, swearing, boasting, concluding.
4 Sentence types (in relation to pragmatics)
Declarative: a sentence that makes a statement, provides a fact, offers an explanation, or conveys information.
Exclamative: expresses strong emotion.
Interrogative: a sentence that asks a question.
Imperative: a sentence that expresses a direct command, request, invitation, warning, or instruction.
In pragmatics, one sentence type can be said while another is meant.
“has your watch broken?” interrogative, means “you’re late” declarative.
Giles’ theory (convergence and divergence)
Convergence- when an individual adjusts their speech to match those in a social group. emphasises unity, shared identity and a bond
Divergence- when an individual adjusts their speech to be different from those in a particular group. Emphasises separation, withdrawal from a group and boundaries.
embodied knowledge
knowledge that is associated with memories of physically experiencing something
schema
a bundle of knowledge about a key concept person or event
co-text
other words or phrases surrounding a word in a text
cooperative principle
the idea that, in conversation, we intend to truthfully convey our meaning. we help each other to communicate
implicatures
implied meanings that listeners were intended to infer from a speaker’s comments as a result of a maxim being broken
Conversational maxims
explicit principles that provide a backdrop for conversations to take place so that speakers can easily understand each other
Person deixis
names and personal pronouns
spacial deixis
adverbs of place such as here and there, demonstratives showing locations such as this and that, orientational words such as left and right, deictic verbs such as come and go
temporal deixis
adverbs such as today, yesterday and tomorrow. each of these both locates a speaker in and points from a particular deictic centre.
proximal deixis
deictic expressions that refer to concepts, events or people close to the speaker
distal deixis
deictic expressions that refer to concept, events or people at a distance from the speaker
What is Presupposition?
ny information which is taken for granted within discourse
