Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Lecture no. 1
INTRODUCTORY CONCEPTS
that the Queens intention was to stop them trying to make her laugh and lift her out of the
depression, and that her statement implies a reminder that she has to be respected as Queen.
1. CONTEXT
Pragmatics and discourse analysis have much in common: they both study context, text and
Understanding concepts
function.
introduction
situational context
Both pragmatics and discourse analysis study the meaning of words in context,
analysing the parts of meaning that can be explained by knowledge of the physical and social
world, and the socio-psychological factors influencing communication, as well as the knowledge
of the time and place in which the words are uttered or written (Stilwell Peccei 1999; Yule
The first section of this lecture defines pragmatics and discourse. First, let us look at
1996).
what they are not, by using an example. In Queen Victorias famous words We are not
amused, if we analyse the grammar and say that
Both approaches focus on the meaning of words in interaction and how interactors
communicate more information than the words they use.
we is the noun phrase subject of the sentence containing a first person plural pronoun,
both speaker and hearer: the speaker constructs the linguistic message and intends or implies a
meaning, and the hearer interprets the message and infers the meaning (Brown and Yule 1983;
Thomas 1995).
The second feature that pragmatics and discourse analysis have in common is that they
both look at discourse, or the use of language, and text, or pieces of spoken or written
discourse, concentrating on how stretches of language become meaningful and unified for their
outside; it includes grammar, and does not consider who said it to whom, where, when or why.
Returning to the Queen Victoria example, if we analyse the meaning of her words in
pragmatics calls it relevance. Both approaches would take into account the fact that Victorias
words were intended to be seen as relevant to the courtiers joke and to anything that they should
say afterwards.
Finally, pragmatics and discourse analysis have in common the fact that they are both
concerned with function: the speakers short-term purposes in speaking, and long-term goals
in interacting verbally.
Function is related to the speech act theory. Speech act theory describes what utterances
about Queen Victoria and her courtiers, or why she said this.
Moving on to what pragmatics and discourse analysis are, we can start by saying that
they are approaches to studying languages relation to the contextual background features.
They would take into account the fact that, in the example, Queen Victoria had been in a
prolonged depression, caused by the death of her husband Albert, and her courtiers knew this,
principles of discourse. Pragmatics can explain the example thus: the Queen complied with the
social maxims of being relevant, precise, clear and sincere, and her courtiers expected her to do
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so, and she obeyed the social principles of politeness in that her request for the courtiers to stop
gestures with their hands or face; what is funny about this is that hearer and speaker do not share
the situational context, so the gestures do not add meaning to the words. The situational
Pragmatics takes a socio-cultural perspective on language usage, examining the way that
context is the immediate physical co-presence, the situation where the interaction is taking place
the principles of social behaviour are expressed is determined by the social distance between
at the moment of speaking. It is not by chance that DM uses the words like this. This is a
speakers. It describes the unwritten maxims of conversation that speakers follow in order to
demonstrative pronoun, used for pointing to something, an entity, that speaker and hearer can
see. Any overhearer who cannot see DMs hands would not know how badly his wifes knees
were swollen.
Let us take an example from written language, now, from The English Struwwelpeter,
room of the Applied Linguistics department of the University of Edinburgh. The text deals with
a book from the beginning of the twentieth century that contains moralistic, humorous tales
the meaning of words in context (the physical and social world) and assumptions of knowledge
about naughty children who are punished for their bad behaviour. There is one such tale called
The story of Augustus who would not have any soup. The tale begins with Augustus as a chubby
DM, an Englishman, had planned to go to Spain for Easter but could not afford the
tickets; he tells AF, a Scottish woman, that he ended up going hill walking in Arran, an island
lad who ate and drank as he was told, and never let his soup grow cold. Then one day he
screams I wont have any soup today. Here is verse two:
off the west coast of Scotland. What knowledge do they assume that they share?
(2) So you went to Arran. A bit of a come-down isnt it! ((laughing))
It was nice actually. Have you been to Arran?
No Ive not. (1) Like to go.
Did a lot of climbing.
// (heh)
// I went with Francesca (0.5) and David.
Uhuh?
Francescas room-mate. (2) And Alices - a friend of Alices from London
(1). There were six of us. Yeah we did a lot of hill walking. (0.5) We got back (1) er
DM
(2) Michelle and I got home she looked at her knees. (0.5) They were like this.
Swollen up like this. Cos we did this enormous eight hour stretch.
AF
Uhm.
(Students on Hill Walking 1996)
Typically, there are three sorts of context to observe here:
AF
DM
AF
DM
AF
DM
AF
the situational context, what speakers know about what they can see around them
the background knowledge context, what they know about each other and the
world
In the excerpt about hill walking in Arran, there is an example of words taking on
meaning in the situational context: They were like this. Swollen up like this. DM must be
making a gesture that he knows AF can see, holding his hands open and rounded to show what
Michelles knees looked like. You may have seen people talking on the telephone and making
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about the low mountains on the island: AF does not appear surprised that DM and his friends
went hill walking, that they could walk for eight hours there, or that the walk was strenuous
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Skinny, emaciated
thin
enough to make somebodys knees swell. If interlocutors establish that they are part of the same
group. In this case, it is the group of people who can overlook the mosquitoes and see the beauty
group, they can assume mutual knowledge of everything normally known by group members
of the island.
(Sperber and Wilson 1995). Here, the community of people who could be assumed to know
about the mountains are British people, or people who have visited or studied the British Isles.
It is this cultural context and shared attitude of a group that can make the humour of
one country difficult to understand for people of another country, and the humour of one
Groups with mutual knowledge vary in size. For example, most nationalities of the
world would understand a conversation assuming knowledge of the fact that stars come out at
humorous London magazine, dated 1894, that depicts a young girl in a grocers shop; the
night, the sun is high at midday or the world is round. The community can also be relatively
caption reads: Arf a pound er margarine, please, an mother says will yer put the cow on it, cos
small: in the hill-walking example, out of all the forty or so students on the course, maybe only
shes got company! The context seems to be that the grocer had barrels of margarine and butter,
AF and DM know that Francesca is Davids girlfriend, and that Alice is from London. Take
and when he made up a packet of butter, he would put a stamp with the shape of a cow on it.
The grocer and the mother would have known that margarine was cheaper, that the mother could
Rock music was born twins: there were two sibling styles, one derived from country and western,
one from rhythm and blues. These two sources were distinct and separate corners of the music
industry, one white, stemming from Nashville, Tennessee, and Wheeling, West Virginia, the other
black, stemming from Chicago, Memphis, Houston, St. Louis, and Kansas City. But of course,
there was an overlap between the two styles and their locations, especially both had wide national
followings. (Sawyer 1992:82)
The community who could fully appreciate the meaning of these words would be people
with an interest in North American popular music. Within that community there will be a
smaller group of people who know all about rhythm and blues, its singers and bands, its history
and geography. Within that community, there will be an even smaller group of people who know
every song that a particular rhythm and blues band has recorded, as well as the life histories of
each of the band members. These smaller groups may form what Swales (1990) calls discourse
communities, if they have the broadly agreed common public goals, special mechanisms for
not afford butter, and that she wanted to impress her guests by making them think that she could
afford it. Today, we might not find this funny. This 1894 humour reflects a middle-class attitude
of the time, that it is amusing that the poor try to hide their poverty, in vain.
Interpersonal background knowledge
In the hill-walking excerpt, we see that AF and DM know who Michelle is. This is the
interpersonal context. DM will have told AF in a previous conversation that his wifes name is
Michelle; he might also have told her where home is AF might have actually been to DMs
home and learnt quite a lot about Michelle. Shared interpersonal knowledge is knowledge
acquired through previous verbal interactions or joint activities and experiences, and it
includes privileged personal knowledge about the interlocutor.
There was a US television advertisement that featured a telephone dialogue like this:
this is why reference to any part of it can be so vague, implicit and minimal.
1.5 Referring to context
The act of using language to refer to entities in the context is known as reference: an
act in which a speaker uses linguistic forms to enable the hearer to identify something. The
speaker uses linguistic forms, known as referring expressions, to enable the hearer to identify
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the entity being referred to, which is in turn known as the referent. For example, in the words I
All of these take part of their meaning from the context of utterance.
went with Francesca (0.5) and David, the first person singular personal pronoun I is a
Finally, when a referring item refers to entities in the background knowledge, whether
referring expression which refers to the person speaking, who is the referent. Similarly, the
cultural or interpersonal, that have obviously been mentioned in a previous conversation or text,
proper nouns Francesca and David are the referring expressions that refer to the two people
or have occurred in a previously shared situation or activity, we call this intertextuality (de
whose names are Francesca and David, the latter being the referents. When this is the first
Beaugrand and Dressler 1981). In the telephone call about the Olympic medal, the that of
mention of the referent, in the sense that there is no previous mention of the reference in the
That was great is an example of intertextuality because it refers back to the wifes performance
preceding text, we call it exophoric reference. Exophora is dependent on the context outside the
in the Olympic event which she won. The previous text becomes part of background knowledge.
text. Thus, in
Since That was great refers to an event that millions of viewers around the world would have
seen, it is in the cultural context. If the husband had been referring to a romantic evening beside
AF Uhuh?
the fire with his wife, the intertextuality would have been interpersonal. Intertextuality is more
DM Francescas room-mate. (2) And Alices a friend of Alices from London (1).
often interpersonal than cultural, since it usually refers to knowledge gained in previous
conversations between the people who are speaking. Common ground is a result of the
the us and the we are not exophoric because they refer back to DM, Francesca, David,
Francescas room-mate, the friend of Alices, and Michelle, who are all mentioned elsewhere in
interpenetrating biographies of the participants, of which the conversation of the moment is only
a part (Coulthard 1986).
the text. The nouns Francesca and David are used as exophoric reference because they
point to people who are in the cultural context and are not referred to previously in the text.
If the referring expression points to the referent in the context (whether interlocutors can
see it or not), it is known as deixis. There are three types of deixis:
person,
place
time.
When we talk of person deixis we mean the use of expressions to point to a person, with
the personal pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we and they:
We are not amused
- So you went to Arran.
- We got back (1) er (2) Michelle and I got home she looked at her knees. (0.5)
- They were like this.
Spatial or place deixis is words used to point to a location, the place where an entity is in
the context, as in the demonstrative adverbs there, here, the demonstrative adjectives and
pronouns this, that, these, those:
- They were like this.
- That was great.
Time deixis is expressions used to point to a time, as in next day, then and now:
Next day, now look, the picture shows.
- ASSIGNMENT Text
How are things going?
Here is another conversation between students. AF, the Scottish woman, comes in and
sees CM, the Canadian man, and DM, the Englishman, sitting with the curtains drawn. They are
joined by BM and MM, Englishmen.
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AF
DM
AM
DM
AF
CM
DM
AF
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DM
NF
DM
MM
DM
AF
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DM
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DM
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DM