This document summarizes Leech's 1983 work on pragmatics. It discusses several key principles of pragmatics, including: 1) The semantic representation of an utterance is distinct from its pragmatic interpretation. 2) Semantics is rule-governed while pragmatics is principle-controlled. 3) Grammatical meanings are conventional while pragmatic forces are motivated by conversational goals. It also contrasts aspects of grammar and pragmatics, such as grammar being ideational while pragmatics is interpersonal and textual.
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Notas sobre la obra de Leech titulada Pragmática, principio de.
This document summarizes Leech's 1983 work on pragmatics. It discusses several key principles of pragmatics, including: 1) The semantic representation of an utterance is distinct from its pragmatic interpretation. 2) Semantics is rule-governed while pragmatics is principle-controlled. 3) Grammatical meanings are conventional while pragmatic forces are motivated by conversational goals. It also contrasts aspects of grammar and pragmatics, such as grammar being ideational while pragmatics is interpersonal and textual.
This document summarizes Leech's 1983 work on pragmatics. It discusses several key principles of pragmatics, including: 1) The semantic representation of an utterance is distinct from its pragmatic interpretation. 2) Semantics is rule-governed while pragmatics is principle-controlled. 3) Grammatical meanings are conventional while pragmatic forces are motivated by conversational goals. It also contrasts aspects of grammar and pragmatics, such as grammar being ideational while pragmatics is interpersonal and textual.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
PI: THE SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION (OR LOGICAL FORM) OF AN
UTTERANCE IS DISTINCT FROM ITS PRAGMATIC INTERPRETATION. 19 According to the PERFORMATIVE HYPOTHESISevery sentences S in a language is in its deep or semantic structure a performative sentence roughly of the form I state/declare/ask/etc. S. 19 P2: SEMANTICS IS RULE-GOVERNED (GRAMMATICAL); PRAGMATICS IS PRINCIPLE-CONTROLLED (RETHORICAL) 21
GENERAL
P3: THE RULES OF GRAMMAR ARE FUNDAMENTALLY CONVENTIONAL; THE
PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATICS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY NON-CONVENTIONAL, ie MOTIVATED IN TERMS OF CONVERSATIONAL GOALS. 24 That a promise is recognized as a promise not by means of rules (except in so far as rules are required in determing sense), but by means of a recognition of ss motive; and that Searls rules apply only to the exent that they specify contitions wich will normally follow from that regonition. 24 What is conventional is the semantic fact that a sentence of the syntactic form Ill pay you back tomorrow expresses a proposition describing a particular future act by the speaker. That is, the sense is conventional, in that it is deducible from the rules of gramar (amog wich I here include lexical definitions); but the force is arrived at by means of motivated principles such as the CP [Coperative Principle]. 24 P4: GENERAL PRAGMATICS RELATES THE SESNSE (OR GRAMMATICAL MEANING) OF AN UTTERANCE TO ITS PRAGMATICS FORCE. THIS RELATIONSHIP MAY BE RELATIVELY DIRECT OR INDIRECT. 30 the sense can be described by means of a SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION in some formal language or notation. The force will be represented as a set of implicaturesWe cannot ultimately be certain of what a speaker means by an utterance. The observable conditions, the utterance and the context, are determinants of what s means by the utterance U; it is the task of h to diagnose the most likely interpretation. 30 the pramatic force is motivated by general principles or rational and social behaviourand second, to give a rough otline of the postulated interpretative process wich may, however, be to a greater or lesser degree automatized. 32 P5: GRAMMATICAL CORRESPONDECES ARE DEFINED BY MAPINGS; PRAGMATIC CORRESPONDENCES ARE DEFINED BY PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS. P6: GRAMMATICAL EXPLANATIONS ARE PRIMARILY FORMAL; PRAGMATIC EXPLANATIONS ARE PRIMARILY FUCTIONAL. 47
P7: GRAMMAR IS IDEATIONAL; PRAGMATICS IS INTERPERSONAL AND
TEXUAL. 56 A linguistic act of communication (an utterance) is described as constituting a transaction on three different planes: as (a) an interpersonal transaction, or DISCOURSE; as (b) an ideational transaction or MESSAGE-TRANSMISSION; and as (c) a textual transaction or TEXT. But these are ordered such that the discourse includes the message, and the message includes the text. 59 The discourse is the whole transaction(The term discourse is used in preference to illocution or illocutionary act which would also be an appropriate term for the whole transaction. But discourse suggests that the field of activity in fact contains a sequence of illocutions. I do not, that is, wish to limit the value of Fig. 3.3 by suggesting that it only applies to single utterances. On the other hand, I do not wish to embark upon the particular problems of analyzing continuing discourse a task which is best left to discourse analysts59 We should have to recognize that a text is in itself a phenomenon which unfolds in time, and that all the components of Fig. 3.3 can themselves undergo temporal progression. 61 P8: IN GENERAL, GRAMMAR IS DESCRIBABLE IN TERMS OF DISCRETE AND DETERMINATE CATEGORIES; PRAGMATICS IS DESCRIBABLE IN TERMS OF CONTINUOUS AND INDETERMINATE VALUES. 70 The terms DECLARATIVE, INTERROGATIVE, and imperative are typically used for syntactic categoriesThey are conventionally distinguished from corresponding semantic or speech-act categories, referred to by such terms as assertion, question, and command [assertion, asking, impositive] 114 There is common ideational content that may be shared by propositions, questions, and mands, and which has been variously described as a propositional content, predication, or sentence radical [nota 9, p. 129: Propositional content is Searles (1969) term. Kempson (1975:43-4) adopts Steniuss (1967) term sentence-radical.]. For instance, You will sit dawn, Will you sit down, and (You) sit down! All share a common propositional content X, describing a sitting down of h in the future. They differ in terms of logical form, but I shall want to use a simple term, PROPOSITIONAL, to apply to all three types of sentence sense. 115 The bottom line of Fig. 9.1, corresponding to the text in Fig. 3.3, p 59 can appropriately receive the label phonetic, following Austins term phonetic act for the actual physical execution of the utterance. 200 Speech-act verbs: 214 (199: definitions).