Pragmatics Notes

for

English (Linguistics)

Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan

(AWKUM)-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Compiled and Edited by:

Dr. Abdul Waheed Qureshi

Assistant Professor

Department of English,

AWKUM
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What is Pragmatics?

A subfield of linguistics that studies how people comprehend and produce a

communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a
conversation. It studies the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on
the speaker, the addressee, and other features of the context of utterance.

Etymology
The word pragmatics is derived from the Greek ‘pragmatikos’, meaning
amongst others "fit for action", which comes from ‘pragma’, meaning "deed, act", and
‘prasso’, meaning "to pass over, to practise, to achieve".

History

Pragmatics, the youngest linguistic discipline, has a venerable (old and

respected) past, all the way from the Greeks and nineteenth-century pragmatic
thinkers to today’s workers in various sub-disciplines of linguistics, sociology,
psychology, literary research, and other branches of the humanities and social
sciences.

There are three stages in the development of pragmatics:

1st Stage

1930 - The term “Pragmatics” was used at for the first time. It was the branch of
Semiotics.

1940 - Charles Morris divided semiology into three parts: syntax, semantics and
pragmatics.

2nd Stage

1950 – 1960 - Three philosophers: Austin, Searle and Paul Grice established their
theory of Speech Act and Implicature respectively.
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3rd Stage

1977 - Jacob L. Mey published the 1st Journal of Pragmatics in Holland in 1983.
Levinson wrote his book “Pragmatics” whereas Geoffrey Leech wrote his “Principle
of Pragmatics”.

1988 - The set-up of International Pragmatics Association (IPrA). This was a year
which noted as a year when pragmatics turned into an independent discipline.

Focus and Content

Some of the aspects of language studied in pragmatics include:

Deixis: meaning 'pointing to' something. In verbal communication however, deixis in

its narrow sense refers to the contextual meaning of pronouns, and in its broad sense,
what the speaker means by a particular utterance in a given speech context.

Presupposition: referring to the logical meaning of a sentence or meanings logically

associated with or entailed by a sentence.

Performative: implying that by each utterance a speaker not only says something but
also does certain things: giving information, stating a fact or hinting an attitude. The
study of performatives led to the hypothesis of Speech Act Theory that holds that a
speech event embodies three acts: a locutionary act, an illocutionary act and a
perlocutionary act (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969).

Implicature: referring to an indirect or implicit meaning of an utterance derived from

context that is not present from its conventional use.

Ambiguity: is an attribute of any concept, idea, statement or claim whose meaning,

intention or interpretation cannot be definitively resolved according to a rule or
process consisting of a finite number of steps.

Areas of Interest

● The study of the speaker's meaning, not focusing on the phonetic or grammatical
form of an utterance, but instead on what the speaker's intentions and beliefs are.
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● The study of the meaning in context, and the influence that a given context can have
on the message. It requires knowledge of the speaker's identities, and the pace and
time of the utterance.

● The study of implicatures, i.e. the things that are communicated even though they
are not explicitly expressed.

● The study of relative distance, both social and physical, between speakers in order
to understand what determines the choice of what is said and what is not said.

● The study of what is not meant, as opposed to the intended meaning, i.e. that which
is unsaid and unintended, or unintentional.

● Information structure, the study of how utterances are marked in order to efficiently
manage the common ground of referred entities between speaker and hearer.

● Formal Pragmatics, the study of those aspects of meaning and use, for which
context of use is an important factor, by using the methods and goals of formal
semantics.

Uses

1. Pragmatics involve three major communication skills:

Using language for different purposes, such as

● greeting (e.g., hello, goodbye)

● informing (e.g., I'm going to get a cookie)

● demanding (e.g., Give me a cookie)

● promising (e.g., I'm going to get you a cookie)

● requesting (e.g., I would like a cookie, please)

2. Changing language according to the needs of a listener or situation, such as

● talking differently to a baby than to an adult

● giving background information to an unfamiliar listener

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● speaking differently in a classroom than on a playground

3. Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such as

● taking turns in conversation

● introducing topics of conversation

● staying on topic

● rephrasing when misunderstood

● how to use verbal and nonverbal signals

● how close to stand to someone when speaking

● how to use facial expressions and eye contact

An Individual with Pragmatic Problems:

● says inappropriate or unrelated things during conversations

● tells stories in a disorganized way

● has little variety in language use

Communicative/Pragmatic Competence: The ability to understand another

speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence.

Related Fields with Pragmatics

There is considerable overlap between pragmatics and sociolinguistics, since

both share an interest in linguistic meaning as determined by usage in a speech
community. However, sociolinguists tend to be more interested in variations in
language within such communities. Pragmatics helps anthropologists relate elements
of language to broader social phenomena; it thus pervades the field of linguistic
anthropology. Because pragmatics describes generally the forces in play for a given
utterance, it includes the study of power, gender, race, identity, and their interactions
with individual speech acts. According to Charles W. Morris, pragmatics tries to
understand the relationship between signs and their users, while semantics tends to
focus on the actual objects or ideas to which a word refers, and syntax (or
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"syntactics") examines relationships among signs or symbols. Semantics is the literal

meaning of an idea whereas pragmatics is the implied meaning of the given idea.

Main Theories in Pragmatics and their Difference

Communication sometimes can be somehow tricky and disconcerting

(embarrassing/puzzling) because language itself sometimes can confuse the
participants of a conversation, as the meaning of the conversation can be confusing
sometimes. In the linguistic field, the term ‘meaning’ and what it implicates (twists),
have been studied from different points of view. In semantics, when they try to
understand the meaning of something in a conversation, they focus just on the word
and what does it mean and how its syntactical structure accompanies the real
connotation of the word; whereas in pragmatics, they study how the context of the
conversation has influence on the real meaning of the utterance employed, depending
on the localization where the dialogue is occurring, whether the speaker is giving a
background connotation to the utterance or the relationship between the participants
of the conversation among other things.

Linguists had been studying the different connotations, pragmatics has given
to communication and language since many years ago, and as a consequence of this,
there are several theories about meaning in this field which have provided some
different points of view about this topic. There are different important theories in
pragmatics such as Speech-Act Theory by Austin and Searle, Conversational
Implicature by Paul Grice, Politeness Principle by Geoffrey Leech, the Face
Theory by Browning and Levinson, and Relevance Theory by Dan Sperber and
James Wilson and how they differ between each other. John Langshawn Austin was
the one who created one of the main theories of this topic, calling his theory the
‘Speech Act Theory’. Since in contrast with old suppositions, he believed that
utterances not only express statements, but they are in fact acts of communication and
some of them express actions. The development of this theory carried a lot of years of
study and a path which would lead to the ‘Speech Act Theory’ as it is known, full of
different perspectives.

Austin originated the mentioned theory by differing between the

‘Performative’ and ‘Constative’ utterances. With this last one mentioned he referred
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to the statements, hypotheses or predictions that could be described whether as true or

false, whereas with the Performative utterances he pointed to the statements that
express action. They cannot be true or false, since they do not describe what you are
going to do or what you are doing, but they could be referred as successful or
unsuccessful. An example of constative utterance might be when in the
meteorological section of the news they say it is going to be cloudy for a week. That
could be truth or not and the meaning of the utterance depends on it. But performative
utterances could be for example when someone promises to do something. They are
not stating anything, in contrast, this kind of utterance carry an action that would
affect a life in one way or another, and the meaning of it depends on if it is successful
or not. With the performatives, Austin explained, it is important to notice the Context
around the utterance through some rules, which the linguist referred to as ‘Felicity
Conditions’, which determine if the action implied by the performative is
successfully produced or not, depending on if they fulfill with several qualities such
as: there has to be a system established by the speakers with arranged rules, also the
context has to be appropriate taking into consideration the system and rules
established; and finally, this procedure has to occur as it was exactly settled.

In addition, Austin added to these conditions the Sincere one, in which the
participants of the speech act must have several thoughts, feelings and intentions.
However, Austin stated that if any of the felicity conditions were broken, they became
into misfires (to fail to have the intended effect). For example, if a boyfriend gives as
a present a ring to his girlfriend and she says ‘I do’, it is breaking one of the felicity
conditions, since they are not really getting married. Moreover, if the sincerity rule is
broken, it is known as abuse, which is seen everywhere in society. An example when
this happens is when someone is promising something they know they won’t do.
Furthermore, Austin also considered that performative utterances could be Explicit or
Implicit. Whereas the implicit (hidden) performatives are understood as simply
implicit warnings, orders or advices, since the speaker does not specifically mean
what he is saying (‘It is cold outside’). In the explicit (obvious) performatives, verbs
known as ‘performatives’ (warn, advice, have, . . .) are used in the sentences in order
to show that they are really meaning what they are saying. Also, the explicit
performatives also are used with ‘hereby’ to emphasize what they are trying to say: ‘I
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recommend you to use a coat, it is cold outside’ or ‘I hereby recommend you to use a
coat, it is cold outside’.

After studying the constatives and performatives utterances, Austin realized

that both utterances are in one way or another speech acts in the same way and he
noticed that speech acts are acts of communication and that the speakers could be
using three performative acts at the same time. So, he divided it into three parts:
locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. The first one is understood as
saying something that makes sense from some points of view, as the phonetic act i.e.
it has to produce certain sounds, the phatic act i.e. it has to follow some certain rules
of grammar and vocabulary, and the rhetic act i.e. referring to using words with sense.
Therefore the locutionary act refers to the meaning of what it is said. Whereas, the
illocutionary act, indicates what the speaker’s really intentions and actions are. And
eventually, the perlocutionary act which reflects the consequences and results of the
speech acts on the people involved in the conversation. For example, if a person on a
dining table says “My hand does not reach the dessert”, the locutionary act will be its
literal and surface meaning, its sounds and diction etc. The illocutionary act
understood is direction. The perluctionary act is suggestion to someone who is near
the dessert to give him/her the plate of dessert. Another example is if a sign says
‘Don’t go near the edge of the cliff’, the illocutionary act understood is warning and
advice, while the perlocutionary act interprets it as a prohibition, producing fear.

Fifteen years after the publication of Austin’s Speech Act Theory, linguist
John Rogers Searle decided to make some contributions to his theory in contrast with
the old theory. While the original one focused on several points, Searle focused
mostly on the illocutionary act, since he believed that the studies had to concentrate
on what are the real intentions when the speaker is talking. With this idea in his mind,
he divided the speech acts into five different parts focusing on the illocutionary act.
To start with, he talked about the Representative or Assertive act i.e. a statement or
conclusion that is influenced by how the speakers interpret their world or how they
see what is true or not, or statements that commit a speaker to the truth of the
expressed proposition, for example ‘Seafood is too salty’. Moreover, there is the
Directive act, which implies the speaker ordering or asking the listener to do or
perform something or statements that are to cause the hearer to take a particular
action, for example ‘Could you pick up your brothers from the school?; other
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examples are requests, commands and advice. Also he talked about the Commisive
act, which involves the speaker committing to something in the future, for example ‘I
will hand it over tomorrow’; other examples are promises and oaths. In the same way
there is the Expressive act i.e. the speaker’s attitudes and emotions towards the
proposition, for example ‘I am so glad you have finally found a job!; other examples
are congratulations, excuses and thanks. Finally, there is the Declarative act, in which
the state said by the speaker can change the world in one way or the other due to his
role in it or statements that change the reality in accordance with the proposition of
the declaration, for example ‘You are fired’; other examples are baptisms,
pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife.

Furthermore, as Cohen asserts “speaking a language, according to Professor

Searle, is engaging in a form of behavior that is governed by . . . rules” (1970, p. 545),
so he also contributed to the Speech Act Theory by differencing between Regulative
and Constitutive rules. The regulative rules are those which regulate something that
already existed and which existence is completely independent from the rules.
Whereas, the constitutive rules establish an activity which existence does depend on
the mentioned rules i.e. the illocutionary acts. So, he distinguished between several
rules: the propositional rule, which implied the different conditions the utterance
would have in the future; the preparatory rules, referring to the differences on how
the utterances are related and interpreted by the participants of the conversation; the
sincerity rules which show the emotional and psychological attitude of the speaker
and finally the essential rules, which tell us what the essential meaning of the action
is.

Paul Grice’s Conversational Implicature theory contrasts with Austin’s and

Searle’s theory since instead of focusing mostly on how the context and different
utterances influences in what the speakers say, he focus mostly on what the speakers
really implicate (twists) by expressing something, which it is related to some
principles and maxims. According to Grice speaking a language and having a
conversation involves cooperation and some rules established by its participants so
the conversation is able to follow its course and be satisfactory to all the speakers and
listeners. In order to cooperate to achieve that the speaker and hearer have a general
implied agreement, he described some maxims or principles. The first maxim is the
Quantity, which determines that the speakers say the right amount of information
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leaving out of the conversation non-important details. The next maxim is the Quality,
in which it is only said that it is true without saying that it is thought to be false or
with not enough evidence. Additionally, there is the third maxim which is the
Relevance, demanding not to change the topic of the conversation and stay saying
what it is its focus and eventually there is the Manner maxim in which ambiguity is
avoided and the conversation stay ordered. Using these maxims the real and hidden
meaning of the utterance can be interpreted, for example ‘It is too cold outside’ could
mean ‘I do not want to go out’. Among the mentioned characteristics and some more,
there are some more Negatives that constitute the Conversational Implicatures. They
can be cancelled if someone adds more words to the sentence, for example ‘I like it’
can change what it implies when it is added ‘but it needs to be less salty’; also they
are Non-detachable since what is said cannot be expressed in other words, not even
with synonyms, and they are Calculable which means that the conversational
implicature must be achieved no matter what. In order to conclude his theory, Grice
explained that conventional sentences do not mean what is said, but they contribute to
what the meaning really implies with no need of extra information or circumstances
whereas conversational implicatures specifically depends on the context and situation.

In contrast with these theories about the importance of the meaning an

implicature of utterances in a speech, linguists have studied the relationship between
the speaker and the listener, how someone has to act and use language in an
appropriate way in order to have consideration with the other participants of the
conversation. These theories are known as Politeness Theories, which consider
where politeness comes from and how it functions in a conversation depending on the
culture of the ones involved in the speech, the social hierarchy and other factors. To
start with, linguist Geoffrey Leech developed the idea of politeness principle which
aim was to understand and contribute to language under politeness terms, in order to
build a balanced and nice social relationship, a comity (a friendly social atmosphere),
between the participants of the interaction. He distinguished between several
politeness maxims. First, he explained the Tact maxim which is the one with the cost
of one as minimizing and the benefit of other as maximizing, an example, ‘Won’t you
have dinner?’ is using an indirect expression in order to be polite instead of ordering
to have dinner; the next one is the Generosity maxim in which the benefit of oneself
is minimizing and at the same time self-cost is maximizing, for example, ‘Why don’t I
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give you a ride?’, implying the benefit of the hearer. Following this one, there is the
Approbation maxim, which determines to minimize the unpleasant utterances or
criticism to others and maximize the praise to other. Moreover, there is the Modesty
maxim which minimizes praise of self but maximize the criticism of self ‘I did not
realize the lesson was over, I am so distracted’. There is the Agreement maxim,
which minimizes disagreement between self and other and maximizes agreement
between both ‘. . . That’s true, but. . .’ Finally, there is Sympathy maxim which
maximizes sympathy between self and other ‘I’m so sorry about your grandmother’.

Whereas, Leech’s politeness theory is focused on the maxims established

between speakers and hearers in order to maintain cordial and balanced interaction,
Browning and Levinson developed their Face Theory in which politeness depends on
the consideration others have to others’ face. What they meant with ‘face’ is the social
image that everyone has and wants others to recognize. These linguists differed
between two types of faces. The positive face, which is the one that everyone has
when s/he needs to belong to a certain social group and to be accepted, and the
negative face, which is the one when s/he needs to be independent of a group and not
be judged. They stated that every act of communication and interaction can suppose a
threat to one’s face, and in order to avoid these face-threatening acts, it is important to
have cooperation between both participants; and there are some politeness strategies
to avoid these threats. They divided it into Positive Politeness strategies, Negative
Politeness strategies, Bald-on Record strategies and Indirect strategies. The positive
strategies address the positive face, the nice and considerate side we want to show to
the world as we belong to a certain social group ‘I am sure you can, you always get
what you want!’ The next strategy is the negative, which is related to the negative
face and they could be used with deference (obedience) ‘Excuse me, sir. . .’ with
hedging ‘Would you, em, if you can, explain me, em, how does it work?’ and with
indirectness. The next case of strategy, i.e. Bald-on Record only appears when there is
some intimacy between the participants of the conversation since there is not really a
face-threaten, for example ‘Give me your plate!’; and the indirect strategy is used
when asking for a favor or for something without really expressing what you want
‘That dress is incredible, but it is too expensive’ in order to avoid the face-threaten.

Dan Sperber’s consideration of language as a tool to express or convey

meaning is widely used in communication. Conversely, communication, as it uses
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language, functions for many different purposes and one of which is persuasion.
Persuasion is an act of convincing or persuading other people to accept one’s own
beliefs or opinions. According to Bettinghaus (1994), persuasion through transmitting
messages attempts to change the attitude, beliefs or behaviour of an individual or
group of individuals. Persuasion as it tries to convince and to alter the attitude of a
person or group of persons is commonly practiced in a social context called market
(Wanke & Reutner, 2009). Market persuasion involves a persuasion situation in
which an agent (speaker) attempts to persuade another agent (listener) to take an
action (Glazer & Rubinstein, 2006). Putting this concept in market setting, the speaker
or persuader might be the seller as he sells his product and tries to persuade his buyers
to buy and to patronize his products or he might be the buyer as he tries to convince
the seller to sell his product in much lower price than its actual or usual price, as that
of the case of bargaining. A persuader (seller or buyer) delivers his proposition
(persuasive statement) either overtly manifested (explicit) or covertly manifested
(implicit) in many different forms as that of statement, request or command, or in a
form of a question. Such proposition expressed overtly or covertly must create a
relevance to the expected information of the persuadee in order to achieve an efficient
persuasive communication between the two participants. This is supported by Dan
Sperber and James Wilson as Relevance Theory, as they put it “communication
information comes with a guarantee of relevance”. According to Grice, in cooperative
principle of relevance, recipients in a communication may expect that the information
that is presented is relevant to the accepted purpose of the communication. Applied to
persuasion, this would suggest that the persuadee may expect that any information
presented by the persuader is relevant to the persuader’s goal and potentially supports
the desired conclusion. This paved way to the role of conversational relevance on
persuasion put in the context of market. The underpinning principle of relevance deals
with how humans pay attention only to relevant information addressed by the speaker
which creates an expectation of relevance on the part of the listener. Also, the theory
posits that the search for relevance is a basic feature of human cognition, which
communicators may exploit. As mentioned above, market is one of the contexts in
which persuasion exists.

Language and speech, as it has been said before, sometimes can be very
confusing, and despite the differences between the theories just explained, all of them
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contribute in a way or another to understand from different points of view what the
utterances used really mean and why they are used, either considering the context, the
implicatures or the face employed.

Grice’s Conversational Implicature Further Explained

By Implicature Grice’s basic idea was to clarify the difference between what is
expressed literally in a sentence and what is merely suggested or hinted at by the
utterance of the same string of words. To distinguish the latter from the former, Grice
uses the neologisms (new words or expressions or a new meaning of a word),
implicate and implicature, while he refers to the linguistically coded part of utterance
content as what is said. According to Davis “An Implicature is something meant,
implied, or suggested which is distinct from what is said”. Implicature can be part of a
sentence meaning, or can be dependent on conversational context, and it can be
conventional or unconventional. Grice differentiates between two main types of
implicatures which are Conventional Implicature and Conversational Implicature.

Conventional Implicature is an implicature that is determined by the

conventional meaning of the words used, which results in determining what is said.
According to Lycan the conventional meaning of a sentence goes beyond the
conversation and incorporates other conventional devices. The devices in
conventional implicature play a vital role in the meaning of the utterances of the
speaker. Grice provides the following example of conventional implicature:

He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.

In this sentence, the meaning of ‘therefore’ creates an implicature. It

implicates causality. Grice observes that the speaker who uses the previous example
implicates, but does not say, that the fact that man is brave follows from his being an
Englishman. The conventional implicature here is attributed to the presence of the
lexical item therefore. Conversational implicature, on the other hand, is a pragmatic
inference which is not tied to any phrase or word, but is inferred from the use of some
utterances in the context.

The following is an example:

Peter: How is the weather going to be in Paris?

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Mary: You should pack a raincoat.

The conclusion arrived at by Peter is that it is going to be rainy in Paris although

Mary did not explicitly say so. However, from the implication contained in her
response, the conclusion is that it is going to be rainy.

Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature

According to Grice, conversational implicature is an implicature that “…arises by

virtue of a general principle governing linguistic behavior”. This principle is known
as the Cooperative Principle. It is known and shared by conversational participants in
Conversational Implicature in a cooperative way. This principle renders certain
conversational contributions and prevents conversation from consisting of
“disconnected remarks”.

Cooperative Principle

Grice refers to Cooperative Principle as follows:

Make your conversational 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.

Grice specifies the cooperative principle in what he calls Maxims of Conversation,

which are formulated as rules governing our conversation. Grice classifies these
maxims into four main categories: Quality, Quantity, Relevance and Manner, and
under some specific maxims he offers sub-maxims to specify these rules of
cooperative conversation.

Conversational Maxims

The maxims which Grice proposes are listed below:

Quality

Super-maxim: Try to make your contribution one that is true.

● Do not say what you believe to be false.

● Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

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To illustrate this, look at the following example:

Jack: Are Tom and Sally married?

Mary: I saw a wedding ring on Sally’s finger.

The implication here in the context of the maxim of quality, is that there is a certainty
that they are married because of the wedding ring (evidence).

Quantity

● Make your contribution as informative as is necessary for the current purposes of

the exchange.

● Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. An example of

this maxim is the following:

Paul: Who are invited?

Ken: Peter, James, Ann, Smith and Robin.

The implication behind Ken’s response is that Peter, James, Ann, Smith and Robin are
the only people invited, given that the response is guided by the maxim of quantity.
The assumption is that all information in response to the question is provided.

Relevance

● Be relevant.

To illustrate this maxim, look at the following example:

Tom: What is the time?

Sally: The sun has gone down.

In this scenario, the implication is that it is after sundown in order to satisfy the
maxim of relation.

Manner

Be clear and comprehensible.

● Avoid obscurity of expression.

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● Avoid ambiguity.

● Be brief (avoid unnecessary information).

● Be orderly.

Look at the following example:

Anna: How do I get the engine started?

John: Turn the key, turn the power lever and push the red button.

The manner in which the question is answered implies that the details are necessary
and therefore consistent with the maxim of manner.

Felicity Conditions Explained under Performatives vs. Constatives

In its very beginning, speech acts were classified into performatives and
constatives. Those two divisions began to disappear as the theory was in its way to
become complete and fulfilled. In fact, Austin approves this classification as a branch
of his speech act theory. He also disapproves this classification as the distinction
between them is unclear.

a. Performatives

As Austin defines it, Performatives are those sentences that denote an action.
When the speaker wants his/her listener or reader to perform an action, s/he just uses
certain words in a certain context that direct the other party to perform that intended
action. In that case, Austin uses the expression ‘felicity conditions’. These are the set
of rules under which an utterance would be governed as performative. These
conditions are:

● The performatives should be based upon convention.

● The speaker should have the authority to perform that action.

● The intention should be understood by the hearer.

● The procedure must be executed (i) correctly and (ii) completely.

● The utterance should reveal clearly its consequences.

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He says also that if any of those conditions is not applied, then the performatives
would be awkward.

Explicit Performatives

Performatives could be further classified into explicit and implicit. Explicit

performatives usually contain a performative verb which is apparent to the other
party. It bears a clear cut meaning. In the utterance; "I promise to study," there is a
clear performative verb which is "promise". The utterance in that case should be
declarative. Its subject should be in the first person pronoun with an active, present
simple verb. Yet, this rule has some exceptions as in "Passengers are requested to
cross the railway line…." Here the subject of the utterance is plural, and the verb is in
the passive mode, in spite of the fact that this is a performative utterance.

Implicit Performatives

Unlike the explicit performatives, implicit performativs do not contain a

performative verb. The only way to understand that this is a performative utterance is
by realizing the real intention behind that utterance. Here the context plays an
important role in determining the intention of the speaker because the utterance does
not bear a cut clear meaning as in the explicit performatives.

b. Constatives

These are certain utterances which do not denote an action. The do not contain a
performative verb that would direct the other party to perform an action. As Austin
says, these constatives are used only in descriptions and assertions. It is supposed that
the proposed felicity conditions could not be applied to constatives. However, Austin
realized that constatives might be performatives. For example, somebody may say,
"the window is open". The utterance here might be directive as the speaker wants the
window to get closed. In that case, the constative utterance is classified as implicit
performative for the performative verb is not clear. From these examples, it is found
that the distinction between constatives and performatives is not that clear. They
might be overlapped. Thus, Austin shifts to another classification, as he differentiates
between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary actions.
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The Cooperative Principle ― Virtues and Limitations

Ferdinand de Saussure was the founding father of the division of language into
two components: the signifier and the signified. The signified is pure information, the
signifier a matter of conveying it. Herbert Paul Grice developed the Cooperative
Principle, which can be divided into four Gricean maxims. These maxims constitute a
way of understanding the relationship between the signifier and the signified, or, in
other words, the link between utterances and how they are understood. The
Cooperative Principle, in short, is a very influential description of human interaction
that also lends to our understanding of it. This discussion explores the explanatory
power of the Cooperative Principle, preceded by a brief overview of its key ideas.
This essay argues that the Cooperative Principle provides an elegant framework to use
when thinking about communication, but only when incentives prompting
competition are lacking.

The construction of an ideal language logically constructed without ambiguity

is a project that was undertaken by John Quijada. The language was never meant to be
spoken, and indeed is too complex for even Quijada himself, to use in speech.
However, the development of such a language - as well as the relatively numerous
proponents of it - hints at the existence of an expectation for language to be precise
and unambiguous. According to Grice, this is more or less the stance of linguistic
formalists, who posit that language should be able to convey information
unambiguously. Informalists, on the other hand, would argue that the mechanical
precision should not be the aim of language or the standard against which language
should be compared. Grice claims that the development of his Cooperative Principle
does not place him on either side of the debate. Rather, those discrepancies between
utterances and their signifieds are far less common than people assume, so long as
Grice’s Principle (and its maxims) is obeyed. In sum, language is more precise that
we commonly give it credit; misunderstandings are most often based on the incorrect
use of it. This is not to say that there is an objective yardstick (rule) by which we can
determine ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ use of language; simply, the Cooperative Principle
in many ways summarizes the expectations that receptors have from emitters
(encoders/speakers) of messages in the way language is used. When these
expectations are violated, confusion may follow.
 18

The rules based on these expectations are called the Gricean maxims, of which
there are four (echos of Kant): the maxim of Quality (‘what you say better be true,
and if you do not know if it is, do not say it’), the maxim of Quantity (‘make what you
say as informative as required, no more, no less’), the maxim of Relation (‘be
relevant’) and the maxim of Manner (‘say things in the appropriate fashion; do not be
ambiguous, unnecessarily wordy, et cetera’). There are a variety of ways in which the
expectations underlying the Cooperation Principle can be broken. For instance, the
person speaking could simply violate a maxim. Alternatively, an individual can
simply opt out by saying, perhaps, ‘I will respond to your questions only with the
words purple and orange’. On some occasions, the maxims may clash: an individual
cannot provide the information expected if he is not aware of it. On others, the
individual may intentionally, blatantly (very obvious and offensive) flout
(break/violate) the maxims: in such instances, Grice refers to a conversational
implicature, in which a maxim is being exploited. In general, an implicature denotes
simply the hidden meaning and implications behind the way certain things are phrase.
A conversational implicature (as opposed to a conventional one) is an implicature in
which the missing connection can be substantiated with an argument (rather than with
mere intuition, which case we would be referring to a conventional implicature).

Thus, what is the value of the Cooperative Principle? How far can it be
extended, and where does it fail to explain human communication? It seems almost
frightening and somewhat presumptuous that the seemingly immense complexities
surrounding language and communication can be boiled down to a set of simple rules.
At the same time, however, there is a certain beauty to it. The Cooperative Principle
brings out the theme that language’s purpose is about conveying information, but also
makes it clear that a lot of factors come into play so as to ensure that the information
being conveyed and the information being understood match. Yet despite this
multitude of factors, somehow we as a species seem to communicate well with
extraordinary consistency. The Cooperative Principle elegantly sums up the
mechanisms through which understanding can be achieved - and also explains
occasionally how it can be achieved despite violations of its maxims. The notion of
implicatures is powerful in that it explains the conclusions we jump to - or rather, the
conclusions we expect to jump to - given a certain phrasing, even though a link is not
explicitly there.
 19

Let us consider, for instance, the blatant violation of a maxim. This is a device
used commonly by comedians: disruption of the norm, from the expected, in
entertaining, and responding to a heckler (who interrupts to embarrass you in
performance by shouting rude comments upon you) saying “you suck” with “I like
Thai people” could be seen as such. This isn’t only because a maxim is violated, but
because we, as humans, search for patterns and explanations; in such a statement, our
minds would start pondering the implicatures that that response provokes.

Is the comedian implying that hecklers do not like Thai people? And even if
the comedian simply wished to sidestep (bypass) the heckler’s comment, some
individuals may still be liable to think that the reason the comedian said he liked Thai
people was because the phrase “you suck” (in Thai language suck as a slang word
means idiot or fool) sounded somewhat Thai. This illustrates how powerful our
assumptions are with respect to the use of the Gricean maxims: when they are
violated, we still seek an implicature that attempts to make an answer consistent with
our expectations.

An interesting thought revolves around the applicability of the Gricean

maxims to written language. Although Grice talks predominantly about spoken
language, the written is also mentioned in his influential 1975 paper “Logic and
Conversation”, in this case a variation of a famous line by William Blake: “I sought to
tell my love, love that never told can be” (original line is: Never seek to tell thy love,
love that never told can be). This phrase amounts to a violation of the maxim of
manner (‘be clear, avoid ambiguity’), with various interpretations of that sentence
possible. However, this is precisely what makes poetry, poetry; it flourishes
ambiguity, double-entendres (an ambiguity with one interpretation that is indelicate)
and - some might say - confusion. Poetry is designed to provoke thought as well as to
send a message. Poetry is nevertheless merely one type of written word, and spoken
poetry exists as well. Since the Cooperative Principle specifically centers around
understanding - in other words, communication that is aimed at providing information
rather than reflection - a better comparison may revolve around argumentative essays
(as compared to spoken argumentation).

Another interesting application of the Cooperative Principle can be seen in

institutional dialogue. Slembrouck and Sarangi (1992) conduct such an analysis,
 20

finding that the Cooperative Principle can indeed be applied to institutional discourse,
although a few elements of the Cooperative Principle are complicated when the ‘game
of communication’ becomes less cooperative. An element of competition seems to
weaken the service of the Cooperative Principle, since the conveying of information is
no longer the primary goal. If transmission of information is not a primary goal, then
the rules that govern the transmission of information can also be bent. This is more
than just an interesting observation. The extent to which competition (rather than
cooperation) is common in society shows that in fact, the Cooperative Principle may
assume too much by making explicit the rules of a cooperative game. When two co-
workers talk about anything work-related, the colleague who has the informational
edge (say, about when the next round of promotions is going to be) will aim either at
being vague, or simply lie, just to reduce competition. In the scene of politics,
politicians gain from lack of specificity: catering to the lowest common denominator
is how a solid enough support base is built up. The more a politician takes risk and
positions herself on an issue, the smaller the pool of people that will agree with her.
Two friends interested in the same girl may lie to each other about their whereabouts
and compete for her attention when the other’s back is turned. Lies and deceptions are
a natural by-product of the competitive society we live in, and to define
communication as a strictly cooperative game seems biased. Given the prevalence of
competition (and, subsequently, lies and deceit), much of human communication may
define itself by the negation of Grice’s maxims rather than their use.

This ‘definition’ of human interaction that the Cooperative Principle provides,

then, is rather weak. Little is gained from defining peace as the absence of war, just as
little is gained from defining human exchange by what it is not (cooperative). Of
course, there is much room for nuance in the previous statements. Any theory cannot,
on its own, explain everything, as falsifiability is necessary for a theory to be deemed
viable. Additionally, Grice’s work does do an exceptional job at explaining human
communication when the exchange of information is sought on both ends of the
conversation. However, human life is so plagued by competition and entrenched
interests for self-preservation and selfishness that the Cooperative Principle is violated
almost as a norm. Perhaps, through Grice’s work, the need for a ‘Competitive
Principle’ is expressed. The Cooperative Principle can and does explain competition
to some degree, but only insofar as ‘breaking the rules’ constitutes an explanation.
 21

Perhaps the most interesting concept that Grice uses is the implicature, as,
unlike the Cooperative Principle, it can be extended to any form of communication of
which words are a part. Just as in communication, there are two sides that can define
an implicature: the speaker and the listener. The speaker may intend a certain
implicature, yet it may be one that the listener does not see. Conversely, the speaker
may have meant no implicature yet the listener found one. It is possibly around this
divergent perception that much of misunderstanding is based on. It could be argued
that the Cooperative Principle explains it: if misunderstanding exists, it is because the
speaker did not abide by the maxims. However, this perception of communication is
one that is detached from the continuous nature of life. In other words, whether I have
had interaction with a person before or not will determine not only how we address
each other (which is factored into the Cooperative Principle), but also the implicatures
I understand from what the other says (which is not). A person who understands
another’s way of thinking will be far more likely to reach the intended implicature
than a person who is meeting another for the first time. Conversely, a person who
knows the speaker to have an interest in not following the Cooperative Principle will
be likelier to assume that the speaker is not doing so, regardless of whether the
Cooperative Principle in fact is.

The above may seem to meet to some degree with the previous point made
about competitiveness. Individuals who are competitive with each other will also
interpret implicatures differently if they are listening and make different (and
probably more ambiguous) implicatures if they are speaking. Although it is true that
situations in which competitiveness is present implicatures on both ends will be liable
to divergence, the reverse is not necessarily true. In other words, divergent
implicatures do not necessarily mean that there is a competitive dynamic between
individuals. The speaker may have misspoken, the listener may have misheard, and
both individuals may come from different cultural backgrounds and speak different
maternal languages such that different implicatures are arrived at in different ways.

In sum, the Cooperative Principle and its Gricean maxims is a good way of
understanding communication when the game of communication is one in which the
primary goal of all participants is the transmission of information. Of course, lies,
deceit and body language (and so on) all do constitute a form of information. It is thus
important to note that the information I refer to here is information that is transmitted
 22

through signifiers alone when these signifiers are assumed to denote the truth (maxim
of Quality). Thus, when communication occurs between individuals who are not
primarily interested in receiving information (in the sense that I have defined the
term) from the other, then the Cooperative Principle only serves to define this type of
exchange as a negation of the Cooperative Principle. This is the case of intentionally-
constructed misunderstanding, a derivative of competition - an element of life that is
common. However, misunderstanding in general comes from a perception of an
implicature by the listener that is different from the intended implicature by the
speaker. Although the Cooperative Principle falls short of explaining human
communication in any real way, it rather well encompasses the rules of verbal
exchange when the aims of participants in this exchange are mixed. Given the central
role of implicatures in misunderstanding, it would be interesting to further research
how mixed implicatures are arrived at in the context of a ‘competitive principle’.

Deixis

Deixis is a phenomenon of great importance for the interpretation of utterances. It is

noticeable in the following examples. If a person does not know when a message was
composed, the receiver of it will not know when the action will happen, such as in I’ll
be back in an hour. Another example is Meet me here a week from now. In this case,
the addressee of the message does not know who he has to meet, neither where nor
when. What the essay tries to say with this is that there is a term, called context of
utterance which is essential for communication to take place completely. Bearing this
idea in mind, deixis can be defined as a phenomenon in which the relationship
between language and context is reflected in the structures of a language. This term
comes from Greek, and means ‘pointing’ or ‘indicating’. Any linguistic form used to
accomplish this ‘pointing’ is called deictic expression, also known as indexical. Some
examples are I’m reading your message now or what is that? As it can be observed,
the deictic expression can be a pronoun, a demonstrative, or a special time or place
adverb. Apart from this, it has to be known that there are two main usages of deixis.
On the one hand, gestural deixis appears when an object is pointed at and referred to
as this or that, or direction of gaze, tone of voice… For instance: I broke this finger.
On the other hand, symbolic deixis requires generally only basic spatio-temporal
knowledge of the utterance, such as: I love this city.
 23

Types of Deixis

With regard to types of deixis, it has to be pointed out that there are several
distinctions depending on the linguists. The more traditional types are person deixis,
time deixis and place deixis. But, according to Fillmore and Lyons, there are two new
types which must be included with the previous ones. These more recent types are
discourse deixis and social deixis. The following sections of the paper are going to
study them a bit more deeply.

Traditional Types of Deixis

As it has been mentioned above, there are three traditional types of deixis. These are
person deixis, time deixis and place deixis.

a. Person Deixis

Person deixis concerns with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance. These
participants are as follow. Firstly, it is found those directly involved in the act of
communication (the speaker and the addressee). Secondly, there are those no directly
involved in it (over hearers). And thirdly, those mentioned in the utterance. In
English, these distinctions are generally indicated by pronouns, as the following
examples show: I am going to the cinema; they tried to hurt me, but he came to the
rescue; would you like to have dinner? etc.

b. Time Deixis

Time, or temporal, deixis concerns with the various times involved in and referred to
in an utterance. Some examples are now, then, soon, the use of different verb tenses…
Time adverbs can be relative to the time. This time can be of two types. Encoding
time, when an utterance is made. Or decoding time, when an utterance is heard. For
example: It is raining now, but hope when you read this it will be sunny; He told me:
“I will be there tomorrow”.

c. Place Deixis

Place deixis, also known as space deixis, concerns itself with the spatial locations
relevant to an utterance. Similarly to person deixis, the locations may be either those
of the speaker and the addressee or those of people or objects being referred to. The
 24

most outstanding English examples are the adverbs here/there and the demonstratives
this and that, and their plural forms. For example: I enjoy living in this city; here is
where we will place the statue; she was sitting over there.

Languages usually show at least a two-way referential distinction in their

deictic system. It can be proximal, which means near or closer to the speaker (this,
here). But it can also be distal, which means far from the speaker and/or closer to the
addressee (that, there).

New Categories following Lyons and Fillmore

As it was mentioned at the beginning of section, apart from the traditional types,
Lyons and Fillmore suggested two more types of deixis. These are discourse deixis
and social deixis.

i. Discourse Deixis

Discourse deixis, also referred to as textual, refers to the use of the expressions within
an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that contains that utterance. For
example: This is a great story (this refers to an upcoming piece of the discourse); or
that was an amazing day (that refers to a previous piece of the discourse). An
interesting point and a bit difficult one as well, is the distinction that must be made
between discourse deixis and anaphora (when an expression makes reference to the
same referent as a prior term) being the following a sample of anaphora: Mike is an
incredible athlete; he came in first in the race where he makes reference to Mike,
which appears previously. Lyons points out that it is possible for an expression to be
both deictic and anaphoric at the same time. As in I was born in London and I have
lived here/there all my life. Here and there function anaphorically in their reference to
London, and deictically in that the choice between here and there indicates whether
the speaker is or is not currently in London. The main point to distinguish the two
phenomena is the next one. When that expression refers to the same item as a prior
linguistic expression, it is anaphoric reference. For example, this dress is beautiful but
it is too loose. In this case, the pronoun it refers back to this dress. On the contrary,
when an expression refers to another linguistic expression or a piece of discourse, it is
discourse deixis. For instance, “I hate cloudy days”, John said. But this sentence is not
true, where this refers to the whole sentence “I hate cloudy days”.
 25

ii. Social Deixis

Social deixis is concerned with the social information that is encoded within various
expressions, such as relative social status and familiarity. There are two main forms of
it. These are the so-called T-V distinction and honorifics (titles like Mr., Mrs., Dr.,
Prof. etc). First of all, T-V distinction receives that name from the Latin tu and vos,
which are the singular and plural versions of you respectively. This can be defined as
a phenomenon that takes place when a language has two different second-person
pronouns, as is the case of French or Spanish, but not English. The varying usage of
these pronouns may indicate formality, familiarity, or solidarity between interacts.
The second type of social deixis is honorifics. Honorifics are expressions which
indicate higher status. There are two main types of honorifics. These are relational
honorifics, which express the relationship between different participants. And
absolute honorifics, which depend on the speaker and who is he/she talking to. At the
same time, relational honorifics are divided into three subtypes. Firstly, there are
addressee honorifics, which express the social status of the hearer. Secondly, there are
referent honorifics, which express the status of the person being spoken about. And
thirdly, there are bystander honorifics, which express the status of someone who is
nearby, but not a participant in the conversation. For instance, it was the King who
made that decision or would you like some coffee, Mr. President? With regard to
absolute honorifics, it can be talked about authorized speakers, who are those who can
use words which cannot be used for others; and authorized recipients, which the
words they are said depend on who they are (in some languages, depending on the sex
of the listener). It is not common in English.

Pragmatics Deixis and Conversation

The Concept of Deictic Centre

Deixis deals with the words and expressions whose reference relies entirely on the
circumstances of the utterance. For that reason these special expressions and their
meaning in discourse can only be understood in light of these circumstances. The term
deictic centre underlines that the deictic term has to relate to the situation exactly at
the point where the utterance is made or the text is written. One could even say that
the deictic centre is the unmarked anchorage (something that provides a strong hold or
 26

connection) point from which the utterance is made. To decode the meaning of a
sentence we use a navigation (to find the way to get to a place/information) system. In
our day-to-day conversational exchanges, the speaker does not consciously use deictic
expressions, as well as the addressee usually understands the utterance immediately
(the addressee does not need much time to think about an utterance before
understanding the message). Deixis makes discourse easier and more effective, giving
us a means to pass more information in less time. Nevertheless, there are certain
situations making an interpretation difficult or even impossible, mostly when we only
get chunks of information and therefore lack context. If, for example, a person tells a
story and forgets to give the essential information a deictic term refers to, we will
grow aware of the weakness the deictic system features. Or if the fax machine just
receives the second page of a letter, beginning with "Then he was quite embarrassed
about it" - the addressee will never be able to guess what "then", "he" and "it" stands
for. Similar gaps arise if we read about an utterance made in the past and lack
information about the references. Although the addressee at that time could easily
have understood the sense, we may not be capable of getting the original meaning.
Even if we knew the context in detail, this might not be sufficient to understand
discourse, for example if a special gesture is made when pointing at a building while
saying: "I lived there two years ago."

Linguistic Categories

The Greek origin of the term deixis meaning pointing via language already hints at its
function. As Yule says "Deixis is clearly a form of referring that is tied to the
speaker´s context" (1996: 9), this again leads us to the concept of deictic centre. The
deictic centre can be divided into certain ‘ sub-centers. 1. Central person (speaker):
Personal pronouns, I (Speaker), you (Addressee) 2. Central time (coding time):
Adverbs of time, now and then 3. Central place (the location of the speaker): Adverbs
of space, here and there 4. Discourse centre (the point of the speaker´s discourse):
Adverbs of time and place, conjunctions 5. Social centre: (the speaker´s social status
relative to the addressee´s).

Next we can distinguish between proximal terms (like here, now, this - near to the
speaker) and distal terms (like there, then, that - away from the speaker). It is
important to note that in context of deixis and grammar, when direct speech is shifted
 27

into indirect speech, the proximal forms also shift into the corresponding distal forms.
Compare the two following sentences:

You were here this morning?

I asked him whether he had been there that morning.

In contrast to the effect of "immediateness" proximal deictic forms create, the

reported speech utterance normally makes the original speech event seem more
remote. In the following section, I shall discuss some forms of deixis in detail.

Person Deixis (Further explanation)

These seemingly simple forms are sometimes quite tricky in their use. Children often
have problems using personal pronouns. The three pronouns from first to third person
I, you and he, she, it are in many languages elaborated with markers of relative social
status (social deixis). Expressions indicating a higher social status are called
honorifics. In German or French, there is a special social aspect about a familiar form
of you (Du/tu) and an unfamiliar one (Sie/Vous). The use of either one form gives us
information about the speaker’s view of his/her relationship to the addressee. Third
person terms are usually more distant terms. Today they sometimes may serve ironic
purposes (Should I clean the dishes for her majesty?), and they can also be used to
make a potentially personal issue seem like an impersonal one, e.g. if I want someone
to do me a favor.

Spatial Deixis (Further explanation)

Spatial deictic terms indicate the relative location of people and things (here, there).
Interesting about the use is the aspect of deictic projection. Speakers often refer to
physically distant locations like "home" using here, as if they still were in that
location. Moreover, modern technology allows us to utter seemingly impossible
sentences like "I am not here at the moment" on an answering machine. Yet another
shift takes place when I tell a story quoting direct speech, as here or there have to be
understood relative to the place my story takes place.
 28

Temporal Deixis (Further explanation)

‘Now’ is indicating both the time coinciding with the speaker´s utterance and the time
of the addressee hearing these words. ‘Then’ may either refer to past and future
actions relative to the moment where it is uttered (deictic centre). Deictic expressions
like yesterday, tomorrow, today, next week etc. have to be separated from non-
deictical temporal references such as local time. Showing similarities to the notion of
spatial deixis, the remote form in temporal deixis can be used to communicate not
only distance from current time, but also distance from current reality or facts.

"May we come in, sir?"

We refers to a group of at least two persons that the speaker belongs to. In this case
the exclusive we (addressee does not belong to group) should be suggested more
likely (Person deixis). Sir implies that the addressee has at least the same social status
as the speaker or probably even a higher status relative to the group (Social deixis).
The action of coming in involves a certain place, or, to be more precise, two places
(Spatial deixis): One where the speaker is situated at the moment of his utterance, and
one where he requests to go. As this sentence seems typical of our everyday life
politeness, it is not very difficult to find a situation where it could have been uttered,
e.g. a group of pupils visiting their teacher at his home.