Pragmatics and Text
Analysis
Chapter 6
Introduction
Pragmatics is the study of language
usage from a functional perspective
and is concerned with the principles
that account for how meaning is
communicated
by
the
speaker
(writer) and interpreted by the
listener (reader) in a certain context.
Introduction
Different from semantics, pragmatics
studies the contextual meaning. This
distinction can be seen in the
following example:
Mike: What happened to that bowl of
cream?
Annie: Cats drink cream.
Introduction
Pragmatics concentrates on those
aspects of meaning that cannot be
predicted by linguistic knowledge
alone and takes into account our
knowledge about the physical and
social world.
Introduction
The four utterances in the following
dialogue are all syntactically
incomplete, but pragmatically they are
all "appropriate" in the particular
context.
Jane: Coffee?
Steve: Sure.
Jane: White?
Steve: White.
Introduction
Like pragmatics, text analysis is also
concerned with language used in
particular contexts. It is the linguistic
analysis
of
naturally
occurring
connected spoken or written texts.
In other words, it is the study of
linguistic units larger than sentences
or clauses.
Speech Act Theory
As pointed out by the British philosopher
Austin in 1962, sentences are not always
uttered just to say things, but rather, they
are used to do things.
Based
on
this
assumption,
Austin
advanced the Speech Act Theory.
All linguistic activities are related to
speech acts. Therefore, to speak a
language is to perform a set of speech
acts, such as statement, command, inquiry
and commitment.
When a sentence is uttered, the speaker is
performing
three
kinds
of
speech
acts
simultaneously: locutionary act, illocutionary act,
and perlocutionary act .
Among these kinds of speech acts, pragmatists
are most interested in illocutionary act.
In order to perform a certain
performative speech act, particular
conditions should be met.
Essential conditions
Propositional conditions
Preparatory conditions
Sincerity conditions
Essential conditions
For example, when the speaker
ORDERS/COMMANDS the hearer to leave
the room, the following essential conditions
should be met: the speaker has the
authority to command while the hearer has
the obligation to carry out this command.
Propositional conditions
For instance, if the speaker
APOLOGIZES, the propositional
content of the apology must be an
action which he or she did or was
responsible for in the past.
Preparatory conditions
For example, if the speaker makes a
PROMISE / COMMITMENT, two
preparatory conditions should be
presumed. First, the speaker should
have the ability to carry out the
promise/commitment. Second, what is
promised/committed should be
beneficial to the hearer.
Sincerity conditions
When the speaker performs an
illocutionary act in an utterance
expressing a certain propositional
content, he also expresses a certain
mental state.
When the speaker makes a
STATEMENT, he or she also expresses
the mental state of "belief".
A locutionary act may have different
illocutionary forces in different
contexts. In other words, an
utterance may be interpreted as a
direct or indirect speech act.
"Don't you think it's too stuffy in
here?"
What is the speaker is saying?
Similarly, an illocutionary act can be
performed by different locutionary
acts.
a. Command: Open the door please.
b. Request: Would you please open
the door?
c. Statement: The doorbell is ringing.
Indirect Speech Act
Indirect speech act refers to an
indirect relationship between the
propositional content and
illocutionary force of an utterance.
A sentence which expresses an
indirect speech act is an indirect
performative.
Example A below is an explicit performative
in which the speech act of request is directly
coded by the performative verb request.
Example B is an indirect performative in
which the speech act of request is indirectly
expressed by a question:
A. I request that you help me with the
luggage.
B. Can you help me with the luggage?
A: What are the police doing?
B: I've just arrived.
A: Let's go to the movie tonight.
B: I have to study for an exam.
The Cooperative Principle
the literal meaning and the non-literal
meaning.
In order to account for such a linguistic
phenomenon, Grice in 1967 found that
tacit agreement exists between the
speaker and the hearer in all linguistic
communicative activities. They follow
a set of principles in order to achieve
particular communicative goals. Thus,
Grice proposed the term of the
cooperative principle and its maxims.
The maxim of Quality
try to make your contribution one that is
true, especially: (i) do not say what you
believe to be false and (ii) do not say that
for which you lack adequate evidence.
The maxim of Quantity
(i) make your contribution as informative as
is required for the current purposes of the
exchange, and (ii) do not make your
contribution more informative than is
required.
The maxim of Relevance
make your contribution relevant.
The maxim of Manner
Be perspicuous, and specifically: (i)
Avoid obscurity of expression; (ii)
Avoid ambiguity; (iii) Be brief (avoid
unnecessary prolixity) and (iv) Be
orderly.
But
in
real
communication,
the
participants often flout the cooperative
principle and its maxims.
In this example, B flouts the quantity
maxim by not making his or her
contribution as informative as is required:
A: When are you going to the airport?
B: Sometime this morning.
A: The hostess is an awful bore,
don't you think?
B: The roses are lovely, aren't they?
A: Let's get the kids something.
B: Okay, but I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.
The Politeness Principle
In order to explain why in many cases people
express themselves implicitly and indirectly by
flouting the four maxims of the cooperative
principle, Brown and Levinson (1978) advanced
the Face Theory. Leech (1983:132) developed the
face theory further and formulated the politeness
principle.
The Face Theory
According to this theory, everybody has face
wants, i.e. the expectation concerning their public
self-image. In order to maintain harmonious
interpersonal relationships and ensure successful
social interaction, we should be aware of the two
aspects of another person's face, i.e. the positive
face and the negative face .
A: Bob is really mischievous, isn't he?
B: Children are children.
a. I order you to answer the phone.
b. I want you to answer the phone.
c. Would you answer the phone?
Tact maxim
(i) Minimize cost to other
(ii) Maximize cost for self.
Generosity Maxim
(i) Minimize benefit to self
(ii) Maximize praise of other.
Approbation Maxim
(i) Minimize dispraise of other
(ii) Maximize dispraise of self.
Modesty Maxim
(i) Minimize disagreement between self and other
(ii) Maximize sympathy between self and other.
Agreement Maxim
(i) Minimize disagreement between self and
other
(ii) Maximize agreement between self and
other
Sympathy Maxim
(i) Minimize antipathy between self and other
(ii) Maximize sympathy between self and
other
presupposition
Presupposition can be defined in linguistics
as any kind of background assumption
against which an expression or utterance
makes sense or is rational.
Presuppositions refer to the conditions that
must be met in order for the intended
meaning of a sentence to be regarded as
acceptable.
Their team won this years African finals.
Their team played in the African finals.
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
Empirical findings reveal that some spoken texts can be
represented by variations of recursive exchanges. The term
exchange is used here to refer to the minimal unit of
interactive spoken texts.
An exchange may be of a two-part question-answer type,
like (1), or of a two-part greeting-response type like (2). It
may also be a typical three-part teacher-pupil talk like (3):
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
A: What time is it by your watch?
(Question)
B: Nine thirty. (Answer)
(2) A: Hello. (Greeting)
B: Hi. (Response)
(3) Teacher: What's the capital of France?
(Initiation)
Pupil: Paris. (Response)
Teacher: Right. (Feedback)
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
A
further
analysis
of
the
logical
relationship in spoken texts reveals some
automatic sequences. They are called
adjacency pairs. An adjacency pair always
consists of a first part and a second
part, produced by different speakers. For
example:
Anna: Hello.
Bill: Hi.
Cohesion
Halliday and Hasan (1976): Cohesion in
English
A text is not a collection of lexical items
and/or sentences in random. In other
words, it must have texture, i.e. the
property that distinguishes a text from a
non-text. The unity of a text can be
achieved by a number of semantic and
lexicogrammatical means, among which
the most important is cohesion .
Cohesive
ties
may
be
either
grammatical
devices
such
as
reference, ellipsis and substitution,
and conjunction, or lexical devices
such as general words, reiteration
and collocation.
Reference
Reference refers to the semantic relation in
which a word or words are used to enable
the addressee to identify someone or
something. The word or words used for
reference are called the reference item.
The person(s) or thing(s) identified by the
reference item are called the referent.
John has moved to a new house. He had it
built last year.
Substitution and Ellipsis
Substitution refers to the replacement of
one item by another and ellipsis the
omission of an item. Unlike reference,
substitution and ellipsis are a relation
between linguistic items. Substitution and
ellipsis are two closely related processes.
A: I ate two eggs and a cup of milk for my
breakfast.
B: I ate the same.
Conjunction
Conjunction in grammar refers to a
word or expression like and, but, or
that connects words, phrases,
clauses and/or sentences.
Lexical Cohesion
Lexical cohesion refers to the cohesive
effect achieved by the choice of lexical
items.
English lexical cohesive ties fall into two
categories: reiteration and collocation.
Reiteration can take the following four
forms: repetition, synonymy, antonymy,
and hyponymy and meronymy.
Theme and Rheme
According to Halliday (1994) ,theme can be defined as
the element which serves as the point of departure of
the message conveyed by the clause. It is the ground
from which the clause is taking off. In English, this
element always takes the first position of a clause. The
remaining part of the message, the part in which the
Theme is developed, is called the Rheme .
My parents gave me
a new bicycle
Theme
Rheme
Given + New
An information unit usually consists of two
components.
To Halliday (1994), the part which the
speaker invites the addressee to attend to
as unexpected, or important is the New,
and the part which the speaker presents as
being already known to the addressee is
the Given. In the tone structure, the New is
always signaled by the tonic accent.
The duke gave my aunt that teapot.
End of lecture
Thank you for your attention
