Pragmatics

PRAGMATICS
INDEX:
0. Index
• What is pragmatics?
• Contextual meaning
• Kinds of meaning
• Context coding
• Speech Acts and Intentional Meaning
♦ Speech Acts
♦ Intentional Meaning
♦ Gricean Pragmatics
◊ Cooperative Principle
◊ Implicatures
◊ Relevance
⋅ Inference and Context
⋅ Explicature
⋅ Metaphor
⋅ What is pragmatics?
Pragmatics is an approach to discourse in which three concepts are
concerned: meaning, context and communication. In order to elucidate the
term Pragmatics we provide a set of definitions from different resources.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online:
In linguistics and philosophy, the study of the use of natural language in
communication; more generally, the study of the relations between languages
and their users.
It is sometimes defined in contrast with linguistic semantics, which can be
described as the study of the rule systems that determine the literal meanings
of linguistic expressions. Pragmatics is then the study of how both literal
and nonliteral aspects of communicated linguistic meaning are determined by
principles that refer to the physical or social context (broadly construed) in
which language is used. Among these aspects are conversational and
conventional implicatures (e.g., John has three sons conversationally
implicates that John has no more than three sons; He was poor but honest
conventionally implicates an unspecified contrast between poverty and
honesty).
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article−9375791
And following the Merriam Webster definition:
⋅ a branch of semiotic that deals with the relation between signs or linguistic
expressions and their users.
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⋅ a branch of linguistics that is concerned with the relationship of sentences to
the environment in which they occur.
http://www.merriam−webster.com/dictionary/pragmatics
For Jacob Mey:
Language is the chief means by which people communicate. The use of
language, for various purposes, is governed by the conditions of society,
inasmuch as these conditions determine the users' access to, and control of,
their communicative means.
Hence, pragmatics is the study of the conditions of human language uses as
these are determined by the context of society.
(Italics taken from the original)
In Katz (1977:19):
Grammars are theories about the structure of sentences typesPragmatics
theories, in contrastexplicate the reasoning of speakers and hearers trying to
establish a link between what is said and the semantic proposition behind it.
According to Levinson (1983:9):
Pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that
are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a language.
There are two tendencies in current pragmatics. On the one hand, a kind of
pragmatics concerned with analyzing language in relation to its
communicative function, where the analysis flows from language to context
in order to provide and adequate description of the structure of the linguistic
code. On the other hand, a sort of pragmatics dealing with the context in
which the statement occurs and how this context determines the meaning of
this statement, an example of this is Grice's theory. Here the mechanisms of
communication, which explain the meanings of the utilized linguistic signs,
are analyzed.
2. Contextual meaning
2.1. Kinds of meaning
There are two kinds of meaning, and they include other types of meaning:
semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning.
The semantic meaning is expressed by statements. Those statements are
linguistic units (both spoken and written) inherently contextualized, that is
statements are sentences in use. To be able to interpret statements we need a
minimum context.
Our languages are cultural products and therefore their phonic, syntactic and
semantic structures are conventional, that is, they are not natural. Thus,
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sentences have conventional (as long as languages are conventional codes) or
grammatical (the code itself) meaning. As an example of this we can see the
following sentence:
⋅ The boy is sick.
This sentence is compounded of lexical elements combined following
grammatical criteria; therefore this example reproduces a correct sentence. If
it would not have followed these rules it would have been an ungrammatical
sentence. Both the lexical meanings and the grammatical rules are
conventional, that is, arbitrary and consolidated through time.
Semantics studies the linguistic meaning (semantic meaning), which is based
on the relationships between the expression and the world, that is, the
conditions of veracity of the sentence. Thus, the relationship between the
described situation and the world must be verified in order to explain the
meaning of (1). The content of the sentence, which is called proposition, is
true if the boy is sick.
However, speakers do not only use sentence (1) to say that the boy is sick,
which is its semantic meaning, but it can have other meanings in a particular
context. For instance, if a mother uses this example when she is invited to go
shopping, it may imply that she cannot go out; and this is what we call
pragmatic meaning. Therefore, it can be said that sentences, once they are put
in context, can have new meanings. Semantics relates linguistic forms to the
objects of the world represented by them, however, it does not deal with the
reasons why speakers use such forms in a particular context, a task done by
pragmatics.
♦ Context coding
It is not always easy to distinguish the differences between the semantic and
the pragmatic meaning. Consider the following sentence:
⋅ They will not be interested in a book like that.
According to the grammatical rules of English, this example is a correct
sentence. However, it is not easy to establish its semantic meaning, since
there are elements in (2) that have no meaning without a context. These
words are they and like that. What are their meanings? Every English speaker
can recognize these items and even find them in the dictionary, but the
dictionary cannot help us to understand (2), because they need a context.
Firstly, we cannot know to whom they is intended to refer. The adjective like
that has also no meaning if it is not associated to a context.
Human languages have grammatical elements, such as deictic expressions,
which encode some aspects of the context. Deictic words can be personal
pronouns, which identify the participants of the communicative act, and
adverbs like here, there, now, yesterday.
Deictic elements are in the boundary line between semantics and pragmatics.
Thus, many linguists consider the work of pragmatics begins with deictic
expressions and other similar elements which belong to the grammar of a
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language but are context dependent. Whenever we have to resort to the
context in order to attach meaning to linguistic expressions we are doing
pragmatics.
Nevertheless, this previous linguistic stance does not take into account many
phenomena that have to do with the language, its structure and its semantic
meaning. The following statement, which took place during a meal, has a
pragmatic meaning which is not directly related to its semantic meaning:
⋅ These vegetable soups are always a bit tasteless, aren't they?
The person that said that did not want to inform his/her addressees about the
main qualities of this kind of soups, but rather he/she would have wanted to
mean that the soup was bland and he/she would like to put more salt in it.
The purpose of (3) could be to ask salt without offending the person who had
done the soup.
The example above shows that there are disparities between the literal
meaning and the real meaning, i.e. what the speaker wants to transmit.
Therefore, pragmatics has to analyze not only the production and
interpretation of the grammaticalized linguistic elements, but also the non−
grammaticalized.
Generally, we understand by context the collection of knowledge and beliefs
shared by the participants in a verbal communication. These knowledge and
beliefs are relevant to produce and interpret the statements.
As regards to Pragmatics, it is important to distinguish three kinds of context:
linguistic, situational and sociocultural. The first consists of the linguistic
material which precedes and follows a statement. The linguistic context is
also known as co−text. The situational context contains the information about
the immediate physical material surrounding the situation. Finally, the
sociocultural context is the configuration of the data taken from social and
cultural influence on verbal behaviour and its uses according to different
circumstances. For example, there are social rules to greet or rules in order to
know which linguistic register use in a particular situation.
Frames are the structure containing the whole communicative system. They
are one of the most interesting aspects of the sociocultural context. They are
also very important in relation to Pragmatics because statements are always
interpreted within a metacommunicative frame which qualifies the situation
of the communicative act and the participants. These frames provide the data
necessary for us to communicate. This information can be stereotyped
structures of situations or concepts which allow us to associate some
meanings with other meanings. For example, if someone says library, we will
automatically think in a context in which there are books, shelves, librarians,
etc.
In situations of ritualized speaking like greetings, the sentences truth value is
not so important because they are highly context dependent. Therefore, we
say want we want to say in every occasion. However, we also say what we
are expected to say since our linguistic behaviour is codified by social rules.
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These codifications belong to the context because they determine the
meaning of the statements.
3. Speech Acts and Intentional Meaning
3.1. Speech acts
Speech acts are mainly acts of communication. The main idea of the speech
act theory is that language is not only utilized to describe the world but also
to change reality. In view of the fact that a speech act is an act of
communication it succeeds if its audience identifies the speaker's intention
that means, the attitude being expressed. As an example of this a statement
expresses a belief, a request entails a desire and an apology expresses a
regret. This was already studied by some language philosophers before the
seventies like John Austin, who is considered as the pioneer of modern
pragmatics and whose theory was revised and consolidated by his disciple
John Searle.
At first Austin developed a theory with two kinds of statements in which one,
assertive (4), described things as true or false and the other, performative (5),
attached to the felicity conditions. These conditions are necessary to the
success of a speech act. An essential fact for the felicity conditions is that the
people uttering the speech act must be qualified to do it. As an example of
this not everyone is allowed to declare war, to baptize people or to pass a
sentence.
(4) It is raining.
(5) I promise to stay.
Performative statements appoint exactly the action done when we utter the
statement, e.g. declare, order, promise, baptize, swear
Afterwards Austin reformulated his initial theory when he realized that
assertive statements are used to comply with acts too, although they have no
explicit performative verbs. Thus, (4) is an assertion even though it does not
contain the verb assert in it.
From this new perspective we can extract three different speech acts:
illocutionary act, locutionary act and perlocutionary act. The speech act from
which we can extract the meaning is the locutionary act (6).
(6) It's snowing
The illocutionary act is the force, the capacity to do something (7).
(7) Welcome back home.
Finally the perlocutionary act provokes a set of effects on the interlocutor
(persuade, surprise, scare) (8)
(8) Really?
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Searle considers speech acts as linguistic communicative units performed
following a set of rules. These rules, closely related to linguistic conditions,
define speech acts. These directives are not only used to regulate but they
also create or define a behavioural manner.
Searle declared that there is a correlation between linguistic forms and speech
acts and thus assertions are realized using declarative statements and
questions by means of interrogatives, when language is being used literally.
However speakers also use language in an indirect manner (non−literal)
many times, therefore the theory must provide an adequate explanation.
Indirect speech acts are considered by Searle as the superimposition of two
acts: a literal and a non−literal. The hearer interprets the true speech act
(non−literal) due to the sociocultural and situational contexts where the act is
performed and to his / her ability to interpret the speaker's intention. As an
example of this:
(9) Can you pass me the salt, please?
Here the semantic meaning would ask about the hearer's ability to perform
the action, whereas the pragmatic meaning would order the hearer to pass the
salt to the speaker.
3.2. Intentional Meaning
The intentional meaning is a basic aspect of pragmatics. It is based on the
fact that what is said has a meaning that depends on the used expressions and
it is subject to its veracity. What we want to say has pragmatic force and it is
pragmatics that conjectures the principles that allow us to interpret this force.
In the following example:
(10) It's cold here, isn't it?
We do not only interpret the natural meaning (the fact that it is cold) but also
the intentional one that provokes a reaction on the hearer (close the window
or switch the heating on). Thus, communication is realized when the hearer
interprets correctly the speaker's intention and not only the literal meaning.
Pragmatics studies the intentional meaning, what someone wants to say. The
philosopher Paul Grice developed two key theories in pragmatics: the
non−natural meaning and implicatures. As regards to speaker meaning Grice
separates non−natural meaning from natural meaning. Natural meaning
berefts of human intentionality, whereas non−natural meaning is equivalent
to intentional meaning. As said in Schiffrin (1994: 192) As Grice (p. 58)
states: ´A meant−nn something by X` is (roughly) equivalent to ´A intended
to utterance of X to produce some effect in an audience by means of the
recognition of this intention`. From all the previous said we can deduce that
the natural meaning follows the relation between cause and effect, as for
example
(11) Those spots mean measles.
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Whereas the non−natural meaning has a conventional meaning that is an
invented meaning:
(12) Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full.
4. Gricean Pragmatics.
4.1. Cooperative Principle.
According to Grice's theory there is a previous tacit agreement to collaborate
when communicating, and Grice names this Cooperative Principle (CP).
Grice proposes a general principle which participants will be expected to
observe: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the
stage at which occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged. (Schiffrin, 1994: 194).
The Cooperative Principle consists of four specific maxims:
Quantity:
⋅ Make your contribution as informative as is required;
⋅ Do not make your contribution more informative than required.
Quality:
⋅ Do not say what you believe to be false;
⋅ Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Relation:
Make your contribution relevant.
Manner:
Be perspicuous, and specifically:
⋅ avoid obscurity
⋅ avoid ambiguity
⋅ be brief
⋅ be orderly.
♦ Implicatures
Implicatures are a kind of pragmatic meaning. When talking about
implicatures we refer to
Something that is implied by a speaker uttering a sentence, without being part
of the truth−conditional content of that sentence. The notion was introduced
() to explain how speakers can mean more with their utterance than what they
say. Some implicatures where conventionally tied to specific words (like but,
differing from and in its conventional implicature of contrast), others follow
on the basis of the Cooperative Principle and its maxims. A well−known
example are the scalar implicatures, where a weaker term on a scale
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implicates the negation of a stronger term.
http://www2.let.uu.nl/Uil−OTS/Lexicon/
There are two types of implicatures: conversational implicature and
conventional implicature.
Conversational implicatures are not dependent on the conventional meaning
but on the principles ruling the conversation. These kinds of statements can
be easily cancelled precisely because they are implied by the context by a
following realization. Thus, I can say
(13) Paul ate some of the Easter eggs.
and add:
− in fact he ate all of them.
In this way, the context added by this second utterance cancels the
implicature of the first sentence. Thus the conversational implicature is added
by the second utterance.
Conventional implicatures are not dependent on any conversational context
but they have meaning by themselves. Their additional meanings are inner in
this linguistic expressions. An illustrative example of this
(14) Finally, Susan managed to submit her essay on time.
This statement means that Susan submitted the essay and implies that she did
a great effort to achieve it. The idea of the effort made by Susan is implicit in
the verbal construction to manage to + infinitive, a conventional implicature
of this expression. Furthermore the adverb finally also gives the idea of
effort.
Therefore, Conventional implicatures are non−truth−conditional inferences
that are not derived from superordinate pragmatic principles like the maxims,
but are simple attached by convention to particular lexical items. (Levinson
1983: 127)
Implicatures take place in the following cases:
⋅ when the speaker follows the maxims.
As an example of this,
A− I have a terrible headache.
⋅ I have an aspirin.
Thus, this statement implies that the B is offering An an aspirin.
(16) when the speaker seems to violate the maxims but he / she does not.
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A trainer recommends a bad although hard−worker football player called
Michael to another football trainer and says:
− Michael is a very responsible guy. He attends every training session and
works very hard.
The trainer offers less information than it is expected and thus, seems to
violate the principle of quantity. Thus, the addressee draws the implicature
that Michael is a bad footballer.
(17) when the speaker does not need to obey one of the maxims to obey a
more important one that is the one which will show the implicatures. B does
not know who exactly wrote Miss Dalloway but he/she just knows the
author's nationality.
⋅ Who wrote Miss Dalloway?
⋅ An English writer.
Due to the fact that B does not know who the writer is, he / she breaks the
quantity maxim in order not to violate the quality maxim.
(18) when the speaker deliberately violates a maxim.
BOY− (ninth time) When are we going to the park?
FATHER− When your father finishes his work and stands up and has a
shower
The father violates deliberately the maxims of quantity, relation and manner
in order to make the boy infer from his answer his attitude, because the boy
had been too insistent.
⋅ Relevance Theory
Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson proposed this theory, one of the most
important in current pragmatics. They followed Grice's model, but their
theory proposes a different manner to explain the linguistic process of
communication.
As regards to CP, Sperber and Wilson said that interlocutors are
cooperative because they want to obtain cognitive effects i.e. knowledge
of the world. Every intentional statement has relevance guarantee.
According to Sperber and Wilson, when we communicate we have the
task to improve our knowledge. Relevance guarantee allows us to think
that if a person emits a deliberate verbal stimulus, we must pay attention
and interpret it, because it produces the cognitive effects which are
relevant for us.
5.1. Inferences
Inference is a deductive reasoning process which starts from a set of
premises to achieve a conclusion following these premises. Addresses
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select from what is said the most relevant premises following the
relevance principle. As an example of this
(19) A.−Are you coming to the stag night?
B.−I've spent all my money.
According to the relevance theory, A creates a context in order to
understand B answers. This context is the one B expected A to create.
From the several premises A can find in the created context, he / she
infers the most important inference: the fact that B is not going to the
stag night.
In the relevance theory the context is defined as psychological, and not
social or cultural. The important issue is the fact that the participants
share a similar context, and thus they both know the same and the
communicative act is successful.
5.2. Explicature
The notion of explicatures is first introduced by Sperber and Wilson (1995:
182) to complement Gricean's notion of implicature. They were attempting to
show that pragmatic inferences contribute both to what is implied and to what
is explicitly communicated. Sperber and Wilson defined explicature as an
explicit assumption communicated by an utterance.
Thus, the explicature is the proposition taken from conventionally expressed
and from the disambiguation, enrichment and reference assignation.
In this way, explicatures and implicatures are very close but whereas
explicatures are described as developments of logical forms, implicatures are
shown as expansions or completions of semantic contents.
5.3. Metaphor.
The important issue in communicating is not the literal truth but being
relevant in the utterances performed.
(20) Tom is on holidays in Cea and meets Mary. They are talking about who
they are from. Tom answers:
−I live in Cangas.
This statement is relevant because Tom wants Mary to infer the whole set of
implicatures that can be taken from (11): the fact that he lives in Galicia, on
the coast of Pontevedra (and not in Costa Brava or Ourense), and that she can
visit him anytime in Cangas. Tom sets the truth of these implications,
although not the literal meaning of the statement he gave to communicate.
(21) exemplifies Sperber & Wilson's loose talk. For these authors metaphors
are a subtype of loose talk and can be analyzed in the same manner.
Metaphor's literal meaning is always inappropriate.
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Metaphors are more difficult to understand, however they produce a greater
cognitive effect.
REFERENCES
Katz, Jerry J. 1977: Propositional Structure and Illocutionary Force. New
York: Crowell.
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983: Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Mey, Jacob L. 1993: Pragmatics. An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers
Reyes, Graciela 1995: El abecé de la Pragmática. Madrid: Arco Libros.
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994: Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson 1986: Relevance: Communication and
Cognition. Cambridge: Mass. Harvard University Press.
www.britannica.com
www.merriam−webster.com
www2.let.uu.nl
www.griffith.edu.au/school/lal/staff/haugh_papers/Haugh2002Intuitive_basis_of_impl
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