Introduction to Pragmatics: Study of Language in Context
1. Definitions and Background
Pragmatics: Concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). In essence, pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning. This involves interpreting what people mean in a particular context and how that context influences what is said. Therefore, pragmatics is also the study of contextual meaning. It explores how listeners infer meaning from what is said to understand the speaker’s intended message. Thus, pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said. The choice between what is explicitly stated and what is left unsaid is often tied to the notion of distance. Speakers assess the listener’s proximity (physical, social, or psychological) to determine how much needs to be explicitly communicated. Hence, pragmatics can be seen as the study of the expression of relative distance.
Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics:
- Syntax: The study of the relationships between linguistic forms, their arrangement, and well-formed sequences.
- Semantics: The study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; how words literally connect to things. Semantics also examines the truth or accuracy of verbal descriptions in relation to real-world states of affairs.
- Pragmatics: The study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms. Pragmatics allows us to analyze intended meanings, assumptions, purposes, and goals in communication. However, it can be challenging because it involves understanding people’s minds and intentions.
Regularity: Regularity in language use stems from social conventions and shared experiences within a linguistic community. People generally adhere to expected behavioral patterns within their social groups. Shared experiences and non-linguistic knowledge also contribute to regularity.
Semantics is concerned with the truth-conditions of propositions. If proposition P involves an action and proposition Q involves another action, we tend to interpret the conjunction “and” not as a logical conjunction, but as a sequence (“and then”). The more two speakers have in common, the less language they need to identify familiar things.
2. Deixis and Distance
Deixis: Deixis means “pointing” via language. A deictic expression is any linguistic form used for this purpose. Types of deixis include:
- Person deixis: (e.g., me, you) indicates people.
- Spatial deixis: (e.g., here, there) indicates location.
- Temporal deixis: (e.g., now, then) indicates time.
Deixis relies on shared context between speaker and hearer. A fundamental distinction is between “near speaker” (proximal terms like this, here, now) and “away from speaker” (distal terms like that, there, then). Proximal terms are interpreted relative to the speaker’s location, the deictic center. “Now” refers to a point or period in time centered around the speaker’s utterance.
Person Deixis: Operates on a three-part division: first person (I), second person (you), and third person (he, she, it). Some languages elaborate these categories with honorifics, markers of social status. Social deixis examines the factors influencing the choice of these forms.
Spatial Deixis: Indicates the relative location of people and things. English uses here and there, but other languages and dialects may have a wider range of deictic expressions. Deictic projection occurs when the speaker mentally fixes a location. The pragmatic basis of spatial deixis is psychological distance. Physically close objects are often treated as psychologically close, and vice versa. However, a speaker can mark something physically close as psychologically distant (e.g., “I don’t like that“).
Temporal Deixis: “Now” refers to the time of the speaker’s utterance. “Then” refers to both past and future times relative to the speaker’s present. Non-deictic temporal reference systems include calendar and clock time. These are learned later than deictic expressions like yesterday, tomorrow, and today, which rely on the utterance time for interpretation. Temporal deixis has a psychological basis similar to spatial deixis. Events can be treated as moving towards us (into view) or away from us (out of view). Verb tense (present or past) is a basic type of temporal deixis in English.
Deixis and Grammar: Person, spatial, and temporal deixis operate in the grammatical distinction between direct and indirect speech. Direct speech uses proximal deictic forms, conveying a sense of immediacy. Indirect speech uses distal forms, making the original speech event seem more remote. Deictic expressions rely on context, speaker intention, and express relative distance.
3. Reference and Inference
Reference: The act of using linguistic forms (referring expressions) to enable identification. Referring expressions include proper nouns (Shakespeare, Hawaii), definite noun phrases (the man, the woman), and pronouns (he, she, it, them). The choice of referring expression depends on the speaker’s assumptions about the listener’s knowledge. Successful reference relies on inference. Since words don’t directly map onto entities, listeners must infer the intended referent. Speakers use various strategies, including vague expressions (e.g., “the blue thing”) and invented names (e.g., “Mr. Aftershave”), relying on the listener’s ability to infer.
Referential and Attributive Uses: Not all referring expressions have identifiable physical referents. Indefinite noun phrases can identify present entities (e.g., “There’s a man waiting for you”), but also non-existent entities (e.g., “We’d love to find a nine-foot-tall basketball player”) or those known only by description (e.g., “He wants to marry a woman with lots of money”). The latter is an attributive use, meaning “whoever/whatever fits the description.” This contrasts with a referential use where the speaker has a specific person in mind. Definite noun phrases can also have attributive uses (e.g., “There’s no sign of the killer” when the killer is unknown) and referential uses (when the killer has been identified).
Names and Referents: Reference involves an “intention-to-identify” and a “recognition-of-intention” collaboration. Conventions exist for using referring expressions, but these are flexible. A person can be identified with “the cheese sandwich,” and a thing can be identified with “Shakespeare.” A pragmatic connection exists between proper names and conventionally associated objects. Using a proper name unconventionally invites the listener to make a specific inference, demonstrating shared socio-cultural knowledge.
The Role of Co-text: Co-text (the linguistic material accompanying a referring expression) helps disambiguate reference. For example, in “Brazil wins the World Cup,” the co-text clarifies that “Brazil” refers to the national team. The referring expression provides a range of reference, and the co-text narrows it down. The physical environment (context) and socio-cultural conventions also play a role.
Anaphoric Reference (Anaphora): Subsequent reference to previously introduced entities. For example, “A man and a woman are getting married. The man gave the woman a ring, and the woman started crying. They are a great couple.” The definite noun phrases and the pronoun “they” are anaphors, referring back to the antecedents “a man” and “a woman.” Cataphora occurs when the pronoun precedes the full noun phrase (e.g., “I turned the corner and almost stepped on it. There was a large snake…”). Zero anaphora or ellipsis occurs when a referent is implied but not explicitly mentioned (e.g., “Cook (?) for three minutes”).
Successful reference is a social act relying on shared knowledge and inference. The immediate recognition of an intended referent signals social closeness.
4. Presupposition and Entailment
Presupposition: Something a speaker assumes to be true prior to making an utterance. Entailment: Something that logically follows from what is asserted in the utterance; a property of sentences. For example, “Mary’s brother bought three horses” presupposes that Mary exists and has a brother. It entails that Mary’s brother bought something, bought animals, and bought three of something.
Presupposition: Often treated as a relationship between propositions (P >> Q, meaning P presupposes Q). Constancy under negation means that a presupposition remains true even when the sentence is negated (NOT P >> Q).
Types of Presupposition:
- Existential: The X presupposes that X exists.
- Factive: I regret leaving presupposes that I left.
- Non-factive: He pretended to be happy presupposes that he wasn’t happy.
- Lexical: He managed to escape presupposes that he tried to escape.
- Structural: When did she die? presupposes that she died.
- Counterfactual: If I weren’t ill… presupposes that I am ill.
The Projection Problem: Presuppositions of simple sentences don’t always carry over to complex sentences.
Entailment is a logical concept. Speakers can manipulate ordered entailments using stress to indicate the foreground entailment, the main focus of the message.
5. Cooperation and Implicature
Conversation relies on cooperation. Implicature is the additional conveyed meaning beyond the literal meaning of words. For example, if someone replies “A hamburger is a hamburger” when asked for their opinion, the implicature is that they have no strong opinion.
The Cooperative Principle: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange.
Gricean Maxims:
- Quantity: Be as informative as required, but not more informative than required.
- Quality: Try to make your contribution true; don’t say what you believe is false or lack evidence for.
- Relation: Be relevant.
- Manner: Be perspicuous (clear, brief, unambiguous, and orderly).
Hedges: Expressions that indicate a speaker may not be fully adhering to the maxims (e.g., “as far as I know,” “I may be mistaken,” “to cut a long story short,” “oh, by the way”).
Conversational Implicatures: Inferences made based on the assumption that speakers are adhering to the cooperative principle. For example, if someone asks “Did you bring the bread and the cheese?” and the other person replies “I brought the bread,” the implicature is that they didn’t bring the cheese.
Generalized Conversational Implicatures: Require no special knowledge to calculate. Scalar implicatures arise from the use of words on a scale of values (e.g., “some” implies not all).
Particularized Conversational Implicatures: Require specific contextual knowledge. For example, if someone says “My parents are visiting” when asked about attending a party, the implicature is that they won’t be going to the party.
Properties of Conversational Implicatures: They are deniable; speakers can deny they intended to communicate a particular implicature.
Conventional Implicatures: Associated with specific words (e.g., “but” implies contrast, “even” implies contrary to expectation, “yet” implies a change in the future). Different interpretations of “and” can also be seen as conventional implicatures.
6. Speech Acts and Events
Utterances perform actions (speech acts), such as apologies, complaints, compliments, invitations, promises, and requests. The speech event (the circumstances surrounding the utterance) influences interpretation. For example, “This tea is really cold” can be a complaint in winter or praise in summer.
Speech Acts:
- Locutionary act: Producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
- Illocutionary act: The communicative force of an utterance (e.g., stating, requesting, promising).
- Perlocutionary act: The effect of the utterance on the hearer.
Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs): Indicate the illocutionary force. Performative verbs explicitly name the illocutionary act (e.g., “I promise you that…”). Other IFIDs include word order, stress, and intonation.
Felicity Conditions: The conditions that must be met for a speech act to be successful. These include general conditions (e.g., participants understand the language), content conditions (e.g., a promise must refer to a future act of the speaker), preparatory conditions (e.g., for a promise, the event will not happen by itself and will be beneficial), sincerity conditions (e.g., for a promise, the speaker intends to carry out the action), and essential conditions (e.g., a promise creates an obligation).
Speech Act Classification:
- Declarations: Change the world via their utterance (e.g., “You’re fired!”).
- Representatives: State what the speaker believes (e.g., “The earth is round.”).
- Expressives: State what the speaker feels (e.g., “I’m sorry.”).
- Directives: Attempt to get someone to do something (e.g., “Please close the door.”).
- Commissives: Commit the speaker to a future action (e.g., “I’ll be there.”).
Direct and Indirect Speech Acts: A direct speech act has a direct relationship between structure and function (e.g., a declarative used to make a statement). An indirect speech act has an indirect relationship (e.g., a declarative used to make a request). Indirect speech acts are often more polite.
Speech Events: Social situations with participants, social relationships, and goals. A speech event is an activity in which participants interact via language to achieve an outcome.
7. Politeness and Interaction
Linguistic interaction is social interaction. Politeness is showing awareness of another person’s face (public self-image). Face-threatening acts threaten another’s self-image. Face-saving acts lessen the threat.
Face Wants: People expect their public self-image to be respected.
Negative and Positive Face:
- Negative face: The need to be independent and free from imposition.
- Positive face: The need to be accepted and liked.
Negative Politeness: Shows deference and avoids imposition (e.g., apologizing for interrupting).
Positive Politeness: Shows solidarity and emphasizes shared goals (e.g., using nicknames).
Strategies:
- Solidarity strategy: Emphasizes closeness (e.g., using personal information, slang).
- Deference strategy: Emphasizes the hearer’s independence (e.g., formal politeness).
Pre-sequences: Used to avoid risk to face (e.g., pre-requests, pre-invitations, pre-announcements).
8. Conversation and Preference Structure
Conversation Analysis: Analyzes conversation structure. The floor is the right to speak. A turn is having control of the floor. Turn-taking is the process of taking turns. A transition relevance place (TRP) is a possible change-of-turn point.
Pauses, Overlaps, and Backchannels: Attributable silence is significant. Backchannels (e.g., “uh-huh,” “yeah”) indicate listening.
Conversational Style:
- High involvement style: Fast speaking rate, little pausing, overlaps.
- High considerateness style: Slower rate, longer pauses, no overlaps.
Adjacency Pairs: Automatic patterns in conversation (e.g., greetings, question-answer). An insertion sequence is one adjacency pair within another.
Preference Structure: Silence in the second part of an adjacency pair indicates a dispreferred response.
9. Discourse Analysis and Culture
Discourse Analysis: Focuses on the unsaid and unwritten aspects of communication. Considers background knowledge, beliefs, and expectations.
Coherence: The assumption that discourse will make sense based on normal experience.
Background Knowledge: Schemata are pre-existing knowledge structures. Frames are static schemata. Scripts are dynamic schemata involving event sequences.
Cultural Schemata: Schemata are culturally determined.
Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Studies differences in expectations based on cultural schemata. Contrastive pragmatics compares different cultural ways of speaking. Interlanguage pragmatics studies the communicative behavior of non-native speakers. We all speak with a pragmatic accent, which reflects our cultural assumptions about communication.