Appunti completi di Modulo Teorico III, Appunti di lingua inglese

Expectations and Background Information

Ex 3: Fire-fighter (during a wild fire)- Jump out of the window! together with• Therefore felicity/preparatory conditions represent one of the answerpresuppositions, modern pragmatics gives to the question: How do we communicate if we sayz and we mean y? non-linguistic• Both felicity/preparatory/essential/sincerity conditions and presuppositions haveand communicative significance and constitute part of the background knowledge which canbe replied on to grasp the intended meaning of an utterance.Ex:A (to B)- Have you stopped robbing banks? [presupposition: B used to rob banks] 21 di 37expectations,Furthermore, they create which we constantly rely on when communicating (or• living, in general)Violation of expectations is what more than many other communicate devices, creates a striking• effect (humor, fear, terror)Ex:A- Can you do me a favor?B- SureA- Go to hell, and stay there, never come back.Expectations > based on background informationsSocial

The use of speech acts vary according to social factors: is a sign of politeness in many languages/cultures; directives are more often expressed as interrogatives than imperatives

Ex: Could you please open the window?

The addition of please marks the illocutionary force of the utterance as directive, ruling out that it is a question about ability, hence ruling out that GF=CF, even though the literal meaning of the rest of the sentence is not directive. The formality of the context or social distance

Indirectness is also used on account of (lack of familiarity, differences of status, age, gender, education, occupation): those who are in a more powerful social position (can) use directness, while those who are in a less powerful social position tend to use indirectness.

Indirectness is also used because it allows for reparation, e.g. an indirect accusation can always be repaired (that's not what I said). Cultural dimension

The way of expressing speech acts is highly

Macro-Functions

Furthermore, it should be noticed that above speech acts, Brown and Yule (1983) classify two macro-functions of talk:

• Transactional: expression of content and transmission of factual information (e.g. the extreme pole is giving institutions to somebody in the street)
• Interactional: expression of social relations and personal attitudes, meant to show solidarity phatic communication and maintain social cohesion (the extreme pole is (e.g. at the bus stop;“my goodness, it’s cold)

Fillers/ Backchannels

The utterance falling under the categories of fillers and backchannels cannot be easily classified as speech acts:

• Fillers: “There you go”, “You know”

they have an interactional, socially, cohesive function:

• avoid silence, so that every speaker feels comfortable.

Backchannel: "Was it?", "Oh really?", "Uhm, uhm"

they also have an interactional, social function: they show that the hearer is listening and is encouraging the speaker to continue talking.

To be more specific, the apparatus necessary to explain the indirect part of indirect speech act includes:

1. a theory of speech act
2. certain general principles of cooperative conversation
3. mutually shared factual background information of the speaker and the hearer.

Appropriacy to context

Prescriptive grammar and communicative use of language may differ (can > ability/permission = GF vs can > request [for a favor]/command = CF)

Different linguistic selections are to reused in different contexts (can 75% formal vs could 90% formal), so that speakers do no run the risk of being too formal or too informal (polite/impolite, straightforward/vague).

Indeed,

We acquire knowledge and perceive sentences not only as grammatically correct, but also as appropriate or inappropriate. As Dell Hymes pointed out in 1971, the ability to distinguish between what is appropriate and what is not constitutes part of the communicative competence of speakers, which is distinguished from their linguistic competence.

Linguistic competence: a speaker has knowledge of a language including:

• Rules of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax) - knowledge of the language as a formal system
• Rules of use (where, when, how, etc.) - they are as important as rules of grammar, if not more, and are linked to cultural relativity.

Conversation Analysis (CA) adopts a "bottom-up" approach: it starts with the conversation, takes real data, examines them, and demonstrates that conversation is systematically structured.

Process:

CA views conversation as an unfolding event implying cooperation.

and negotiation between speakers. Guy Cook (1989) claims that talk can be classified as conversation [hence, it can be distinguished from any other stretch of talk delivered orally (class at university, political speeches, interviews etc)] when:

1. It's not necessitated by a practical task.
2. Any unequal power relation between participants is partially suspended.
3. The number of participants is small.
4. Turns are quite short.
5. Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience.

Ex: English class is NOT conversation because:

• It is necessitated by a practical task.
• There exists an unequal power relation between interactants.
• The number of participants is NOT small.
• Some turns are NOT short.
• Any stretch of talk is for the whole audience, even when it is represented by one-to-one interaction.

However, these should be considered as guidelines, rather than rules, they do not have a general universally valid application:

99% of human conversation is outcome-oriented.

1. Even if no "official" imbalanced power relationship between speakers exists, this kind of relationship can be constructed during the conversation itself (one of the two speakers is a skillful communicator and takes the lead of the conversation, for example).
2. Turn Taking

Turn-taking management refers to how speakers manage their turns in conversation. In many cultures, generally speaking, only one person speaks at a time, then another, then the first etc (A-B-A-B-A). All cultures have their preferences as to:

• how speakers should hold the floor
• when a new speaker can start
• whether the new speaker can overlap, and so on.

Ex:

• Latin Americans > pauses of a fraction of a second, it is socially acceptable to overlap.
• Native Americans > 2 sec pause; Japanese find it unacceptable to interrupt.
3. Transition Relevance Place (TRP)

TRP represents the moment in a conversation when a change in the person turn taking is possible. It is a complicated phase to manage: scarcely ever can

next speaker be sure the current speaker's turn is over. interruption.

If next speaker does not want to wait until TRP, this is called an overlap.

When speakers predict that the preceding turn is about to end, but they come in before it really is over, this is called non-attributable interruption.

If the silence constituting the pause is not meant to carry meaning, we speak of silence, on the other hand, we speak of attributable silence if the pause is intended to carry meaning instead.

Ex:

A- I'm getting fat.

B- [silence]

Adjacency Pairs

Adjacency pairs are frequently occurring corresponding pairs of utterances, the structure of the first making a certain response by the next speaker very likely:

Question- Answer

Greeting- greeting

Goodbye- goodbye

N.B.: Any break in the expected pattern of adjacency pairs constitutes a violation of expectations, hence, unless it is released to an insertion sequence, it will trigger a process of interpretation on part of the hearer.

Ex:

Question- question

Greeting- Silence

As far as the content is concerned, when we open an adjacency pair we have certain preferred expectations of a particular second part; if the expectation is respected we have a response; dispreferred response. If it is not respected we have a dispreferred response.

In conversation, certain sequences tend to appear: main sequences, pre-sequences, insertion sequences, opening/closing sequences.

Pre-sequences: prepare the ground for a following sequence and signal the type of the utterance that should/would follow in the main sequence.

Ex: pre-invitation ("I was thinking about going to the cinema tonight), pre-request ("Are you busy right now?"), pre-announcement ("You'll never guess what's happened yesterday!")

N.B.: Pre-sequences also serve as politeness strategy.

Insertion sequence: the pair appears embedded within another adjacency pair.

Ex:

A- You know that movie I wanted to see?

B- Yes?

A- Do you want to go and see it tonight?

B- What time does it

start > insertion sequence

A- 20.30

B- Why not?!

Function > 1) Gathering further essential information; 2) Time-filler

Opening sequences: constituted by greetings, enquiries after health, or past references.

• Ex:

A- Hey

B- Hi, how are you doing?

A- I’m doing good, thanks. Lovely dinner yesterday, eh?

B- Yeah, definitely.

Function > phatic/interactional

Closing sequences: can be preceded by a pre-closing sequence and are meant to bring the conversation to a close.

• Ex:

A- Well, I’ve got to go now.

B- Yeah, me too.

A- So, I’ll see you tomorrow

B- Bye then.

A- Bye.

Function > phatic 25 di 37

Cooperation

Therefore, if there is no one-to-one relationship between LE and CF,

• LEs have meaning potential

• communication varies according to the context (the participants, the time, the setting, etc)

• presuppositions and felicity/preparatory conditions represent previously known information

• indirectness can be used and interpreted only when the conditions

are fulfilled•IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN RELY ON TO INTERPRET THE VERY LINGUISTIC SIGNAL IN CONTEXT? H.P. Grice

Cooperative Principles

To answer this question Paul Grice elaborated the Cooperative Principles in 1975.

What is conveyed

What is said

What is meant (implicated)

propositional meaning

implicature (e.g. entailments)

conventional conversational

What is said

A- What is your name?

B- Elisabetta

What is said (propositional meaning): my name is Elisabetta [including entailments: I have a name; my name is that of a female; etc]

What is implicated: //