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Introduction to linguistics
Lecture 6: Pragmatics (1)
Sources
• Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, Nina
Hyams. 2003. An introduction to language.
– Chapter 5: The meaning of language, pp. 207-211
• Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia
of language, p. 120.
Semantics vs. pragmatics
• Semantics
studies the meaning that can be
determined from a sentence, phrase or word.
• But in a conversation, we follow a large
number of social rules,
– e.g. we don’t tell jokes during a funeral.
Semantics vs. pragmatics
• Pragmatics
: the study of meaning, as it
depends on context (speaker, situation).
• Pragmatics describes:
– The choice of language in social interaction.
– The effect of this choice on others.
• Speakers use different grammatical
constructions and vocabulary in different
contexts.
Pragmatics
• Social norms that influence the choice of
language include:
– Norms of
formality
(formal and informal lg);
– Norms of
politeness
.
• The lg used when talking to others reflects
social class
,
status
, degree of
intimacy
, etc.
Basic terminology
• Speech event
– a communicative exchange.
• Utterance
– a stretch of speech preceded and
followed by silence or a change of speaker
– Sentence
– the term used when discussing
grammar.
• Discourse
– a continuous stretch of spoken
language larger than a sentence.
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Context: types
• Linguistic context
– the discourse that
precedes the phrase or sentence to be
interpreted.
– e.g.
bank
has different meanings depending on
other words in an utterance:
– I keep all my money in this
bank
vs.
– People were sunbathing on the river
bank
.
Context: types
• Situational context
– the external world that
influences meaning:
– e.g. the meaning of the sign
bank
depends on its
physical location.
Context
• It's impossible to fully analyse the meaning of
a sentence without its context, e.g.:
• Flying planes can be dangerous
.
– Context helps to
disambiguate
this sentence:
1. Pilots must be well trained because
the act of
flying planes
can be dangerous;
2. Flying planes (=
planes that are flying
) can be
dangerous for migrating birds.
Deixis
• In a language, there exist
words and phrases
that cannot be fully understood without
additional contextual information
.
• Such expressions are called
deixis
[ ]
(from Greek 'pointing') or
deictic expressions
.
• The interpretation of deixis depends fully on
situational context
,
– and is always interpreted only with the reference
to the
speaker
.
Deixis: types
• Person deixis
: we need to know who the speaker,
hearer and other participants are to interpret it,
e.g.:
– Pronouns:
I hate him
– who
I
and
him
refer to?
• Time deixis
: we need to know the time of
speaking to understand such expressions as, e.g.:
– now, then, recently, last Thursday
.
– BIG SALE NEXT WEEK
– if this notice is undated, you
won’t know when the sale is or was.
Deixis: types
• Place deixis
: to understand it we need to
know the place of the utterance, e.g.:
– Bring that here and take this there
.
• Other deictic expressions showing spacial
relations:
– come/go,
– bring/take,
– this place/that place
– yonder mountains
, etc.
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Anaphora vs. cataphora
• Deixis includes words that refer backwards or
forwards in utterances.
• Anaphora (anaphoric reference)
[
]
–
refers to something within a text that has
been previously identified, e.g.:
– in "
Susan dropped
the plate
.
It
shattered loudly
"
the word "
it
" refers to the phrase "
the pl
ate".
Anaphora vs. cataphora
• Cataphora (cataphoric reference
) [ ] –
refers to something within a text that has not
yet been identified, e.g.:
– in "
He
was very cold.
David
promptly put on his
coat
"
– we don’t know who "
he
" is until the individual is
also referred to as "
David
".