Inglese pragmatica

APPUNTI INGLESE

Semantics can be defined as “the study of the meaning of morphemes, words,

phrases and sentences.” examines meaning that is conventional or "coded" in a given

language

Types of meaning:

Referential: The person, object or abstract notion, event, or state to which a

 word, a phrase or a sentence makes reference.

Social: Sentences also convey information about the identity of the person who

 has uttered them. Social class, ethnicity, regional origin and context are all

types of social factors.

Affective, Feelings and affection can be communicated through stress and

 intonation.

Meaning Extension (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche)

metaphor is "a figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it

 ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by implicit comparison

or analogy."

Metonymy is "a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated

 feature is used to name or designate something.

"Synecdoche is "a figure of speech by which a more inclusive term is used for a

 less inclusive one, or vice versa."

Utterances are unique events and may also be incomplete yet understandable in

context. An utterance is a continuous piece of speech beginning and ending with a

clear pause. Utterances do not exist in written language, only their representations

do.

Pragmatics is the study of “how to do things with words”. studies how the

transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge

(e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) , but also on the CONTEXT of the utterance, on any PRE-

EXISTING KNOWLEDGE. Comedies often use the absence of PRAGMATICS in robots as

a source of humour.

Comedies often use absence of pragmatic as a source of humour.

There are three sorts of CONTEXT: • The situational CONTEXT, what speakers

know about what they can see around them. The immediate physical co-presence, the

situation where the interaction is taking place at the moment of speaking • The

background knowledge CONTEXT, what they know about each other and the

world. This can be either: Cultural general knowledge that most people carry with

them in their minds, about areas of life Interpersonal knowledge, specific and possibly

private knowledge about the history of the speakers themselves. • The co-textual

CONTEXT, what they know about what they have been saying.

Deixis refers to words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional

contextual information. • Their meaning varies depending on time and/ or place of the

utterance. • There are 3 types of deixis: person, place, and time.

Ex. You’ll have to bring that back tomorrow, because they aren’t here now 8



deictical expression

ENTAILMENT=We do not expect people to tell us something we do already know.

Embedded in every sentence there is a certain amount of understood information that

comes from our knowledge of the language itself. All sentences have a number of

entailments: sentences which are automatically true if the original sentence is true. is

a purely semantic concept. can be drawn only from declarative sentences.

There are two types of entailment:

ONE-WAY ENTAILMENT= the sentences are not true paraphrases of each other.

Ex. My sister grows roses. My sister grows flower. (flowers may not be roses)

TWO- WAY or MUTUAL ENTAILMENT= the sentences are paraphrases of each other

Ex. My sister grows roses. My sister cultivates roses.

We can define presupposition as ANYTHING THE SPEAKER ASSUMES TO BE TRUE

BEFORE MAKING THE UTTERANCE Or A NECESSARY PRECONDITION FOR THE

SENTENCE TO MAKE SENSE. Presuppositions remain constant under NEGATION of the

main sentence. The words the, that, this, these, those, and possessives like Annie's,

my, your, etc trigger a very basic kind of presupposition.

Ex. Did you buy this awful wine? This wine is awful.



Type of presupposition triggers: wh-words & how, DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS,

CHANGE OF STATE VERBS (stop, begin,start,finish, leave, etc.), ITERATIVES

(again, anymore,returned,repeat etc.), FACTIVE VERBS (A factive verb is a

verb that presupposes its complement to be true).

Entailment are cancelled by negation, while presupposition remain. They are

not affected by negation ( Ex. Lucy knows that George is a cook. Lucy

doesn’t knows that George is a cook George is a cook).



A third type of inferencing is called IMPLICATURE and refers to the way in which

speakers co-operate in conversation to achieve a shared meaning for utterances.

Drawing the appropriate implicature can require a considerable amount of shared

knowledge between the speaker and the hearer.

The philosopher PAUL GRICE proposed that all speakers, regardless of their cultural

background, adhere to a basic principle governing conversation which he termed

THE CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE. That is, we assume that in a conversation the

participants will co-operate with each other when making their contributions.

Grice then broke this principle down into four basic MAXIMS which go towards

making a speaker's contribution to the conversation 'cooperative':

1. RELEVANCE: Make sure that whatever you say is relevant to the conversation at

hand.

2. QUALITY: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you

lack adequate evidence.

3. QUANTITY: Make your contribution sufficiently informative for the current purposes

of the conversation. Do not make your contribution more informative than is

necessary.

4. MANNER (or CLARITY): Do not make your contribution obscure, ambiguous or

difficult to understand.

Grice pointed out that these maxims are not always observed, but he makes a

'quietly' VIOLATING openly FLOUTING

distinction between a maxim and a maxim.

In Grice's analysis, these violations might hamper communication but they do not lead

to implicatures. What leads to implicatures is a situation where the speaker flouts

(trasgredire) a maxim. That is, it is obvious to the hearer at the time of the utterance

that the speaker has deliberately and quite openly failed to observe one or more

maxims.

Flouting quality: Hyperbole, Metaphor, Irony, Banter

Flouting relation: So what do you think of Pamela? Her flatmate is a wonderful

 cook Flouting quantity: Well, how do I look? Your shoes are nice.

Flouting manner: What did Laura do when she heard that Tony’s boat had

 arrived? Laura ran to the pier. Laura jumped.

Apart from flouting and violating there are other ways in which speakers fail to fulfil a

maxim: INFRINGING and OPTING OUT

A speaker infringing a maxim fails to observe it because of imperfect linguistic

 performance.

A speaker opting out of a maxim indicates that he is not willing to cooperate,

 although they do not want to appear uncooperative.

implicatures are inferences that cannot be made from isolated utterances. They are

dependent on the context of the utterance and shared knowledge between the

speaker and the hearer.

In Grice's analysis, the speaker's flouting of a maxim combined with the hearer's

assumption that the speaker has not really abandoned the cooperative principle leads

to an implicature.

Conversational implicatures do not have any evidence in the text, they are not

explicitly stated anywhere in the sentence, BUT we can infer them using our

knowledge about the context, the human behaviour and relationships, a vast store of

knowledge-

We distinguish two types of conversational implicatures: Generalized

implicatures can be drawn with very little `inside' knowledge. Particularized

implicatures require not only general knowledge but also knowledge which is

particular or `local' to the speaker and the hearer

When a speaker cancels a presupposition, the results usually sound rather

contradictory or incoherent. On the contrary, when both generalized and

particularized implicatures are cancelled, the results usually sound much more

'normal'.

The philosopher of language J.L. Austin was one of the first scholars to recognise that

“words” are in themselves ACTIONS and that these speech acts should be

systematically studied. Speech acts need to be analysed at different levels

distinguishing first between: LOCUTION= is the actual form of

words used by the speaker and their semantic meaning and

ILLOCUTION=is what the speaker is doing by uttering those words: commanding,

offering, promising, threatening, thanking, etc.

PERLOCUTION: the actual result of the locution. It may or may not be what the

speaker wants to happen but it is nevertheless caused by the locution. the perlocution

is defined by the HEARER'S REACTION.

PERFORMATIVES: utterances which contain a performative verb that explicitly

describes the intended speech act. The verb must describe an action which is

under the control of the speaker.

PERFORMATIVES:

Assertion

 Question

 Order

 Request

 Promise

 Advice



There are several conditions that govern the successful performance of the act: these

are called FELICITY CONDITIONS: " Appropriate and accepted conventional

procedure " Appropriate participants and circumstances " Complete execution "

Appropriate feelings and thoughts OTHERWISE THE PERFORMANCE IS VOID OR

UNHAPPY

SPEECH ACT THEORY (Searle)

REPRESENTATIVES = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the

 expressed proposition, e.g. reciting a creed. (DECLARATIVE FORM) the words

fit the world

DIRECTIVES = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular

 action, e.g., commands and advice. (IMPERATIVE FORM) the world will fit the

words COMMISSIVES = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future

action, e.g. promises and oaths. (DECLARATIVE FORM) the world will fit the

words

ROGATIVES = speech acts that express the speaker’s want for information. Eg.

 Requests (where is John?) (INTERROGATIVE FORM) the words fit the world

EXPRESSIVES = speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and emotions

 towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks.

(DECLARATIVE) the words fit the world

DECLARATIONS = speech acts that change the reality in accord with the

 proposition of the declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or

pronouncing someone husband and wife, declaring war. (DECLARATIVE) the

words change the world

Searle proposed to group speech acts into general categories based not on

performative verbs but on the relationship between 'the words' and 'the world' and on

who is responsible for the action

Searle further distinguished between speech acts. "In DIRECT SPEECH ACTS there is

a direct relationship between their linguistic structure and the work they are doing. "In

INDIRECT SPEECH ACT the speech act is performed indirectly through the

performance of another speech act.

PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES c