Modulo Teorico Inglese 3

Modulo teorico 3zurru 2017/2018

Introduction

“To speak” is different than “to communicate.” To communicate means just that a message has been sent even if the grammar is wrong. In fact, "pizza tonight" sounds like a sort of invitation and it doesn’t need any introduction, so it depends on the context. We actually don’t select our words randomly unless we look for a specific result with a sort of person. When it’s about communication, intuitively we know what’s appropriate.

Why do jokes make us laugh? We need to create a context and expectation and then we have to be betrayed. Following this way, we can manipulate the speech. The meaning is also all the connections we can create with a world, related to a subject. Language is the result of many different subjects put and working together at the same time (graphemes, sounds/phonemes, morphemes, structure of sentences, propositional meaning, communication).

Is verbal communication like words?

Propositionally, we make riddles like: What has roots that nobody sees, is taller than trees, up it goes and yet never grows? Mountain. We talk about a propositional meaning. Riddles are language-specific because they are based on the literal meaning of words. Riddles are the one text type in which in equation verbal communication and words is true. Propositional/literal meaning is enough just for riddles to retrieve/find the intended meaning of the text type. But this is not true for many other text types.

Pragmatics

It is a subfield of linguistics that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology. Pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors.

In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity since meaning relies on the manner, place, time, etc. of an utterance.

Functional perspective

It is the study of the language based on its function than what do we do to reach a target. The function and the code give a language. The study of function makes clear that non-linguistic elements give meaning and a function to a sentence. The function is also what we wanna do with language. The pragmatics is the relation between language and its speaker then the contextual conditions (non-linguistic aspects). Meaning in use or interaction, which is related to function. It’s how people make sense of each other linguistically. All underlines in pragmatics the relation between language, meaning, and context and focuses on language as it is used by users in communication.

Text-type

Every kind of text like written or oral text type. A conversation in an oral text type is different from a university written letter. It’s text type a monologue, a political speech, and so on. Not all text types are focused on propositional meaning. That’s the pragmatic answer to that. Text: the whole communicative interaction, which can be realized through different text-types: Conversation, phone call, Skype call, political speech, oral exam, lecture, assignment (tesina), text messages, emails, etc.

Word vs Term

Words belong to general language while terms concern particular and specific fields.

Utterance

Sequences of utterance make up a text. An utterance can be longer or shorter than a phrase because it can be composed of many phrases. Utterance consists of a sequence of words preceded and followed by a pause. It is related to the context.

Sentence

It is a sequence of words starting with a capital letter and finishing with a doc. Every word has a role. Sentence is a syntactic structure. Sentence can be also just a single word, like imperative verbs.

Meaning

Speakers often imply more than what they say. Pragmatics studies the intended and perceived meaning of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, of utterance in interaction. It happens when words are not used propositionally, the situation gets more complicated to take out the real meaning and what is truly intended.

• Propositional meaning: Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or exaggeration and representing the exact words of the original text.
• Intended meaning and implied meaning: The intended meaning is about what the speaker intends directly or indirectly while the implied meaning overlaps with the intended meaning just when it is conveyed indirectly.
• Perceived meaning: It is how the meaning is decoded and understood by the hearer.
• Communicative meaning: It is the meaning of an utterance as a linguistic activity: e.g. requesting, ordering, asserting, etc.

Context

The words in a text are often not enough to understand its communicative/propositional meaning. Very often, in order to be able to grasp the intended meaning of an utterance or of a series of utterances, we need to know the context of communicative exchange.

Example 1

A: Door!
B: I’m in the bath!
A: Ok!

None of these utterances have a propositional meaning.

Meaning in Context

It can be explained by: physical and social world: bilocation does not exist, it is often influenced by socio-psychological factors, not socially acceptable to open the door wearing a towel. I can’t open the door wearing a towel: This is my well-deserved bath, I’m not moving for the world, and so on. Time (in this case, related to physical and social constraints) while having a bath. Place: home (of both?). Therefore, in this specific example, interactors communicate more than what their words apparently say.

A: Door! = Go open the door (this could be the end of a previous situation or process and not the start).
B: I’m in the bath = I can’t/won’t, because I’m having a bath.
A: Ok! = I see, I’ll get the door myself then.

We actually don’t select words randomly because of process and situation.

Speaker's Meaning

It is based on assumptions of knowledge, namely hypotheses based on factual evidence or on previous knowledge shared by both speaker and hearer. The speaker constructs a message which has an intended meaning which, very often, is implied. The hearer interprets the message and decodes the implied meaning; (when this is not done, misunderstandings take place!). His/her decoding of the message leads them to formulate further assumptions and test them through their utterance, and so on and so forth.

Meaning Potential (Potentiality of Utterance)

Utterances can potentially mean anything, including the opposite of their surface/propositional meaning. We can’t predict what an utterance is meant to convey in isolation from a given context. (Jokes, irony, banter, rhetorical devices in general).

Context

We distinguish 3 related yet distinct types of context: situational/communicative context, background knowledge context/knowledge of the world (KOW), and co-textual context/co-text. Context influences the way we communicate; it helps reduce the potentiality of utterance, it allows us to see utterances which are reduced in explicitness and understand other people’s utterances which are reduced in explicitness. The 3 types together make up the context of communicative exchanges.

Situational/Communicative Context

Contextual Variables: Topic, Setting, Participants, Medium. These compose the situation context. They influence what/to whom/how/when/where/why we say something. They’re variables because if we change one of these, the final result (the context) will change.

Topic

That’s what people are discussing. Of course, it influences the way we communicate if it’s a general or a specific topic, for example, a legal issue. Many topics are taboo so we actually can’t talk about them. It helps to reduce the potentiality like "This place is a greenhouse" (at home- it’s too warm here) (a real estate agent- about selling).

Reduction in Explicitness

She commented about his mistake/ Prepositional Verbs/ Right, she commented on his mistake.

Setting: Diachronic and Synchronic

It’s about time and place. In the case of time, the main reason is synchronic. It’s the time made for doing something specific. The same goes for place. A synchronic approach considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic linguistics aims at describing a language at a specific point of time, usually the present. By contrast, a diachronic approach considers the development and evolution of a language through history. Historical linguistics is typically a diachronic study. It helps for the intended meaning.

Example 1: May rest in peace (church)/amen
Example 2: De Niro is one of the best actors ever/ Amen. Amen has different meanings.

Reduction in explicitness: Are we going there now or later/ Now.

Participants

Different sub-variables influencing communication (What I said, how we say it).

Individual Identity

Personality- shy, talkative, etc. It depends on emotions, personality, and situation and also by the time and our emotional state.

Social Identity

Differences in gender, class, religion, ethnicity, age, and role, particularly related to taboo issues.

Personal and/or social relationship between interactions
Relation between Teacher and Students rather than Mom and son.
Presence and absence of an audience during communicative interaction.
When you know someone else is actually listening you put more attention in what you say or the opposite if there’s someone we won’t not to be listening, we code the language.
Reduce potentiality is an important goal of this staff as

Examples Given

A person during a row with their friend: If you do that, you can go to hell (very probably is a metaphor, if you do that thing I don’t want you to do, we’re no longer friends).
A priest during a homily: If you do that, you can go to hell (Intended literally, if you sin and you do not redeem in time, you’ll be condemned to eternal damnation).
We’ve gotta know who’re participants to understand the potentiality.

Reduction in Explicitness

We actually don’t know anything about the subjects they’re talking about but if we think about personal experience we can admit we do know what they are about. We can guess and assume what people are doing but about anything. That/ one/ there are links in the conversation with the world around. To understand them we need to be in the context. In other case the conversation would need to be more explicit giving the name/determination to the links. We explicit the terms/ subjects. These words are Deixis: words that literally point at something around us and link the language to the external world  Context is necessary. The 3 major categories are Personal, Time, Place. Whenever we communicate we take whatever we can for granted, namely we tend to avoid being over-explicit, for example through deixis. We simplify the language. Expectation is a sort of reduction of explicitness even with strangers.

Examples Given

• Shall we meet in front of the Orient Express at 8:30 pm? (Here, I need to be specific? This is a relationship we don’t go too much close).
• Same place, same time? (We do it all the time, I don’t need to be specific).
• See you in five minutes.
• Can you pass me that?
• Where can I find them?  Over there.

Medium

Written Texts (Organized, complex structure, linear progression, grammatical accuracy).
Spoken Texts (Disorganized, simple structure, subject changing, grammatical inaccuracy. Generalized vocabulary). Medium is how a certain message is delivered, the channel is the physical way by which the message is delivered. When we speak we don’t have much time to think what we need to say, so we have short phrases, we go back, repeat and so on. Spoken language is unplanned. In written language, we use linking words, we plan the discourse. Otherwise, we can mix them a little bit giving a look to the context.

Background knowledge context/knowledge of the world (KOW)

It is constituted by everything we know about the world, all the information that we possess and that influences our communicative behavior, allow us to reduce the potentiality of utterances and to perform utterances reduced in explicitness and understand other people’s utterances which are reduced in explicitness. Background knowledge is about social notions, not of linguistic matter. This provides the social notions that represent our personal packet. This is always expanding because every day we have new experiences and also, we forget about something every day. It always changes and it’s all about expectation. It is the knowledge about how things usually go in the world which we update with every new experience we make; it is stored in our memories and helps us fill in the missing links in communication and understand the intended meaning of utterance. This is important with participants: the more is KOW the more we have reduced explicitness and so on. Share knowledge is extremely important.

Cultural/Encyclopaedic KOW

Open-access knowledge shared by the members of the same group or community (which may vary in size). Shrek is likely to be known by half the globe, acquired through school, books, TV, radio, cinema, internet...

Interpersonal KOW

Knowledge acquired through previous conversations and social activities, which includes personal knowledge about the interlocutor; it is the knowledge, different and unique, which each of us possesses.

Example Given

Tell us about your favorite fairy tale. It is about a wonderful prince. He is tall and big, fat and green and stinks. Yeah, I like Shrek very much too. This last is all about background.

Co-textual context/co-text

It is the context of the text itself; it is constituted by only linguistic information, namely the words/sentences/utterances which constitute the rest of the text and come before and after the utterance we are considering. The difference with the previous two types of context is that the situational and background knowledge contexts include non-verbal/non-linguistic elements. Co-text is the whole text from the beginning to the end as we can understand it all without knowing the background. The co-text is the previous or following part of utterance that can help us to understand a particular utterance. Context is therefore the dimension of communication which turns language as a formal system into a means of communication (Saussure).

A: Door! / I’m in the bath / Ok (all this is the co-text).
Let’s change the co-text.
B: Door! / Oh my gosh, thank you! I hadn’t realized there was a glass door! / Yeah, I know I could see that, you were clearly going to crash against it… now you owe me one.

In other words, a change in co-text implies a change in the whole communicative exchange and in the intended meaning of utterance (even of the same utterance).

Discourse Analysis

Coherence

It is in the meaning, the text needs to show unity of meaning and thematic and logical progression to be considered coherent (This is the Discourse Analysis approach, Pragmatics considers Coherence as Relevance). This is not about the form of the text. It’s about just the meaning, there’s a revolution in the meaning of the text, logical and consequential. Meaningful means that something has meaning, coherence means that there’s progression in meaning.

Discourse

It is different from Speech. Discourse is meant how communication can be used to drive people towards a certain opinion or another and concern written communication for the most.

Cohesion

Grammatical and lexical unity of the text - the way the text makes links with and within itself. In other words, it is the way the co-text hangs together. It’s the way it’s making its grammatical and lexical relationship explicit. It is represented by all the verbal signals present in the text (remember co-text is only made up of linguistic elements).

Cohesive Devices

These are language terms which refer to other language items in the text and help to create the structural unity of the text itself by: grammatical cohesion (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction) and Lexical Cohesion (repetition, lexical reiteration). Lexical is about vocabulary which always changes. Grammar is about rule and structure which sporadic changes. All these three elements concern more the written text type.

Reference

Linguistic forms, known as referring expressions, are used to indicate or refer to something in the external world or in the text which is known as a referent. It is used to avoid unnecessary repetition which would make the text over explicit:

Example Given:
The boy with the red hat was playing in the garden… was playing with the ball… was nine years old. The referent is the physical element that we can paint in the world to which our words are referring to.
My apartment consists of a living room, a dining room and a kitchen. The living room is located next to the dining room.

Exophora/Exophoric Reference

It is dependent on the context outside the text. The referring expression represents the first mention of the referent in the text: Tom is studying so hard at the moment because he has to take his finals in a few weeks’ time.

Example Given: Elisabetta is a lecturer of English Linguistic. In a hole under the ground lived a Hobbit. It is based on the background knowledge. The referring expression refers to something in the KOW (Also known as intertextuality).