ON TAP PHAN READING UNIT9-16LOP10

 There is a general idea that people involved in a conversation will co-operate with each other.. Grice 1975:45 speaker is being co-operative and is speaking truthfully, informatively,

 Greek “Pragma”, meaning deed

 Pragmatic: practical or realistic

 Pragmatics: the field of enquiry that deals with how language can be used to do things and mean things in the real-world situation

 Jenny Thomas: the study of meaning in

interaction

 Speaker’s meaning

 Utterance interpretation

 Speech acts: when we say something, we are always doing something

Austin’s three-part framework

 How to work out the illocutionary force?

 Examples:

 The relation of form to function is:

 Not one-to-one

 But many-to-many

 Still a PROBLEM

 E.g.: the use of tag questions by women

 There is a general idea that people involved in

a conversation will co-operate with each other.

 Paul Grice:

When people interact with one another, a

“co-operative principle” is in force

 Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose

or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (Grice 1975:45)

speaker is being co-operative and is speaking

truthfully, informatively, relevantly,

perspicuously, and appropriately

When Grice uses the term co-operative about conversation, he means it in a special and

limited sense - he is talking only about the

kind and degree of co-operation that is

necessary for people to make sense of one

another’s contribution

However, some utterances are uninformative or over-informative or evasive or obscure, etc The speaker is obviously flouting normal

expectations regarding quantity, quality,

relevance or manner – something s/he cannot

or will not say directly, but expects us to

infer So the maxims are flouted implicature.

Interviewer: Will you condemn the violence on the picket lines?

Arthur Scargill: I condemn the violence of the police and the National Coal Board.

 He denies that the pickets have engaged in

violent actions – in which case there is nothing for him to pass judgment on.

 Perhaps he intended listeners to infer that

miners did not deserve to be condemned for

“the violence on the picket lines” because

even granting that they were involved in it, they were only responding to provocation by their opponents, the police and the

employers.

 He wanted his audience to infer that whereas

he condemned the actions of the police and

the National Coal Board, he actually approved

of violent actions taken by members of his

union on picket lines.

 Definition of Face: Face refers to the respect that an individual has for him or herself, and maintaining that "self-esteem" in public or in private situations

 Two kinds of Face:

 Not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer’s face, these provide no effort to

reduce the impact of the FTA’s

 Examples

 An Emergency: HELP!!

 Task oriented: Give me that! Or Do the

dishes, it’s your turn!

 Alerting: Turn your headlights on! (When

alerting someone to something they should be doing)

 Request: Put your coat away

 Use indirect language and removes the

speaker from the potential to being imposing

 Example

 Wow, it’s getting cold in here

-> insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the air-conditioner or close the door without directly asking the

listener to do so

Both the co-operative principles and the politeness principles are being applied very generally cross

cultures.

- The politeness principles with their model are

claimed to have universal application

Variations in politeness behavior may arise

because of different cultures; however, the

same ones are operative in all, and people’s

face – wants themselves are fundamentally

the same everywhere

- The co-operative principle captures something

about the intrinsic nature of human communication and the reasoning faculty that underpins it

-> The existence of variation does not undermine

the general argument that successful linguistic

communication depends on participants’

capacity for rational, purposeful and

co-operative action.

-> Human communication practices are similar to

one another in some ways, and different in

others

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