Pragmatics

Topics in Pragmatics

• Deixis: interpretation of expressions (e.g., you, here, yesterday) depends on speaking context
• Speech acts
• Conversational implicature
• Presupposition
• Discourse analysis: topic/comment, information, etc.
• Conversational analysis
• Politeness and formality

Pragmatics vs. Semantics

• Utterances: sentences in context, particular instantiations of sentences
• Context: physical, linguistic, social, epistemic

Speech Acts (Austin, Searle)

• The irrelevance of truth conditions for many sentences, e.g., imperatives, questions
• Sentences with similar functions but radically different structures and words
  
  1. Stop talking, please.
  2. I wouldn't mind saying a few words too, you know.
• Utterances as acts with particular preconditions and effects
• Locutionary act: making a meaningful utterance; illocutionary act: act performed by a speaker by virtue of the utterance having been made, defined with respect to speaker's purpose (e.g, warning); perlocutionary act: act which achieves a particular effect on the listener (e.g., frightening)
  For example, S says to H "I will come tomorrow" (a promise).
  1. Since this is a well-formed, meaningful English sentence, a successful locutionary act has been performed if S knows English.
  2. A successful illocutionary act (promise) has been performed if S intends to come tomorrow, believes she can come tomorrow, thinks she wouldn't normally come tomorrow, thinks H would like her to come tomorrow, and intends to place herself under an obligation to come tomorrow and if both S and H understand the sentence, are normal human beings, and are in normal circumstances.
  3. A successful perlocutionary act (persuasion) has been performed if H is convinced that S will come tomorrow.
• Felicity conditions for illocutionary acts: these must be satisfied if the speech act is to be correctly performed
  • Types of felicity conditions: propositional content conditions, preparatory preconditions, sincerity conditions, essential condition
  • Felicity conditions for requests
    • Prop: Future act A of H
    • Prep: (1) S believes H can do A; (2) it is not obvious that H would do A without being asked
    • Sinc: S wants H to do A
    • Ess: Counts as an attempt to get H to do A
  • Felicity conditions for warnings
    • Prop: Future event E
    • Prep: (1) S thinks E will occur and is not in H's interest; (2) S thinks it is not obvious to H that E will occur
    • Sinc: S believes E is not in H's best interest
    • Ess: Counts as an undertaking that E is not in H's best interest
• Types of illocutionary acts (Searle)
  • Representatives (asserting, concluding)
  • Directives (requesting, questioning)
  • Commissives (promising, threatening, offering)
  • Expressives (thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating)
  • Declarations (excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing)
• How illocutionary acts are realized
  • Performatives: I order you to leave the room.
  • Other conventional forms: Leave the room.
  • Indirect illocutionary acts: You'd better leave the room. If I were you, I'd leave the room. If you know what's good for you, you'll leave the room. I'd say it was in your best interests to leave the room. I'd better not see you in this room the next time I turn around.
• Indirect speech acts
  • They may refer explicitly to particular felicity conditions.
  • What good are they when they seem harder to interpret than direct speech acts?
  • How are they interpreted? Some may be conventional; others may make use of general conventional strategies (e.g., to make a directive, refer to the undesirability or unlikelihood of an event that could take place if the directive is not carried out).

Implicature and Grice's Maxims

• The Cooperative Principle: "Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."
• People normally assume that the principle is being adhered to, though perhaps at an abstract level.
  A: Where's Bill?
  B: There's a yellow VW outside Sue's house.
• Conversational maxims: rational means for conducting cooperative exchanges
• Observing and flouting the maxims
  • Quality (truth, sufficient evidence)
    • Flouted: Unh-hunh, and I'm the queen of Bulgaria.
    • Flouted: A: What if Russia blockades the Gulf and all the oil? B: Oh come now, Britain rules the seas!
  • Quantity (informative enough, not too informative)
    
    • The flag is white
    • A: How did Harry fare in court? B: Oh, he got a fine.
    • Flouted: War is war.
    • Flouted: Either John will come or he won't.
  • Relevance
    
    • A: Can you tell me the time? B: Well, the mail has come.
    • Flouted: Lovely weather we're having today.
  • Manner (avoiding obscurity, ambiguity, verbosity, and sloppiness)
    
    • Flouted: A: Let's get the kids something. B: OK, but I veto I-C-E C-R-E-A-M.
    • Flouted: Miss Singer produced a series of sounds corresponding closely to the score of an aria from Rigoletto.
• Implicature
  • Maxims generate inferences beyond the semantic content of of the sentences uttered: implicatures.
  • How implicature is supposed to work.
    • S has said that p.
    • There's no reason to think S is not observing the Cooperative Principle.
    • In order for S to say that p and be indeed observing the Cooperative Principle, S must think that q.
    • S must know that it is mutual knowledge that q must be supposed if S is to be taken to be cooperating.
    • S has done nothing to stop me, the hearer, from thinking that q.
    • Therefore S intends me to think that q, and in saying that p has implicated q.
  • Implicature vs. logical implication (entailment), defeasibility of inferences
    • If Socrates is a man, he is mortal. Socrates is a man. => Socrates is mortal.
      Entailment; we cannot say "... but Socrates is not mortal".
    • John has three cows. => John has exactly three cows.
      Implicature: we can say "...but John does not have exactly three cows."
  

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