Understanding Pragmatics: Language and Context

UNIT 1 PRAGAMATICS

INTRODUCTION

• Deixis: Refers to words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information. Pointing via language.

“You’ll to bring this tomorrow because it is not here”

• Referenic. Act by which a speaker uses language to enable a listener to identify something.

• Inference: Additional information used by the listener to connect what is said to what must be MEANI

• Anaphora: Subsequent reference to an already introduced entity

“My brother came to see me. He was furious”

• Supposition: What a speaker assumes is true or known by what he hears

“Your qualified is waiting outside” → You heard a qualified

• Politeness: showing awareness of others' perform fave. Fave = public self-image

  • Fave-threatening acts: “don’t touch this”

  • Fave-Saving act: “could you pass me that book, please”

How people communicate involves interpreting:

• What speakers SAY

• What they “intend”

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

How do language-users interpret what other language-users intend to convey?

• Make sense of what we read in texts

• Understand what speakers mean despite what they say

• Recognise connected vs. jumbled or unconnected discourse

• Successfully that part is a conversation

Language users can cope with

• Fragments: “Trains collide, two die” CASUAL RELATIONSHIP

• Ungrammatical form. “Supermarket near here, you know?”

How do we react to language?

• Try to make sense of text

• Arrive at an interpretation

For this, we rely on:

• Linguistic form + structure

• But we apply more knowledge than that

COHESION → Ties or connects with him

Textuality= property of a text which distinguishes it from a random sequence of uncommitted

Connections present by:

• Use of Pronouns

• Lexical variations → iteration -> direct repetition

• Hyponymy (rose- flowers)

• Synonym (Eggplant -aubergine)

Connections present by:

-Connectors

-Verb Tenses (Connection between events)

Items refer:

• Anaphoric reference: looking back in the text

• Cataphoric reference: looking forward

• Exophoric reference: looking outward (Context or knowledge assumed by the speakers)

COHERENCE → Interpretations made by the speaker/writer

Phoebe: “That’s the telephone”

James: “I’m in the bath”

Phoebe: “Ok”

SPEECH ACTS: What a piece of language is going. Performance of a particular act by using language forms. Speech acts: variation of WHAT is said and HOW it is said.

Criteria:

• Roles of speaker and hearer

• Relationships (friends, strangers)

• Topic of conversation

• Setting

A: Are you coming to the concert tonight?

B: I’v got a busy say tomorrow

IMPLICATURE: Additional conveyed meaning

Background knowledge: we build interpretations of what the text is about based on our expectations of what normally happens