PRAGMATICS

The discipline of

LANGUAGE
USE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=VKbp4hEHV-s
MAN TO NEIGHBOUR: ‘Did you hear me
pounding on the wall last night?’
NEIGHBOUR TO MAN: ‘Don’t worry about
it. We were making a lot noise ourselves!’

****************************
**
CUSTOMER: ‘Walton, there’s a fly in my soup .’
WAITER: ‘Keep it down, sir, or else everyone
will want one.’
 Charles Morris (1938):
Semiotics is divided into:
 syntax – or the study of the combinatorial properties of words,
or rather the study of the formal relation of signs to one
another; (John is a good guy = NP + V + ART + ADJ + N)

 semantics – or the study of meaning, i.e. of

the relation of signs to the entities to which they
are applied;

 pragmatics – or the study of the

relation of signs to users, i.e. the study
of language usage.
 Let us laugh for a second …
 A man walks into a book shop and says: ‘Can I
have a book by Shakespeare?’. ‘Of course, sir’,
says the salesman, ‘Which one?’ The man
replies: ‘William.’

 A guy phones the local hospital and yells:

‘You’ve gotta help! My wife is in labor!’ The
nurse says: ‘Calm down. Is this her first child?’
The man replies: ‘No! This is her husband!’
 Some key pragmatic notions:
SOME KEY TERMS
-Context and cotext dependency

- Deixis

- Presuppostion

- Implied meaning

- Violation of semantic rules (anomaly, metaphor, idioms)

THEORIES:
- Speech act theory (locution, illocution and perlocution);

- Gricean conversational maxims (see the link on MudRi)

- Relevance Theory
 Discourse analysis
 DISCOURSE: linguistic unit larger than a
sentence (again, L use);
 Transactional vs. interactional function of
language;
 Sentence vs. Utterance
 Cohesion vs. Coherence
- Context and cotext dependency
- Deixis
- Presuppostion
- Implied meaning
 Violation of semantic rules:
-The rules of language are not like rules of
physics; unlike the latter, the former are
‘violable’ to a degree, this ‘violability’ being
another one of the ‘rules’ of language. There
are three main kinds of rule violation:
 anomaly

 metaphor

 idiomacity.
 The Relevance Theory
 Move from the code model (communication is
transmittion of info from sender to reeiver) to the
inferential model of communication (communication
achieved by the message recipient’s recognition of the
sender’s informative (i.e. communicative) intention.
 A conceptual i.e. psychological model, in which the
sender of the message takes into account the context of
the communication and the mutual cognitive
environment between the sender and the recipient (e.g
presupposition i.e. background infromation).
 E.g. Mary: Would you like to come for a run?
Bill: I'm resting today.
 Relevance theory (cont.)
 Underlying presumption: communicated information
comes with a guarantee of relevance. Developed by
Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in 1986.
 Core of the theory: ‘Communicative principle of
relevance’ which states that “every act of ostensive
communication communicates the presumption of its
own optimal relevance” (Sperber & Wilson, 1986:
158).
 When making an utterance the sender of the message
is conveying that what s/he says is worth listening to,
i.e. that it will provide "cognitive effects" worthy of
the processing effort required to find the meaning.
 Pragmatics in action:
 Grice’s Conversational principles (maxims):
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI9tFOcV
nV4
 The relevance theory:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRv1agt7
76c&t=25s
 Text 1

My father once bought a Lincoln convertible.

He did it by saving every penny he could. That
car would be worth a fortune nowadays.
However, he sold it to help pay for my college
education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have
the convertible.
 Text 2
My father once bought a Lincoln convertible.
The car driven by the police was red. That
colour does not suit her. She consists of three
letters. However, a letter isn't as fast as a
telephone call, let alone a car.
 Information structure
 GIVEN followed by NEW. Consider:
I have a brother. He likes basketball a lot. This
sport is quite demanding’.

I (GIVEN, known by the addressee, the referent is the

sender of the message) have a brother (NEW
information). He (GIVEN, PRONOUN – filled in by
the already known information i.e. ‘my brother’) likes
basketball (NEW). This sport (GIVEN – ‘basketball’)
is demanding (NEW information).
 Why do we do this?
• Research language and try to understand it
• Improve teaching
• Improve dictionary representation
• Improve translation
• Basis for cognitive semantics and
psycholinguistics
Figure 3.6 Location of Broca’s area
 In a Tokyo Hotel:
Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a
person to do such thing is please not to read notis.
 In a Bucharest hotel lobby:
The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we
regret that you will be unbearable.
 In a Belgrade hotel elevator:
To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the
cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a
number of wishing floor. Driving is then going
alphabetically by national order.
 In a Japanese hotel:
You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.
 In a Norwegian cocktail lounge:
Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
 In a hotel in Athens:
Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the
hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily.
 In a Yugoslav hotel:
The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the
chambermaid.
 In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian
Orthodox monastery:
You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian
and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily
except Thursdays.
 On the menu of a Polish hotel:
Salad a firm's own make; limpid redbeet soup with cheesy
dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef
rashers beaten up in the country people's fashion.
 In a Zurich hotel:
Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the
bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.
 In a Rome laundry:
Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.
 In a Bangkok temple:
It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner if dressed as a man.
 In a Tokyo bar:
Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.
 In a Copenhagen airline ticket office:
We take your bags and send them in all directions.

 On the door of a Moscow hotel room:

If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it.

 In a Norwegian cocktail lounge:

Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
 On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.
 Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop:
Ladies may have a fit upstairs.
 In a Bangkok dry cleaner's:
Drop your trousers here for best results.
 In a Rhodes tailor shop:
Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute
customers in strict rotation.
 In a Budapest zoo:
Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food,
give it to the guard on duty.
 In the office of a Rome doctor:
Specialist in women and other diseases
 Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
- English well talking. / - Here speeching American.
 In a Dubrovnik hotel room:
 Molimo Vas da dnevno upišete na listu
konzumiranih pića, te da račun ovjerite Vašim
potpisom kojega ćete ostaviti na mini baru.
 Deixis
 Demonstratives
 Pointing ...