Inglese 5 appunti

Pragmatics

Study of the language and focuses on the effects of context on meaning.

Discourse Analysis: Studies written and spoken language in relation to its social context.

They both study:

• Context: Is the time and place in which the words are said.
• Text: Is the use of language. In fact, if the text is meaningful and unified there is a coherence or relevance.
• Function: Is the purpose of the speaker in speaking.

We know 3 types of context:

• Situational Context: Refers to what speakers know of the environment around them.
• Background Knowledge Context: As the cultural knowledge or what people know about the world. It is an information that is used from memory. We can have:
  • A cultural general knowledge
  • An interpersonal knowledge
• Co-textual Context: Is the context of the text. It is formed by all words that surround a word we are referring to in the text.

Ex: The house where was empty when I arrived. "The" is the subject and the other words are co-text.

Deixis

It helps us to understand what/when/where something is happening. There are 3 types of deixis:

• Person Deixis: It uses person pronouns.
• Place Deixis: Refers to a location. In fact, we use demonstrative adjectives (this, that) and adverbs (like here or there).
• Time Deixis: It points to time.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of the language and focuses on the effects of context on meaning.

Discourse Analysis: Studies written and spoken language in relation to its social context.

They both study:

• Context: Is the time and the place in which the words are said.
• Text: Is the use of language. In fact, if the text is meaningful and unified, there is a coherence or relevance.
• Function: Is the purpose of the speaker in speaking.

We know 3 types of context:

• Situational Context: Refers to what speakers know of the environment around them.
• Background Knowledge Context: (conoscenza di base) Is the cultural knowledge or what people know about the world. It is an information that is used from memory. We can have:
  • A cultural general knowledge
  • An interpersonal knowledge
• Co-textual Context: Is the context of the text. It is formed by all words that surround a word we are referring to in the text. Ex: The house where was empty when I arrived. "I" is the subject and the other words are co-text.

Deixis

It helps us to understand what/when/where something is happening. There are 3 types of deixis:

• Person Deixis: It uses person pronouns.
• Place Deixis: Refers to a location. In fact, we use demonstrative adjective (this, that) and adverbs like (here or there).
• Time Deixis: It points to time.

Reference

An act in which the speakers use a linguistic form to make someone identify an entity.

Exophoric Reference: when the use of a word or a phrase refers to something outside the discourse.

Endophoric Reference: refers to something inside the text.

There are 2 types of endophora:

• Anaphora: repetition of words mentioned before in the context.
• Cataphora: an entity that is mentioned forward in the context.

For the endophora we have also:

• Substitution: it's a repetition of the same words in a text.
• Ellipsis: omits part of the discourse that the readers already know, for avoiding repetitions.
• Grammatical Cohesion: is an expression linked to another in the context.

Cohesion vs Lexical Cohesion: is a relation between sentences through:

• Repetition: repeating a word or phrases in several times.
• Synonyms: it's the same word used by speaker.
• Superordinates: it isn't a synonym but a general word of items (general items).
• General Words: superordinates.

Speech acts

Is one of the most important area of pragmatics. Were introduced by Austin. We can analyse as levels:

• Locutionary Act: we try the act of saying something in particular (what is said).
• Illocutionary Force: what the speaker is doing with the words. In fact, making a request or giving (asking) an order.
• Perlocutionary Effect: the result that the acts of the words on the readers.

Based on this premises, Austin developed the performative hypothesis in which there are always a performative verbs such as to ask, to order. So later he abandoned the theory.

It's better to talk also of implicit performatives that are the most common in spoken language, but they can create ambiguity in understanding the meaning.

For ex. I'll study English. W