Transcript Pragmatics and Text Analysis

Pragmatics and Text
Analysis
Chapter 6
Introduction
• Pragmatics is the study of language usage
from a functional perspective and is
concerned with the principles that account for
how meaning is communicated by the speaker
(writer) and interpreted by the listener (reader)
in a certain context.
Introduction
• Different from semantics, pragmatics studies
the contextual meaning. This distinction can
be seen in the following example:
• Mike: What happened to that bowl of cream?
• Annie: Cats drink cream.
Introduction
• Pragmatics concentrates on those aspects of
meaning that cannot be predicted by linguistic
knowledge alone and takes into account our
knowledge about the physical and social world.
Introduction
• The four utterances in the following dialogue
are all syntactically incomplete, but
pragmatically they are all "appropriate" in the
particular context.
• Jane: Coffee?
• Steve: Sure.
• Jane: White?
• Steve: White.
Introduction
• Like pragmatics, text analysis is also concerned
with language used in particular contexts. It is
the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring
connected spoken or written texts.
• In other words, it is the study of linguistic
units larger than sentences or clauses.
Speech Act Theory
• As pointed out by the British philosopher Austin in
1962, sentences are not always uttered just to say
things, but rather, they are used to do things.
• Based on this assumption, Austin advanced the
Speech Act Theory.
• All linguistic activities are related to speech acts.
Therefore, to speak a language is to perform a set of
speech acts, such as statement, command, inquiry
and commitment.
• When a sentence is uttered, the speaker is performing three
kinds of speech acts simultaneously: locutionary act,
illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act .
• Among these kinds of speech acts, pragmatists are most
interested in illocutionary act.
• In order to perform a certain performative
speech act, particular conditions should be
met.
● Essential conditions
● Propositional conditions
● Preparatory conditions
● Sincerity conditions
• Essential conditions
• For example, when the speaker ORDERS/COMMANDS
the hearer to leave the room, the following essential
conditions should be met: the speaker has the
authority to command while the hearer has the
obligation to carry out this command.
• Propositional conditions
• For instance, if the speaker APOLOGIZES, the
propositional content of the apology must be
an action which he or she did or was
responsible for in the past.
• Preparatory conditions
• For example, if the speaker makes a PROMISE /
COMMITMENT, two preparatory conditions
should be presumed. First, the speaker should
have the ability to carry out the
promise/commitment. Second, what is
promised/committed should be beneficial to
the hearer.
• Sincerity conditions
• When the speaker performs an illocutionary
act in an utterance expressing a certain
propositional content, he also expresses a
certain mental state.
• When the speaker makes a STATEMENT, he or
she also expresses the mental state of "belief".
• A locutionary act may have different
illocutionary forces in different contexts.
In other words, an utterance may be
interpreted as a direct or indirect
speech act.
• "Don't you think it's too stuffy in here?"
• What is the speaker is saying?
• Similarly, an illocutionary act can be
performed by different locutionary acts.
• a. Command: Open the door please.
• b. Request: Would you please open the door?
• c. Statement: The doorbell is ringing.
Indirect Speech Act
• Indirect speech act refers to an indirect
relationship between the propositional
content and illocutionary force of an utterance.
• A sentence which expresses an indirect speech
act is an indirect performative.
• Example A below is an explicit performative in
which the speech act of request is directly
coded by the performative verb request.
Example B is an indirect performative in which
the speech act of request is indirectly expressed
by a question:
• A. I request that you help me with the luggage.
• B. Can you help me with the luggage?
• A: What are the police doing?
• B: I've just arrived.
• A: Let's go to the movie tonight.
• B: I have to study for an exam.
The Cooperative Principle
• the literal meaning and the non-literal
meaning.
• In order to account for such a linguistic
phenomenon, Grice in 1967 found that tacit
agreement exists between the speaker and
the hearer in all linguistic communicative
activities. They follow a set of principles in
order to achieve particular communicative
goals. Thus, Grice proposed the term of the
cooperative principle and its maxims.
• The maxim of Quality
• try to make your contribution one that is true,
especially: (i) do not say what you believe to be
false and (ii) do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence.
• The maxim of Quantity
• (i) make your contribution as informative as is
required for the current purposes of the
exchange, and (ii) do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
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The maxim of Relevance
make your contribution relevant.
The maxim of Manner
Be perspicuous, and specifically: (i) Avoid
obscurity of expression; (ii) Avoid ambiguity;
(iii) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) and
(iv) Be orderly.
• But in real communication, the participants often
flout the cooperative principle and its maxims.
• In this example, B flouts the quantity maxim by not
making his or her contribution as informative as is
required:
• A: When are you going to the airport?
• B: Sometime this morning.
• A: The hostess is an awful bore, don't you
think?
• B: The roses are lovely, aren't they?
• A: Let's get the kids something.
• B: Okay, but I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.
The Politeness Principle
• In order to explain why in many cases people express
themselves implicitly and indirectly by flouting the four
maxims of the cooperative principle, Brown and Levinson
(1978) advanced the Face Theory. Leech (1983:132)
developed the face theory further and formulated the
politeness principle.
The Face Theory
• According to this theory, everybody has face wants, i.e. the
expectation concerning their public self-image. In order to
maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships and ensure
successful social interaction, we should be aware of the two
aspects of another person's face, i.e. the positive face and the
negative face .
• A: Bob is really mischievous, isn't he?
• B: Children are children.
• a. I order you to answer the phone.
• b. I want you to answer the phone.
• c. Would you answer the phone?
• ● Tact （得体）maxim
• (i) Minimize cost to other
• (ii) Maximize cost for self.
• ● Generosity Maxim
• (i) Minimize benefit to self
• (ii) Maximize praise of other.
• ● Approbation （赞扬）Maxim
• (i) Minimize dispraise of other
• (ii) Maximize dispraise of self.
• ● Modesty Maxim
• (i) Minimize disagreement between self and other
• (ii) Maximize sympathy between self and other.
• ● Agreement Maxim
• (i) Minimize disagreement between self and other
• (ii) Maximize agreement between self and other
• ● Sympathy Maxim
• (i) Minimize antipathy between self and other
• (ii) Maximize sympathy between self and other
presupposition
• Presupposition can be defined in linguistics as any
kind of background assumption against which an
expression or utterance makes sense or is
rational.
• Presuppositions refer to the conditions that must
be met in order for the intended meaning of a
sentence to be regarded as acceptable.
• Their team won this year’s African finals.
• Their team played in the African finals.
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
• Empirical findings reveal that some spoken texts can be represented by
variations of recursive exchanges. The term exchange is used here to refer
to the minimal unit of interactive spoken texts.
• An exchange may be of a two-part question-answer type, like (1), or of a
two-part greeting-response type like (2). It may also be a typical three-part
teacher-pupil talk like (3):
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
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A: What time is it by your watch? (Question)
B: Nine thirty. (Answer)
(2) A: Hello. (Greeting)
B: Hi. (Response)
(3) Teacher: What's the capital of France? (Initiation)
Pupil: Paris. (Response)
Teacher: Right. (Feedback)
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
• A further analysis of the logical relationship in
spoken texts reveals some automatic sequences.
They are called adjacency pairs. An adjacency pair
always consists of a first part and a second part,
produced by different speakers. For example:
• Anna: Hello.
• Bill: Hi.
Cohesion
• Halliday and Hasan (1976): Cohesion in English
• A text is not a collection of lexical items and/or
sentences in random. In other words, it must have
texture, i.e. the property that distinguishes a text
from a non-text. The unity of a text can be achieved
by a number of semantic and lexicogrammatical
means, among which the most important is
cohesion .
• Cohesive ties may be either grammatical
devices such as reference, ellipsis and
substitution, and conjunction, or lexical
devices such as general words, reiteration and
collocation.
Reference
• Reference refers to the semantic relation in which a
word or words are used to enable the addressee to
identify someone or something. The word or words
used for reference are called the reference item. The
person(s) or thing(s) identified by the reference item
are called the referent.
• John has moved to a new house. He had it built last
year.
Substitution and Ellipsis
• Substitution refers to the replacement of one item by
another and ellipsis the omission of an item. Unlike
reference, substitution and ellipsis are a relation
between linguistic items. Substitution and ellipsis are
two closely related processes.
• A: I ate two eggs and a cup of milk for my breakfast.
• B: I ate the same.
Conjunction
• Conjunction in grammar refers to a word or
expression like and, but, or that connects
words, phrases, clauses and/or sentences.
Lexical Cohesion
• Lexical cohesion refers to the cohesive effect
achieved by the choice of lexical items.
• English lexical cohesive ties fall into two categories:
reiteration and collocation. Reiteration can take the
following four forms: repetition, synonymy,
antonymy, and hyponymy and meronymy.
Theme and Rheme
• According to Halliday (1994) ,theme can be defined as the element
which serves as the point of departure of the message conveyed
by the clause. It is the ground from which the clause is taking off. In
English, this element always takes the first position of a clause. The
remaining part of the message, the part in which the Theme is
developed, is called the Rheme .
My parents gave me
a new bicycle
Theme
Rheme
Given + New
• An information unit usually consists of two
components.
• To Halliday (1994), the part which the speaker invites
the addressee to attend to as unexpected, or
important is the New, and the part which the speaker
presents as being already known to the addressee is
the Given. In the tone structure, the New is always
signaled by the tonic accent.
• The duke gave my aunt that teapot.
• End of lecture
• Thank you for your attention