Pragmatics

A: I have a fourteen year old sonB: Well that's all rightA: I also have a dog B: Oh I'm sorry

There are some aspects of meaning which are not derived solely from the meanings of the words used in phrases and sentences.

Invisible meaning In many ways, pragmatics is the study of 'invisible' meaning, or how we recognize what is meant even when it isn't actually said (or written). In order for that to happen, speakers (and writers) must be able to depend on a lot of shared assumptions and expectations. The investigation of those assumptions and expectations provides us with some insights into

how more gets communicated than is said

Heated Attendant

 ParkingIt is not logical to think that it is a place to park a heated attendant! Though the word “car” is not mentioned, you would normally understand that:

-         You can park your car in this place.-         This place is a heated area.

-         There will be an attendant to look after your car.You come to this understanding when:

-         You use the meaning of words in combination.-         You think about the context in which they occur.

-         You try to get the intended message behind the sign.

• Let’s consider another example, taken from a newspaper advertisement

• BABY & TODDLER SALE.

context

• 1. Linguistic context, also known as co-text. • The co-text of a word is the set of other words

used in the same phrase or sentence. This surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we think the word means

• E.g. The word (bank) is a homonym

• 2. Physical context. • E.g the word (BANK) on the wall of a building

in a city, the 'physical' location will influence your interpretation.

Deixis Definition

• It is a technical term for one of the most basic things we do with utterances, which means ‘pointing’ via language.

Deictic Expressions

• Any linguistic form used to accomplish ‘pointing’ is called deictic expressions

• They are also known as indexicals.

Types of Deixis • PERSON DEIXIS : Any expression used to point

to a person (me, you, him, them)

• SPACE/SPATIAL/PLACE DEIXIS : Words used to point to a location (here, there)

• TIME/TEMPORAL DEIXIS : The expression used to point to a time ( now, then, tonight, last week, yesterday)

• DISCOURSE DEIXIS: any expression used to refer to earlier or forthcoming segments of the discourse: in the previous/next paragraph, or Have you heard this joke?

• SOCIAL DEIXIS: honorifics (forms to show respect such as Professor Li).

Pronouns: grammatical category for a person

• The pronouns of the first (I-my-mine) and second person (you- your-yours) are deictic: reference to the speaking person.

• Definite and specific pronouns: this, that, those, or these.

• Indefinite and specific pronouns: somebody , something , who, what.

• Indefinite and non-specific pronouns: someone , something , nobody, nothing.

• Place Deixis concerns the locations relative to anchorage points in the speech event (speaker = centre)

Place Deixis

• Motion verbs = signs of place deixis come vs. go makes distinction between the direction of motion He's coming = he is moving towards the speaker's location. He's going = he is moving away from the speaker's location

Time Deixis

•Time Deixis makes ultimate reference to participant-role => ex.: now = the time at which the speaker is producing

the utterance containing “now .”•distinguishes the moment of utterance (= coding time

(CT)) and the moment of reception (= receiving time (RT)). deictic centre remains on the speaker and CT: This

programme, is being recorded today, Wednesday April 1st, to be relayed next Thursday. => deictic centre is

projected on the addressee and RT: This programme was recorded last Wednesday, April 1st, to be relayed today.

(deictic centre was projected into the future)

Social Deixis

• It concerns those aspects of language structure that encode the social identities of participants, or the social relationship between them

Using Deixis

“ you’ll have to bring that back tomorrow, because they aren’t here”, It is quite unintelligible.

• People can actually use Deixis to have fun. The coffee shop owner who puts up a big sign that reads “ Free snacks Tomorrow” ( to get you to return to his shop) can always claim that you are one day too early for the meal.

Deixis and Grammar

• Grammar : the study of the rules governing the use of a given natural language, and, as such, is a field of linguistics. Traditionally, grammar included morphology and syntax.

• Deixis: those words in a language that entirely depend on context (Fromkin, et. al., 1991). The meaning of deixis is 'pointing to' something. In verbal communication however, deixis in its narrow sense refers to the contextual meaning of pronouns, and in its broad sense, what the speaker means by a particular utterance in a given speech context.

Deixis and Grammar

• The basic distinctions for person, spatial, and temporal deixis can be seen in English grammar are presented in direct and indirect speech.

• Are you planning to be here this evening? ( DIRECT SPEECH) I asked her if she was planning to be there that evening. ( INDIRECT SPEECH)

The regular difference in English reported discourse marks a distinction between the ‘near speaker’ meaning of direct speech and the ‘away from speaker’ meaning of indirect speech.

REFERENCE AND INFERENCE

Words themselves do not refer to anything, people refer

Reference Definition

• Reference is defined as an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or reader, to identify something.

• These linguistic forms are called : referring expressions.

Referring expressions can be

1. Proper nouns: ‘HillaryClinton’ ‘Cairo’

2. Noun phrases (definite):‘The city’ ‘the Secretary of State’

3. Noun phrases (indefinite): ‘A woman’ ‘A place’

4. Pronouns: ‘She, her’ ‘It’

The choice of one type of referring expression rather than another seems to be based, to a large extent, on what the speaker assumes the listener already knows. Reference is clearly tied to the speaker’s goals and beliefs in the use of language.

• Attributive use : e.g a man waiting for you a woman with lots of money a nine-foot-tall basketball player • Referential use: Nora/she

Anaphor and Antecedent

•In technical terms, the second or subsequent expression is the anaphor and the initial is the antecedent.

Example: “In the film, a man and a woman were trying to wash a cat. The man was holding the cat while the woman poured water on it. He said

something to her and they started laughing ”

Zero Anaphora, or Ellipsis

When the interpretation requires us to identify an entity, and no linguistic expression is presented, it is called zero anaphora, or ellipsis. :

. “Peel an onion and slice it. Drop the slices into hot oil. Cook for three minutes.”

Inferences

• Inferring is connecting prior knowledge to text based information to create meaning beyond what is directly stated.

• Inference – any additional information used by the listener to connect what is said to what must be meant .

• Example: A: Have you seen my Yule? B: Yeah, it is on the desk. :

Examples of inference

(1) a. Where is the fresh salad sitting? b. He’s sitting by the door.

(2) a. Can I look at your Shakespeare? b. Sure, it’s on the shelf over there