Modern Linguistics
Chapter 9
Using Language
Professor Dr Salah Mohammed
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the branch of linguistics which studies those
aspects of meaning which cannot be captured by semantic
theory. In brief, it deals with how speakers use language in
ways which cannot be predicted from linguistic knowledge
alone.
In a narrow sense, pragmatics deals with how listeners
arrive at the intended meaning of speakers. In its broadest
sense, it deals with the general principles followed by
human beings when they communicate with one another.
It is therefore sometimes light-heartedly referred to as
'the waste-paper-basket of semantics.
Discourse Analysis
Pragmatics overlaps with discourse analysis, which deals with the
various devices used by speakers and writers when they knit
single sentences together into a coherent and cohesive whole.
Discourse Analysis is a method of analyzing the structure of texts
or utterances longer than one sentence, taking into account both
their linguistic content and their sociolinguistic context.
Discourse analysis overlaps with stylistics, the study of linguistics
and literature. Devices which maintain the smooth flow of
communication are particularly important in written language,
where there is no one available to clarify unclear points
The Cooperative Principle
An American philosopher, Paul Grice, is sometimes
regarded as the 'father of pragmatics'. Grice
emphasized that human beings communicate
efficiently because they are by nature helpful to
one another. He attempted to specify the principles
which underlie this cooperative behaviour, and
proposed four 'maxims' or rules of conversation
which can jointly be summarized as a general
principle: 'Be cooperative'. These are given below
Maxims
1 Maxim of Quantity Give the right amount of information when you
talk. If someone at a party asked "Who's that person with Bob?', a
cooperative reply would be That's his new girlfriend, Alison'. An
uncooperative reply would be an over-brief one, such as 'A girl', or an
over-long one, such as That's Alison Margaret Jones, born in Kingston,
Surrey on 4th July 1970, daughter of Peter and Mary Jones... etc'
2 Maxim of Quality (Be truthful). For example, if someone asked you
the name of an unfamiliar animal, such as a platypus, reply truthfully,
and don't say 'It's a kookaburra', or 'It's a duck', if you know it's a
platypus.
3 Maxim of Relevance (Be relevant). If someone says, 'What's for
supper?', give a reply which fits the question, such as 'Fish and chips',
and not Tables and chairs' or 'Buttercups are yellow'.
4 Maxim of Manner (Be clear and orderly). For example, describe
things in the order in which they occurred.
Violation of the Maxims
At this outline level, the cooperative principle
seems like common-sense. It becomes more
interesting when we consider how often people
apparently break it. In answer to the question:
‘What's for supper?' one is likely to receive a
reply such as: 'Billy fell downstairs', which
doesn't answer the query.
Conversational Implicatures
In brief, listeners interpret what people say as conforming
to the cooperative principle, even when this principle is
overtly broken. They draw implications from the
utterance which are not strictly there in the linguistic
meaning.
The main problem with these Gricean maxims is that they
are fairly vague, and the conversational implicatures or
conclusions which can be drawn are wide and numerous.
Some recent work therefore has attempted to specify
how humans manage to disentangle what is relevant
from the mass of possible inferences they could make.
Speech Acts
When a person utters a sequence of words, the speaker is
often trying to achieve some effect with those words, an effect
which might in some cases have been accomplished by an
alternative action.
This overall approach is known as speech act theory.
Proponents of speech act theory try to list the various possible
speech acts which a speaker might attempt to perform -
statements, requests, queries, commands, promises, placing
of bets, and so on. At the heart of the list come statements,
questions and commands:
(I state that:) It's cold.
(I ask you:) What's the time?
(I command you:) Go away
Direct And Indirect Speech Acts
These are examples of direct speech acts: the act is expressed
overtly by the most obvious linguistic means. But many
speech acts are indirect, in that they possess the syntactic
structure more usually associated with another act. For
example, the following might all be intended as commands,
yet only the first has the typical command structure:
Go to bed!
Isn't it past your bedtime?
You should have been in bed long ago.
The first is therefore a direct speech act, but the second two
are indirect speech acts.
Conversation Analysis
Conversation is not just a case of linking
sentences together. On a more basic level, it fits
into a conventional framework.
Conversation Analysis is an approach to the
study of social interaction that empirically
investigates the mechanisms by which humans
achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on
both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially
in situations of everyday life.
Turn-taking
Conversations, then, typically follow a predictable
format, exchanges are selected from a number of
commonly used types. The options chosen by a
particular speaker on a particular occasion depend
on the social situation.
Turn-taking occurs in a conversation when one
person listens while the other person speaks. As a
conversation progresses, the listener and speaker
roles are exchanged back and forth (a circle of
discussion).
Adjacency Pairs
Adjacency pairs are sequences of two related
utterances which are given by two different
speakers. The second utterance is always a
response to the first. Adjacency pairs are the
smallest unit in conversation.
Repairs
Conversations do not necessarily run smoothly. People cannot always explain
things properly. Or they make a mistake. Or the person they are talking to
makes a mistake. These minor breakdowns, if noticed, have to be 'repaired'.
Repairs sometimes involve self-repair, when a speaker spontaneously notices a
problem and solves it:
Could you hand me a spoon? A teaspoon, that is.
Marion arrived on Saturday-sorry, I mean Sunday.
Sometimes they involve other-repair, when someone is not quite sure about
what has been said, or suspects that the other person has made a mistake:
I assume you mean a teaspoon.
Did Marion really arrive on Saturday? Wasn't it Sunday?
However, humans do not usually confront one another directly, so other-
initiated self-repair is very common. In such cases, a listener mildly queries the
speaker, who then repairs the original utterance: Speaker A: Alan's taken a
course in deep-sea diving. Speaker B: Alan? Has he really? Speaker A: Sorry, I
don't mean Alan, I mean Alec. As this example suggests, humans tend to be
polite to one another, so politeness can radically affect the structure of
conversations.
Politeness
If you wanted someone to shut the door, you could in theory use any of
the following sentences:
Shut the door!
I wonder if you’d mind shutting the door?
There's quite a draught in here.
But in practice, the first, a direct command, would be uttered perhaps
only to a young child. To anyone else, it would seem somewhat rude.
This avoidance of directness is partly culturally based.
The idea that it is politer to say things indirectly may be universal.
Humans everywhere tend to be polite in similar ways, based on two
basic social requirements: 'No criticism' and 'No interference'. Humans
want to be approved of, and they do not want to be imposed upon.
Consequently, anyone with social know-how will minimize criticism of
others and will avoid interfering with their liberty, at least overtly. These
requirements of ‘No criticism' and 'No interference' have an effect on
language. Any criticism or interference will be a social risk.
