English Language 2

English language II

Prof.ssa Valeria Franceschi

Università degli Studi di Verona

Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere

A.A. 2016/2017

Pragmatics and discourse analysis

Introduction

“We are not amused” →

• Pronounced by Queen Victoria
• She was depressed

We can make many plausible hypotheses, but they are not sure to be the reality; we need a context to know it.

• Her courtiers tried to lift her spirits with a joke
• She reminds them they have to respect her as the Queen
• To understand language, we need to take its context into account

Pragmatics includes extra-linguistic factors. It deals with the social context.

So we can say that context, social context and factors that are outside from the text are called the paralinguistic and extra-linguistic elements of the language. They show a different attitude, a paralinguistic feature, for example as in the case in which the pitch of the voice changes to show the opinion in answering towards an invite.

Extra-linguistic signals express meaning through elements which are not linguistic such as body posture or gesture.

To understand language, we need to take its context into account.

• Semantics → Studies the linguistic meaning (word meaning and sentence meaning) and is not context-dependent.
• Pragmatics → Studies the meaning of the utterance or the meaning intended by the speaker, and is context-dependent. It also includes extralinguistic factors and it deals with the social context.

Mike, Annie and Mike’s cat, Felix, are in Mike’s kitchen. What did Annie mean?

Semantic meaning (linguistic info) → What did domestic felines consume the liquid fat of milk.

Mike: What happened to that bowl of cream?

Annie: Cats drink cream.

Pragmatic meaning → Felix probably drank the cream.

Pragmatics

First approaches to pragmatics was in the 60s and 70s. Pragmatics is interested in the process of producing language and in its producers, not just in the end-product, language. Chomsky – 60s – distinction between:

• Competence: «The user’s knowledge of language and its rules».
• Performance: «The way the individual goes about language».

The language user is at the center of pragmatics.

The studies on pragmatics shifted the attention from the final end-product to the process of production of the language itself. Chomsky in the 60s created the bases for pragmatics by creating the distinction between competence and performance.

David Crystal about this issue says that pragmatic is one of the most important phenomenon of the language because it answers to the question why and try to find the reason for linguistic choices, for example the use of the passive form that serves to put emphasis on one of the two elements.

We have many ways to call a man (name, surname, nickname, etc.) and the choice depends on the relationship that he has with the speaker, but not only the social relationship but also the context in which they are having a conversation.

Pragmatics answers the question: Why?

• Choices you make when you use language;
• The reasons for your choices;
• The effects these choices convey.

Pragmatics and discourse analysis

Pragmatics and discourse analysis are approaches which are very similar to a certain extent but they have also differences. Pragmatics and discourse analysis have some common aspects. Cutting says that they both studies the meaning of words in a context, which means that they study language when it is used in real life.

“Approaches to studying language’s relation to contextual background features”. They study context, text, and function: “meaning of the words in context”.

• Pragmatics → “Concentrates on aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account knowledge about the physical and social world.” Or “Pragmatics is concerned with how the interpretation of language depends on knowledge of the real world […]. Pragmatics is interested in what people mean by what they say, rather than what words in their most literal sense might mean by themselves”.
• Discourse → Indicates the unit of language above the sentence. «Typical ways of using language in particular situations»; they have characteristic linguistic features. “‘Discourse is for me more than just language in use: It is language use, whether speech or writing, seen as a type of social practice.” Or “Discourse constitutes the social… Discourse is shaped by relations of power, and invested with ideologies.”

Pragmatics and discourse analysis have some common aspects.

• Looks at the «relationship between language and the social and cultural contexts in which it is used»;
• Studies how language presents different views of the world;
• Studies how relationships between participants influence language;
• Studies effects of language use on social identities and relations;
• Studies spoken and written texts;
• Studies how perspectives and identities are built through discourse.

“Language simultaneously reflects reality (“the way things are”) and constructs (construes) it to be a certain way” → View of language as social construction of reality.

Discourse is shaped by:

• What preceded it and what might follow it;
• The medium in which it occurs;
• Its purpose.

Common aspects: Pragmatics and discourse analysis study the meaning of words in context. They analyze elements of meaning that are explained by:

• Knowledge of physical and social world;
• Social and psychological factors;
• Knowledge of time and place in which the words were uttered or written;
• Discourse: use of language;
• Text: spoken or written;
• Function: the speaker’s purpose.

Differences

Some views of language didn’t take into account the social and cultural context of language use → Hymes (1964) speaks of ethnography of communication.

• Discourse analysis highlights the structure of text: DA studies the organization of texts beyond the sentence.
• Pragmatics underlines the social principles of discourse. It analyses how social behavior is influenced by the relationship between speakers.

Ethnography of communication

Important questions:

• Who speaks to whom?
• About what?
• For what purpose?
• Where?
• When?

These impact how we say and do things according to the cultural setting: culturally-different ways of doing things.

Changing the answers to one of the questions the final result will be different. They change according to the cultural setting.

Es. In Italia chiedere di trattare per avere un prezzo diverso di un prodotto non viene accettato come un comportamento educato mentre in alcuni paesi orientali la compra-vendita è un qualcosa di comune. Questo, sempre in Italia ma in un altro tipo di negozio (ad esempio un bazar) potrebbe essere accettato.

Communicative competence involves what to say and to whom, and appropriate use of language in specific situations:

• Knowledge of rules of speaking;
• Knowledge of how to react to certain speech acts (e.g. requesting, apologizing) in different contexts.

Hymes (1972): four underlying components:

• Grammatical competence → Knowing the language;
• Sociolinguistic competence → Using language appropriately;
• Discourse competence → Connecting utterances so the text is cohesive and coherent;
• Strategic competence → Strategies to solve issues in communication and increase effectiveness.

Discursive competence

Bathia (2004) includes:

• Textual competence → Producing and interpreting texts that are contextually appropriate – knowledge of the characteristics and interpretation of a particular text. (e.g. knowledge of features of digital language – abbreviations);
• Generic competence → Response to communicative situations using conventions pertaining to specific types of text (genres) (e.g. writing a dissertation, a paper, or an e-mail);
• Social competence → Use of language in appropriate ways to express our social identity in specific contexts. It includes factors outside the text.

Our use of language can be explained in terms of social networks.

Languages, language varieties, styles, communicative repertoire, registers: that we use in communication according to → social context, topic, function and goal of interaction, social distance, formality and status of speaker. → Context.

Context

Context is one of the most important key words; there are different types of context defined by Cutting. The context includes socio-psychological factors and also the time and the place in what they are pronounced.

Speaker and hearer are involved. The speaker creates a message which includes a pragmatics meaning and the hearer has to infer the meaning intended by the speaker. For this change to be successful they have to share some assumptions of knowledge.

• Knowledge of world and social conventions;
• Socio-psychological factors;
• Time and place words were pronounced (or written).

Meaning of words in interaction:

Speaker → linguistic message → implies meaning → interprets message.

Hearer → infers meaning.

Assumptions of knowledge → shared by speaker and hearer.

Example: a conversation as introduction to different context

DM > English Man > wanted to go to Spain but went hill walking in Arran (Scottish island).

AF > Scottish Woman.

DM and AF > students at the University of Edinburgh.

AF: (2) So you went to Arran. A bit of a come-down isn’t it! (laughing)

DM: It was nice actually. Have you been to Arran?

AF: No, I’ve not. (1) Like to go.

DM: Did a lot of climbing.

AF: // (heh)

DM: // I went with Francesca (0.5) and David.

AF: Uhuh?

DM: Francesca’s room-mate. (2) And Alice’s, a friend of Alice’s from London (1). There were six of us. Yeah we did a lot of hill walking. (0.5) We got back (1) er (2) Michelle and I got home she looked at her knees. (0.5) They were like this. Swollen up like this. Cos we did this enormous eight-hour stretch.

AF: Uhm.

There are two people speaking without any place or time or relationship information.

There are some elements that cannot be understood without a knowledge: who is Francesca/Michelle/Alice? We know that David is Francesca’s roommate because it is said. Arran is located in Scotland but we cannot know it unless someone tell us or we already know.

The first sentence cannot be understood and also “like this” cannot be understood because we are not present in that moment. There are some paralinguistic feature that are written in the text, as the laugh or the number that represent the pauses.

To be interpreted in the correct way, the text has to be transcribed with paralinguistic aspects. DM is a man who wanted to go to Spain but in the end he went to Scotland and thanks this knowledge the first sentence has a sense. AF is a Scottish girl and they are both students in Edinburgh and because of this they have an informal relationship.

They have a shared knowledge for example about Arran and about other people of their school.

So we can say that context is crucial to understand the text.

Context includes:

• Physical context;
• Social context;
• Mental worlds and roles of participants.

A student’s law school assignment vs the same text typed the letterhead on a law firm and addressed to a client. The immediate context changes the status and function of the text.

This shows how a certain text can assume a different meaning according to the situation in which it is written or pronounced.

«Meaning is not something that is inherent in the words alone, nor is it produced by the speaker alone or the hearer alone. Making meaning is a dynamic process, involving the negotiation of meaning between speaker and hearer, the context of utterance (physical, social and linguistic), and the meaning potential of an utterance».

Meaning is produced in interaction → It is a joint enterprise of speaker – listener/writer – reader: «a form of collaborative social action».

Meaning takes back the difference between semantic and pragmatics because it is not about the form (the same word can have a different meaning).

Producing meaning and making a conversation effective is a joint enterprise/effort.

Types of context

• Situational context → Knowledge about their surroundings;
• Background context → Knowledge of each other and the world;
• Co-textual context → Knowledge of their communicative exchange (because of it, if we arrive in the middle of a conversation we cannot know that it was said before our arrival).

Situational context

• Immediate physical co-presence;
• Situation during communicative event;
• “They were like this. Swollen up like this” (gestures).

Situational context causes the fact that hearing a message we cannot see what people point to and so we cannot see the reality around people who are speaking. It often involves extra-linguistic features. In advertisement situational context is often necessary to understand the meaning.

The sentence “get them of your dog” makes us understand the reference to fleas because of our background context but only seeing the advertisement up above we can understand it clearly. We are in a store, there is a picture of a dog and people moves on it representing fleas. The headline “get them off your dog” now has a sense, different from before. The perspective is very important to understand the message, the implied meaning in the way of who created it wanted people to infer it.

Background context

Background knowledge can be divided in:

• Interpersonal;
• Cultural.

Cultural background context

Knowledge about areas of life; so if speakers are part of the same group they share a mutual knowledge of information commonly known by group members. For example, AF and DM → share cultural background knowledge about the hills of Arran. Groups may vary in size: communities of practice (CoP).

• Cultural is to understand as culture in all areas of the life, for example the fact that we are born in Italy makes us to share the same experiences, for example by naming a celebrity all would understand who he is.
• Culture is not related only to our country; for example, not only people of British know about Arran but even people from other countries that are interested in climbing because their interest created a community.
• Cultural knowledge is shared by people of the same group, in general. Groups can vary in size. We are all students but a smaller group study the same language, another group study English and Spanish. A group of people love African music but within it there is the group of people who listen music from Maghreb and then someone who are interested in single singers. There groups are defined as communities of practice, CoP.

Communities of practice

Communities of Practice → “Communities of practice are social groups composed of individuals who come together for shared purposes that are organized around, for example, social, familial, or professional goals”. Focus on practice.

They are characterized by:

• Mutual engagement (same purpose);
• Joint negotiated enterprise (they collaborate);
• Shared repertoire of negotiable resources:
• Special strategies of communication;
• Special vocabulary (Wenger 1998).

The fact that they have a shared linguistic repertoire facilitates the negotiation of meaning.

Communities of Practice was a name originally create for a professional purpose to show people together but now it has been expanded and it has become the name of groups of people organized for a purpose (familiar, professional, passions, etc.). They can also be called “communities of interest” because they are organized around them.

Discourse communities

They are also called discourse communities.

• Set of common goals;
• Mechanisms for communication;
• Way of providing exchange of information;
• Particular genres;
• Specialized terminology and vocabulary;
• Expertise in the area.

Focus on texts and language more than CoP.

Swales (1990) →

• No formal membership;
• People with similar interests / working on similar problems;
• There may be discourse communities within discourse communities (e.g. different departments within a university).

The difference between the two classifications is small. The characteristics are almost identical. Discourse community is more focused on textual and linguistic element because often the knowledge produced is shared in texts.

If people come together for a purpose and their focus is not the production of a text but the fulfill a practical achievement is more a Community of Practice.

If they gather to produce a text, they are more a Discourse Community.

Discourse communities don’t need a formal membership. They exist even if members leave and new members come. This is in relationship to the cultural context.

Interpersonal background context

• Knowledge acquired through previous interactions or activities;
• Personal knowledge about the interlocutor (for example, AF knows that Michelle is DM’s wife);
• A lot of information can be implicit.

Interpersonal context is a knowledge acquired through the interaction with other people. We didn't know named people in the text because we lacked this aspect.

Her: How are you?

Him: OK.

Her: Did you have friends in and get a video last night?

Him: Oh, I had friends in, but we just watched a little TV.

Her: Ah, right.

Him: That was great. How do you feel?

Her: OK.

We don't know what the video is about.

This US advertisement plays on the interpersonal background until it is shown a flashback we don't know it.

Flashback: she has won a gold medal in an Olympics event.

Reference to interpersonal knowledge can be vague, implicit, minimal.