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Outline
Introduction
Context
Deixis, reference, anaphora
Speech Acts
Cooperative principle in conversations
Politeness
Aims
To know what is pragmatics and its main
concern;
To have a general idea about context and the
notions of deixis, reference and anaphora;
To understand the Speech Act theory, the
Cooperative Principles in Conversation and
Politeness Principles in Conversation.
Definition of Pragmatics
The study of language in use.
The study of meaning in context.
The study of speakers’ meaning,
utterance meaning,
& contextual meaning.
Introduction
Pragmatics is the study of how speakers of a
language use sentences to effect successful
communication. It studies the following topics:
deixis ( 指示功能 ), speech acts, indirect language,
conversation, politeness, cross-cultural
communication, and presupposition. (Dai & He,
2002: 84)
Pragmatics is the study of speaker
meaning, contextual meaning, how more
gets communicated than is said, the
expression of relative distance. (Yule, 2000,
p. 3)
What’s the differences between
Semantics and Pragmatics?
The origin
Semantics
I go to the park
every day.
Performatives
Utterances which are used to perform acts, do not
describe or report anything at all; the uttering of
the sentence is the doing of an action.
The performative utterance is used to perform an
action, so it has no truth value.
Features of performatives
The first person singular
Speech act verbs / performative verbs
The present tense
Indicative mood
Active voice
“I do.”
as uttered in the course of a
marriage ceremony.
I name this ship Elizabeth.
--- as occurring in a
will.
“ I bet you sixpence it
will rain tomorrow.”
--- as uttered when
making a bet.
Austin’s model of speech acts
A locutionary act is the act of uttering
words , phrases , clauses. It is the act of
conveying literal meaning by means of
syntax , lexicon and phonology .
An illocutionary act is the act of expressing
the speaker's intention ; it is the act
performed in saying something.
An illocutionary act
In saying X, I was doing Y.
In saying “I will come tomorrow”, I was
making a promise.
Illocutionary force
A perlocutionary act is the act performed
by or resulting from saying something ; it
is the consequence of , or the change
brought about by the utterance : it is the
act performed by saying something .
A perlocutionary act
By saying X and doing Y, I did Z.
By saying “I will come tomorrow” and making
a promise, I reassure my friends.
Searle’s classification of speech acts
I
promise
to love
you!
Commit, promise, threaten, pledge, etc
The illocutionary point of expressives to to
express the psychological state specified in the
propositional content such as apologizing,
thanking, congratulating,welcoming etc.
It’s very
nice of you!
I appoint you
I declare chairman of
the meeting the
open. committee.
Be relevant.
The maxim of manner
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief.
4. Be orderly.
CP is meant to describe what actually happens
in conversation.
People tend to be cooperative and obey CP in
communication.
When we violate these maxims, in some
situations, conversational implicature will
arise.
Violation of the maxims (Quantity)
evidence.
Be relevant.