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Pragmatics and more:common topics, deictics, reference

Week 4, 5

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Pragmatics- the study of actual language use

Speakers mean much more than their words actually say,yet how do people manage to understand one another?

Early 1980s, meaning in use, meaning in context

Speakers meaning (social view) vs. utteranceinterpretation (cognitive approach) Let him have it Chris!

Ambiguity and intentionality (Thomas, 14,15)

Common topics in pragmatics: reference, deixis, speechacts, entailment, presupposition, politeness (FSA andFTA), indirectness, intercultural pragmatics

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3 levels of meaning

Assigning reference and sense in context (e.g. p. 3,4, 5)

Abstract meaning (1st level): sense, reference, structure

Speakers meaning (2nd and 3rd level):

a. utterance (contextual) meaning- relevant to the domain

of discourse

b. force of an utterance- speakers communicativeintention

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Utterance meaning and force

Understanding both utterance meaning and force

Understanding utterance meaning but not force

(keep doing whatya doing man)

Understanding force but not utterance meaning (Its

my shout)

Understanding neither utterance meaning nor force

(my personal corridor)

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Pragmatics revisited Pragmatics studies meaning in interaction (both speakers

and hearers meaning)

Communication is a dynamic process of negotiation of

meaning

Pragmatics is a study of relationships between linguisticforms and the users of those forms

The pragmatics wastebasket

Meaning potential (not unlimited): e.g. How are things,Dusica?

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Assigning reference in context: deictics

How do we assign reference to someones words i.e.

determine in context who/what is being referred to?

Deictic expressions (indexicals) derive part of their

meaning from the context of utterance

They have no absolute values, the context is necessary

for their right interpretation

The deictic center (speakers location) is the point of

reference from which the dimension is looked at e.g. now,

the war in Agatha Christies novels (deictic context)

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Types of deictics/deixis Place (spatial) deictics: here, there, this, now

Time deictics: yesterday, today, now, choice of tense

Person deictics: I, you, he, she

Exclusive we and inclusive we

Attitudinal (social) deictics: tu, vous, honorifics (Madam, Your

Grace)

Discourse deictics: the former, the latter, there, whenever earlierdiscourse is being pointed at, can be projective (announcingbeginning of a lesson), self-referential/reflexive (this paper)

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Reference and inference

Assumption: we use the words to refer to people

and things

Reference- an act in which a speaker/writer useslinguistic forms to enable a hearer/reader to identify

something

Inference: because there is no direct relationshipbetween entities and words, the listeners task is to

infer correctly which entity the speaker intends to

identify

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Referential and attributive uses

Not all referring expressions have identifiable physicalreferents

Attributive uses of expressions (who/whatever fits the

description)

There is a man waiting for you.

They cant find the killer.

Referential uses of expressions

The role of co-text and context delimits the range of reference

(number of possible referents) in pragmatics

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Anaphoric and cataphoric reference

Keeping track of reference, after introducing some entity, people will try to maintain reference

In English the initial reference is often indefinite (antecedent) after which the referencebecomes definite (anaphor)

Eg. There is a man in the street. The man is walking slowly.

Anaphora: usually pronouns but also definite NP

Sometimes the reverse is possible, first a definite reference is introduced and then explainedby an indefinite on (cataphora)

Eg. I almost stepped on it, there was a snake underneath my foot.

Zero anaphora or ellipsis (no linguistic entity present: eg Cook for three minutes.

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Texture: coherence and cohesion

Cohesion (elements): achieved by lexicosyntactic

formal devices, semasiological, form

Dont trust Jim because he is a shyster.(cohesion/coherence)

Coherence (dimensions): achieved by conceptual

devices (ideas), onomasiological, content

Dont trust Jim. Hes a shyster. (coherence, low

cohesion)

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Cohesion without coherence

A week has seven days. Every day I feed my cat.

The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters. Letters

are roughly phonemic. I better phone my mother.

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Coherence without cohesion

We drank Chardonnay and had foie grass and tartar

steak. The wine was good but the toast they served

was burnt.

I bought a house recently. The kitchen was very

spacious and both bedrooms had balconies.

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Cohesion--formal, semasiological (grouping of words

in terms of their meaning on conceptual or semantic

grounds: structural and based on iteration, balance(iteration of structure), connection (coordination)

Coherenceconceptual, onomasiological (based on

the forms of words, ortography and phonology):

referential or topical (definite, indefinite), proformal

(anaphoric, cataphoric, eliptical), relational: paratactic

and hypotactic,