There are two types of meaning: Semantic meaning (literal, linguistic meaning) and pragmatic meaning

(contextual=What you want to achieve by uttering). So pragmatics studies the role of non-linguistic factors
and context-dependent elements in verbal communication revealing the speaker’s meaning of triadic
relation, while semantics is interested in context-free elements revealing the sentence meaning of dyadic
relation. Pragmatic meaning depends on context and Paul Grice (1957) studied the concept of speaker’s
intended meaning, that is to say not what is said, but what is implicated. There is no sentence without
pragmatic meaning.

Sentences are abstract grammatical units, underspecified and potentially ambiguous.

Utterances are concrete products of speech and writing that receive meaning inferentially, through
linguistic and contextual knowledge.

Propositions= descriptions of states of affairs

Polysemy (one word with more senses)

Homonymy (different lexemes with the same form)

The assignment of structural meaning= when the structure of a sentence offers more than one meaning.

The assignment of reference = deciding to which referent to attribute a word (?)—ex del golf—we have
been married for thirty years.

The assignment of utterance meaning= understanding what the speaker is trying to do=matter of speaker’s
intention

Interactional meaning =what the speaker means by an utterance, what the hearer understands by it
(could be two different things), how these emerge and are shaped during interaction.

Incongruity theory=the clash between what we expect and what we discover that triggers the potential
humour. Discourse situation needs to be taken into consideration=the configuration of discourse roles
relating to a particular situation.

Narrow/componential view of Pragmatics= pragmatics=additional level of language analysis, considering

context as a micro context: users and interpreters, but no social relations or situations. (Morris, Grice,
Searl, Sperber and Wilson). It is considered the Anglo-American view of pragmatics studying reference,
deixis, presupposition, speech acts, implicature and inferencing—it is a pragma-semantic approach.

Broad view of Pragmatics= seen as a socio-cultural perspective on the functioning of language. It is

considered the Continental-European view. Pragmatics as a superordinate field, «a general cognitive,
social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in forms of behaviour».
(Pragma-dialogic approach, Pragma-discoursive approach)

But these two views are not completely separated

Pragmatics is somewhat culture-specific, but the problem in studying pragmatics of English is that not
everybody would recognise the same things as being English, so we could talk about “pragmatics of
Englishes”. Because of this Schneider and Barron have talked about variational pragmatics.

There are many interesting areas of research in pragmatics

• Metapragmatics (language used to talk about pragmatics)

• Pragmatic forms (forms that carry pragmatic meaning in English)
• Pragmatic functions (how particular functions are performed in English)
• Pragmatic contexts (nature of contexts within which certain functions are performed)
 • Pragmatic variation (how all of the above vary).

There are different types of variation: Inter-English variation (similarities or differences amongst
Englishes), Intra-English variation (similarities or differences amongst the sub-varieties of a particular
English), Diachronic variation in English (similarities or differences amongst the historical periods of a
particular English and how pragmatic phenomena have evolved).

We will have an Intercultural pragmatic approach: discourse-segment perspective because utterance-level

interpretation is not sufficient >> “occasionally, we should go beyond the single utterance to understand
the communicative agenda of interlocutors.”—it implies a macro perspective that is to say ways of
establishing norms, patterns and expectations about language use in speech communities. In Intercultural
pragmatics we study the difference in the way in which L1 and non-L1 speakers use the language, its usage
between human beings who have different first languages, who communicating in a common language,
represent different cultures

The new approaches to pragmatics are non universalistic because culture-specific aspects of language >>
Socio-cognitive perspective—language is not semantically neutral.

Cognitive-philosophical approach to pragmatics: intention is an a priori mental state of speakers and

underpins communication

Socio-cultural-interactional approach to pragmatics: intention is a post factum construct that is achieved

jointly through the dynamic emergence of meaning in conversation

Interlanguage pragmatics focuses on the acquisition and use of pragmatic norms in L2: how L2 learners
produce and comprehend speech acts, and how their pragmatic competence develops over time.

Cross-cultural pragmatics studies how individuals from two different societies or communities interact
according to their own rules or norms, often resulting in a clash in expectations and, ultimately,
misperceptions about the other group.

Entailment=understood information that comes from the knowledge of the language itself, it can be
automatically derived if one knows the meaning of the words. It is a type of relationship between sentences
that forms the basis for some inferences. An inference is a logical conclusion derived from premises known
or assumed to be true based on evidence and/or reasoning. So entailment is a lexical or more generally
semantic inference.

Analytic sentences=necessarily true because of the meaning relationship between the words. They can
also be necessarily false, and so they are called contradictions.

Synthetic sentences= you need other, non linguistic information (knowledge of the world), to know if the
sentence is true or false.

Paraphrase= in semantics=a special type of entailment—mutual/two way entailment. (if the first sentence
is true also the second one is true and viceversa). Otherwise it is a one-way entailment.

Pragmatics has a role to play in the interpretation of entailment too.

Summary of entailment: All sentences have a number of entailments - other sentences which are
automatically true if the original sentence is true. Entailments are inferences that can be drawn solely
from our knowledge about the semantic relationships in a language. This knowledge allows us to
communicate much more than we actually say1.
Understanding entailments depends on lexical knowledge. Problem for English foreign language speakers,
but also for different English varieties. Importance of vocabulary breadth and depth, hyperonyms and
hyponyms, being able to paraphrase.

Focal accent=a word or syllable that is made prosodically prominent through marked pitch, amplitude and
duration. It generally indicates what the speaker is presenting as new information, it indicates cognitive
focus.

Presuppositions=type of inference—Inferences about what is assumed to be true in the utterance rather

than directly asserted to be true, they remain constant under NEGATION of the main sentence—One
reason why what is presupposed generally survives such negation is that a presupposition is not, generally,
what is asserted by the sentence, what is asserted is often new information—presuppositions are often old
information. (constancy under negation). They can be cancelled by metaliguistic negation (ex there is no
because)

Definiteness and indefiniteness—Definite expressions are primarily used to invite the participant(s) to
identify a particular referent from a specific context which is assumed to be shared by the interlocutors.
These expressions denote something but also imply that it exists. There are various ways in which
languages can signal definiteness. The most common method in English is the definite article the. Then we
have other noun phrase determiners, such as possessive determiner pronouns, demonstratives, or s-
genitives. We can have either non-referential, descriptive usage of a definite expression, or a referential
usage (attributive versus referential).

Presuppositions are assumptions that are typically taken for granted in a conversation and are
conventionally associated with particular linguistic expressions.

Types of presupposition=

 existential presupposition—the speaker seems to assume, and invites the hearer to assume, the
existence of the entity to which they refer. Ex. The king of France is bald –Possessive
presupposition (subclass)
 factive presupposition—with verbs presupposing that something truly happened (ex it is true that
we wrote this, regret, know, realise, be aware, be odd that, be sorry that, be proud that, be glad
that, be amazed that)
 non-factive presuppositions—with verbs that seem to push the truth status of their complements
into a twilight zone where we are not sure about whether they are true or not (ex. believe,
suppose, intend and claim).
 counterfactive presupposition—the opposite of factive presuppositions—they presuppose that
some proposition is not true. (ex. If the computer had crashed, we might have lost our book
manuscript).—Counterfactual conditionals
 Change of state presupposition, triggered by verbs like stop, finish, continue, start, begin, leave,
arrive.
 Implicative presupposition—(manage >> try, forget to >> ought to have /intended to X happened
to A >> A didn’t intend or plan)
 Temporal clauses presupposition—Introduced by subordinating conjunctions before/since/ when Z
>> Z happened/happens while Z >> Z was or is happening
 Cleft construction presupposition--It wasn’t A that did Z >> Someone (else) did Z
 Comparison and contrast constructions presupposition—A is a better C than B is >> A is a C and B is
a C Other, also, another, not... Either Superlative forms of adjectives
 Non-restrictive, non-defining relative clauses presupposition—Television has brought murder back
into the home, where it belongs (Hitchcock)
With all these types of presupposition the presupposition is conventionally associated with particular
linguistic forms called presuppositional triggers. They invite a pragmatic inference to be made.

Summary—Presuppositions seem to be inferences that can be made with very little knowledge of the
context. They are inferences about what is assumed in an utterance rather than directly asserted and
are closely linked to the words and grammatical structures that are actually used in the utterance and
our knowledge about the way language users conventionally interpret them. They can be drawn even
when there is little or no surrounding context.

Entailment vs. Presupposition Presupposition survives negation and remains constant in interrogative
constructions, while entailment does not.

Presupposition is fundamental in • Advertising: One way of packing in information into the short space
available in the slogan, and also of creating a dramatic and memorable slogan. To create a problem or
need for which the product is the solution—persuasive use of presuppositions • Marketing • Political
discourse • Legal discourse: used to trick people in Courtroom discourse, to get a defendant or witness
to accept, inadvertently or otherwise, assumptions that point towards their guilt •Academic writing.
They are also used to create fictional worlds in literature through definite noun phrases, change of
state verbs etc.

Presupposition is an important part of backgrounded information.

Informational pragmatics: an area that is concerned with how to segment the message into units; how
to assign degrees of prominence or subordination to different parts of the message; how to order the
parts of the message. This structure mediates communicative meanings in context.

Textual rhetoric is based on speaker-hearer cooperation, a textually “well behaved” utterance being
one which anticipates and facilitates H’s task in decoding, or making sense of, the text.

In essays you can use presupposition as a powerful tool in argumentative discourse, BUT You might
also have to prove your conclusions or to provide references for your statements. Attention to the way
in which you use determiners, because they prompt existential presuppositions and create
expectations relative to given vs. new information. Some information is left in the background and
some other information is foregrounded.

Understanding presupposition depends on lexical knowledge, so for EFL speakers—importance of

understanding the consequences of using presupposition triggers (different types of verbs and use of
determiners)

Context—A statement, in real life, is never detached from the situation in which it has been uttered
(context of situation). Context is a complex dynamic entity, with many different facets. • The
immediate cotext • The physical and social world • The socio-psychological factors influencing
communication • The knowledge of the time and place in which the words are uttered or written.

However there are different types of context

Situational Context=What speakers know about what they can see around them. It concerns • Time •
Place • The speakers (and their social roles) • The medium

Background Knowledge=What the participants in the conversation know about each other and the
world. It comprehends—Cultural General Knowledge=Knowledge that most people carry with them in
their minds, about areas of life. Interpersonal Knowledge=Specific and possibly private knowledge
about the history of the speakers themselves. Usually a mix of contextual information is involved in
meaning construal.
In background knowledge we can distinguish between: • Intrinsic aspects (cognitive, affective) •
Extrinsic aspects (social, cultural, and interactive).

What may cause misunderstanding is the difference of an expression in different languages concerning
the encyclopaedic knowledge=structured system of knowledge, organized as a network, including—
Frames: preconceived understandings of a new situation. Scripts: sequences of activities associated
with a situation. Scenarios: set of organised units in cognitive processes. Schemata: higher level
knowledge we use to understand a situation.—it is Culture-specific (Our everyday communication is
full of prefabricated expressions and utterances, which trigger similar scenarios and familiar cultural
models providing a kind of reference library for possible plans of action or interpretation of actions of
others. These models are inferred by each of us from what we see and experience with people around
us)

There are different linguistic ways to refer to the context • Exophoric reference: the first mention of
the referent in the exchange. Exophora=dependent on the context outside the text. • Endophoric
reference=to a known entity in the text.

Deixis (context outside the text, referent in the situational or background knowledge context.) is
different from Anaphora and cataphora—associated with the context of the text itself, or the co-
textual context. The referent is generally located in either the preceding (anaphora) or the
forthcoming text (cataphora).

Deixis=connection between the conversation and the context, it reflects the relationship between
language and context in the structures of languages. The term comes from the Greek word for
‘pointing’ or ‘indicating’, it refers to the way in which speakers orientate themselves and their listeners
in relation to the context of a conversation.

Deictic expressions can be used both as deictic (gestural/symbolic) and non-deictic (ex. You referring
to a general subject vs you referring to a specific referent).

Deictic Centre (aka origo)= a perceived egocentric organisation of the deictic system. He relates
everything to his viewpoint--‘I–here–now’ axis. The speaker is the central person, central
place=speaker’s location, discourse centre=point of the conversation the speakers has joined, social
centre=social rank of the speaker

Types of deixis:

Person deixis =concerned with ‘the identity of the interlocutors in a communication situation’.
Personal pronouns=most obvious and frequent manifestations.
Place deixis (Proximal vs. Distal)—Speaker as deictic center: • demonstratives (this, that, these, those)
• deictic adverbs of place (here, there). Locations as deictic centre: (objects relative to other objects) •
prepositions of place (above, below, left, right, behind, from)

Time deixis (Proximal vs. distal time)—Coding time (CT) - the moment of utterance vs. Receiving time
(RT) - the moment of reception. • Simple adverbs of time (now, then, today, tomorrow, yesterday) •
Complex adverbials of time (this month, next year or last week)

Discourse deixis=to focus the hearer’s attention on aspects of meaning, expressed by a clause, a
sentence, a paragraph or an entire idea. Also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of expressions
within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that contain the utterance—including the
utterance itself. (ex. Listen to this).—similar to anaphora ?

Social deixis=those aspects of language structure that encode the social identities of participants or
the social relationship between them, or between one of them and people or entities referred to.
Vocatives usually used to address people, to mark social relationships: • Sweetie, my love
(endearment) • Mummy, daddy (family names) • Guys, mate, folks (familiarisers) • Title and surnames
vs. names (Professor, Mr. Brown vs. Jeff) • Sir, Madam (honorifics) • Lazy (hey lazy, hey ginger) ecc.

Empathetic deixis=the speaker is personally involved with the entity, situation or place to which he is
referring or is identifying himself with the attitude or viewpoint of the addressee (expressing Approval
or disapproval)

Language disorders: autism – problems with referent resolution, deixis, etc. • Learning differences:
dyslexia – problems with anaphor interpretation, limited background knowledge. • Consequences for
foreign language instruction and inclusive teaching. • problems with reading comprehension
•Intercultural communication • Translation

Fundamental role of shared knowledge, Research on multimodal resources and the ways in which
context helps comprehension through multiple semiotic resources (e.g. gestures)

IMPLICATURES— in conversation speakers co-operate to achieve a shared meaning for utterances.

Unlike presuppositions and entailments, implicatures are inferences that cannot be made from
isolated utterances. They are dependent on the context of the utterance and shared knowledge
between the speaker and the hearer. Grice has proposed a way of analysing implicatures based on the
co-operative principle and its maxims of relevance, quality, quantity and clarity. In Grice's analysis,
the speaker's flouting of a maxim combined with the hearer's assumption that the speaker has not
really abandoned the co-operative principle leads to an implicature.

PAUL GRICE talks about the CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE=in a conversation the participants will co-
operate with each other when making their contributions.

There are 4 MAXIMS we respect to be cooperative= 1.RELEVANCE= Make sure that whatever you say is
relevant to the conversation. 2.QUALITY = Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for
which you lack adequate evidence. 3.QUANTITY= Make your contribution sufficiently informative. Do
not make your contribution more informative than necessary. 4.MANNER (or CLARITY)=Do not make
your contribution obscure, ambiguous or difficult to understand.

You can… Observe, Flout (not observe the maxims intentionally but expect hearers to understand
correctly), Violate (speaker knows that the hearer won’t know/understand the truth, but doesn’t
observe the maxims the same. It generates misleading implicatures or no implicature at all), Infringe
(speaker does not observe the maxim because he’s not able to do it), Opt-out of (speaker refuses to
observe the maxims) the maxims.
CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE=The meaning conveyed by speakers and recovered as a result of the
hearer’s inferences—in conversation the speakers cooperate in order to understand each other.

Flouting the maxim of quality—(say something that obviously doesn’t represent the truth) Hyperbole,
Metaphor, Irony, (mock politeness–friendly way of being offensive), Banter (mock impoliteness–
offensive way of being friendly), Euphemism, Sarcasm.

Limitations of the cooperative principle 1. Culture specific 2. Overlap between maxims

Types of implicature:

Generalized conversational implicatures=conventional expressions, so 'strong' that they do not seem

to require any extra knowledge to understand aka Conventional implicature=part of a lexical item’s or
expression’s agreed meaning, rather than derived from principles of language use, and not part of the
conditions for the truth of the item or expression. Ex. He’s English therefore brave—different from—
Particularized conversational implicatures=require considerable shared contextual information
between the speaker and hearer.

Scalar implicatures=special type of generalized implicature, the inference is made by reference to a

scale of values—scale of quantity: some, most, all. Scale of frequency: sometimes, often, always. Scale
of coldness: cool, cold, freezing Scale of likelihood: possibly, probably, certainly.

In order to distinguish between Generalized conversational implicatures and presuppositions=

Cancellation test–you cannot cancel a presupposition—the results sound contradictory/incoherent.
Generalized and particularized implicatures, instead, can be cancelled with much more 'normal'
results.

Types of utterances - Describing - Warning - Ordering to seek action - Expressing emotion

For Austin –Utterances can be described in terms of the actions they perform.

CONSTATIVE=utterances that are either TRUE or FALSE (‘The cat is in the house’.)

EXPLICIT PERFORMATIVE utterances that are neither TRUE nor FALSE (I promise to give you the money
back tomorrow)—they contain a performative verb and are in the 1st person present simple, the
speaker must be the one responsible for enforcing the action expressed by the utterance

IMPLICIT PERFORMATIVE utterances implying a performative act (ex.—promising (implied)—I’ll give

you the money tomorrow)

Within each utterance there are 3 types of “actions”: 1.LOCUTION=the production of an expression
with sense and reference 2.ILLOCUTION= the act the produced expression performs, such as informing,
ordering, undertaking, sentencing, asking, reminding, accusing, reproaching, apologizing, suggesting
3.PERLOCUTION= the effects on the feelings, thoughts and actions of the participants caused by the
produced expression.

Speech Act Theory—Austin makes a classification of speech acts: Verdictives (e.g. estimating,
assessing, describing) Exercitives (ordering, appointing, advising) Commissives (promising, betting)
Behabitives (apologizing, congratulating, thanking) Expositives (arguing, insisting).

Searle develops the theory (1969) classifying speech acts in 5 types: • Declaratives • Representatives •
Directives • Commissives • Expressives. Searle thinks that a speaker who uses a direct speech act
wants to communicate the literal meaning of the words=direct relationship between the form and the
function.
 Table of the five speech act categories by Searle, plus the additional category of rogative, proposed by
Leech (1983) to deal with requests for information.

Felicity conditions=set of “necessary conditions” for a performative to function happily (Austin), for
Searle they are constitutive rules for speech acts, rules that create the activity itself. This is different
from Austin’s idea because here felicity conditions are not just necessary for the “happy” performance
of a speech act, but they are actually constituting it:

 Preparatory conditions=Real-world prerequisites—they relate to the broader context where

the speech act is performed and include the situational context, if the speaker has the authority
to make a specific speech act, and the assumptions a speaker makes in relation to the hearer.
(ex for a request: 1. the speaker believes in the hearer’s ability to do the requested action 2. He
doesn’t believe the hearer would do the requested action anyway. 3. He occupies a role in
which he or she can make requests of a hearer.)
 Propositional conditions—They refer to the content—what the utterance is about (ex a
request: must be about future actions)
 Sincerity—The beliefs, feelings and intentions of the speaker who must be genuine about the
speech act he or she is performing. (ex request= the speaker truly wants the hearer to do the
action that is being requested)
 Essential/general—what is needed for the act to be performed, an utterance must count as
performing a particular speech act.—( ‘Pass me the water please’:this utterance is good to
make a request)

Cross-cultural variation in directness–speech acts vary in their degree of directness depending on the
culture, British English culture, for example, is usually assumed to favour greater indirectness.
To sum up, utterances can be analysed as speech acts, a framework originally proposed by Austin.
Speech acts can be analysed on 3 levels: the locution (the words the speaker uses); the illocution, or
illocutionary force (what the speaker is doing by using those words); the perlocution (the effect of
those words on the hearer). Austin proposed that utterances can be classified as performative or
constative. Performatives like “I apologize” simultaneously state and perform the illocution.
Constatives can also be used to perform an illocution but, unlike performatives, they do not explicitly
name the intended illocutionary act.