Party Woman

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4.1 Principles and rules

• Elements of understanding• Prerequisites to understanding• Going all the way from elementary

knowledge to high-level, theoretical and metatheoretical speculation.

Hjelmaslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, 1943

• Three methodological principles for linguistics;

1. Simplicity, 2. Non-contradiction 3. Exhaustivity

These principles are Conditions for a sound description of a language, and should not be confused with the rules of description themselves,

It’s absolutely incredible! Superb.

Reuland

• Being equivalent to proposal for description (1972)

• Chomskyan grammatical writing, • Principled reasoned, justified.

Rule

• Chomsky grammar of the language Simply consisting of rules, the rules are the grammar, not to say; the

language. Syntactic,

Language

Need semantic or pragmatic natureLanguage description (Mey 1991a)What a Chomskyan ‘rule’ possibly could

do outside of the domain of syntax.

Mey’s questions

• Is there any sense at all in talking about rules in semantics, or even pragmatics?

• What would a semantic or pragmatic rule have to look like, and what use would it be?

Answer

• A grammatical rule: its ability to predict. • The rules of the grammar contain all the

information needed to establish (generate) the entire set of correct (well-formed) sentences of a language, and only these; as far as syntax is concerned, language is rule-generated.

But what about semantics?

• In semantics, the concept of well-formedness is controversial.

• Semantic rules only make sense outside of actual language use.

• The person who moves too far away from the normal meaning of the words will have difficulties in being understood;

• But this semantic rule is one of usage, not of prediction.

Leech (1983)

• We restrict the use of rules primarily to syntax

• In pragmatics, we prefer to work with

principles.

4.2 Some principles discussed

• 4.2.1 The communicative Principle• 4.2.2 The cooperative Principle

4.2.1 The communicative Principle

• Is people talk with the intention to communicate something to somebody, whether or not they observe a particular syntactic rule is not too important.

Gazdar’s terminology

• Avoids giving our interlocutors either an over- or an underdose of information.

• A strength scale of expressions ranging from stronger to weaker;

• All, most, many, some few none.

Communicative principles

• When communicating, speakers try to be understood correctly,

• And avoid giving false impressions. • No matter how logically correct and true

my speech is, if it confuses or misleads my hearer, then my utterance will not have its proper effect.

The communicative Principle• relies on another principle, that of

• cooperation, • and in particular on the

• maxim of ‘quantity’, • by which we are supposed to always provide the

• suitable amount of information.

I am the party whip, it is my responsibility to ensure that all the party members toe the party line and vote to oppose the motion.Suppose further that I’m less than successful in keeping my voters in lin; then I might want to de-emphasize this fact, e.g., by stating, in my report to party headquarters, that Many of our

people voted against.

But you didn’t do your job properly; after all, not all of our people voted against, so

Looser!!!

What these utterances emphasize is the

user’s point of view. Pragmatic.

Many of them did oppose the motionHm~~~

OK!

Well done!!!

The communicative Principle• relies on another principle, that of

• cooperation, • and in particular on the

• maxim of ‘quantity’, • by which we are supposed to always provide the

• suitable amount of information.

Have you finished with your thesis?

• Well, It’s almost done. • Not yet. • No, I am still working on it.• No, but I’ve been working really hard. • Almost, but need a couple of weeks more. • Whew! It’s a tough job. • Are you kidding?• I don’t remember when I had my last

sleep.

4.2.2 The Cooperative Principle

• Communication, furthermore, requires people to cooperate; the bare facts of conversation come alive only in a mutually accepted, pragmatically determined context.

Cooperative Principle (CP)(Grice, 1975, 1989)

• Four Maxims: superordinate Cooperative Principle

• The maxim of quantity• The maxim of quality• The maxim of relation• The maxim of manner.

Questions by Mey

• When do we use the maxims, respectively when do we fail to use them,

• Why are they necessary in the first place?• because otherwise communication

would be very difficult, and perhaps break down altogether.

The Maxim of Quantity

1. Make your contribution as informative as required;

2. Do not make your contribution more informative than required.

Dostoyevski and the rubber ball

Where’s my ball?

Why don’t you look behind Volume 6 of Dostoyevski’s Collected Works?

•Violates the maxim of mannerInformation is not perspicuous•Against the maxim of quantityToo much informationToo little information

Cooperation and ‘face’

• Two views that clash CP1. One is that of cooperative behavior as a

kind of abstract, philosophical rationality; the notion of cooperation reduces to what is minimally necessary to explain people’s actual use of language

2. The second view raises Problems of moral philosophy and practical ethics

1st view

• A’s saying X implies conversationally that certain things will be assumed to be the case by B, who will then act in accordance with that assumption.

• E.g. • A: You spend a night with him, Soo!• B: Well, then what about Jack?

Soo has to marry himOr has to break up with jack

Soo did a wrong thing.

• The second view raises Problems of moral philosophy and practical ethics (without cooperation, communication wouldn’t be possible, hence we had better cooperate)

• Political issues, conflicting interactants• If this is the case we need to adopt

cooperation as the basis for their communicative behaviour.

Grice Suggestion

• Are they (the maxims of conversational behaviour) conventional rules?

• The maxims are not arbitrary conventions, but rather describe rational means for conducting co-operative exchanges.

• If this is so, we would expect them to govern aspects of non-linguistic behavioiur too,

• Pass the brake fluid, pass the oil ?.

• In each of these cases, then the non-cooperative behaviour falls short of some natural notion of full co-operation,

• Because it violates one or another of the non-verbal analogues of the maxims of conversation.

• The maxims do indeed derive from general considerations of rationality.

govern aspects of non-linguistic behavioiur

rational means for conducting co-operative exchan

Face

Full co-operation

General rationalityCulture-specific

considerations

PositiveNegative

Losing face

• Acting cooperatively, people try to build up their interlocutors’ positive faces while trying to avoid posing threats to their negative faces.

• When face is being threatened in interaction,

Mitigation devices

• In-direct speech acts• Pragmatic acts• Gee, that ice cream looks really good• Get lost, you’re wasting your time,• Leave me alone • Forget it.

4.2.2.3 Cooperation and Flouting

• Problems that actually occur between cooperating humans.

1. Flouting maxim• Use a word in a sense that is contrary to

what is commonly accepted and I know that my interlocutor is not aware of this.

Flouting maxim by use of not accepted meaning to the hearer• There are two bad men in the world. The

Russian white man and the American white man.

• There are two neuclear bombs in the room. The red hat one and the yellow socks one.

Flouting maxim by considering the effects people want to obtain by their linguistic

behaviour• Why don’t you look at the Volume 6 of

Dostoyevsky’s novel?

• Why don’t you put things in the same place?

In order to lead the addressee to look for a convert, implied

meaning• Doorman: I need to see your ID, it’s the rule.

• Inger: But I left it back at the hotel.• Doorman: sorry ma’am, then I can’t let you

in. • Inger: But I’m twenty-nine and the mother

of four• Doorman: yes, and I’m the pope’s

grandfather and have six kids.

In order to lead the addressee to look for a convert, implied

meaning • B: Aren’t they cute?.• A: Are these your children?• B: What? I’m only nineteen.• A: Oh, yeah? then I’m 5.

• What are you doing?• Sorry. • I don’t have them all. • Well she looks like the one I used to know.• I’m done. Let’s go. • Don’t you see that?