PRAGMÁTICA DE LA LENGUA INGLESA

GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES: LENGUA, LITERATURA Y CULTURA

UNIT 1: DEFINING PRAGMATICS

Professor: Dr. Laura Alba Juezlalba@flog.uned.es

What is pragmatics? Why do we need pragmatic knowledge in communication?

Many authors have defined Pragmatics in different ways, and in these definitions, elements such as context, meaning beyond literal meaning, speech acts, deixis, understatement or implicature are presented as important components of this discipline.

Leech explains that both Semantics and Pragmatics are concerned with meaning, but the difference between them lies in two different uses of the verb to mean (1983: 6): [1] What does X mean? [2] What did you mean by X? Semantics would deal with [1], and Pragmatics with [2]. Thus, it is important to point out that pragmatics is defined with respect to a speaker or user of the language.

Georgia Green’s (1989) definition of Pragmatics is, by contrast, a much broader one:

 “Linguistic pragmatics as defined here is at the intersection of a number of fields

within andoutside of cognitive science: not only linguistics, cognitive psychology, cultural

anthropology, andPhilosophy (logic, semantics, action theory), but also sociology (interpersonal

dynamics andsocial convention) and rhetoric contribute to its domain”. (1989: 2)

One of Levinson’s (1983) definitions of Pragmatics as “the study of utterance meaning” equates it

to Schiffrin’s definition of Discourse Analysis. But, are Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis

the same? Schiffrin notes that the scope of Pragmatics is wide and “faces definitional dilemmas

similar to those faced by discourse analysis” (1994: 190).

The more we study conversation or any kind of discourse, the more we realize that it is not so

much what the sentences literally mean that matters, as how they reveal the intentions and

strategies of the speakers themselves.

In any case, and as Peter Grundy (2008) suggests with the following quote from Sam Johnson

(1776), “We all know what light is, but it is not easy to tell what it is”.

FEATURES OF EVERYDAY LANGUAGE USE THAT ARE IMPORTANT IN PRAGMATICS (Grundy,2008)AppropriatenessNon-literal or indirect meaningInferenceIndeterminacyContextRelevanceAccomodationReflexivityMisfires

1. APPROPRIATENESS

One of the important features oflanguage has to do with

appropriateways of using language to get

businessdone.Appropriateness is thought in

relationto those who use the language andthose to whom it is directed

Read and look at this comic strip about

Alice in Wonderland. Do you find itappropriate? Is there anything strange about it?

If so,what is it and why is it strange?

2) NON-LITERAL OR INDIRECT MEANING:

Human discourse is full of non-literal, indirect meanings. Consider the mother’s question in the strip on the right. Why is it indirect? What does she mean with her question?

Many appropriate utterances are indirect. Sometimes appropriateness requires indirectness, as for instance in:

A: What do you think of Paula? Is she pretty?B: Well, she’s certainly a very good student.

3) INFERENCE

But how do we get from literal to non-literal, indirect meaning? We obviously have to draw inferences or come to conclusions as to what the speaker is intending to convey. So what the patient in this cartoon does is verbalize the inference she made from what the doctor said.

In Grundy’s example (2008: 7):

Radion removes dirt AND odours

We infer that other washing powders leave our clothes smelling bad, even though we are not told such a thing.

So communication is not only about a speaker encoding a message and a hearer decoding it. The receiver must also draw an inference as to what is conveyed beyond what is stated.

4) INDETERMINACY:

The fact that some meanings are matters of inference implies that the utterances we encounter are somehow unclear or ambiguous, i.e., under-determined. This means that an utterance might have several possible meanings and that the inferences we draw determine which of these possible meanings is the one the addressee thinks the speaker is intending.

The picture on the right is an example of image undeterminacy or ambiguity. Depending on how you look at it, it may be the picture of an old lady or of a young one. Can you see them both?

Thus, the following utterance is under-determined in that it would mean different things depending on whether it’s uttered by most people or by a university lecturer:

I’ve just finished a book

Pragmatics is partly about trying to account in systematic ways for our ability to determine what speakers intend even when their utterances are under-determined.

5) CONTEXT:

Context is a crucial aspect for determining the meaning of an utterance. And we refer here not only to linguistic context, but to the physical, social and cultural contexts as well.

The same utterance in different contexts may mean completely different things. Think of the utterance:

I love people with good manners

a) Said by a person in a conversation about good manners.

b) Said by a person after someone else has been rude to her.

Do a) and b) mean exactly the same?

6) RELEVANCE:Relevance has been seen by Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995) as the most important principle in accounting for the way we understand language. Since we take every utterance as relevant, we understand utterances in whatever way will make them as relevant as possible.

So, for instance, in Grundy’s (2008: 14) example of the sign pinned to a chair that read:

Sit down with care. Legs can come off

It is obviously more relevant to assume that it refers to the legs of the chair rather than to those of the person sitting down.

Think of the nowadays famous T.V commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfyeXrdZZ1o ) where George Cloney says: “Nespresso; what else?What is the most relevant assertion intended by the question?

7) ACCOMMODATION

“As we try to determine what people mean by what they say, we usually need to accept or accommodate a good deal of information which we feel is known to both the speaker and ourselves” (Grundy, 2008: 14). This background knowledge or accommodation is essential to making sense of exchanges like the following, taken from another of the Nespresso commercials (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgGeZS2BrE&feature=related )

“We’ve run out of capsules up there”

“Heaven can wait, George, but not for its capsules”

Think of all the information we have to accommodate in order to understand the real meaning of this exchange between George and John.

8) REFLEXIVITY:

We usually provide some sort of comment on how our utterance fits into the discourse as a whole, or on how we want to be understood. When we do this, we make it easier for our interlocutor(s) to understand what we mean. That is why reflexive uses of language as the following are so common:

Bill Clinton (on his relationship with Monica Lewinsky):

“Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong”.

Here ‘indeed’, ‘in fact’ and the emphatic ‘did’ are examples of reflexive uses of language which tell us about Clinton’s commitment to the truth of what he is saying

9) MISFIRES:

Pragmatic misfires occur when a given utterance does not have the expected pragmatic effect. In spite of the negative effect they may have, they are important because they tell us -by showing us the effect of not achieving the norm- that there are expected norms for talk.

The following utterance was considered to be a misfire when a reader understood that the suit was a piece of clothing (when in fact it referred to a legal action),

The tailor pressed one suit in the municipal court

And the following headline was a misfire when the reader interpreted that the gun had been found beside the victim (and not that the victim had found it (which was the intended meaning):

Stolen gun found by the victim

This kind of misfires reminds us of the great care speakers need to exercise in order to convey the intended meaning successfully. Can you think of other examples of misfires?However, misfires are rare, and normally speakers are able to convey the meanings they intend with remarkable consistency.

TO CONCLUDE…Although all the above features have been treated separately for the sake

of clarity, the fact is that all or most of them normally appear together in a bundle, as can be seen in the following utterance (made by a dancing teacher in her class to one of her new students):

Is she your partner? I mean, are you going to dance together?

We can see here how the features of every day language studied in thisunit (appropriateness, indeterminacy, inference, etc.) work together inorder to make the utterance a pragmatic whole: 1) the question theteacher makes is an appropriate way to ask about dancing partners in adancing class, but considering the student is new, the teacher realizes shehas to reformulate her question in order to make sure the student doesnot misinterpret the question as one about his private life. Thus we seethe element of reflexivity in the pragmatic marker I mean.

Therefore, the question Is she your partner? is under-determined and can become a misfire if the addressee does not have a common background and knowledge of the terminology used in a dancing class and of the context in general. This knowledge will make him work out the right inference as to what the teacher means by “partner” (i.e. ‘dancing partner’, not ‘girl-friend’), therefore making the former interpretation the most relevant. In this way, the student will learn to accommodate this background information in order to make the correct interpretation of the teacher’s utterance.