Pragmatics: Relevance Theory, Communication, and Politeness
Pragmatics: Key Concepts
1. Steps to Comprehension According to Relevance Theory
- Language module apprehends a grammatical sequence (linguistic decoding)
- Identification of the logical form of the utterance (no context is required)
- Intentional pragmatic enrichment (context is required)
- Reference assignment, disambiguation, free enrichment, conceptual narrowing.
- Proposition expressed by the utterance (guided by a criterion of relevance: implicature and explicature)
2. Relevance Theory in Relation to Visual Metaphor
- The literal (explicit) meaning of the utterance is communicated but requires the adjustment of concepts.
- The literal, explicit meaning is part of the speaker’s intended metaphoric interpretation.
- The metaphoric interpretation is mainly communicated as a strong or weak implicature.
3. Misunderstanding
When the hearer picks up an interpretation, among a choice of interpretations in a certain context, which is different from the interpretation that the speaker wanted to communicate with a verbal or non-verbal stimulus.
When a person interprets incorrectly the information which, without a prior communicative intention, reaches that person from the surrounding world.
4. Types of Non-Verbal Communication
- Physical appearance: attributes of image, race, weight, body shape, dress
- Kinesics: the body language not touching other people. It encompasses things like postures and movements styles. Categories: emblems, illustrators, affect displays, adaptors, regulators.
- Oculesics: The eyes as “windows of the soul.”
- Paralanguage: It means non-verbal clues found in the speaker’s voice (interactions).
- Proxemics: Study of the use of personal space: how it is used in interactions.
- Haptics: It is the study of touching behavior.
- Environmental details: The surrounding provides contextual clues for the interactions.
- Chronemics: the study of the use and the perception of time.
5. Contextual Source and Irony
- Encyclopedic knowledge: general information of the world
- Information on the speaker: likes, dislikes…
- Recent actions or events: knowledge still in the hearer’s memory
- Speaker’s non-verbal communication: previous utterances
- Physical setting: non-verbal communication, vocal or visual
- Previous utterances: lexical or grammatical choices by the speaker which work as linguistic cues about the speaker’s ironic intention
- Linguistic cues: information coming from the physical area
6. The Importance of Context in Pragmatics
We need contextual information to determine the intended or implicated meaning of an utterance. Depending on contexts, conclusions will be different. Pragmatics is interested in the context in communicating the speaker’s meaning, so context is a very important pragmatic research area.
7. Figurative Language
It allows speakers to communicate meanings that differ from what they literally say.
- Metaphor: ideas from different domains are compared
- Metonymy: The salient part is used to represent the whole part
- Idioms: a speaker’s meaning cannot be derived from an analysis of the word’s typical meaning
- Hyperbole: Speaker exaggerates the reality
- Understatement: the speaker says less than is actually the case
- Oxymoron: 2 contradictory ideas
- Indirect requests
8. Differences Between Spoken and Written Discourse
- Sounds versus written signs: speech has changes of pitch (intonation) and writing has a punctuation system.
- Speech: The daily process of reading in speaking has its own characteristics. Reading can be faster than speech.
- Permanency: writing is permanent marks recorded on paper. Speech is only sounds passing through the air and it stores in the memory.
- First and final drafts: writing can be worked on every time you want because it is recorded on paper. Speech is always a first draft and comes with the mistakes characteristic of a first draft.
- Interaction between listener and speaker: normally the listener and speaker are face to face; they can see each other and see what is going on. In writing, the reader and the writer may never meet (written documents can be read by anyone, everywhere).
- Purposes of language: written and speeches are used for different purposes. Written documents are kept for the future. A meeting may use spoken language.
- Formality: Writing is more trusted, in a way that speech is not put in writing. Speech is more used for reasons that are not immediate.
- Contextualization: a written text lacks an immediate context.
- Grammatical differences:
- Spoken: no complex constructions, coordination, active voice, indexicals (you, there, etc.), incomplete information, ordinary discourse markers, repetitions, fillers, hesitations…
- Written: complex constructions, subordination, passive voice, no explicit indexicals, complete information, formal discourse markers, fillers, etc.
9. Communication Problem at the Level of Implicature
- Noise, pronunciation, lack of ling. competence: impossible, inferential, hypothesis: non-understanding.
- Contextual assumptions not supplied: impossible implicature: puzzled understanding.
- Alternative contextual assumptions: alternative implicature: alternative understanding.
- Hearer stops at the level of explicature: implicature as explicature: alternative understanding.
10. Communication Problem at the Level of Explicature
- Noise, pronunciation, lack of ling. competence: impossible, inferential, hypothesis: non-understanding.
- Contextual assumptions blocking inference. Short-circuited explicature: puzzled understanding.
- Erroneous explicature: Assign. Referent: alternative explicature: alternative understanding.
- Unintended contextual implications added by mistake: explicature as implicature: alternative understanding.
11. Negative and Positive Politeness
Positive Politeness: FTA (Face-threatening acts) performed with softening action. Strategies oriented towards positive face of the hearer. e.g. strategies seeking common ground or co-operation, such as in jokes or offers “Wash your hands, honey.” Strategies:
- Notice and attend to H’s wants and needs
- Exaggerate interest, approval, sympathy
- Use in-group identity markers
- Seek agreement/avoid disagreement
- Assert common ground
- Joke
- Be optimistic
- Give offers, promises, reasons, sympathy understanding, cooperation
Negative Politeness: FTA performed with softening action. Strategies oriented towards negative face of the hearer. e.g. indirect formulation “Would you mind washing your hands?” Strategies:
- Be indirect
- Be pessimistic
- Minimize imposition
- Give deference
- Apologize
- Depersonalize (avoid ‘you’, ‘I’)
12. Prototypical Cases in Irony Comprehension
- Fast irony interpretation when the interpretation of explicit content has just started.
- Ironic interpretation half-way through the interpretation of the utterance.
- Ironic interpretation at the end of the interpretation of the utterance.
- Explicit interpretation and ironic interpretation intended and in parallel.
- Explicit interpretation first, ironic interpretation at a subsequent stage.
- Ironic interpretation undetected.
13. How Pragmatics Conceptualizes Human Communication
14. Intercultural Problems of Non-Verbal Communication (Poyatos)
a) The realization of the nonverbal behavior is different in both cultures.
b) The nonverbal behavior is typical of one culture and does not exist in other culture.
c) The nonverbal behavior is the same in both cultures but the meaning ascribed to it is different in each culture.
d) The nonverbal behavior is the same in both cultures but it has more variants and extended meanings in one culture than in the other.
Identify the ironic strategy, the contextual sources being activated and the prototypical case corresponding to this situation:
Tom: Sorry, just a second, I need to call my boss right now (looking at some heavy boxes on front of him)
Ann: I’ll never be able to repay your help.