LECTURES:

7 basic approaches to the term:

Establishing norms and exercising forms of control in society;
Creating a community of people;
A form of human interaction;
A kind of influence on people;
A way of understanding and perception of the reality;
An exchange of meanings (ideas);
Transmission of information.

Communication is contextually determined interaction of communicants consisting of

intellectually determined and linguistically implemented acts which are descrete in time
and space.

Components of communication:
Participants (addresser - addressee);
Context (physical, social, linguistic);
Message (idea, information);
Contact (means and ways).

DISCOURSE as a term
Text implemented in reality (includes cultural, personal, material components); V. Dressler
Text as signifying means in a communicative situation; [Link]
Genre, sub-style of oral communication; P. Seriot
A sample for speech behaviour in a particlular context.
S. Harris (1952) within distributional analysis defined it as “equivalence of phrases and their
sequences”, introducing supra-phrasal level in the language (sentence vs utterance)
Approaches to discourse:
Formal: a unit which is larger than a sentence;
Functional: language use with all its variety;
Situational: language, used under circumstances (personal, social, cultural).

Basic categories
(differentiating features)
Contextuality (actions plus non-actions);
Personalization (overlaps of participants’ minds, defining common grounds);
Process-duration (discourse emerges from activity);
Closed structure of discourse (limited by the above-mentioned factors) – anybody can
perceive it, but not create it.
Discourse is focused on conversation

Discourse analysis and Conversation

DA is focused on recorded (oral or written) process involving speech interaction
performed in a context to fulfil a certain intention.
Conversation structure:
the floor, a turn, (Speaker 1 – Speaker 2)
a pause, an overlap, (silence, Speaker 1+2)
Backchannel (Speaker 1 – indication of listening)
Adjacency pairs

Conversational analysis
High involvement
High considerateness
Preference – socially determined structural pattern of speakers’ behaviour
(preferred/dispreferred social acts)
A speech act is an action performed via utterance.
Traditional sentence types: statement, negation, interrogative
 Apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, request, order,
threat – what types of sentences are they?
The circumstances in which the utterances are performed (speakers,
noise, channel) are a speech event
The tea is cold .- What type of event and intention is it?

Structure of a speech act:

Locution – the linguistic form of the utterance;
Illocution – communicative force of the utterance;
Perlocution – the expected response and feedback.
I’ll see you later.
A promise, a threat, a guess
Performative verb – indicating device of the illocutionary force (explicit name for
the intention)
Word order, stress, intonation, voice quality – one statement :: different
illocutions

Types of speech acts:

[Link]. “How to do things with words”.
Illucutionary force is the core of a speech act.
Verdictive (the sentence in the court);
Exersitive (persuasion, argumentation);
Commissive (promises);
Behabitive (clichés, politeness formulae);
Expositive (observations, informing).
Performative sentence – the utterance corresponding to the aim of the act.
[Link] “classification of speech acts”
Features of speech acts: Relation to reality, Interaction of speakers,
Communicative environment.
Representatives – what the speaker believes to be the case;
Declaratives – change the reality through utterances;
Expressives – state the speaker’s feelings, attitudes;
Directives – instruments to make a partner do smth;
Commissives – commitment to a future action.
Direct / Indirect speech acts – relation between the structure of the utterance
and its function

Deixis (from Greek “pointing”) – indicating tools of the language,

orientation means in communication
Study of indexicals – language means that emphasize an object and relate it to
the context
I’ll put it here.
Anthropological paradigm: human being is the referential centre for the
content of all language units.

Person deixis:
Categorial items (pronouns)
Honorifics (T/V distinction, like French, Russian, etc.)
Identification of a person:
He was certainly a rich man!
Quality:
Your friend is a bit (a gesture)
Functions:
Inclusive: Do we want some soup for lunch?
Exclusive: Somebody didn’t clean up after oneself!
Let’s go (we all) – inclusive
Let us go (and he stays) - exclusive

Spatial deixis
Categories of the language (prepositions, conjunctions, verbs);
Here, over, behind
Language units of different levels:
Beforehand, go - come
Semantic correlations (cognitive metaphor):
He quickly climbed the tree.
He quickly climbed the career ladder.
Deictic projections (fixed mentally or phisically):
(the answering machine): I’m not here now, please, leave a message.
Psychological distance:
I don’t like that. How cute is this little boy of yours!

Temporal deixis
Sequence of tenses:
We met yesterday. – I didn’t know they had discussed it.
Direct/indirect speech:
- Are you panning to be here in the evening?
Lexical items:
now, then, often, never
Semantic co-relations (distance from reality):
We are meeting at 5 and I’ll bring you the book. (sequence)
If I were rich I could be in Hawaii now. (unreal condition)
Had we met before I would have recognized him.
Reference
Reference – using a linguistic form to enable the recipient to identify
something.
How does the name refer to reality?
HEART How do we know?
Inference – found in the sentence (can be drawn from the available info).
My heart sank.
Does it swim? What happened?

Presupposition
 Presupposition – smth that a speaker assumes to be the case before making the
utterance. (speaker’s idea)
Entailment logically follows from the assertion of the utterance. (truth)
e.g.: The King of England is rich.
There is a King of England – presupposition;
There is no King of England, so the sentence does not make sense - entailment

Types of Presupposition

Pragmatic focus
Pragmatics is the study of language which focuses attention on the users and
the context of language use rather than on reference, truth, or grammar (The
Oxford Companion to Philosophy).
When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’; When he says perhaps, he
means ‘no’; When he says no, he is not a diplomat. (Voltaire)
Relationship of the word-meaning and what speakers mean when uttering those words;
particular circumstances of utterance;
intentions and corresponding actions of speakers;
what they manage to communicate.
Communicative strategies
Strategy – automatic activity of participants facilitating the aim of communication
It defines the choice of style, manner, channel, etc.
T. van Dijk classified them as:
Depending on the speech context – contextual, semantic, syntactic, textual;
Depending on the language use – communicative, cognitive;
Depending on the aim – cooperative, conflicting and manipulative
Communicative tactics – instruments for intentional implementation. They are explicit,
differ from fragment to fragment, performed through a communicative act

H.P. Grice
Cooperative principle of communication – expected behaviour of participants aimed at
reaching the aims and successfully delivered messages.
Maxims (unstated assumptions):
Quantity: make your contribution as informative as required;
do not give excessive information (which is not required).
Quality; your contribution must be true;
do not state something you know to be false;
do not state something where you lack adequate evidence.
Manner: avoid obscurity and ambiguity
be brief and orderly.
Relation: be relevant (stick to the point)

Hedges (bushes on the border) - marks that the speakers may be in

danger of not adhering totally to the maxims;
Quality:
As far as I know;
I may be mistaken…
I’m not sure but…
 I guess..
Quantity:
To cut it short…
I won’t bore you with details…
As you probably know…
Manner:
I’m not sure if it’s clear at all...
I don’t know if it makes sense..
This may sound confused…
Relation:
Oh, by the way…
Well, anyway…
Coming back to the subject..

implicatures
Conversational implicatures:
JI hope you brought the cheese and bread.
JI brought the cheese.
Scalar implicatures:
I got some of this jewellery in Paris, in fact I got most of it there.
Particularized implicatures:
JComing to the wild party tonight?
JMy parents are visiting.
◙Conventional implicatures:
David is not here yet.

Gender in language and communication

 Because of the sexual difference language reflects the social and cultural
effects of male vs female communication.
Basic features of female communication:
Verbal skills: usage of obscene words, evaluative adjectives, topical vocabulary.
Intonation patterns: variety of tones, greater part of rising terminal tones.
Addressing: relation-building strategies, inclusive, encouraging interjections.
Interruptions: less interruptions, do not ignore, non-categorical,
Aims and topics: existential, supportive, non-competitive,

Non-verbal communication
Culturally dependent behaviour and reactions based on the conventions
and traditions of a society/community/group.
Forms:
Kinesics: gestures, poses, body movements;
Touches (tactile contacts): handshakes, kisses, strokes, patting (of the partner);
Distance: spacing between communicants;
Sensor reactions: perception in the context;
Time management: use of time, pauses, length of conversation.