Pragmatics Intro

Meaningagain!

the war

the war with the English

communicative intentions of speakers

refer to something not expected

Communication recognizing what speakers mean

by their utterances

Meaning

The study of what speakers mean, or speaker

meaning, is called pragmatics.

shared assumptions and

a sign may allow many interpretations

meanings = words, the context, and some preexisting knowledge = reasonable interpretation of
producer of the sign intended it to convey

the meaning of the sign is not based solely on the

words, but on what we think the writer intended to
communicate.

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context

dependent on the intentions of participants in a
conversational exchange.

Not the meaning of single words as we saw in semantics,

but the intended meaning of whole exchanges.

Context , intentions and shared knowledge are the

keywords. Also cultural implications play an important
role.

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context dependent on the

intentions of participants in a conversational exchange.

Not the meaning of single words as we saw in semantics, but the

intended meaning of whole exchanges.

Context , intentions and shared knowledge are the keywords. Also

cultural implications play an important role.

A.: I have a 14 year old son

B.: Well thats right

A.: I also have a dog

B.: Oh, Im sorry

Can you understand the meaning of this exchange?

Semantics

Context considered

Pragmatics

Context unconsidered

Traditional semantics

3. Context
Knowledge of language
What has been said before

!
Speaker A

Knowledge about the world

Knowledge about the situation
Knowledge about each other

"
Speaker B

Today is Sunday.

IMPLICATURE

Pragmatics is concerned with the notion of

implicature, i.e. implied meaning as opposed to the
mere lexical meaning expressed (Grice, 1968)

Two women discussing their children:

A: How is Tom going at school?
B: Ah, well ... you know what they say: boys will
be boys.
A: Yeah, but girls are no easier ... you know
what Jess did the other day?
(Adapted from Wierzbicka 1991, p. 391)

On being disturbed by the next-door neighbor's

lawnmower early on Sunday morning:
A: Great way to wake up!
B: (grumpily) Sure is.

If we dont have a context or some knowledge about

a situation, the meaning can be invisible as in the
previous example. Or
- have you seen Sam?
- the black car is over there.

Here are some real examples of promotional signs:

1) We do not tear your clothing with machinery; we do it carefully by hand.
2) Heated attendant parking
3) Baby & Toddler Sale
They may sound ambiguous:
Does not mean that people working at that laundry tear your clothing by hand.
Does not mean that we heat an attendant and then we can park him/her
somewhere.
Does not mean that we sell young children.
What do they mean?

"My friends were poor, but honest.

'but' carries the implicature that what follows runs
counter to expectations.
What is the counter to expectation or simply
expectation?
Well will return to implicature later!!

Cross Cultural Pragmatics

"Pragmatic errors are the result of an interactant

imposing the social rules of one culture on his
communicative behaviour in a situation where the
social rules of another culture would be more
appropriate" (Riley 1989: 234).

According to Liebe-Harkort (1989) difficulties in

intra-cultural communication are potentially
compounded further, if one of the speakers is
monolingual and cannot imagine that the intentions
of their speaking partner may be different than his
or her own would be if s/he were to use a form or
expression the other uses.

Clearly, communicative competence must include

pragmalinguistic competence (i.e., choosing
appropriate form) and sociopragmatic competence
(i.e., choosing appropriate meaning) if inter-cultural
pragmatic problems are to be avoided (Trosborg,
1994, p. 10)

Context or co-text
We have different contexts:
The linguistic context also called co-text is the set of other words
used in the same sentence:
We know that the word pupil is a homonym. How do we know which
meaning is intended? Usually by means of the linguistic context:
If it is used in a sentence with words like teacher, classmates etc.
we understand that pupil here means ?
If it is used in a sentence with words like eye, dilatation or iris we
know that here it means ?

Context or co-text
Another type, is the physical context.
If you see a sign like this near a school: SLOW
DOWN. PUPILS CROSSING THE STREET.
It does not mean that you have to slow down
because you could run over eye-pupils and reduce
them to a pulp.

Bank and bankagain!

Our understanding of much of what we read and

hear is tied to this processing of aspects of the
physical context, particularly the time and place, in
which we encounter linguistic expressions.

Two more examples:

A. Do you understand this question?

B. Amazingly, he already loves he

A: Oh no, . . .. ..

B: Dont panic, Ill take you to the bank

Can you think of two completely different ways to

complete A?

They should exemplify the two different meanings

of bank.

Deixis
Examples:
Youll have to bring them back by tomorrow, because
they arent here now and they need them.

Deixis (/daktk/)

comes from Greek and it means pointing by

means of language.

We can have: person deixis, place deixis, time

deixis.

This means that language is used to act. By means of

language, in terms of requests, commands, asking
questions or information, we perform actions, that are
called speech acts.
are you married?, can they play tennis?, do you know
anything about what happened? are forms used to ask
for information and they are called direct speech acts.
In questions like Can you pass the wine? you dont
want to know if the person is able to pass the wine, but
you want the wine. These are called indirect speech
acts.