PRAGMATICS

PRAGMATICS
 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.
 EXAMPLE NUMBER 1

A.: I have a 14 year old son

B.: Well that’s right
A.: I also have a dog
B.: Oh, I’m sorry

Can you understand the meaning of this exchange?

It would be hard to catch it, unless you know that A. is trying

to rent an apartment from B. and B. doesn’t accept pets.
 If we don’t have a context or some knowledge
about a situation, the meaning can be ‘invisible’

EXAMPLE NUMBER 2

- have you seen Sam?

- the black car is over there.

This seemingly incoherent text can be easily

understood if we know that Sam owns a black car.
EXAMPLE NUMBER 3: 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…

1) Does not mean that people working at that laundry tear

your clothing by hand.
2) Does not mean that we heat an attendant and then we
can park him/her somewhere.
3) Does not mean that we sell young children.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

 CONTEXT
WE HAVE DIFFERENT CONTEXTS
The LINGUISTIC CONTEXT also called CO-TEXT is the
set of other words used in the same sentence:

EXAMPLE:
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

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.
 DEIXIS
There are many words in the language that cannot be
interpreted alone, without being put in a context.

Here, there, that, now, I, you, them and many other

examples if used without a shared knowledge or a clear
context can result very vague.

You’ll have to bring them back by tomorrow, because they

aren’t here now and they need them.

This sentence could virtually mean everything and nothing.

Deixis comes from Greek and it means ‘pointing’ by means
of language.

We can have: person deixis, place deixis, time deixis.

DOING THINGS WITH LANGUAGE
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 don’t

want to know if the person is able to pass the wine, but
you want the wine. These are called ‘indirect speech
acts’.
 FUNCTIONS
Did you watch the movie? - IS A QUESTION
Drink your milk - IS A COMMAND/REQUEST
You drank your milk - IS A STATEMENT

Whenever one of the above forms is used to perform a

function other than the functions written below, the result is
an indirect speech act.
If we say: you left the door open this could be interpreted
as a statement, but if you say that to someone who has
just come into the room and it is quite cold outside, yours is
not a statement but a request: please, shut the door.
WHEN WE FAIL TO UNDERSTAND SOMEONE’S SPEECH ACTS
THE RESULT COULD BE FUNNY:

A: excuse me, do you know the time?

B: yes, I do.
And B walks away.
J. L. Austin in his ‘How to do things with words’
identifies three distinct levels of action beyond the
act of utterance itself.
He distinguishes the act of saying something, what
one does in saying it, and what one does by saying
it, and calls these…

'LOCUTIONARY ACT',

'ILLOCUTIONARY ACT'

‘PERLOCUTIONARY ACT'
For example, that a bartender utters the words,
'The bar will be closed in five minutes‘
He is performing the locutionary act of saying that the bar will be
closed in five minutes (from the time of utterance).
The level here is ‘what words mean’ and the act of saying
something
In saying this, the bartender is performing the illocutionary act of
informing the customers of the bar's imminent closing.
The level here is to perform a function: informing people about
something.
Perlocutionary acts are performed with the intention of
producing a further effect. The bartender intends to be
performing the perlocutionary acts of causing the customers to
believe that the bar is about to close and making them finish
their drink or order their last one.
The level here is to making people do something.
He is performing all these speech acts, at all three levels, just by
uttering certain words.
To sum up:
 Locutionary act: saying something (the locution).
 Illocutionary act: the performance of an act in
saying something
The illocutionary force is the speaker's intent.
e.g. informing, ordering, warning, asking.
 Perlocutionary acts: Speech acts that have an
effect on the feelings, thoughts or actions of the
listener. In other words, they seek to change
minds!
Unlike locutionary acts, perlocutionary acts are
external to the performance.
e.g., inspiring, persuading or deterring.
YOU SAY, YOU DO, YOU OBTAIN
Pragmatics and Speech Acts in Culture
Speech acts are sometimes difficult to perform in a second
language because learners may not know the idiomatic
expressions or cultural norms in the second language or they
may transfer their first language rules and conventions into
the second language, assuming that such rules are universal.
The natural tendency for language learners is to fall back on
what they know to be appropriate in their first language.
For example, the following remark as uttered by a native
English speaker could easily be misinterpreted by a hearer
who does not know English very well:
 Sarah: "I can’t agree with you more. "
 Marie: "Hmmm…." (Thinking: "She can’t agree with me?! I
thought she liked my idea!")
Culture Again!
Knowing a language is not enough.

If we ignore the culture of a people we could get

into pragmatic troubles.

The communication could break down.

- Would you like something to drink?

- No, thanks.
This is why many times in order to respect the
pragmatic force of utterances for instance in
movies the translation of these utterances
must be changed because they would not
have the same effect on audiences other
than the source culture’s.
 From Ocean’s Eleven by
Steven Soderbergh, 2001.
Rusty-Brad Pitt and Danny-George Clooney meet and start
joking on the way in which they are dressed. Danny is
wearing a tuxedo, while Rusty is wearing a dress with a very
showy shirt.
In the original version we have:
 Rusty: I hoped you were the groom.
 Danny: Ted Nugent called. He wants his shirt back.

Can you understand this exchange? Who’s Ted Nugent?

He is a famous US rock singer who uses to wear very
eccentric clothes. OK, but who knows that?

That’s why the Italian dubbed exchange is:

 Rusty: Speravo che tu fossi lo sposo.
- I was hoping you were the groom
 Danny: Ha chiamato Elton John. Devi restituirgli la camicia.
- He called Elton John. You have to give him back his shirt.
Another example from the same film:
The gang is organizing a difficult theft in a Las Vegas
casino.
 Rusty: You’d need at least a dozen guys doing a
combination of jobs.
 Daniel: What do you think?
 Rusty: Off the top of my head, I say looking at a
Bowski, a Jim Brown, two Jethro’s and a Leon Spinx,
not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever…
Ignoring, as we do, many of the mentioned people, what
would the effect be if we had a literal translation?

The meaning is that they need some kinds of superheroes,

geniuses in their fields.

For example, Spinx is a famous boxer who won the world

championship against Mohamed Alì.
 Rusty: ci vorranno almeno una dozzina di truffatori
esperti in vari rami.
 Danny: Di che tipo secondo te?
 Rusty: Vediamo, a occhio e croce direi che
servono un Bill Gates, un Carl Lewis, un Uomo
Ragno e un Cassius Clay, per non parlare della
migliore Ella Fitzgerald della storia…
"I'm expecting a phone call"
can have a variety of meanings. It could be
a request to leave the phone line free or a
reason for not being able to leave the
house; or it could suggest to a listener who
already has background information that a
specific person is about to call to convey
good or bad news.
Exercise 1
Exercise 1
Imagine suitable two suitable contexts for the
following sentences:
 Take a holiday soon.
 It won't end here.
 You're taking this too seriously.
 I deny all knowledge of this scandal.
 Don’t tell Mom!
 Exercise 2
Below are some examples of indirect speech
acts. For each one try to identify both the direct
and the indirect act, e.g.
[Customer at a railway ticket-office window]
I'd like a day return to Galway.
Direct act: statement Indirect act: request
 [Travel
agent to customer]
Why not think about Spain for this summer?
 [Customer to barman]
I'll have the usual.
 [Mother to child coming in from school]
I bet you're hungry.
 [Doormanat a nightclub to aspiring entrant]
Don't make me laugh.
Specify two possible illocutionary and perlocutionary
forces for each of the following and create a
suitable situation/context
 Are you drunk?
 Can you hear me?
 It is seven o'clock
 It is getting quite late.
 It is raining outside.
Our path:
Phoneme
Morpheme
Word / meaning
Clause
Sentence/utterance
Pragmatics
Discourse
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis is the study of units of
language, larger than clause or sentence,
used by members of a speech
community in order to meaningfully
communicate.
Discourse analysis deals with both speech
and writing and the concepts of
pragmatics, text, textuality and genre are
its central elements.
The definition offered by The Cambridge Encyclopedia
of Language (Crystal, 1992) says: discourse analysis is
 the study of how sentences in spoken and written
language form larger meaningful units such as
paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.
 how the choices of articles, pronouns, and tenses
affects the structures of the discourse
 the relationship between utterances in a discourse
 the moves made by speakers to introduce a new
topic, change the topic, or insert a higher role
relationship to the other participants
 Analysis of spoken discourse is sometimes called
conversational analysis (CA). Some linguists use the
term text linguistics for the study of written discourse.
Pragmatics is traditionally mentioned in contrast with
Discourse vs. pragmatics
semantics, and primarily concerned with language in
use.
In modern linguistics, pragmatics is applied to the study
of language from the point of view of users, especially
of the choice they make, the constraints they
encounter in using language in social interaction and
effects their use of language has on the other
participants in an act of communication
Discourse Analysis is specifically about the
understanding and examination of spoken or written
language in actual communication.
Pragmatics is a fundamental tool to analyse discourse.
But discourse is something ‘larger’, it deals with the
You have 5 mins. to provide
a definition of ‘text’:
Texts may refer to collections of written or spoken
material…
The study of texts has become a defining feature of a
branch of linguistics referred to as textlinguistics or
discourse analysis.
Texts are seen as language units which have a
definable communicative function, characterized
by such principles as cohesion, coherence and
informativeness (or informativity) On the basis of
these principles, texts are classified into text types
and genres.
THIS MAKES TEXTUALITY
Text types and genres
 Text types can be categorised in:
- narrative texts;
- descriptive texts;
- expository texts;
- argumentative texts;
- directive texts;
 Genres can be fictional (in general
novels, poems, in particular
adventure, detective, horror, love
stories) or non-fictional (essays,
scientific or technical reports,
Narrative and descriptive texts
Narrative texts have to do Descriptive texts are
with time. What is concerned with the
characteristic is the setting of people and
passing, the sequencing things in space.
of time events. State/stative/static verbs
There is the use of dynamic and usually adjectives are
verbs and adverbials such used.
as, and, then, first, In descriptions there is no
second, lastly and many passing of time.
others… Example: The room was
Example: First we went to quite large with mirrors
the airport, then we had a everywhere, but the
coffee and after the strange was that those
check-in we caught the mirrors were all veiled with
plane. black and thick curtains.
Expository and directive
texts
Expository texts Directive texts are
indentify and those texts which
characterise contain directives,
phenomena. commands,
Dictionary definitions, instructions, rules
teacher’s etc.
explications, Usually imperatives
summaries, and are used.
essays. Example: shake well
Example: texts may before using. Do
consist of one or not ingest with
more words and of alcohol. Take two
Argumentative texts
Argumentative texts start from the
assumption that the receiver’s beliefs must
change.
Someone must be persuaded about
something.
There is a starting hypothesis, the support of
this hypothesis with examples and pieces
of evidence and then a conclusion which
should convince the audience.
Advertisements, essays, pieces of advice,
recommendations parents/children,
political discourse (before elections) etc.
To simplify:
GENRES TEXT TYPES
Recipe Directive text
=
Expository or
Biology textbook descriptive text
=
Narrative or
Novel descriptive text
=
Expository ,
Tourist material descriptive text
Important to remember:
Two or more texts may
belong to the same text
type even though they may
come from two or more
different genres.
A brochure for tourists, a
novel, a scientific article are
different in genre, but they
Register and style
Register (in stylistics and
sociolinguistics) refers a variety of
language defined according to its
use in social situations, e.g. a
register of scientific, religious, formal
English (Crystal).
Style in linguistics is generally defined
as a typical and distinctive way of
using a language.

DO THEY HAVE THE SAME

STYLE is to do with variations in formality
STYLE has been divided into categories. Some of
them are:
 CASUAL
Coming down the pub?
 INFORMAL
Would you like to go to the pub?
 FORMAL
You are cordially invited to accompany me to the
pub.
 FROZEN/FIXED
PLEASE ORDER PUB LUNCHES AT THE FOOD COUNTER.
Style can also be modern, classical, old-fashioned,
original, inimitable, distinctive, obscure, foggy, elegant,
redundant etc.

There are a couple of related concepts which may be

helpful:
 STYLISTIC VARIATION which describes the differences in
speech and writing of a group of users of a language
dependent on situation, location, topic and roles.
 STYLE SHIFT which describes what you do when you
add, for example, a personal note to the end of a
formal piece of language because, although there is a
convention operating which makes you want to be
formal, you have a closer personal relationship with
one or more of the addressees. So we get, e.g., "Good
morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for
coming. Oh, and Hi to you too, Sue."
Style can affect three things, essentially:
 Choice of Vocabulary ('dismayed' vs. 'fed up').
 Choice of Grammatical Structure ('John is responsible.' vs.
'The responsibility lies with John.')
 Pronunciation
REGISTER should refer to the differences in language use
which are shown up when you analyse the speech and
writing between people of the same occupation or
sharing a field of interest. So we might have:
 LAWYERS
Endorse the affidavit.
 DOCTORS
Diagnose with the stethoscope.
 EFL TEACHERS
Fill in the gaps in the Cloze test.
LEVELS OF LAWYERS DOCTORS EFL TEACHERS THE THREE
FORMALITY O N THE LEFT
To sum up schematically:
(STYLE) ARE AREAS
(REGISTER)
FROZEN QUEEN’S BLOOD BANK FCE
BENCH CLOSED ON PRACTICE
DIVISION BANK MATERIALS
ENTRANCE HOLIDAYS ARE
AVAILABLE
AT CLA
FORMAL I put it to you Scalpel! Stop writing
m’lud now and put
your pens on
your desk
INFORMAL Did you do This won’t Say it again,
it? hurt Walter.
CASUAL His words are These bloody You upper
a total radiographer intermediate
basket case. s are useless ? Fat
Cohesion and coherence
Sentences are linked by lexical and
grammatical items.
Cohesion refers to the surface structure of
texts, on how words and sentences are
organised to form a cohesive whole.
Coherence refers to deeper structures (not
surface structures) in texts. It involves a
semantic (meaning) and pragmatic level.
Difference between cohesion
and coherence
Hoey sums up the difference between
cohesion and coherence as follows:
"We will assume that cohesion is a property
of the text and that coherence is a facet
[i.e. side] of the reader's evaluation of a
text. In other words, cohesion is objective,
capable in principle of automatic
recognition, while coherence is subjective
and judgments concerning it may vary
from reader to reader."
A text has to contain some new information. A text is
informative if it transfers new information, or information
Informativity
that was unknown before. Informativity should be seen as
a gradable phenomenon. The degree of informativity
varies from participant to participant in the
communicative event.
A book written in 1950 has an informativity that was high
appropriate then.
Sentences like:
The sea is water
The days of the week are seven
The first letter of the alphabet is ‘A’
can give new information to a baby, but they are not
informative at all for the rest of the world.
Read the following and discuss
them in terms of cohesion and
coherence:

 My father once bought a Lincoln. He did it

by saving every penny he could. That car
would be worth a fortune today.
However, he sold it to help pay for my
college education. Sometimes, I think I’d
rather have the Lincoln;

 My father bought a Lincoln. The car driven

by the police was red. Red doesn’t suit
her. She wrote three letters. However, a
letter isn’t as fast as an e-mail message
and, you know, my mailing box is full of
spam.
Here are the titles of two short texts you are
going to read and analyse:
Wastewater disinfection treatments and
A Haunted House.
Can you identify the topic of each text?
What types and genre of text do you think
they belong to?
Here are two extracts from the texts.
Read through them as quickly as you can
(not more than 2 minutes) and try to think
of their differences in terms of syntax and
lexis (in particular pay attention to the use
of verb tenses, passive forms, special or
technical lexis, denotation, connotation
and any other aspects coming to your
mind).
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But
the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so
rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always
burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between
us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the
house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left
it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the
Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the
Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The
Treasure yours.”

The disinfection of potable water and wastewater provides a

degree of protection from contact with pathogenic organisms
including those causing cholera, polio, typhoid, hepatitis and a
number of other bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases. Disinfection
is a process where a significant percentage of pathogenic
organisms are killed or controlled. As an individual pathogenic