Pragmatics and Discourse

Pragmatics and discourse

The aim of this course is to elaborate critically academic material. First of all, it is important to say that to speak has a different meaning from to communicate.

Riddle

(Enigma, quelli riportati dal prof erano enigmi basati su parole aventi più significati) it is very important to focus on the meaning of the words in order to solve it. A particular riddle in Italian such as “entri in una stanza quanti piedi ci sono? Risposta 6, 2 tuoi + 4 del letto” can't be translated into English in a successful way because words are language-specific.

Ballard (author of our 2nd-year book) defines words as “the building block of the language.” Now we have to find an answer to this question: Is the equation verbal communication = words correct? No, it isn't. Because there are two types of meaning: the first one is the propositional meaning, and the second one is the intended meaning which will be analyzed later.

Verbal communication

• Starts from words
• It is not only made up of words
• Words are only a part of the communication
• Verbal and non-verbal communication complete each other

A definition of pragmatics

We can't find a watertight definition (a definition nobody can argue with, definizione che non può essere discussa) for pragmatics.

Pragmatics studies:

• Language
• Meaning
• Context

And focuses on: language used in communication. Others define pragmatics as the study of non-linguistic pressures and causes → this is what we call context. When we speak, we don’t only understand what words mean but we intuitively know something is not included in the text and what makes us understand these elements is the context.

To sum up, pragmatics studies the relation between language, meaning, and context because speakers often imply more than what they say. Pragmatics studies the intended and perceived meaning of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, or, to be more exact, of utterances in interaction.

A word can stand on its own but it can go up and be considered as a clause or a sentence. It can do so pragmatically because pragmatics takes into consideration descriptive grammar and not prescriptive grammar. It is interested in what people say. Pragmatics doesn't study sentences as syntax does, but it considers UTTERANCES, that is what we use to communicate.

Utterance → sequence of words preceded and ended by a pause used to give a message. So “no” is an utterance because it furnishes a complete reply. An utterance is a unit above a sentence, it's a unit of pragmatics used to convey a number of ideas.

In the structure of language, pragmatics is the last step, after semantics (graphology – phonetics – morphology – syntax – semantics – pragmatics).

Schema riassuntivo: pragmatics studia la relazione tra lingua, significato (meaning) e contesto.

The context

Words in a text are not enough to understand its communicative meaning; very often, we need to know the context of a communicative exchange. Context is not only made up of circumstances and situations but also past events are part of the today context. Pragmatics talks about goal or aim in the cause of future context. The goal (obiettivo) we have in our mind is very important in our communication. We basically communicate because we want to achieve something. So the context is made up of everything around that particular moment.

Example: “Door!” Without a context, we cannot know what the speaker means. We can guess by trying to imagine a context based on our background because a single word can mean a lot of different things. Even if we have some context information (f.e. we are in the bathroom), we still can't be 100% sure if “DOOR!” means open or close the door. The intended meaning is what I want to mean, and usually is very different from what I say.

Meaning in the context can be explained by:

• Physical and social world
• Socio-psychological factors influencing communication
• Time (related to physical and social constraints)
• Place

As I’ve just written above, speakers imply more than what their words apparently say. In other words, all the utterances contain an intended meaning deeper and different from the propositional meaning.

When we communicate, the result is a combination of speaker and hearer → the roles change at every utterance. Speaker's meaning depends on:

1. When we start a communicative exchange, whatever we say is based on assumptions of knowledge → hypothesis we create in our mind beforehand; they guide our communicative behavior, what words we choose (e.g. Studente che entra in una stanza e capisce immediatamente che c'è un insegnante perché si trova in un'aula universitaria).
2. The hearer interprets the message and decodes the non-literal meaning. This process is circular. So our mind works in this way:

• Contextual element → sound: knock at the door
• Underlying assumptions → someone is knocking at the door
• Implied meaning → go open the door
• Utterance → “Open the door!”

Three types of context

1. Situational / communicative context
2. Background knowledge context / knowledge of the world
3. Co-textual / co-text

These three kinds of context make up the context of any communicative exchange; they are three aspects of the same thing.

Word vs term

• A word is a lexeme in our natural language. It can have different meanings.
• The term has only one meaning. It is the same as a word from the point of view of shape but it has only one meaning. Used in specialized discourses.

Some words are actually terms in Pragmatics, such as context → it's a specialized term, a so-called “umbrella term” → it can be split into three parts that together represent the context.

There are two main reasons for which we have to consider the context (the third reason will be explained later):

• It influences the way we communicate.
• It helps reduce the potentiality of utterances (it is related both to the production and the interpretation of the meaning).

According to the context, we can decide whether we communicate or not and in which way. It is difficult to predict the absolute meaning of an utterance in isolation from the context because of its meaning potential. Utterances can potentially mean anything including the opposite of their surface (propositional meaning) (in case of jokes, irony, etc.). In conclusion, to reduce the potentiality, we need to consider the context.

Example: “Door!” → to reduce its potentiality, we put it in a context.

Situational/communicative context

The situation in which the interaction is taking place at the moment of speaking. We are talking about the physical world. This context provides the speaker with all those words, sounds, non-verbal devices that help the speaker determine the meaning of the utterance, in the sense that the extra-linguistic information helps participants eliminate any ambiguity in the text. It also determines the way the speakers communicate with one another (WH questions: how, why …) and what they talk about or do not talk about.

Situation as context is an umbrella term that includes three aspects:

1. Place
2. Participants
3. Time

After having considered the linguistic information, we start thinking about the extra-linguistic ones, that is (cioè) the situational context. When we have both linguistic and extra-linguistic elements, we are able to define what is the right context among the possible options.

The linguistic info → “Door!” “I'm in the bath” “Ok!”

Extra-linguistic info → place: shared apartment, participants: two roommates, time: one is doing something else, the other is having a bath.

N.B context in general terms (not only the situational context) is the dimension of communication which turns language as a formal system into a means of communication (“parole” le mot utilisé par F. de Saussurre dans son cours de linguistique générale).

There is a third reason why context is so important: there is a large range of words that literally point out at something around us:

• Deixis → all those words that link language to the external world
• Reduction in explicitness → it's a typical trait of human communication; we tend to avoid being over-explicit, in particular when the situational context allows us to do so (saying “that” instead of “the bottle of water”)

Three kinds of deixis:

1. Personal (personal pronouns)
2. Place
3. Time

We use them when we take for granted a lot of information. According to the context, we can understand if we can/cannot/how to be reduced in explicitness. In the exam, we should not reduce our explicitness. If we don't know what a particular deixis means, we have to make assumptions.

Now we will underline the contextual variables that make up the situational context:

• They are able to affect speakers and texts because they influence how, when, why, etc., we say something and they can help us understand the intended meaning. They are:

1. Topic
2. Setting (time and place)
3. Participants
4. Medium (spoken or written) + text type, purpose, channel… also these are elements of the situational context

1,2,3,4 are important. If one of them changes, the context changes, and each of them has a very strong impact.

Topic

It may affect lexis, grammar, and style; for example, legal documents have long and complex clauses. It also helps to reduce the potentiality → according to the topic, the same utterance can have a different meaning.

Taboo topics → things you don’t talk about in a particular context, e.g., teacher and students share only some aspects of their lives.

Setting

It may affect language/communication in a variety of ways:

1. Time: diachronic → if you have to read Chaucer, you need to read Middle English; synchronic (we talk about a specific point in time) → lesson vs office hours
2. Place → they influence the concepts to be expressed and the type of language employed. It makes us understand the intended meaning: AMEN in church has a different meaning in another context.

Participants

• Sub-variables:
• Individual identity
• Social identity (gender, class, religion...)
• Personal and social relationship between interactors
• Presence or absence of an audience

Medium

• Difference between written (organized, complex structures, grammatical accuracy) and spoken language (in general not planned in advance)
• There can be a mixture of written and oral: written to be spoken vs spoken to be written (someone who says something knowing that it will be written down). There are also differences among written texts such as formal or personal e-mail.

N.B. These variables act all together and they impact on each other (le variabili non agiscono in maniera individuale).

Background knowledge or knowledge of the world

It is constituted by everything we know about the world, all the information that we possess and that:

1. Allow us to reduce the potentiality of utterances
2. Influence our communicative behavior
3. Perform utterances that are reduced in explicitness and understand other people's utterances which are reduced in explicitness

We share a lot of knowledge with the people we know, so we have in common a big background. This is the knowledge about how things usually go in the world which is stored in our memories and helps us fill the missing links in communication and understand the intended meaning.

Encyclopedic knowledge: everything which is shared by members of the same group or community, acquired through schools, books, TV, radios... This kind of knowledge is open access.

(Inter)personal knowledge: knowledge acquired by previous conversations and activities, which includes personal knowledge about the interlocutor. It is the knowledge unique and different that everyone possesses... it only belongs to us, not open access, you can't find it in books or television. It depends on experiences of your life.

The co-text

It is the context of the text itself. Therefore, it is constituted by words and verbal indications, namely those words and verbal indications which constitute the rest of the text. All the words BEFORE and AFTER the utterance we are considering make up the co-text. The difference with the previous two types of context is that the co-text doesn't include non-linguistic elements. An utterance might appear completely different if we don't know what has been said and what will be said before and after. In other words, a change in the co-text implies a change in the intended meaning of the utterance we are considering.

Cohesion and coherence

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.

Coherence: it concerns the meaning; the text needs to show unity of meaning and theoretic and logical progression to be considered coherent. These two concepts usually go together.

Meaningful → every sentence has a meaning, at least the propositional meaning if we do not understand the intended one.

Coherent → a text is supposed to be coherent since it must be progressive and logical. An utterance must be logically linked to the previous co-text (there must be unity of meaning); a sequence of meaningful sentences can't be coherent so they can't have a logical progression.

A text can be cohesive but not coherent → no unity at the meaning level.

Cohesion

1. Language making links with itself, e.g., making its grammatical and lexical relationship explicit through verbal signals present in the text.
2. Cohesive devices:

• Grammatical cohesion: reference/substitution/ellipsis/conjunction
• Lexical cohesion: repetition/lexical reiteration

Reference: Linguistic forms, known as referring expressions, which are used to indicate something, namely to refer to something in the world or in the text which is known as a referent.

Example: My apartment consists of a living room. The living room is... (grammar explains that we are talking about the same room). Reference is used to avoid unnecessary repetitions, which would make the text over-explicit. Remember that a typical human communication is based on reduction in explicitness!

Exophoric vs endophoric reference

• Exophoric reference is dependent on the context outside the text → Elisabetta is the lecturer of English Linguistics. (In this case, the co-text is not enough)
• The referring expression represents the first mention of the referent in the text
• The referring expression refers to something in knowledge of the world (also known as intertextuality)

Example 1: A. What happened here? It looks like the 2nd world war broke out in this apartment. This is a case of cultural intertextuality because it's part of a knowledge shared by the largest part of people; nearly everybody knows what was and what in this case means the expression I have underlined.

Example 2: A. O.M.G! What Sara told him yesterday was amazing! → Here we have the interpersonal textually, something shared probably by few speakers such as Sara, the speaker, and their friends.

Endophoric reference → reference refers to items within the same text → Jack and Sandra will get married soon. They met at the university (in this case, the co-text is enough to understand who “they” refers to).

There are two types of endophora:

1. Anaphora (anaphoric reference) links back to a referent that has already been mentioned in the same text (the left dislocation: My neighbors, they moved).
2. Cataphora → links forward to a referent that follows in the text (right dislocation, They moved, my neighbors).

Example: Millions of copies of his novel have been sold so far. Dan Brown is one of the most famous writers of the year. His → endophoric and cataphoric reference (encyclopedic).

The associative endophora

There is one case in which NPs (nouns and pronouns) are not explicitly linked to each other, but one of them is linked to entities associated with the other NP, this is the associative endophora.

Example: YouTube is a popular video-sharing website where users can upload, view, and share video clips. What is video sharing? → Public viewing online, not physically, passing DVDs to friends. How can we know these things about video-sharing? Thanks to the knowledge of the presuppositional pool of “website.” The two NPs refer to each other not linguistically but associatively.

What about deixis? Are they endophoric or exophoric reference?

(N.B. the deictic focus is the person who is speaking) We need to answer this difficult question. Deixis can be:

• Proximal deixis → near to the speaker
• Distal deixis → away from the speaker

Then we have analyzed different kinds of deictics (examples are noted in my notebook) such as:

• Personal deixis
• Time deixis
• Place deixis
• Discourse deixis
• Psychological use of spatial deixis
• Gestural deixis
• Symbolic deixis

In conclusion (we need to look at the example to completely understand) to fully understand a deictic, we need the world outside the text!

Substitution

Use of substitutes (one, so, did) like endophoric reference, to hold the text together and avoid repetitions.

Example: - I have a Pentium computer! I don't have one, but I wish I did. One = a Pentium computer. Did: I had a Pentium computer.

Ellipsis

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