英语语言学第八章 语用学 pragmatics

1、Chapter Eight Language in Use(Pragmatics),1. Introduction: Definition of Pragmatics,The study of language in use. The study of meaning in context. The study of speakers meaning, utterance meaning, the uttering of the sentence is the doing of an action; they cannot be said to be true or false. Perfor

2、mative verbs: name, bet, etc.,I do. I name this ship Queen Elizabeth. I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow. I give and bequeath my watch to my brother. I promise to finish it in time. I apologize. I declare the meeting open. I warn you that the bull will charge.,Minister: addressing the groom) (

3、Grooms Name), do you take (Brides Name) for your lawful wedded wife, to live together after Gods ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love, honor, comfort, and cherish her from this day forward, forsaking all others, keeping only unto her for as long as you both shall live? XXX，你是否愿意

4、娶xxx为妻，按照圣经的教训与他同住，在神面前和她结为一体，爱她、安慰她、尊重她、保护他，像你爱自己一样。不论她生病或是健康、富有或贫穷，始终忠於她，直到离开世界？Groom: I do.,Felicity conditions: A. (i) There must be a relevant conventional procedure. (ii) the relevant participants and circumstances must be appropriate. B. The procedure must be executed correctly and completely

5、. C. Very often, the relevant people must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, and must follow it up with actions as specified.,The distinction between constatives ,Maxim of Relation: Be relative. Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous. Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be br

6、ief. Be orderly.,CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation. People tend to be cooperative and obey CP in communication.,However, CP is often violated. Violation of CP and its maxims leads to conversational implicature.,Violation of the maxims (Quantity),Make your contribution as

7、informative as is required. A: 昨天上街买了些什么? B: 就买了些东西。 I dont want to tell you what I bought.,2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Aunt: How did Jimmy do his history exam? Mother: Oh, not at all well. Teachers asked him things that happened before the poor boy was born.

8、Her son should not be blamed.,Violation of the maxims (Quality),1. Do not say what you believe to be false. X runs as fast as a deer. He is made of iron.,2. Do not say that for which you lack evidence. A: Beirut is in Peru, isnt it? B: And Rome is in Romania, I suppose. Its ridiculous.,Violation of

9、the maxims (Relation),Be relevant. A: Prof. Wang is an old bag. B: Nice weather for the time of year. I dont want to talk about Prof. Wang.,Violation of the maxims (Manner),1. Avoid obscurity of expression A: Lets get the kids something. B: Ok, but I veto C-H-O-C-O-L-A-TE. Dont give them chocolate.,

10、2. Avoid ambiguity 买一赠一。,3. Be brief A: Did you get my assignment? B: I received two pages clipped together and covered with rows of black squiggles. not satisfied.,Characteristics of implicature,Calculability: hearers work out implicature based on literal meaning, CP and its maxims, context, etc.,w

11、hen sb says sth, which clearly does not make sense at the superficial level, the level of what is said, you will not simply think that he is talking nonsense, and stop thinking about it any more. You will instead try to find out its implied meaning at a deeper level. And if on the basis of every inf

12、ormation available, there is one interpretation which may support your assumptions, then you will take it as the real point the speaker is trying to get across.,In the case of the reference letter in the course book(p179), the reader will not simply think it utterly useless and stop thinking after t

13、he first reading. He will assume that the writer is still following some normal rules like CP and tries to say sth relevant. Since the most important thing is whether the student is qualified for the position, the reader will have to assume that the writer has some negative views on that.,Cancellabi

14、lity / defeasibility: If the linguistic or situational contexts changes, the implicature will also change. A: Do you want some coffee? B: Coffee would keep me awake. I do not like coffee. B: Coffee would keep me awake. I want to stay up.,Non-detachability: implicature is attached to the semantic con

15、tent of what is said, not to the linguistic form; implicatures do not vanish if the words of an utterance are changed for synonyms. A: Shall we go the cinema tonight? B: Therell be an exam tomorrow. Ill take an exam tomorrow. Isnt there an exam tomorrow?,Characteristics of implicature,Non-convention

16、ality: implicature is different from its conventional meaning of words. It is context-dependent. It varies with context. A1：下午踢球去吧！ A2：老王住院了？ B：上午还在换草皮。 A3: 足球场安装了一个新门柱。,Conclusion: Conversational implicature is a type of implied meaning, which is deduced on the basis of the conventional meaning of

17、words together with the context, under the guidance of the CP and its maxims. In this sense, implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or 言外之意in Chinese.,5.Relevance Theory,The theory was formally propos

18、ed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition,speakers may sometimes mean more than what they actually say. How do hearers know about it and fill this gap between the semantic content and pragmatic inference? Grices hypothesis is: there must be a principle

19、 to govern it - the Cooperative principle, as he puts it. In the CP , there is the maxim of relation the information should be relevant to the topic. Grice s maxim of relation-be relevant -has been elevated to the status of an overriding principle governing communication and cognition by Sperber and

20、 Wilson . The principle of relevance is at the center of their claim of a new approach to the study of human communication.,Relevance theory is a new approach to pragmatics. It attempts to answer not only philosophical questions (Grices abstract philosophical consideration of conversational implicat

21、ure) about the nature of communication , but also psychological questions (esp. cognitive psychological mind) about how the interpretation process unfolds in the hearers mind.,They argue that all Gricean maxims should be reduced to a single principle of relevance, which is defined as: Every act of o

22、stensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.,Two key notions in it: Ostensive communication and presumption of optimal relevance Communication is not simply a matter of encoding and decoding, it also involves inference. They maintain that inference has only to do

23、 with the hearer. From the speakers side, communication should be seen as an act of making clear ones intention to express something. This is called ostensive act. A complete characterization of communication is that it is ostensive-inferential,Presumption of optimal relevance Three definitions of r

24、elevance: 1. An assumption is relevant in a context if and only if it has some contextual effect in the context.,But relevance is a comparative concept. Some assumptions may be more relevant than others. They have improved on the definition by adopting an extent-condition format: Extent condition 1:

25、 An assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that its contextual effects in this context are large.,Extent condition 2: An assumption is relevant in a context to the extent that the effort required to process it in this context is small.,2. An assumption is relevant to an individual at a gi

26、ven time if and only if it is relevant in one or more of the contexts available to that individual at that time.,An phenomenon is relevant to an individual if and only if one or more of the assumptions it makes manifest is relevant to him.,Presumption of optimal relevance means: 1. The set of assump

27、tions I which the communicator intends to make manifest to the addressee is relevant enough to make it worth the addressees while to process the ostensive stimulus. 2. The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one the communicator could have used to communicate I.,Every utterance comes with a pres

28、umption of the best balance of effort against effect. On the one hand, the effects achievable will never be less than is needed to make it worth processing. On the other hand, the effort required will never be more than is needed to achieve these effects. In comparison to the effects achieved, the e

29、ffort needed is always the smallest.,Of all the interpretations of the stimulus which confirm the presumption, it is the first interpretation to occur to the addressee that is the one the communicator intended to convey. E.g. George has a cat. The first interpretation is George has a big domestic ca

30、t. But it may also be used to mean George has a tiger, a lion, a jaguar（美洲豹）etc. But this will not be the most relevant on account of the increased processing effort involved. The first interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance is always the best hypothesis.,6.The Q- and R-principles

31、,These principles were developed by L. Horn in 1984. The Q-principle is intended to invoke the first maxim of Grices Quantity, and the R-principle the relation maxim, but the new principles are more extensive than the Gricean maxims.,The definition of the Q-principle (hearer-based) is: (1)Make your

32、contribution sufficient (cf. quantity); (2)Say as much as you can (given R). The definition of the R-principle (speaker-based) is: (1)Make your contribution necessary (cf. Relation, Quantity-2, Manner); (2)Say no more than you must (given Q),The hearer-based Q-principle is a sufficiency condition in

33、 the sense that information provided is the most the speaker is able to. The R-principle, in contrast, encourages the hearer to infer that more is meant.,7.The Q-, I- and M-principles,This tripartite model was suggested by S. Levinson mainly in his 1987 paper In essence(nature), Levinson says, the Q

34、-, I- and M- principles are Grices two maxims of Quantity and a maxim of Manner reinterpreted neo-classically. And the maxims of Quality, as is the case in Horns theory, are kept intact(unchanged).,Levinson does not agree with the treatment in both Sperber and Wilsons and Horns accounts (statements)

35、 to subsume(include) the second maxim of Quantity under a principle of relevance, or relation.,So he renames the second maxim of Quantity the Principle of Informativeness , I- Principle for short; and the first maxim of Quantity the Principle of Quantity or Q-Principle.,Q-principle: Speakers maxim:

36、Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows, unless providing a stronger statement would contravene the I-principle. Recipients corollary: Take it that the speaker made the strongest statement consistent with what he knows .,I-principle Speakers

37、maxim: the maxim of minimization Say as little as necessary, i.e. produce the minimal linguistic information sufficient to achieve your communicational ends. Recipients corollary: the enrichment rule Amplify the informational content of the speakers utterance, by finding the most specific interpreta

38、tion, up to what you judge to be the speakers m-intended point.,M-principle Speakers maxim: Do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason. Recipients corollary: If the speaker used a prolix or marked expression M, he did not mean the same as he would have, had he used the unmarked

39、 expression U specifically he was trying to avoid the stereotypical associations .,Three heuristics Heuristic 1 what isnt said, isnt. Heuristic 2 what is simply described is stereotypically exemplified Heuristic 3 whats said in an abnormal way isnt normal; or marked message indicates marked situation.,8. Politeness P