Discourse and Pragmatics

1. Discourse and Pragmatics Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics

2. Speech Act Speech Event Speech Situation Speech

3. What speech events and acts would you expect in the following situations? • A Trial • A Wedding • A Date • Yum Cha on Sunday

4. Speech Acts • How we ‘do things’ with words • John Austin and John Searle • ‘It’s cold in here.’ • Propositional Content • Locutionary Force • Illocutionary Force • Perlocutionary Force • ‘We would like to thank customers for not smoking while in this store.’

5. Illocutionary Force • Sometimes difficult to identify • Often depends on context • Sometimes spread over several utterances • There may be more than one illocutionary force

6. Kinds of Speech Acts • Representatives (S conveys a belief) • Directives (S tries to get H to do something) • Commissives (S commits to future action) • Declarations (S creates a new external situation—performatives) • Expressives (S expresses personal feelings)

8. Direct and Indirect Speech Acts • Direct speech acts • Use verbs that have the meaning of the act (e.g. ‘I promise I will go’, ‘Did you steal my pencil?’) • Indirect speech acts • Use other ways to perform the speech act • ‘Can you come tomorrow?’ • ‘I didn’t know I made you angry’ • ‘I suggest you get out of my office before I punch you!’

9. Task

10. How many ways can you express the speech act of A threat or warning? Threats

11. Conditions • Not all speakers can perform all speech acts • There are certain conditions necessary for an utterance to be considered a certain kind of speech act • Felicity conditions

12. Felicity Conditions • Speech acts judged not by ‘truth value’ but by their ‘happiness’ • Language (propositional content) • Context (preparatory condition) • ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’ • Participants/setting • Intention • Speaker is sincere, believes the act will have the desired force

13. Felicity Conditions • Rules that need to be followed for an utterance to work. • A promise: • I say I will perform an action in the future • I intend to do it. I believe I can do it. • I think I would not normally do it. • I think the other person wants me to do it. • I intend to place myself under an obligation to perform the action. • We both understand what I’m saying. • We are both normal, conscious human beings. • Both of us are in normal circumstances. • The utterance contains an illocutionary force indicating device.

14. Task • What are the conditions for: • A marriage proposal • A bet • A request • An order

15. Speech Acts across Cultures • Apologies • ‘Would you like a beer?’ • Have you eaten?

16. Conversational Implicature • We guess what people mean by referring to certain DEFAULT EXPECTATIONS • When people do not fulfill the default expectations • They create IMPLICATURE (‘special meaning’

17. Implicature • I love you. • Thank you.

18. How is Alan doing in his new job at HSBC? • Oh, quite well, I think. He likes his colleagues and he hasn’t been to prison yet.

19. Default Expectations • Grice • Conversation is ‘rational behavior’ • The Cooperative Principle • Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it is occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

20. Conversational ‘Maxims’ • The Maxim of Quantity • Be only as informative as required for current conversational purposes. • The Maxim of Quality • Say only what you believe to be true and adequately supported. • The Maxim of Relation • Be relevant. • The Maxim of Manner • Be clear: be brief and orderly and avoid obscurity and ambiguity.

21. Maxims vs. Rules • Sets of expectations which we exploit to make meaning. • The point is not that we follow these maxims or that we ‘should’ follow them. • The point is that when we deviate from them we create a IMPLICATURE.

22. Maxim of Quantity • Make your contribution as informative as required for the current purposes of the exchange. • Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

23. Maxim of Quality • Try to make your contribution one that is true. • Do not say what you believe to be false. • Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

24. Maxims of Relevance and Manner • Maxim of Relevance • Be relevant • Maxim of Manner • Avoid obscurity of expression • Avoid ambiguity • Be brief • Be orderly

25. Examples • Which Maxim/s is/are being flouted? • What kind of implicature does it create • Do you have any money on you? • Is there anywhere I can powder my nose? • Isn’t my new boyfriend handsome? • He has a very nice personality.

26. A Well, how do I look? • B Your shoes are nice. • ‘I could eat a horse’ • ‘Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.’ • A So what do you think of Mark? • B His flatmate’s a wonderful cook.

27. A Does your dog bite? • B No. • A [Bends down to stroke it and gets bitten] Ow! You said your dog doesn’t bite. • B That isn’t my dog.

28. Husband How much did that new dress cost, darling? • Wife I know, let’s go out tonight. Now, where would you like to go?

29. Infringing a maxim: • Fail to observe a maxim because of their imperfect linguistic performance (a child or a foreign learner): nervousness; drunkenness; excitement; cognitive impairment; incapability of speaking clearly. • Example: • Bush said Gates would not routinely attend Cabinet meetings but would take part in sessions where intelligence was necessary for making decision.

30. Implicature l By observing the cooperative principle, interlocutors are able to work out what is meant from what is said. l Utterances do not always carry their literal meaning. l Non-literal meaning must be inferred from context and the cooperative principle. l Non-literal interpretations are referred to as implicatures. l Implicature is a special type of inference in which the hearer makes the assumption that the speaker is NOT breaking one of the conversational maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner.

31. Task

32. Limitations of the cooperative principle • Different cultures, countries, and communities have their own ways of observing and expressing maxims for particular situations. • There is often an overlap between the four maxims. It can be difficult to say which one is operating and it would be more precise to say that there are two or more operating at once.

33. Relevance and meaning (Gee 1999) • Meaning is not merely a matter of decoding grammar. It is also a matter of knowing which of the many inferences that one can draw from an utterance are relevant. • Relevance is a matter deeply tied to context, point of view, and culture. lExample: Sentence 1. May have multiple meanings 2-4. What does it mean? Try to fill in the blanks.