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UNIT 1: ESTÁ ESCRITA EN PAPEL, EN LA CARPETA. UNIT 2: GENERAL ASPECTS OF PRAGMATICS -‐To know about Pragmatics we need to talk about THOMAS KUHN, The structure of scientific revolutions (1962/1970). The main thesis is that science is not the story of how knowledge was acquired, but an accumulation of theories. It follows that old theories are not less scientific than the current one. -‐(We don’t really have theories going better and better, the old view was like that, the theory two is better than the last one and the three is better than the two. Against this old view of science that we get bigger and better, Thomas Kuhn’s view is that theory two is not necessary better than theory one, we have battles between them but it does not mean that it is better. E.g.: In the past, the BETA MAX was of better quality than the VHS, but everybody used the VHS because of the marketing campaigns.) Science develops in PARADIGMS. Universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time (there’s no guarantee that it is going to be like that for ever), provide models and solutions to a community of scientists (Thomas Kuhn). -‐(This is the way he finds that, a PARADIGM is a period of stability because everybody is happy, when a SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION takes place, is because somebody is not happy, so it becomes a period of instability. When this revolution turns up, the people of the stability period is instable too. ) “When a paradigm makes its appearance, it is invariably resisted by the specialists... since any new paradigm necessarily involves a profound change in the rules governing the practice of science” (Thomas Kuhn) -‐(Sometimes these revolutions are caused by a smart person and people follow him or her, after that, there is another scientific paradigm and again a period of stability) SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM (period of stability)-‐SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION (period of instability)-‐SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM (period of stability). Scientific revolutions are the achievement of one single person who questions the current ideas of science. E.g. Darwin and Newton. For example in 1920 Saussure caused a period of instability with a scientific revolution, and the people of the old scientific paradigm (historicism, comparative grammar) were unhappy, they reacted against him thinking that he was a lunatic, but in the end they saw that his ideas were good and everybody was happy with structuralism and it is another scientific paradigm with a period of stability. Then another person, Chomsky, with the Generative Grammar revolutioned the scientific paradigm of Saussure with a scientific revolution and a period of instability, in 1957 was the beginning of this revolution, but most people realized that Chomsky’s ideas were good and again, a scientific paradigm and a period of stability took place. Pragmatics deals with language in use, language used in context. Saussure’s interest in langue, Chomsky’s interest in competence. (We analyse what people do with the language analysing the context.) Saussure’s structuralism: Langue/ System (safe, stable area of research) (The contrary, what was thought) Parole/ Talk (unsafe, unstable area of research) -‐(We don’t have a revolutionary person in pragmatics, we don’t have a pragmatic paradigm, and secondly, analysing what people do with language is so complicated that we don’t have a unitary pragmatics but lots of branches and schools.) Most definitions include at least one of the following factors:
1. Pragmatics studies the context-‐dependent aspects of verbal communication and comprehension. (Not the langue, but what people do with language, we have to analyse the context, that is the keyword) 2. Pragmatics studies the role of non-‐linguistic factors in verbal communication and comprehension. 3. Pragmatics studies how language interacts with other cognitive systems (e.g. perception, memory, inference) in verbal communication and comprehension. (psychological area, nowadays we know more about the brainworks and we also have laboratories) EXAMPLES OF DEFINITIONS: (only a few of them, because there are hundreds) 1. Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others. (Crystal, 1987). 2. Pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study of how utterances have meanings in situations. (Leech, 1983). 3. Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said. (Yule, 1996). -‐Social issues: actions in a social context (Austin, Wittgenstein). -‐Cognitive issues: intentions underlying actions (Grice, Searle). Nerlich y Clarke (2001) “language, actin and context. Linguistic pragmatics in Europe and America (1800-‐1950)” 1. Ordinary language philosophy: (Witgenstein, Austin, Searle): “Speech acts” (ANGLO-‐AMERICAN) 2. Structuralism: Benveniste: “Theory of enunciation” (FRENCH) 3. Peirce/Morris: Pragmatism/Semiotics: “Three-‐fold theory of semiotics” (AMERICAN) 4. Habermas: Universal pragmatics: “Theory of communicative action” (GERMAN) Morris: Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938) SEMIOTICS In this book he says that Semiotics should be divided into three branches: Sintax (the relationship between signs), Semantics (the relationship between sign and the meaning of it) and final and crucially Pragmatics (the relationship between sign and the users of them, it is people). Morris was giving Pragmatics the status of a scientific thing. Explaining context is a very difficult task: Inevitably, different pragmatic perspectives, schools or branches have appeared and they deal with one specific aspect of context. (That’s not good for calling Pragmatics a paradigm, because in a paradigm everybody does the same, and in Pragmatics there are different branches.) This multiplicity has generated a feeling of lack of unity within the pragmatic paradigm. (We don’t really have a pragmatic paradigm) ALTERNATIVE LABELS FOR PRAGMATICS: 1. A perspective (Reyes, 1990; Nuyts, 1992) 2. A number of approximations (Borutti, 1984). 3. A dimension (Eco, 1987) 4. A pre-‐paradigm (Alcaraz, 1990) Examples of criticism on a “pragmatic paradigm”: 1. Pragmatics is still looking for an inherent object of study, especially a stable, homogeneous object. (Reyes, 1990) 2. Behind an apparent feeling of unity there is a lack of coherence in the way the term has been used by researchers (Nuyts, 1987) 3. Pragmatic ideas are too elemental, vague and lacking explicative power (Chomsky, 1979)
PRAGMATICS provides a general cognitive, social and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage, accounting for the dynamics of language and language use, as is reflected in the premise that meaning is not given but rather dynamic and negotiated in context. (Anita Fetzer) UNIT 3: THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT IN LANGUAGE USE. KEY WORD IN PRAGMATICS: CONTEXT Goodwin and Duranti (1992) Rethinking Context. In this book they claim that if we metaphorically think of conversations and dialogues as boats, the context is the sea, depending on how the sea is, the boats or conversations will sail in one direction or another. E.g.: Tom: Would you like some coffe? Ann: Coffe would keep me awake CONTEXT 1: Tom and Ann are students who are about to spend the whole night studying pragmatics: Ann means that she would love to have some coffe (since that would help her in her study). CONTEXT 2: Tom and Ann are an old couple who are about to go to bed: Ann means that she would not like to have coffee (since that would prevent her from sleeping). E.g.: Ann: It’s cold in here CONTEXT 1: Tom and Ann are in the living room. Tom asks Ann whether she’d like to eat dinner in the living room or in the kitchen.: What does Ann mean to communicate? CONTEXT 2: Ann and Tom are in the living room.: What does Ann mean to communicate? Sentence meaning is different from speaker’s meaning (we analyze what the person wants to communicate not what the sentence means) GRIFFITHS (2006) An introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics: The essential difference between sentences and utterances is that sentences are abstract, not tied to contexts, whereas utterances are identified by their contexts. This is also the main way of distinguishing between semantics and pragmatics. If you are dealing with meaning and there is no context to consider, then you are doing semantics, but if there is a context to be brought into consideration, then you are engaged in pragmatics. Pragmatics is interested in the role of context in communicating the speaker’s meaning (or speaker meaning) and hence context plays a central role in pragmatic research. Why we need contextual information... e.g.: 1. This is a good match. (Match is an ambiguous word, it can be a football match or clothes that match, we need context, the utterance is not unique in meaning, it depends on the context.) 2. I decided to get married on Thursday. (It can be wherever, unless we contextualised what the person is talking about we will never know when is on Thursday.) 3. The talk was too long. (What’s too long? It depends on the context) 4. When Susan comes we’ll leave. (We is an example of INDEXICALS, it includes pronouns, adverbs, proper names... these indexicals are empty and have to be filled with information, what is the meaning of we? We don’t know unless we contextualised it.) 5. I’ve got nothing to wear. (it does not mean to go naked, the meaning is nothing nice) 6. It will take some time to fix your car. (How many time?) WE NEED CONTEXT! We are constantly understanding different interpretation from what we literally say. Pragmatics: language in context. -‐It does NOT analyse the meaning of words as in semantics, but the speaker’s intended meaning of whole utterances. -‐Context, intentions and shared knowledge are the keywords. Also cultural implications play an important role.
U.M Quasthoff (1998) “Context”, in Concise Encyclopaedia of Pragmatics: A good account of CONTEXT should answer at least the following question: 1. How do discourse participants decide which elements of physical or verbal surroundings or mental knowledge are relevant for the production or interpretation of an utterance. In other words, what has become “context” during a particular act of communication? TRADITIONAL VIEW OF CONTEXT IN PRAGMATICS: 1. “Context” as the surrounding text of an utterance. 2. “Context” as simply the physical environment in which the utterance takes place. 3. “Context” as the cultural environment to which interlocutors belong. Text: Co-‐text(1), Context of situation (2), Context of culture (3). In the sentence “I saw Susan yesterday, she was in a pub” we understand she as Susan, we need it. “I saw Susan yesterday” would be the co-‐text. TRADITIONAL VIEW OF CONTEXT IN PRAGMATICS: -‐CONTEXT IS GIVEN BEFOREHAND -‐ THE UTTERANCE IS INSERTED IN THAT CONTEXT -‐ AN INTERPRETATION IS REACHED. That is the traditional view of context. Problems: -‐It’s hard to see how (1-‐3) are adequate to deal with the full range of possible kinds of contextual information that may be necessary in the interpretation of an utterance. -‐Besides, how do we identify those particular aspects of the physical environment, culture or preceding text that can play a role in the interpretation of an utterance? CONTEXT CHANGES ALL THE TIME IN EVERY CONVERSATION!!! Context is a dynamic, not a static concept: it is to be understood as the continually changing surroundings, in the widest sense, that enable the participants in the communication process to interact, and in which the linguistic expressions of their interaction become intelligible. (Jacob Mey) THE CURRENT VIEW OF CONTEXT Context as information used (looked for) during the interpretation of an utterance. Contextual information may be obtained from the preceding text, or from observation of the speaker and from the immediate environment, and they may also be drawn from encyclopaedic knowledge that the hearer has access to at the time, etc. SO: -‐THE UTTERANCE IS THE STARTING POINT – AN ADEQUATE CONTEXT IS LOOKED FOR – AN INTERPRETATION IS REACHED. (We access context depending on the utterance, it is the one that actually makes us look for it. Context is not something given, is something we look for as we listen.) -‐Initial stretch of an utterance (Contextual information needed to understand this initial part of the utterance) – next stretch of utterance (Contextual information needed to understand the next part of the utterance) – next stretch of utterance (Contextual information needed to understand the next part of the utterance) – (...) So we contextualise stretch by stretch. The interpretation of every stretch of the utterance also becomes part of the contextual information used in understanding the next stretch of the utterance and influences the choice of an interpretation. E.g. : -‐Tom was disqualified from the game his bat was too grey -‐We had to dismiss Tom’s experiment. His bat was too grey (The initial part of the utterance makes it easy to understand the meaning of the second part)
E.g.: A policeman in Washington D.C. stops a lady and asks for her license. He says “Lady, it says here that you should be wearing glasses” The woman answers “Well, I have contacts” The policeman replies “I don’t care who you know” you’re getting a ticket!” CONTEXT: 1. Speaker’s nonverbal communication (smiling, with an ironic tone of voice...) 2. Encyclopaedic knowledge (your knowledge, some people are very cultured, some information is shared by everybody...) 3. Information on the speaker (irony. E.g. a person that does not like these earrings: Don’t you just love these earrings Tom’s earrings?) 4. Information from previous utterances. 5. Physical environment. CONSEQUENTLY... If context affects the outcome of interpretation, then in order to get the intended interpretation of an utterance (i.e. the speaker’s meaning) the hearer must be capable of selecting and using the speaker’s intended context. The goal of pragmatics is to explain how hearers do that. Besides, pragmatics aims at explaining how hearers choose which information they access and how (and why) they decide when to stop processing contextual information. IMPLICATIONS FOR OUR PICTURE OF UNDERSTANDING 1. Understanding an utterance involves considerably more than simply knowing the language 2. The possible interpretations are determined, on the one hand, by the meaning of the sentence uttered, and on the other by the available contextual information 3. The hearer’s task is to choose, from all the possible interpretation, the actual, intended one. 4. The task, of an adequate pragmatic theory is to explain how people do that. The basic pattern in which, not only communication, but human brains work is by combining new information with contextual information to get a relevant conclusion. NEW INFORMATION+CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION=RELEVANT CONCLUSION. It does not have to be verbal information, could be any information but new for you. e.g. a student doing a thesis working on campus and suddenly sees a yellow Mercedes parked near her department (new information, visual input), he concludes that this evening she will be able to discuss with her teacher at length how her thesis is progressing (relevant conclusion), there is nothing in the Mercedes that leads this interpretation unless, she links this information with the contextual one: professor Smith, who supervises her thesis, owns a yellow Mercedes, he usually takes the bus to the university and only when he intends to stay at university till late in the evening does he drive his car to university (since there are no late buses returning to where he lives). We do the same in real life; we link the new information with the contextual information to get a relevant conclusion. UNIT 4: GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE Formal philosophers interested in: 1. The sentence as source of meaning 2. Whether the meaning of a sentence can be deduced from its semantic content. Theorists of use (ordinary language philosophers) such as Grice and Wittgenstein. Logic cannot really explain communication, communication is not logical. 1975 “Logic and conversation” very famous article, the article is about the impossibility of logic explaining conversation. Logic cannot explain conversation.
Grice’s main contributions to pragmatics: 1. The role of intentionality (successful communication requires the identification of intentions) E.G.: Boss to employee: “You are going” The boss is informing me that I have to go The boss is asking me if I am going The boss is advising me to go The boss is confirming that I have to go The boss is threatening me to go. 2. Communication as a cooperative task between interlocutors (who are regarded as rational beings) Grice in “logic and conversation” (1975) Our talk exchanges are characteristically, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes a common purpose or at least a mutually accepted direction. (Grice 1975: 45). Grice’s 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 in which you are engaged” = To be cooperative, people have to follow a number of MAXIMS (if you follow these maxims you will be regarded as cooperative.) -‐Conversation works – even when we don’t say what we mean. -‐Why it works so well fascinated philosopher Paul Grice. He wondered about conversations such as this: Jack: You’ve got a mountain to climb! Lily: It’s better than a slap in the face. -‐Grice wondered just how we make meaning out of such a conversation. -‐His answer: BECAUSE WE ARE COOPERATIVE AND EXPECT SPEAKERS TO INTEND TO COMMUNICATE SOMETHING TO US. GRICE (1975) (Cooperative principle) = mutually accepted goal: Each participant works in order to fulfil the mutually accepted goal in the conversation. -‐Are we as cooperative as Grice claims? e.g.: -‐Bargaining in a free market: Buyer wants to spend as little as possible; seller wants to get as much as possible. Goals are diametrically opposite. KASHER (1976) (Principle of Rationality) = Personal goals that we want to achieve by means of conversation= each participant has his or her own goal to achieve by means of the conversation. Individual, a more selfish theory. Opposed to the cooperative principle of Grice. 4 MAXIMS: (GRICE) 1. Maxim of Quality. (Has to do with truth) (WHAT?) *Do not say what you believe to be false. *Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. (Don’t lie) 2. Maxim of Quantity. (Has to do with information) (WHAT?) *Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange. *Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. (Provide as much information as necessary) 3. Maxim of Relation. (Has to do with relevance) (WHAT?)
*Be relevant. 4. Maxim of Manner. (has to do with clarity) (HOW?) *Avoid obscurity of expression. *Avoid ambiguity *Be brief. *Be orderly. Cooperative principle: Content: Quantity, quality, relation (What to say) / Form: manner (how to say it) Speakers should follow these maxims. Grice proposed his maxims and there were many critics: -‐Maxim of politeness? (has to do with etiquette) Geoffrey Leech (Principles of pragmatics, 1983): -‐PRINCIPLE OF POLITENESS: (1) TACT MAXIM (2) GENEROSITY MAXIM (3) APPROBATION MAXIM (4) MODESTY MAXIM (5) AGREEMENT MAXIM (6) SYMPATHY MAXIM The idea by Leech is basically this one: communication is like playing with balls, if you want to be cooperative, polite and achieve your personal goals you cannot play with all the balls, sometimes we cannot be polite but cooperative... etc. Sometimes we cannot have it all, the three balls in our hands. -‐Ways in which maxims may not be followed (1) INFRINGING A MAXIM: The speaker fails because of imperfect linguistic performance (e.g. being a non-‐native speaker) (2) OPTING OUT OF THE CP AND ITS MAXIMS: Unwillingness to cooperate due to legal or ethical reasons (e.g. “I’m sorry but I promised not to say anything about this matter”) (3) FLOUTING A MAXIM: Intention to communicate despite an apparent lack of cooperation (generates implicatures) (4) VIOLATING A MAXIM: Intention not to cooperate. e.g. : Have you got the time? a) I have just been mugged (I can’t tell you the time (implicature))FLOUTING b) Yes, I do (and keep walking) VIOLATING With flouting you get extra information, this is called implicature, we get cooperation whereas with violating we get no cooperation. FLOUTING A MAXIM: The speaker is supposed to be cooperative – The speaker flouts one of Grice’s Maxims – If the speaker is cooperating there must be a reason for flouting it – Surely the speaker intends to communicate some information which is NOT in the content of the utterance – Using context the hearer will grasp the additional information – An implicature is reached which is not in the content of the utterance. WHAT IS AN IMPLICATURE THEN? -‐An implicature is an additional meaning that is intended by the speaker and generated by the hearer, and it arises from: (1) The literal meaning of what the speaker said; (2) The cooperative principle and its maxims (3) The linguistic and the non-‐linguistic context (4) Knowledge of context and knowledge of the world (which participant share)
Presupposition versus Implicature A: Where is Tom? B: There is a yellow BMW outside Sue’s house (PRAGMATIC PRESUPPOSITION: Tom owns a yellow BMW) (IMPLICATURE: Tom is at Sue’s house) EXAMPLES OF FLOUTING THE MAXIMS: -‐Maxim of Quantity: A: Well, how do I look? B: Your shoes are nice... (B provides less information than A expects, the implicature is that A does not look nice.) -‐Maxim of Quality I could eat a horse... My house is a refrigerator in January. (Hyperboles, ironies normally lies...) -‐Maxim of Relation A: What on earth has happened to the roast beef? B: The dog is looking very happy (The answer is not the answer but it is implicated) -‐Maxim of Manner (B wants to buy an ice-‐cream without his daughter’s noticing) A: Where are you off to? B: I was thinking of going out to get some of “that funny white stuff” for “somebody” EXAMPLES OF VIOLATING THE MAXIMS: (It is not nice, not cooperative.) -‐Maxim of Quantity: A: Does your dog bite? B: No. (A bends down to stroke it and gets bitten) A: Ow! You said your dog does not bite” B: That is not my dog. (Instead of having said my dog does not bite but be careful cause this is not my dog. The speaker is not cooperating) Husband: How much did that new dress cost, darling? Wife: Less than the last one. (She is not implicating anything, she is telling I am not going to tell it to you, she does not want to tell him) -‐Maxim of Quality: Husband: How much did that new dress cost, darling? Wife: 300.000 pounds (exaggeration) -‐Maxim of Relation: Husband: How much did that new dress cost, darling? Wife: Shall we go out tonight? -‐Maxim of Manner: Husband: How much did that new dress cost, darling? Wife: A tiny fraction of my salary, though probably a ...( obscure message). 1. Semantic presupposition is... Some information whose truth is taken for granted when an utterance is said. e.g.: Tom borrowed Ann’s car. (Ann has a car) PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGERS (Stephen Levinson): saxon genitive, possesives, demonstratives... 2. Pragmatic presupposition is... Some information which is supposed to be shared by both interlocutors when an utterance is said. e.g.: A: Where is Tom? B: There is a yellow BMW outside Sue’s house. (Tom owns a yellow BMW) e.g. of presupposition triggers: My friend did not bother to open an account until she started to earn money
My friend: (I have a friend) definite description Bother: (opening a bank account is troublesome) implicative verb Open: (my friend did not have a bank account before) change-‐of-‐state verb Not... until: (She earned money) temporal clause Start: (She did not earn money before) change-‐of-‐state verb PRESUPPOSITIONS 1. The burglar realised that he had been filmed 2. John forgot to do the washing up 3. John pretended that he was a professional footballer. 4. Susan discovered that her husband was having an affair. 5. Mary started emptying the shopping bags. 6. If John had not missed the interview, he would have got the job. Implicating: -‐Conventionally implicating (ZERO CONTEXT) -‐Conversationally implicating:
-‐particularized conversational implicature(SPECIFIC CONTEXT) -‐Generalized conversational implicature(MOST CONTEXTS)
(Whenever you use some of other tipes of words you immediately get the implicature. You cannot implicate something without context, this is a contradiction. E.g. “I did SOME OF (not all) the exercises.”) We normally get that implicature “John got the keys and open the door” one thing after another; this is a GENERALIZED conversational implicature. The PARTICULARIZED are wholly dependent on context; the ones of the sheet are particularized because they need context to get the implicature. e.g.: (a) Tom: Robert broke a finger last night. Context: Tom is a football player in the same team as Robert. Tom is answering a question about where Robert is, asked by the team coach on the day of a big game. 1. Robert broke a finger, either his own or someone else’s, on the night prior to saying “Robert broke a finger last night” ZERO-‐CONTEXT MEANING. 2. Robert broke his own finger on the night prior to saying “Robert broke a finger last night” GENERALIZED CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE. 3. Robert can’t play the game today. PARTICULARIZED CONVERSATIONAL IMPLCATURE UNIT 5: RELEVANCE THEORY. DAN SPERBER-‐ French Anthropologist DEIRDRE WILSON-‐ English Linguist They both wrote: RELEVANCE: COMMUNICATION AND COGNITION (1986, second revised edition: 1995) (www.ua.es/personal/francisco.yus/rt.html) Relevance theory: PRAGMATICS -‐ (inside )-‐ COGNITIVE PRAGMATICS -‐ (inside)-‐ RELEVANCE THEORY -‐(inside)-‐ CYBERPRAGMATICS. Human cognition is relevance-‐oriented. We are constantly looking for relevance, relevance is reward, satisfaction, interest... the mind is always looking for satisfaction, interest, reward... RELEVANCE. HUMAN COGNITION-‐VERBAL COMMUNICATION-‐COMMUNICATION THROUGH OTHER MEANS (INTERNET, ADS...). The framing of the theories is that human cognition is always looking for relevance. Typical tasks of human cognition: 1. To filter the information from outside that does not seem to be interesting (worth the attention)
2. To update the general picture of the world that we all have (but is different from person to person) 3. To identify underlying intentions and attitudes in the activities of those who are near us. 4. To combine the new information which arrives at the individual’s mind with the information already stored there. 5. To select from context only the information which is relevant for obtaining interesting conclusions. WE COMBINE NEW INFORMATION – WITH CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION -‐ TO GET A RELEVANT CONCLUSION The main objective of relevance theory is “to identify underlying mechanisms, rooted in human psychology, which explain how humans communicate with one another” (Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition, page 32) AIMING AT THE HIGHEST RELEVANCE: -‐The task of the SPEAKER: To design his/her utterance (or nonverbal behaviour) in such a way that the interpretation he/she intends is finally selected by the hearer. I.e. SPEAKER’S THOUGHT: 1Possible devised utterance/ 2possible devised utterance/ 3possible devised utterance. (The speaker has to choose) e.g. Conversation on a mobile phone heard on campus: A: Hello... This is Antonio... I’ve got a phone call from you... (...) A: Antonio Ortiz... I’ve got a phone call... (...) A: Antonio Ortiz... I work as a plumber in San Vicente... Ah... Now you remember. (The utterance was not good enough to get an interpretation, his initial “this is Antonio” did not lead to the expected or correct interpretation, speakers have a choice but we do not often realize.) -‐The task of the HEARER: To build up an interpretive hypothesis (that is, “an interpretation”) about the speaker’s intentions when he/she produces an utterance (or nonverbal behaviour). I.e. Of the first possible devised utterance of the speaker the hearer has to choose one possible interpretation within a set of interpretations and so on. e.g.: John: Now, tell me, how’s your girlfriend? Mike: She’s no longer my girlfriend. John: Oh! I am really sorry.. I really thought you got on very well with each other. Mike: No! I mean... She is now my wife! We got married last month. John: Oh! I see. Congratulations! I had no idea! (interp. A) : His girlfriend has died. (interp. B): They have split up. (Interp. C): They are now married. This provides a picture of the speaker as communicating utterances with degrees of more or less likely interpretations, and the task of the hearer is to select the correct interpretation among all the possible interpretations of the same utterance in a specific context. BASIC IDEAS IN RELEVANCE THEORY: 1. Every utterance has a variety of possible interpretations, all compatible with the information that is linguistically encoded. 2. Not all these interpretations occur to the hearer simultaneously; some of them take more effort to think up. 3. Hearers are equipped with a single, general criterion for evaluating interpretations. 4. This criterion is powerful enough to exclude all but one single interpretation, so that having found an interpretation that fits the criterion, the hearer looks no further. RELEVANCE: -‐Information coming from physical context (RELEVANCE)
*MOST OF THE INFORMATION FROM THE PHYSICAL WORLD IS NOT INTERESTING… BUT SOME CALLS OUR ATTENTION… -‐Information already stored in our minds (RELEVANCE) *All the thoughts that are possible in a specific situation form the person’s COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENT -‐Information “exuded” by other people (RELEVANCE) -‐Information communicated intentionally [VERBALY/NON-‐VERBAL](RELEVANCE) Saussure – relevance theory: it problematize Saussure theory. Code model -‐> sender -‐> message (coded) -‐> receiver -‐> interpretation (decoded) Inferential model -‐> sender -‐> message (coded) -‐> context-‐> receiver -‐> interpretation (inferred) For relevance theory, information can be relevant in one context and not in another, so the basic notion they want to define is that of relevance in a context. By a context they mean: information (“a set of assumptions” in their terminology) used in interpreting (or ‘processing’) a new piece of information, either verbal or nonverbal Mutual cognitive environment: -‐Speaker’s cognitive environment (all that he or she can think in a specific context) -‐Hearer’s cognitive environment (all that she or he can think in a specific context). Comprehension involvers a parallel process of… 1. Determining the explicit content of utterance: disambiguation, locating, referents, adjusting, concepts, etc. 2. Determining the implicated content of the utterance: In other words, deriving the implicatures from what’s been said. 3. Accessing as much contextual information as necessary to reach an adequate interpretation. We get partial interpretations (we identificate the words little by little) as we listen to the utterance. ANTICIPATORY INFERENCING My dear, I love you a lot, but… BACKWARDS INFERENCING: Ayer vi a Pedro en un banco. (Banco: probably a financial institution) Estaba leyendo el periódico y dándole de comer a las palomas. (upps…no… on a park bench) DEFINING RELEVANCE That human cognition is relevance-‐oriented (or whole cognitive system-‐perception, memory and inference-‐ is designed to select information that is potentially relevant to us). There are degrees of relevance; degrees arise from combinations of interest (cognitive effects) and mental effort. -‐ Definition of relevance: Condition a: an assumption is relevant in a context if the number of cognitive effects is high. Condition b: an assumption is relevant in a context if the effort required to process it in that context is low. Steps to take when aiming at relevance. Step (a): Consider interpretations in order of accessibility. Step (b): Stop when your expectations of relevance are satisfied. HUMOR The joke has an initial part with two possible interpretations:
-‐One very likely and selected by the hearer as the intended interpretation. -‐ One very unlikely but which is eventually the correct one. But the hearer does not even notice that there is an alternative interpretation until the humourist foregrounds it.
Human beings rely on two powerful principles when they interact with the surrounding world and with other people through communication The COGNITIVE PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE. “Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of relevance”. (We are always looking for relevance, selecting the best thoughts, looking for what is interesting for us) The COMMUNICATIVE PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE. “Every utterance creates a presumption of its own optimal relevance”. (When people talk to you, you hope to find the information interesting for you, in general we pay attention to people because we think it is going to be interesting for you) THE COGNITIVE PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE: There is too much information available (in our environment and on our minds) and we just can’t pay attention to all of it. Moreover, there are too many potential contexts available in which to process any given input (verbal or nonverbal) that we do attend to, and too many inferences we could potentially make. How do we (consciously or automatically) choose which inputs to attend to, which context to process them in, and when to stop? The COMMUNICATIVE PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE “Every utterance creates a presumption of its own optimal relevance” To communicate with someone is to offer them information. Offers create expectations. If I offer you food, you are entitled to expect it to be good enough to be worth eating... Similarly, if I offer you an utterance, you are entitled to expect it to be relevant enough to be worth processing. Again, your expectation may be disappointed, but if it does not at least seem relevant enough, you may refuse to process it at all. (This is not an independent principle; this is part of the cognitive principle) Sperber & Wilson have defined a notion of optimal relevance which is meant to explain what the audience is entitled to expect in terms of cognitive effects (or interest) and processing effort. It involves two conditions: Condition a: The utterance (or other ostensive stimulus) must be at least relevant enough to be worth processing. That is, it should have at least enough cognitive effects (in other words, be “sufficiently interesting”), at a low processing cost (in other words, involving “low mental effort”), to be worth attending to. Condition b: The utterance is the most relevant one compatible with the speaker’s abilities and preferences. That is, hearers are not entitled to expect the most relevant possible utterance because, first, the speaker may be unable to produce it, and second, she may be unwilling to produce it. COMPREHENSION ACCORDING TO RELEVANCE THEORY There are three questions we have to answer in identifying the speaker’s meaning: (mentally, not literally) 1. What was the intended explicit interpretation? 2. What was the intended implicated interpretation? 3. What was the intended context (the intended set of contextual assumptions) that the speaker expects us to access and use to obtain (a) and (b)? WE NEED CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION TO DETERMINE THE INTENDED EXPLICIT INTERPRETATION OF AN UTTERANCE “He has taken enough from her. Expressing: Jim has endured enough abusive treatment from Mary. “I have eaten” Expressing: I have eaten dinner tonight “Your knee will take time to heal Expressing: your knee will take a substantial amount of time to heal “The water is boiling” Expressing: the water is very hot (not necessarily strictly at boiling point) X: We need your written report now Y: I’ve been very busy recently Implicating: I haven’t written the report yet X: Nice cat! Is it male or female?
Y: It’s three-‐coloured Implicating: The cat is female X: Are you going to the party on Saturday? Y: My parents are away this weekend Implicating: I can’t go because when my parents are away it’s me that has to look after our grand-‐mother. Tom: Shall we go to a pub for a drink? Ann: I’ve got a ton of exams to mark Intended explicit interpretation: Ann has lot of examinations to mark. Intended implicated interpretation: Ann can’t go to a pub for a drink. Intended context: Backgound knowledge: “someone who has a lot of exams to mark does not normally want to go to a pub” (Ann, a mother, is ready to take her children to school. They turn up without their jackets on) Ann (to her children): “I love children who obey their mothers”. Intended explicit interpretation: Ann loves children who obey their mothers. Intended implicated interpretation: Why on Earth aren’t you wearing your jackets? Intended context: previous utterance: Ann’s previous utterance to their children (not very long ago), for example: “don’t forget to put on your jackets”. Tom: So ... did you have a good time with me tonight? Ann: Tom... you are the sunshine of my life! Intended explicit interpretation: None. Intended implicated interpretation: You are the only person who cheers me up, who stops my life from being dull, who puts joy in my life. Intended context: Background knowledge: Mental search for those qualities of “sunshine” which can be applied, in a metaphoric way, to Tom regarding his relationship with Ann Tom: Do you like your steak? Ann: It’s raw! Intended explicit interpretation: The steak Ann is having is undercooked. Intended implicated interpretation: Ann does not like the steak. Intended context: Background knowledge: “Someone who is served an undercooked steak, does not usually like the steak”. An knowledge of the speaker (maybe Ann LOVES raw meat, and then the implicature is YES!) Tom: So... Do you earn a lot of money in your new job? Ann: (smiling, with a sarcasting tone) Yeah, I earn a fortune!! Intended explicit interpretation: none Intended implicated interpretation: Ann earns very little money Intended context: Nonverrbal behaviour: Ann’s face and tone. Knowledge of the speaker: “A fortune” is relative. The relevance-‐theoretic comprehension procedure is as follows: 1. Consider interpretations in order of accessibility; 2. Stop when your expectation of relevance is satisfied As a consequence, 1. The first satisfactory interpretation is the only satisfactory interpretation. 2. Extra processing effort demanded should be compensated for by extra (or different) interest (cognitive effects). Examples: 1. HUMOR 2. ADVERTISEMENTS (e.g. LESS BREAD, NO JAM, London Transport) First accessible interpretation of the ad “London Transport is offering something that involves less bread and includes no jam, probably some type of food”
Relevant in this context? NO )¿(The interpreter is puzzled!) Second possible interpretation of the ad: “Less bread” means “less money” in slang; “no jam” refers to “no traffic jams”. London Transport offers a service which costs less and involves no traffic jams. Relevant? YES. Stepts we go through when interpreting a person: (posible en examen) COMPREHENSION: 1. Language module apprehends a grammatical sequence. (LINGUISTIC DECODING) -‐Jerry Fodor 1983 “the modularity of mind” (a central processor fed with information by specialised modules) (Our brain is feed with modules) a) PERCEPTUAL MODULE: only processes visual inputs (only activated by this specific type) Feeds the central processor with visual information. b) LANGUAGE MODULE: only processes linguistic inputs (only activated by this specific type) Feeds the central processor with coded language to be inferred. These two modules feed with coded language and visual information the CENTRAL PROCESSOR. 2. Identification of the logical form of the utterance (NO CONTEXT REQUIRED) We have no interpretation yet, only the identification of the words, the idea is that we enrich this meaningless words and turn them into an interpretation with the 3rd step: 3. Inferential PRAGMATIC ENRICHMENT (CONTEXT IS REQUIRED) We turn these squematic words into meaning turning them into an interpretation, we need context. e.g. A) I slept well/ I slept well (last night).There is nothing (interesting) on TV (tonight) 4. Reference assignment (Pronouns like I, she... adverbs like there... these words are empty and we need to fill these words with a referent.) e.g. Anoche la ví (¿A quién?), e.g. estaba allí dentro (¿Dónde?), e.g. con Luís y Juan (¿A quiénes se refiere?) Disambiguation (In disambiguation context helps asignación de referente, conceptos que activan... banco puede ser para sentarse o una entidad financiera.) e.g. Peter’s bat is too grey: bat can be un bate de beisbol or an animal, depending on the context we understand it in one way or another.) Free enrichment. (When the utterance is apparently complete but the listener has to provide some missing element. E.g. “Paracetamol is better”, the utterance is correct, but [than what?]) Conceptual adjustment. On most occasions, the words that we utter (e.g. tired, happy, fish, etc.) in a specific context are not intended to mean exactly the same as the prototypical meaning of these words, as we would find in a dictionary, for example. (We adjust the meaning of the dictionary to the one we want to mean to fit the requirements of the interpretation; the idea is that the prototypical meaning is often no good enough, so we adjust it). Depending on the context, we normally mean different shades of meaning with the very same word. Therefore, a word in one context may have slightly different meanings from the same word in a different context. e.g. (1) a. The fish attacked the swimmer. (not any fish, but shark-‐like fish) b. The fish was nice but the potatoes were cold (fish typically served in restaurants) c. Please feed the fish in my room twice a day. (Gold fish-‐like fish) (2) a. I like listening to the birds in the morning (Robins, canaries) b. The birds flew above the waves. (seagulls) c. She was feeding the birds in the square. (pigeons) Every time we listen to fish, birds, etc. We adjust the meaning. e.g. CONCEPTUAL ADJUSTMENT OF “FLAT” a. This ironing board is flat b. My back garden is flat c. He had a flat face and sad eyes
d. Holland is flat e. The sea was flat. f. His conversation was rather flat. A WORD UTTERED BY A SPEAKER IN A CONTEXT: -‐In certain contexts what the speaker intends to communicate is BROADER (less exact) than the information that the words he has chosen literally communicates. CONCEPTUAL BROADENING. (1st kind of adjustment) EXAMPLES OF “CONCEPTUAL BROADENING”: -‐I was born with a square mark on my foot. -‐Antonio’s bedroom is a dump (we mean that it is really dirty, not that there are seagulls) -‐We entered a pub, but we left since it was empty. (It was not empty at all, we do not interpret literrally empty, but looks like empty, there are people) -‐Peter is a magician. He has prepared a delicious meal almost with no ingredients. -‐I’ve got a thousand things to do this morning. -‐Don’t worry. I’ll be ready in two minutes. (Not really, in a while, normally an hour, we interpret a less exact interpretation than two minutes) -‐This steak is raw (not literally raw, but undercooked) -‐In certain contexts what the speaker intends to communicate is NARROWER (more exact) than the information that the word he has chosen literally communicates. CONCEPTUAL NARROWING. (2nd kind of adjustment) -‐EXAMPLES OF “CONCEPTUAL NARROWING”: -‐Everybody got drunk -‐I’ve got nothing to wear for the party. -‐María has a brain. (a very clever or intelligent brain) -‐The cinema is some distance from here (what distance is “some distance”? it can be too far away, or whatever) -‐This boy has a temperature. (the boy has higher temperature, it is obvious that he has temperature, if not he would be dead) -‐It will take some time to fix this car. -‐Antonio drinks too much. e.g. “I am delighted with my daughter. She is a princess”: -‐A BROADER CONCEPT THAN THE ONE LEXICALIZED. She refers to a referent, her daugher, who is not a princess, and therefore the concept [princess] is broader since it also includes women who are not princesses but are pretty, charming, etc. -‐A NARROWER CONCEPT THAN THE ONE LEXICALIZED. She refers to a referent, her daughter, who is narrow than the lexical concept of princess, since the concept [princess] only covers a sub-‐group of princesses: those who are pretty, charming, etc. -‐PROPOSITION EXPRESSED BY THE UTTERANCE: -‐If it is meant to be communicated (explicit content): EXPLICATURE (parallel to implicature). E.g. Do you want some beer? “I’m a Muslim” -‐(implicit content): IMPLICATURE. e.g. A: Did you buy the table I told you about? B: It’s too wide and uneven. 1. Language module apprehends a grammatical sequence (“It’s too wide and uneven”). 2. Identification of the logical form of the utterance (“something is too wide and uneven”) 3. Inferential PRAGMATIC ENRICHMENT OF THE LOGICAL FORM (CONTEXT IS REQUIRED) 4. ”It” refers to “the table”. “uneven” is ambiguous. “too wide” [to go through the door]. “Uneven” needs conceptual adjustment. 5. The table that A told me about is too wide to go through the door and uneven. (GUIDED BY A CRITERION OF RELEVANCE):
-‐EXPLICIT CONTENT (OR EXPLICATURE): The table that A told me about is too wide to go through the bedroom door in my house and also uneven in the sense that its surface is irregular. -‐IMPLICIT CONTENT (OR IMPLICATURE): I didn’t buy the table A told me about.
UNIT 7: SPEECH ACTS John Austin 1911-‐1960 John Searle 1932... Suppose that during dinner one evening you get up, walk across the room, pour yourself a glass of water. Clearly, you performed an action. Now, suppose that you are having dinner and you ask a dinner partner to get you glass of water. This also is an action... the act of asking. Speech, then, is not something that just happens by coincidence. Rather, to speak is to act. This way of thinking about speech is important because it provides insight into the utility of human communication: “that humans use communication as a tool to get their goals”. SEARLE’S CLASSIFICATION -‐John R. Searle’s classification: 1. Directives Directive is a speech act that is to cause the hearer to take a particular action e.g. I need/want that car. – Give me your pen. – Answer the phone, please. 2. Commissives Commissive is a speech act that shows the speaker’s commitment to some future action (promises, refusals) e.g. Maybe I can do that tomorrow. – Don’t worry, I’ll be there. 3. Representatives Representative is a speech act that commits a speaker to the truth of what he/she is saying e.g. I went to the exhibition. Some paintings are very classics and extraordinarily awesome. 4. Declaratives Declarative is a speech act that changes the reality in accord with the content of the utterance. e.g. Class dismissed (students get up and leave) – I now pronounce you husband and wife. – You are fired. 5. Expressives Expressive is a speech act that expresses on the speaker’s feelings, attitudes and emotions towards what he/she is saying. I am very disappointed. – What a great day””” – Oh my, that’s terrible. -‐Three parts (acts) of a speech act: 1. Locutionary act: The act of saying something, without further interpreting the underlying intentions. 2. Illocutionary act: speaker’s intention upon saying the utterance. The speaker can make a statement, an offer, a promise, etc. In uttering a sentence. 3. Perlocutionary act: the effect that the speech act has on the participants (for example doing something, answering, replying, etc. ) e.g. Phone her!-‐>
-‐Locutionary: he has said to me “phone her”. QUESTION: what intention does this utterance have? -‐Illocutionary: He has urged me (or advised, ordered, etc.) me to phone her. QUESTION: has the utterance had any effect on the hearer? -‐Perlocutionary: He has persuaded me to phone her (his utterance has had an impact on the hearer: he has carried out the action) e.g. The bar will be closed in five minutes. -‐Locutionary: the bar (i.e., the one he owns) will be closed in five minutes (from the time of utterance) -‐Illocutionary: he is informing the customers of the bar’s imminent closing and perhaps also the act of urging them to order a last drink. -‐Perlocutionary: He is causing the patrons to believe that the bar is about to close and getting them to order one last drink.
IINDIRECT SPEECH ACTS -‐In indirect speech acts an illocutionary act is performed by way of performing another act. For example, we can make a request or give permission by way of making a statement, say by uttering “I am getting thirsty” and “you can come in” respectively. E.g. can you pass me a pen? (Can you: are you able?: indirectly: request) Or we can give an order by way of asking a question, such as “can you clean up your room?” Or we can offer to do something by way of asking a question, as in “Shall I help you with the washing-‐up?” Typically, the same utterance can be used for different (indirect) speech acts. “There’s a bull in the field”: *If I am describing my uncle’s farm and say this utterance, then that sentence is an assertion or statement. *If you tell me that you’re going to take a short cut through the field to the pub and I say this utterance, then that sentence is a warning. *If you tell me you want to increase the number of cows and can’t afford expense stud fees, and I say this utterance, then that sentence is a piece of advice. SENTENCE TYPES AND DIRECT/ INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS I wonder when the train leaves (declarative used as a question [To a child] You’d better eat your dinner fast (Declarative as an order) Have a good journey. (Imperative used as an assertion (I hope that...)) Tell me why it’s a good idea (imperative used as a question) Can you open the door? (Interrogative used as a request) Declarative sentences used as indirect speech acts There’s a spider in your hair (warning) Someone’s eaten all the ice-‐cream (accusing) I’ve got a gun (Threatening) You are an idiot (insulting) I need the salt (requesting) There’s room for another person (inviting) I wasn’t at the scene of the crime (denying) You can forget about coming back (forbidding) Context of speech acts “There is a policeman at the corner”: This could be a warning, an assurance, a dare, a hint, or a reminder to go and take your car out of the handicapped space you are parked in. UNIT 8: IRONY
IRONY-‐ general definition: -‐The difference between what someone would reasonably expect to happen and what actually does. (Normative bias) Irony is normally used for criticising, and often to joke the person. Irony is a complicated pragmatic phenomenon: typically, it communicates the opposite of what really is: E.g. Ana: (in the pouring rain) I think it’s going to rain! But it also communicates other possibilities: For example: “less than” E.g. Ana: It seems to be raining. For example: “actual truths said ironically” E.g. Ana: It’s pouring down! Verbal irony includes sarcasm... e.g. “Congratulations, you broke the code, if you press the elevator button 3 times after it’s already been pressed, it goes into “hurry” mode. ...but is different from “situational irony” (no intentionality involved) When one’s efforts produce the opposite results of what was expected. E.g. when you have stayed up all night studying for a test the next day, and the test is actually not until the next week. Several characteristics of irony: 1. It’s echoic: (it refers to another situation in which the explicit (literal) meaning of the utterance would be true) CURRENT CONTEXTUAL FEATURES/ UTTERANCE / (IRONIC, WITH A DISSOCIATIVE ATTITUDE) = IT ECHOES... (SE HACE ECO DE...)= DESIRED CONTEXTUAL FEATURES / UTTERANCE / (EXPLICIT, WITH A SUPPORTIVE ATTITUDE) E.g. A: So... do you like your new job? B: (smiling) yeah, 12 hours a day and I earn a fortune!! CURRENT CONTEXTUAL FEATURES (irony/rejected) B earns very little money = these features echo...= DESIRED CONTEXTUAL FEATURES (supported) B earns a lot of money e.g. (A man who is completely burnt is escaping from an FBI agent. The agent manages to grab him from behind as he is running away. Both men fall down on the pavement. The burnt man gets up and feels his chin, where he has received a blow) Burnt man: (to the FBI agent) “Do you think that will leave a scar on my face?” 2. The speaker has a dissociative attitude (that is, a non-‐supportive one) towards the explicit (or literal) meaning of the utterance. Very often, irony is used as a means to express a critical opinion towards the hearer, and without the identification of this “dissociative attitude” the irony might not be recognized. E.g. : Bill is a neurotically cautious driver who always has his tank full and follows all the possible traffic indications. John: “bill, don’t forget to use your indicator!” John: “Bill, don’t you think you should stop for petrol?” 3. When interpreting an ironic utterance, some information from context is incompatible with the literal meaning of the utterance, preventing this literal meaning from being selected as the one intended by the speaker. 4. The hearer can gather information from several contextual sources: a) encyclopaedic knowledge, b) information on the speaker, c) recent actions, d) speaker’s non-‐verbal communication, e) physical setting, f) previous utterances, and g) linguistic cues -‐GENERAL PROCEDURE IN INTERPRETING IRONIES: 1.LISTEN TO THE UTTERANCE (OR READ IT) 2.LOOK FOR THE APPROPRIRATE CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION (NORMALLY MAKING A LITERAL INTERPRETATION IMPOSSIBLE OR INCOMPATIBLE)
3.GET THE INTENDED IRONIC INTERPRETATION CONTEXTUAL SOURCE A: General encyclopaedic knowledge (general information on the world we live in, our culture, collective beliefs, social stereotyped, common sense assumptions, etc.) e.g. (Luis is walking in a street and suddenly a car passes by splashing water and getting hi soaking wet. As he arrives at work, his friend Antonio talks to him) Antonio: Hi Luis! You look angry... Luis: No, actually I love paying 600€ for a suit, wearing it for the first time this morning and checking how much ñaksdjffñlkasdj CONTEXTUAL SOURCE B: Specific encyclopaedic knowledge on the speaker (likes, dislikes, habits, beliefs, opinions...). e.g. (Pedro and Ana are in her birthday party. She has just been given a pair of earrings). Ana: (smiling) Look! Aren’t these earrings amazingly beautiful? Pedro: Oh my god! What are you going to do with them? Ana: I’ll give them to my sister! Mutual cognitive environment BETWEEN: speaker’s cognitive environment AND hearer’s cognitive environment. The information of Ana does not liking earrings is part of the cognitive environment of both. (Narrowed mutual environment) CONTEXTUAL SOURRCE C: Recent actions or events. Knowledge, still stored in the hearer’s short-‐term memory, of events or actions which have just taken place or have taken place very recently. e.g. (Luis is walking in the street and a car passes by getting him soaking wet) Luis: this is fantastic! CONTEXTUAL SOURCE D: previous utterances in the same conversation or coming from a previous conversation: utterances which were said before (or sometime in the past) e.g. (Juan told Sara not to take the umbrella to the restaurant because he was sure it was not going to rain. However, when leaving the restaurant it’s pouring down) Sara: Don’t take the umbrella because I am sure that it is not going to rain!!! CONTEXTUAL SOURCE E: Speaker’s nonverbal communication, either vocal (tone, intonation...) or visual (smile, gestures, wink...) e.g. Ross: (To Rachel) Anyway, if you don’t feel like being alone tonight, Joey and Chandler are coming over to help me put together my new furniture Chandler: (smiling, with a clear ironic tone of voice) Yes, and we’re veeery excited about it! CONTEXTUAL SOURCE F: Lexical or grammatical choices by the speaker which work as linguistic cues about the speaker’s ironic intention. e.g. (Tomás sees that his wife is trying to put a vase on a shelf and offers to help her. When he tries to put the vase there he drops it and it breaks into thousands of pieces) Wife: A NICE FAVOUR you’ve done me!! (Bonito favor me has hecho!) e.g. (Joe has been a close friend of Jim’s. Nevertheless, Joe betrayed some secrets to a business rival). “Joe is a fine friend” “A fine friend Joe is” (this is more ironic simply by putting “a fine” at the beginning. Lexical: Single words intrinsically charged with a very high positive meaning. “John is a genious”. Lexical: modification (by intensifiers, for instance) “You are an absolute genious” CONTEXTUAL SOURCE G: Information coming from the physical area which surrounds the interlocutors during the conversation. e.g. (During a heavy downpour) Antonio: I think it’s going to rain...
e.g. (Two people at a bus stop. The pavements are in very bad condition) Antonio: (to the other person) I am happy that my taxes are used for improving the quality of out town... e.g. (person baskng in the sun) “You have a tough life!” INTERPRETATION AS MUTUAL PARALLEL ADJUSTMENT Anticipatory inferencing/Backwards inferencing Inicial stretch of utterance (logical form of initial stretch) (expl., con., impl.,)> next stretch of utterance...ñsdfkjañlksfdjñasdkfj 1) Irony can be spotted simply by accessing the information supplied by ONE SINGLE contextual source. 2) But human cognition is capable of obtaining information from SEVERAL CONTEXTUAL SOURCES when it is processing the utterance, either simultaneously, or sequentially. Initial stretch of utterance>Next stretch of utterance>Next stretch... There is a point during the interpretation of an utterance when the irony-‐triggering contextual source appears, we can activate sources simultaneously. 1) Uttering an ironic utterance is not a condition for the hearer to access the information from the different contextual sources and guess the ironic intention. The hearer can infer an ironic intention even before the utterance has been spoken. 2) Processing the utterance completely is not a condition for accessing the ironic interpretation. Sometimes the ironic interpretation is obtained even before the utterance has been processed completely (that is, before all the words have been identified). 3) It’s not always necessary to process completely the explicit information contained in the utterance in order to access the implicit ironic interpretation. 4) However, if there is little contextual information available, the hearer may process the explicit (literal) interpretation of the utterance completely before accessing the intended ironic interpretation. 5) Sometimes the hearer does not access the intended ironic interpretation due to an erroneous prediction by the speaker about the hearer’s accessibility to contextual information. In this case, the hearer will stop processing at the explicit (literal) interpretation and will not identify the intended irony. SOME PROTOTYPICAL CASES: 1. Fast ironic interpretation when the interpretation of explicit content has just started. e.g. [Tom sees that his wife is trying to put a vase on a shelf and offers to help her. When he tries to put the vase there he drops it and breaks into thousands of pieces] Wife: [smiling, with a noticeable ironic tone of voice] A NICE FAVOUR you’ve done me!!! -‐Contextual source B Knowledge of the speaker (my wife is always ironic when she gets angry. -‐Contextual source E: Nonverbal communication (smile, ironic tone of voice.) -‐Contextual source F: Linguistic cues (Grammaticalized construction and lexis) (2) Ironic interpretation half-‐way though the interpretation of the utterance. e.g. I left my bag in the restaurant, and someone kindly walked off with it. -‐Contextual source E: nonverbal communication (smile, ironic tone of voice). -‐Contextual source A: General common sense assumptions (people shouldn’t take other people’s bags) (3) Ironic interpretation at the end of the interpretation of the utterance
e.g. (John has provoked enormous loss of money to the company he works for. The boss calls him at his office) Boss: “John... Obviously, what you’ve done to the company is really fantastic. -‐Contextual source E: Nonverbal communication (smile, ironic tone of voice) -‐Contextual source A: general common sense assumptions (What I’ve done to the company is anything but fantastic.) (4) Explicit interpretation and ironic interpretation intended and in parallel e.g. (Ann is about to take her children to school. She asked them to put on their jackets but they turn up without them on) Ann: “I love children who obey their mothers”. -‐Contextual source D: Previous utterances (she asked her children to put on their jackets) -‐Contextual source G: Physical surrounding (visual evidence of them not wearing their jackets) (5) Explicit interpretation first, ironic interpretation at a subsequent stage. e.g. (Mary is in class, taking notes. A new student – John – turns up and sits down beside her). John: (to Mary) “You know, this subject is really fascinating”. (Mary looks at him, wondering whether to believe his words or not. Suddenly John starts smiling ostensively). Mary: “Indeed... And I can hardly sleep waiting for this lesson”. -‐Contextual source A: commonsense assumptions ¿? (It is utterly impossible to like this subject.) -‐Contextual source E: Nonverbal communication (student’s ostensive smile). (6) Ironic interpretation undetected e.g. (On elections day, two neighbours come across at the polling station) Tom: I am sure the popular party will win the elections... They’ll make a good job for Spain. Mike: I hope so... I really trust these guys. Tom: You do? I thought you voted socialists... I was being ironic... Well, I really doubt they’ll do such a great job, sorry to disagree... e.g. John Lennon (in an interview on TV): “The Beatles are more important than Jesus Christ” 1. General encyclopedic knowledge ¿? 2. Knowledge on the speaker X 3. Recent actions or events X 4. Previous utterances X 5. Nonverbal communication X 6. Lexical and grammatical choices X 7. Physical setting X UNIT 9: MISUNDERSTANDINGS Misunderstandings will be defined as follows: (a) When the hearer picks up an interpretation (1), among a choice of interpretations in a certain context, which is different from the interpretation (2) that the speaker wanted to communicate with a verbal or nonverbal stimulus. (b) When a person interprets incorrectly the information which, without a prior communicative intention, reaches that person from the surrounding world. COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS AT THE LEVEL OF EXPLICATURE -‐1. noise, pronunciation, lack of linguistic competence → impossible inferential hypothesis→ non understanding -‐2. Contextual assumption(S) blocking inference→ short-‐circuited explicature→ puzzled understanding -‐3. Erroneous explicature, assign referent, disambiguation→ alternative explicature→ alternative understanding -‐4. Unintended contextual implications added by mistake -‐> Explicature as Implicature-‐> Alternative understanding. COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS AT THE LEVEL OF IMPLICATURE
1. Noise, pronunciation, lack of linguistic competence – IMPOSSIBLE INFERENTIAL HYPOTHESIS – NON-‐UNDERSTANDING 2. Contextual assumption(s) not supplied – MISSING IMPLICATURE – PUZZLED UNDERSTANDING. e.g. A: Nice cat! Is it male or female? B: It’s three-‐coloured. Implicature: the cat is female Contextual information: all three-‐coloured cats are female. 3. Alternative contextual assumptions – ALTERNATIVE IMPLICATURE – ALTERNATIVE UNDERSTANDING 4. Hearer stops at the level of explicature – IMPLICATURE AS EXPLICATURE – ALTERNATIVE UNDERSTANDING. UNIT 10: NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION Nonverbal Communication is the information that is communicated without using words (that is, by vocal or visual means.) FOR THE MOST OPTIMISTIC ANALYSTS... 93% of communication is nonverbal, 55% through facial expression, posture, gesture, 38% through tone of voice. ROLES OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: -‐Repetition: to reinforce what is being said through verbal communication. E.g. When we are told to remember two things and someone holds up two fingers. -‐Contradiction: some forms of nonverbal communication can contradict what we are saying. E.g. When i say that I am doing good, but my nonverbal expressions don’t support that, I am probably not doing so well after all. -‐Substitution: the nonverbal way to express our sorrow or sympathy for another without any verbal communication. -‐Accentuation: to accentuate what is being stated through verbal communication. E.g. when a teacher tells the class that last week’s reports were unacceptable and slams the stack on the desk. -‐Complement: nonverbal messages complement and help modify our verbal messages. E.g. when an athlete is talking about what a great game the team just played, the uniform and facial expressions complement the event being retold. -‐Regulation: Nonverbal communication also helps us regulate the flow of verbal communication. E.g. a nod of the head may encourage someone to continue or stop what they are doing. *Exercise: NAME THAT FUNCTION. 1. Your mother mouths the words “call me” while making a phone sign on the way out the door. COMPLEMENT/REPETITION. 2. Your credit card is declined on a dinner date. You say “That’s just great” CONTRADICTION. 3. A creepy guy in a raincoat beckons with his finger for a child at a playground to come over. SUBSTITUTION. 4. At a butcher’s, you say “two steaks, please.” When the cook says “how many?” you hold up two fingers. REPETITION. 5. When your fiancée asks “will you marry me?” you nod your head up and down like a bobble head doll while saying “Yes”. REGULATION 6. You raise your hand in class to ask a question. REGULATION VOCAL-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐VISUAL INTENTIONAL-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐UNINTENTIONAL WELL UNDERSTOOD-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐MISUNDERSTOOD The combination of them gives us a number of possibilities. e.g
1. Someone speaking with a very noticeable ironic tone of voice. (Vocal, intentional and well understood) 2. Someone winking to the woman sitting opposite him in order to show her that he is attracted to her (visual, intentional, well understood) 3. Someone who is laughing sarcastically but his laughter is understood as normal and spontaneous (vocal, intentional, badly understood) 4. Gestures meaning I am fed up with this (visual, intentional, if we are not part of the culture will be probably badly understood.) 5. Someone who is coughing because he has got a cold (vocal, unintentional, well understood) 6. Someone who is walking towards the railway station carrying two suitcases (visual, unintentional, well understood) 7. Someone who is laughing spontaneously but his laughter is understood as normal and spontaneous. (vocal, intentional and misunderstood.) e.g. During Tom’s visit Ann – the host – yawns 1. Ann yawns intentionally so that Tom interprets that she wants him to leave. Tom understands correctly that she intentionally yawns as a hint for him to leave. (Intentional nonverbal behaviour) (Bad interpretation of the intention) (Bad interpretation of the message) 2. ... 3. .... She yawns intentionally. (intentional nonverbal behaviour) (Good interpretation of the intention) (good interpretation of the message) ESTE EJEMPLO ESTARÁ EN CAMPUS. Nonverbal communication interacts with verbal communication in a number of ways: 1. Intentional nonverbal behaviour reinforces what is being said verbally: e.g. The woman in charge of the library puts her index finger on her mouth while saying “quiet please!” 2. Intentional nonverbal behaviour contradicts what is being said verbally: e.g. A student smiles and laughs while saying “Pragmatics is soooo fascinating!!!” 3. Unintentional nonverbal behaviour reinforces what is being said verbally: e.g. A man is sweating and trembling while saying “I am nervous!” 4. Unintentional nonverbal behaviour contradicts what is being said verbally: e.g. A man is sweating and trembling while saying “I am NOT nervous!” IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT. SOME GESTURES ARE INNATE WHEREAS SOME GESTURES ARE LEARNED: -‐When a man passes a woman in a crowded street, he usually turns his body towards her as he passes; she instinctively turns her body away from him to protect her breasts. Is this an inborn female reaction or has she learned to do this by unconsciously watching other females? -‐Shaking the head from side to side to indicate “no” or negation is also universal and appears to be a gesture learned in infancy. When a baby has had enough milk, it turns its head from side to side meaning I have had enough. -‐SHOULDER SHRUG: Universal gesture that is used to show that a person does not know or does not understand what you are saying. TYPES OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION: 1. Physical appearance: This category refers to all those attributes of image, such as attractiveness, race, height, weight, body shape, hairstyle, dress and artefacts (necklaces, rings...) (Deborah Tanen’s The marked woman, women are always talking about what women wear, whereas for men is simpler) 2. Kinesics: It refers to all bodily movements except for those which involve the touching of another person. Commonly referred to as “body language”, this form of nonverbal communication encompasses such things as posture and movement styles. (Ekman and Friesen in 1969 divided kinesics into five types)
1. Emblems: nonverbal acts which have a direct verbal translation, sometimes just a word or two. E.g. thumbs-‐up sign, the extended middle finger, the hitchhiker’s thumb, OK sign. 2. Illustrators: these are gestures that often complement our verbal signals, helping to illustrate what’s being said verbally. E.g. a fisherman showing how big his fish was that he caught. 3. Affect displays: these are behaviors that indicate the type and intensity of the various emotions that we feel. E.g. facial expressions and hand & arm movements are commonly used to communicate emotional states of mind. 4. Regulators: these are the body movements that help control the flow of communication. E.g. when one holds up the hand palm outward to keep another from interrupting. 5. Adaptors: these are movements of behaviors that involve personal habits and self-‐expressions. They are method of adapting or accommodating ourselves to the demands of the world in which we live. E.g. using a spoon to eat the soup. 6. Oculesics: Intensification, masking, and neutralization all occur in the facial area, and the eyes, as “windows to the soul” have produced a wealth of literature on gaze behavior. 7. Paralanguage: all rhose non-‐verbal cues to be found in a speakers voice (intonation, tone of voice, pitch...) 8. Proxemics: The study of the use of personal space. Hall (1968) classified spacee on the basis of how that space is used in interactions; he proposed the categories public, social, personal and intimate. 9. Haptics: The study of touching behavior. Whether it be a physician’s touch in the exmination room, a lover’s soft caress, or the town bully’s malevolent battery, touch intimates certain details about the nature of the relationship. (Don’t touch cultures: Japan, U.S and Canada, England, Scandinavia, Other N. European countries/ Middle Ground Countries / Touch cultures: Spain and Portugal, Latin American countries, Italy, Greece, Some Asian countries, Russian Federation.) 10. Environmental details: the appearance of one’s surroundings provides contextual cues for the interactions therein as well as the potential for personality attributions of one sort or another on the person or persons responsible for that appearance. Details of spatial organization, size and volume of space, arrangement and selection of objects, lighting, color, temperature, and noise all have discernible effects on nonverbal behavior. 11. Chronemics: Chronemics, or the study of the use and erception of time, is another nonverbal communicative phenomena that varies widely across cultures. Being punctual is held in high regard in many cultures, and to keep someone waiting can be seen as a personal insult. General Intercultural problems concerning NVC (Poyatos 1994) -‐The realization of the nonverbal behaviour is different in both cultures. -‐The nonverbal behaviour is typical of one culture and does not exist in the other culture. -‐The nonverbal behaviour is the same in both cultures but the meaning ascribed to it is different in each culture. -‐The nonverbal behaviour is the same in both cultures but it has more variants and extended meanings in one culture than in the other. TEMA 11: (POWER POINT CAMPUS) UNIT 13: FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Figurative language allows speakers and writers to communicate meanings that differ in various ways from what they literally say. People speak figuratively for reasons of politeness, to avoid responsibility for the import of what is communicated, to express ideas that are difficult to communicate using literal language, and to express thoughts in a compact and vivid manner. Most common forms of figurative language • Metaphor: Ideas from dissimilar knowledge domains are either explicitly, in the case of simile (e.g., “my love is like a red, red rose”), or implicitly compared (e.g., “Our marriage is a roller-‐coaster ride”).
• Metonimy: A salient part of a single knowledge domain is used to represent or stand for the entire domain (e.g., “the White House issued a statement”). • Idioms: A speaker’s meaning cannot be derived from an analysis of the words’ typical meanings (e.g., “John let the car out of the bad about Mary’s divorce”). • Proverbs: Speaker’s express widely held no moral beliefs or social norms (e.g., “the early bird captures the worm”). • Irony1: A speaker’s meaning is usually, but not always, the opposite of what is said (e.g., “what lovely weather we’re having” stated in the midst of a rain storm). • Hyperbole: A speaker exaggerates the reality of some situation (e.g., “I have ten thousand papers to grace by the morning”). • Understatement: A speaker says less than is actually the case (e.g., “John seems a bit tipsy”, when John is clearly very drunk). • Oxymoron: Two contradictory ideas/concepts are fused together (e.g., “when parting is such a sweet sorrow”). • Indirect requests: Speaker make requests of others in indirect ways by asking questions (e.g., “can you pass the salt?”), or stating a simple fact (e.g., “it seems cold in here”, meaning “go close the window”). 1 He does not believe irony is figurative Some issues concerning figurative language 1) Some people think that figurative language is deviant and requires special cognitive processes to be understood. Whereas literal language can be understood via normal cognitive mechanisms, listeners must recognize the deviant nature of a figurative utterance before determining its non-‐literal meaning. (Grice 1989; Searle 1979): wrong idea. e.g., “This teacher is s shark”. 1. The speaker is lying. 2. There must be a reason. 3. Look for metaphoric interpretation (an implicature). Hence, for these people, figurative language should always be more difficult to process than roughly equivalent literal speech. “This teacher is very aggressive” > easy. “This teacher is a shark” > difficult. But the result of many psychological experiments has shown this idea to be false. Listeners/readers can often understand the figurative interpretations without having to first analyse and reject their literal meaning when these expressions are seen in realistic social context. People can read figurative utterances as quickly, and sometimes even more quickly, as literal uses of the same expressions in different contexts, or equivalent non-‐figurative expressions. 2) Related issue: The fact that some figurative language is highly innovative, while on other occasions it tends to become conventionalized (that is, fossilized) and hence the processing effort varies in all of those cases. E.G., “Politics is war”. 3) Figurative language is not something strange in human thinking. We actually use metaphors as part of the way we think and conceptualized the world we live in. George Lakoff and Marc Johnson (1981), Metaphors We Live In. We use metaphoric information (simple, normally from sensory information) in order to explain more abstract, difficult or new information. E.g., “My husband is my anchor” Target domain Source domain (Topic) (Vehicle) -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ Max Black’s Primary Secondary Terminology source source I. A. Richards (1936). Ortony (expert in metaphors) suggests three characteristics of metaphor to make it especially useful:
1 Compactness. Something unknown to the listener that otherwise would require a lengthy digression to describe or explain can be more economically expressed in terms of something known transferring thoughts in fewer words. 2 Vividness. Because the Source Domain comes as a whole from direct sensory experience, it can be more colourful, vibrant and dramatic, capturing one’s attention more so that a concept or abstraction. 3 Ability to convey otherwise inexplicable or unnameable qualities. Since the “real” or literal qualities or inner workings of a subject may not be knowable to the speaker or listener (due to mutual lack of experience or the lack of relevant words in their language), metaphor provides description and explanation that would be otherwise very difficult to communicate. Old view within relevance theory 1. Literal (explicit) meaning of the utterance is not communicated. 2. The literal (explicit) meaning is an aid for obtaining contextual information used for getting interpretations. 3. The metaphorical interpretation is communicated only as a (strong and weak) implicature. Current view within Relevance theory 1. The literal (explicit) meaning of the utterance is communicated but requires the adjustment of concept. 2. The literal (explicit) meaning is part of the speaker’s intended metaphoric interpretation. 3. The metaphoric interpretation is mainly communicated as a (strong or weak) implicature Preliminary context (mutual cognitive environment) A conversation between two friend. After a long separation, in which they bring each other up to date on their experience since they last saw each other. All of these are continually revised, up-‐dated, and connected to new information as the conversation progresses. CONVERSATIONAL CONTEXT (1): Luis: “You seem much happier than the last time I saw you. You used to be disoriented and easily distracted, but now you seem to be contented and at peace with yourself”. Pedro: “My wife is my anchor”. CONVERSATIONAL CONTEXT (2): Luis: “You sound like you’ve become bored with life. You used to be so eager for new experiences, but now the old zest for life seems to have become dull”. Pedro: “My wife is my anchor”. There is not difference between understanding visual metaphors and verbal ones. “The eath is a candle” with a picture of an earth as a candle is a visual metaphor, the idea is that candles burn slowly and the earth is also burning slowly, we are not really aware of the decay of the earth as if it were a candle. -‐When we analyse a visual metaphor, there are four stages: 1. Identification of the images involved in the visual metaphor. (to identify the images) 2. Identification of the referents involved in the visual metaphor. Question 1: are both referents present in the visual metaphor? (That is the first question you have to ask yourself) Eg. An advertisement for trainers, all are tortoises except the ones that are being announced, in this one only one referent is present, you have to work it out maybe a liebre or somehting. Question 2: Are these referents themselves the ones used for the metaphor or do they stand for (substitute) other intended referents? E.g. the earth is a saucepan, in an image the earth painted in a saucepan, both are present. E.g. a syringe and a TV tower in an image, television is a drug, syringe symbolises drugs in general and the TV tower stands for TV itself. We have to be careful whereas the actual references are the ones for the metaphor or if they symbolised something else. 3. Identification of the relationship existing between the referents. PHOTOCOPY VISUAL METAPHOR 4.Pragmatic interpretation of the visual metaphor. (the more creative the visual metaphor, the more different)
UNIT 14: POLITENESS Calsamiglia Blancafort and Tusón Valls (Las cosas del decir 1999: 161-‐162) summarise the most important aspects of politeness: 1. It focuses on verbal interaction and the choice of certain linguistic markers of politeness. 2. It is based upon the acknowledgement that the interpersonal function of language is always present as the essence of human communication. 3. It is used for making social relationships smoother and for ccompensating aggressiveness, that is, all those actions that can constitute a virtual threat for the participants in the interaction. 4. It is considered a number of strategies which determine the choice of certain linguistic elements when building up the utterances that the interlocutors direct at each other. 5. It stresses and shows the current relationships in our social life as influencced by power / solidarity and distance / proximity factors, by feelings, by mutual knowledge, etc. 6. It is a typical object of negotiation in any conversational context. -‐Leech’s view of politeness involves a set of politeness maxims:
1. The Tact maxim (minimize the interlocutor’s effort; maximize the interlocutor’s benefit).
2. The Generosity maxim (minimize personal benefit; maximize personal effort) 3. The Approbation Maxim ( minimize criticism of others; maximize praise of others.) 4. The Modesty Maxim (minimize self-‐praise; maximize self-‐criticism) 5. The Agreement Maxim (minimize disagreement with others; maximize agreement with others) 6. The Sympathy Maxim (maximize sympathy to others)
-‐Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory: Face (Goffman 1955, 1967) “the public self image” or reputation, self-‐esteem of a person” ... face is something that can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction. In general, people cooperate (and assume each other’s cooperation) in maintaining face in interaction. (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 61)
Negative face – Positive face Brown and Levinson (1987 : 62) -‐Negative face is the want to interact without being impeded by others. It represents the desire for autonomy, personal space, freedom from imposition, freedom of action. -‐Positie face, on the other hand, is related to the want to be approved of by other people. It is associated with one’s desire for approval, desire to be acknowledged and approved of. Negative Face Strategies:
-‐Use titles -‐Use formal language -‐Don’t make assumptions -‐Apologize -‐Be indirect -‐Try to minimize imposition -‐Hedge -‐Talk about things not having to do with us.
Positive Face Strategies: -‐Use first nanme or nicknames -‐Use informal language -‐Use a ‘common language’ -‐Act interested, sympathetic -‐Be direct -‐Agree
-‐Claim common experiences, interests, group membership -‐Talk about ‘us’ Face-‐threatening Acts (FTAs) Brown and Levinson argue that, since it is seen of mutual interest to save, maintain, or support each other’s face, FTAs are either avoided (if possible) or different strategies are employed to soften te FTAs. These different strategies are presented in the form of five superstrategies for performing FTAs: (2 and 3 are the most interesting ones, 1 is the opposite of 4) 1. Bald-‐on record: FTA performed bald-‐on-‐record, in a direct and concise way without softening action. E.g. imperative form without any redress: “Wash your hands” 2. Positive Politeness: FTA 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” 3. Negative Politeness: FTA performed with softening action. Strategies oriented towards negative face of the hearer. E.g. indirect formulation: “would you mind washing your hand?” 4. Off-‐record: FTA performed off-‐record. Strategies that might allow the act to have more than one interpretation. E.g. hints, metaphors, etc. “Gardening makes you hands dirty” 5. Avoidance: FTA not performed.
Positive Politeness Strategies: -‐Notice and attend to H’s wants and needs -‐Exaggerate interest, approval, sympathy -‐Use in-‐group identify makers -‐Seek agreement/avoid disagreement -‐Assert common ground -‐Joke -‐Be optimistic -‐Give offers, promises, reasons, sympathy, understanding, cooperation.
Positive Politeness It is usually seen in roups of friends ,or where people in the given social situation know each other fairy well. It usually tries to minimize the distance between them by expressing friendliness and solid interest in the hearer’s need to be respected (minimize the FTA). -‐Attend to the hearer: “You must be hunggry it’s a long time since breakfast. How about some lunch?” -‐Avoid disagreement: A: “Shat is she, small?” B: “Yes, yes, she’s small, smallish, -‐um, not really small but certainly not very big.” -‐Assume agreeent: “So when are you coming to see us?”
-‐Make opinion less direct: “Youu really should sort of try harder”. Negative Politeness Strategies: -‐Be indirect -‐Be pessimistic -‐Minimize imposition -‐Give deference -‐Apologize -‐Depersonalize (avoid ‘you’, ‘I’) Negative Politeness The main focus for using this strategy is to assume that you may be imposing on the hearer, and intruding on their space. Therefore, these automatically assume that there might be some social distane of awkwardness in the situation. -‐Be indirect: “I’m looking for a comb”. In this situation you are hoping that you will not have to ask directly, so as not to impose and take up the hearer’s time. Therefore, by using this indirect strategy, you hope they will offer to go find one for you -‐Forgiveness: “You must forgive me but...” -‐Minimize imposition: “I just want to ask you if I... un punto más Here are variants of the same simple verbal request varying from “positive, direct” to “negative indirect”: Shut the door: Direct, bald on record. No politeness (maximally efficient communication.) How about shutting the door: Direct, on-‐record, positive politeness: you suggest an option not an action. Addresses face-‐saving issues of imposing action on somebody (inclusiveness) Would not you mind if we shut the door?: Negative politeness: same as positive politeness, but the request is cconditional and offer is reversed. It is warm in here, isn’t it? : off ... -‐e.g. I know you are not that crazy about parties but come to the party tonight! You’ll love it. (We can perceiae a casual, intimate interpersonal relationship beyond the literal meaning of the invitation. This is achieved through a number of positive politeness strategies such as the establishment of shared knowledge, the use of informal vocabulary, the use of a directive speech act in imperative and the expression of optimism about the good time that the listener will have, all of them aimed at highlightin closeness and solidarity between the two interlocutors) -‐e.g. It would be nice if you could come to the party toniht if you have ot the time. Well, we’ll understand if you can’t make it. (it satisfies the listener’s negativee face by stressing his/her independence, freedom from imposition and respect for his/her space, time and personal decision. This is achieved through negative poiteness strategies such as giving the option to reect the invitatin, the use of the conditional sentene denoting insecurity, and underlining the lack of expectations marked by a word indicating doubt) Which superstrategy? *-‐Exercise 1: identify the superstrategy. 1. I wonder if you know whether John went out. (negative politeness? 2. Watch out! (bald-‐on-‐record) 3. A penny saved is a penny earned. (off-‐record) 4. Lend us two quid then, wouldja mate? (positive politeness) 5. I’d like to borrow a cup of flour if I may. (negative politeness) 6. Don’t you want some dinner now? (positive politeness) 7. Could you pssibly by any chance lend me your car for just a few minutes? (negative politeness) 8. That house needs a touch of paint. (off-‐record) 9. Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets on the train. (negative politeness) 10. Accept my thanks (bald-‐on-‐record) 11. Help me with the bags will you, love? (positive politeness) 12. Ok If I tackle those cookies now? (positive politeness)
13. Can you open the window? (negative politeness) 14. Give me the money. (bald-‐on-‐record) SIMILAR EXERCISE IN THE EXAM UNIT 15: APPLICATIONS: TRANSLATION. Gutt, Ernest-‐August (1991) Translation and Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. -‐Translation entails comparing or contrasting two cultural and linguistic systems. (In translation we talk about Source Text (ST) that is intended for source text audience. And we talk about Target Text (TT) which is intended for target text audience. ) -‐Translators should reproduce the expectations of relevance generated for the readers of the source text (ST). -‐To do so, they have to solve the problem of transferring, to a different culture, a text that communicates interpretations that were initially meant for a reader that shared with the author the same linguistic and cultural context. -‐The elements that translations exhibit (related to context, mutual knowledge, cultural stereotypes, etc.) aim at facilitating the interpretation of the target text (TT) and at favoring similar levels of relevance to the ones that the reader of the source text (ST) would obtain. -‐It is likely that the TT reader will not reach a correct interpretation if the translator does not transfer, apart from the core meaning of the text, al the cognitive frame that underlies it is in the ST: the specific world wiews and cultural storage exhibited in the ST. E.g.: Advertisement: List of features as long as your arm. But not an arm and a leg. Intended interpretation / effects: 1. this product offers a lot of features but they won’t cost a lot (“to cost an arm and a leg”=to cost a lot of money) 2. To enjoy the game of words with “arm” (literal initially) and “aan arm and a leg” (idiomatic, later) A good translation has to maintain the intended interpretation AND the effects that the advertiser intended to create. Translation suggested: Abra bien los ojos y descubra todas sus prestacines, pero sin costarle un ojo de la cara. (it also works in Italian (costar un ojo de la cabeza)). Intended interpretation / effects (MAINTAINED): 1. This product offers a lot of features but they won’t ccost a lot (“costar un ojo de la cara” = to cost a lot of money) 2. To enjoy the game of words with “ojo” (literal) and “un ojo de la cara” (idiomatic) QUALITY OF TRANSLATION: 1. Cultural Scenario: mutual cultural environment, the stereotypes that spread in the population, socially accepted norms and values, shared referents, etc. E.g. Husband: For twenty years my wife and I were incredibly happy. Friend: and then... What happeed? Husband: We met! 2. Semantic Scenario: -‐Similar ways of coding information. -‐Parallel ways of coding idioms, metaphors, etc. -‐Similar options in the language to enerate humour e.g. “to cost an ar and a leg”. “costar un ojo de la cara”. 3. Pragmatic Scenario: the most important one. It is divided into two: a) Inferential steps: inferential strategies of mutual parallel adjustment of explicit content, implicit import and context accessibility leading to a relevant interpretation. b) Effects and effort: The balance that the source-‐language speaker intended his audience to obtain and that the translator should try to reproduce in the target-‐language audience. The more we can perserve the more literal the translation will be, and the less we can perserve the more imaginative it will be. SCALE OF TRANSLATABILITY (Photocopy chart)
-‐Sometimes translations are very hard because they rely on the visual:
-‐JOKE PROPOSED IN A 2014 CONFERENCE IN BRAZIL AS UNTRANSLATABLE INTO ENGLISH: [dos amigas están charlando sobre sus maridos. En un momento dado, conversan también sobre la calidad del sexo con ellos] 1 ¿ y cómo te va con tu marido en el sexo? 2 bueno, estamos con el tratamiento. 1. ¿cómo que tratamiento? 2. Sí, tratamiento... él trata y yo miento. 1. What is sex like witho your husband... liability, he has no ability and i lie.