Semantics/Pragmatics - Weidner

Important people and their contributions.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Semiotics - sign system, the relationship between a given sign and the object it represents

Sign - signifier (form of the sign), signified (concept it represents)

Langue (language) - system of signs, common knowledge of a given speech system
Parole (speaking) - the way in which knowledge is used by actual speakers

Pierce

Pierce’s semiotic triangle -
the representamen - form the sign takes
an interpretant - not an interpreter but the sense made of the sign
an object - to which the sign refers

3 types of signs -
1. icon - a relation of similarity between the sign and what it represents (portrait, onomatopoeia, imitative gestures)
2. index - a physical cause and effect relationship (smoke→fire, yawning→boredom)
3. symbol - arbitrary, conventional relationship between sign and meaning (red flag, punctuation marks, letters, traffic lights)

“Talking heads”

• utterances are vehicles carrying concepts from one mind to another

Wittgenstein

Language games - children and adults, responses may have multiple meanings which need to be figured out

Wittgenstein’s example:

• A brickie calls “Slab!” and his helper brings it
  - assumptions
  - speculations and jokes

Language and meaning

• Lexicon - infinite body of knowledge, dynamic, contains semantic knowledge

• Productivity - combining words into expressions and sentences, creative, coordinated, maluma/takete → more intuition based

Givon

?’s - do different languages conceptualise meaning differently. the relationship between linguistic meaning and context

• Form follows function
  - usage-based model of language

• Meaning is divided into 3 levels:

1. Lexical semantics - meaning of words

2. Sentential semantics - meaning of sentences

3. Discourse semantics - how meaning is established contextually

• Information / thematic structure

  • already known information and additional information

  • given / new

  • How:

    • New - indefinite nominals

    • Given - definite nominals

  • Salience

    • Once it’s known, it can be referenced

    • pronouns

• Focus and topic

  • Focus

    • New info

    • alternative selection

  • Topic

    • subjects in English

    • Typically given info

Skinner

• Language learning
  Behaviourist perspective

  • influence by classical conditioning and Pavlov

  • imitation and reinforcement

• Learning

  • mechanism of simple imitation
    Behaviourist perspective - language learning is like any other behaviour, can be trained

Chomsky

? - how is language learned and organised

• Criticised Skinner’s behaviourism

• input alone is not enough

Nativist theory of language learning (4 elements)

1. LAD

2. UG

3. Poverty of stimulus

4. Critical period

Language:

• governed by rules and principles

• we instinctively combine a finite number of elements - to create an infinite number of larger structures

Generative Grammar (GG):

• set of rules and principles

• shared by all languages in the world

• enables us to understand sentences

• unaware of them

Competence and Performance

1. Competence - the knowledge we possess about how to speak a language

2. Performance - the real-life linguistic output

Wierzbicka, Goddard, Leibniz

Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)

• common language of all people

Basic language:

• one you can use to explain anything

• intercultural communication

• trial and error

NSM Semantic Primes: (64 semantic primes)

• simple

• innate/hardwired

• mental language

• used for practical purposes

→I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, THIS, HAPPEN, MOVE, KNOW, THINK, DO, WANT, SAY, GOOD, WHERE, WHEN, NOT, MAYBE, BECAUSE, LIKE, KIND OF, PART OF, BIG, SMALL, MOTHER, FATHER

Stalnaker, Frege (+Sanford and Garrod?)

There is a triadic relation between speaker, intention, linguistic form and context.

Context - small dynamic part of discourse

• situational context - what participants know about the object, event, circumstance

• background knowledge context - what participants know about each other and the world

• co-text context - what participants know from what has been said so far

Common ground (CG) - shared background knowledge, context

• universal CG - assumptions about what the participants know

• restricted CG - “to brime” (a reference to a thing only people who know the context will understand)

Inferences - what we infer, listener-generated meaning based on form and context (what the listener does)

Presuppositions - background assumptions taken for granted regardless of the speaker’s belief and can be created or destroyed

e.g. the bald king of France (he is still king of France, even if he isn’t bald)

they can be:

semantic - always present

existential - every definite noun phrases presupposes the existence of somebody or something

pragmatic - dependent on the context and CG

Presupposition types:

1. existential - existence of the entities: my dog is happy

2. active - true due to the presence of factive verbs: i regret its over

3. lexical - one word presupposes some other meaning

4. structural - wh- questions presuppose that the information following is already known

5. non-factive - what follows is not true

6. counterfactual - contrary to facts

Levinson and Verschueren

Discourse - refers to language in use, as a process which is socially stimulated

Discourse analysis

• study of units of language and language use beyond isolated sentences

• study of connected sequences of sentences

• combines a diversity of approaches and methodologies

Adaptability, Negotiability, Variability

Adaptability Theory (Verschueren 1999)

• interlocutors need to make hypotheses about what it is the other means or knows

• propositions are marked as either referring to or departing from expectations

• interlocutors choose resources (forms, patterns, strategies) from the adaptively developed repertoire

• choice-making as the basic activity in using language

• choice-making by S (production) and H (interpretation)

3 key notions

• variability:

  • the range of options from which choices are made

  • not stable, adaptable, subject to change

• negotiability

  • flexible strategies

  • practices that are both rational and reflective

• adaptability

  • language use as choice-making from a variable range of options

  • processes that lead to marrying satisfactory communicative needs

Why conversation analysis now?

Sequence and analysis:

• interaction is organised sequentially

• speakers and recipients have a tacit grasp of the rules of sequencing

• these rules indicate how to produce actions without having to account

• these rules indicate how to influence others’ subsequent actions

Interaction is organised sequentially, by turns:

1. where’s bill?

2. there’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s apartment

3. huh? (repair, confusion)
   oh. (informative)
   oh really? (more than informative)

• recipients will work to hear utterances as sequentially appropriate, as normatively expected responses

• any departure that can’t be normalised will generate special inferences (tic tac toe rule breaking)

• understanding is based not only on what speakers say, but also where they say it

Understanding different possibilities for understanding the same action:

1. why don’t you come and see me some time (invitation or complaint?)

2. I would like to OR i’m sorry, ive been terribly busy

Preference organisation

• background - brown and levinson 1978

  • positive face, negative face

• prefence in CA

  • treatment of certain actions as favoured, over other relevant alternative actions

  • does not refer to private feelings, but to conventional ways of enacting and responding to the alternative actions

a range of optional 2nd actions:

• assessments → agreement / disagreement

• invitations / offers → acceptances / declinations

• requests → grantings / refusals

alternative 2nd actions - asymmetrical design

• agreements / acceptances tend to be

  • prompt

  • unqualified

  • non-accountable

• disagreements / rejections tend to be

  • delayed - by silences, prefaces, token agreements, appreciations, apologies

  • qualified - marked as uncertain, condition, indirect

  • accountable - include an explanation for the rejection

Grice

an underlying assumption that the participants are co-operating with each other

• co-operative principle

• four maxims

• implicatures

co-operative principle - “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”

Gricean maxims:

1. Quantity
   a. make your contribution as informative as is required
   b. do not make your contribution more informative than is required
   - what day is it?
   - tuesday.

2. Quality
   a. do not say what you believe to be false
   b. do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
   - where is John?
   - at home.

3. Relevance/relation
   a. be relevant
   - what are you doing tomorrow?
   - i’m meeting my friends for dinner

4. Manner
   a. avoid obscurity of expression
   b. avoid ambiguity
   c. be brief
   d. be orderly
   - whats your favourite colour?
   - blue

• what are they?

  • description of the normal expectations we have in conversation

  • explain a number of regular features in the way people communicate

Maxims can be:

• observed

• violated (lying)

• flouted

• opted out from

Violation (not obeying maxims):

• what time is it? → its early (quantity)

• how was your weekend? → okay (relevance)

• do you want some coffee? → considering that its already quite late and the fact bla bla (manner)

Flouting (intentional violation, for a reason):

• i’ll never be late again, I promise → yeah, as always (quality)

• what grade did you get from the test → look, a sparrow! (relevance)

Opting out (explicit information that a maxim cannot be satisfied):

• how was your exam → I can’t tell you (quality)

• where is John? → I don’t know, to be honest (quantity)

Implicatures - conventional and conversational

1. Conventional implicatures:

• part of the linguistic meaning

• sentence itself carries the implicature

• detachable - it is possible to say the same thing in a way that does not occasion an implicature

• impossible to deny something implicated in the words themselves

• non-cancellable

→ this morning I had a cup of coffee and drove to the office

• conventionally implicates that I had the coffee first and drove to the office next

• detachable

• I had a cup of coffee this morning; also, I drove to the office this morning

→ I was in Paris last spring too - CI: some other person was in Paris last spring

→ Even Bart passed the test - CI: Bart was among the least likely to pass the test

→ They aren’t here yet - CI: they are expected to be here later

2. Conversational implicatures:

• it’s stuffy in here

• can you hold the door for me?

  • meaning that is not the literal meaning of a sentence

• related to co-operative principle and maxims

• depend heavily on context, on how things are said

• implicit

• harder to detach

• cancellable

• conversational implicatures must be possible to calculate

  • in order to calculate/work out an implicature we need:

    • knowledge of the literal meaning

    • assumption that the speaker is obeying the conversational maxims

Grice’s modified Occam’s Razor Principle:

• senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity

• not multiple senses but multiple contexts

Hedges:

• words or phrases used to indicate that we are not really sure what we are saying is sufficiently correct

• expressions that show that we are concerned about following the maxims while being co-operative

Hedges operate on the accuracy of our statements (quality maxim)

• his hair was kind of black

• the leaves are sort of yellow

• as far as i know,

• im not sure, but

Austin and Searle

Communicative acts

• things what we DO

• what speakers DO by uttering utterances

Communicative functions

1. Declarative sentence - used to constate

2. Imperative sentence - used to direct

3. Interrogative sentence - used to question

Austin

Speech acts - performatives

• a performative utterance describes the act it performs

  • I pronounce you husband and wife

Direct and indirect speech acts

1. Direct SA
   - syntactic structures used in accordance with their functions
   did you eat the pizza?
   eat the pizza!
   you ate the pizza

2. Indirect SA
   - syntactic structure associated with one function used for some different function
   can you hold the plate
   why didn’t you tell me?

3. Analysis → two options
   Can you hold this plate

• direct act - a question about the hearer’s ability to hold it

• indirect act - a request for the hearer to hold it

→indirect speech acts are more polite than direct speech acts

open that door

can you open that door

Types of speech acts

1. Locutionary act - saying something with a certain meaning

2. Illocutionary act
   -significance in a conventional system of social interaction
   -act-making utterance
   -acts defined by social conventions

3. Perlocutionary act - the act of causing a certain effect on the hearer and/or others

→Illocutionary force of a speech act:

• depends on the context of the utterance

• the underlying purpose of the utterance

e.g. a reminder, a warning, a promise, a threat

Classes/categories of speech acts

Classes of illocutionary acts

1. assertives - describes the state of the world (its dark)

2. directives - the speaker trying to get the hearer to behave in some way (ordering, requesting)

3. commissives - commits the speaker to a course of action (promising, threatening

4. expressives - expresses the speaker’s attitude about something (likes, complimenting)

5. declaratives - brings about a change in something (i declare war, you are fired)

Felicity conditions

• conditions that must be fulfilled in the situation in which the act is carried out if the act is to be said to be carried out properly, or felicitiously

• social conventions and rules

Speech act theory

• looks at the ways in which words can be used not only to present information but also to carry actions

• attempts to explain how speakers use language to accomplish intended actions and how hearers infer intended meaning from what is said

Lakoff and Johnson

Metaphor

• a phenomenon of thought

• conceptual mappings across domains

Conceptual metaphor

Mapping between two conceptual domains

• source domain - expressions we draw on to understand sth

• target domain - what we want to describe and understand

conceptual metaphors are conventional

e.g. life as a journey

(target) - (source)

birth as arrival
death as departure
life’s problems as obstacles

Three types of conceptual metaphors

1. Orientational
   - spacial structuring of concepts

e.g. target - source

• happy is up (im in high spirits)

• sickness and death are down (he’s sinking fast)

2. Ontological
   - projection of features from one entity onto another entity

e.g. target - source

• activities are containers (they put a lot of energy into this)

• mind is a machine (my mind isn’t operating today)

3. Structural
   - structuring one kind of experience or activity in terms of another kind of experience or activity

e.g. target - source

1. time is money (you’re wasting my time)

2. love is a journey (we’ve reached a dead-end in our relationship)

A is B formula BUT:

• no metaphor can be comprehended or represented independently of its experiential basis

• no single metaphor is final

Functions of conceptual metaphors

• they hide more than they highlight

• practical pragmatic usage

• they rely almost entirely on factors like context

Goffman, Brown and Levinson

Politeness

Goffman - introduced facework, face is some social value a person claims for oneself

Brown and Levinson - first and second order politeness

1. how people understand and talk about politeness, common sense understanding, behaviours that are evaluated positively

2. a theoretical construct, theory of social behaviour in linguistics, linguistic forms reflecting/affecting people’s standing in relation to self and others

Face

• Sociological motivation

  • how people interact in everyday life?

  • how others perceive us?

  • we create an identity for others to see

  • we act socially to maintain it

→positioning oneself in social interactions: “the public self-image that every member of society wants to claim for himself”(Brown and Levinson)

• Positive face - the want of a person that his attributes, achievements, ideas, possessions, goals, should be desirable to at least certain others

• Negative face - the want of a person not to be imposed upon by others

-face representation and politeness phenomena maintain the cooperative nature of interaction

Face-saving acts

• Negative indirectness: a face-saving act that speaks to a negative face, shows concern about imposition

  • i know you’re busy but would it be okay for you to help me with this

  • it’s very hot in here

• Positive indirectness: a face-saving act that speaks to a positive face, shows solidarity

  • I’m sorry to say this but I think you’re wrong

Face-threatening acts

-represent a threat to a person’s self-image
-speech acts that call for correction

• threats to the H’s negative face (requests)

• threats to the H’s positive face (disagreements)

• threats to the S’s negative face (responses to thanks)

• threats to the S’s positive face (apologies)

On record - clear intention, direct speech acts

→give me that book

Off record - not one clear intention, indirect speech acts, conversational implicatures, hints, metaphors

→are you reading that book?

Face threat verbal acts - different linguistic strategies that are conventionally used to mitigate the degree of face threat in verbal acts

How to do FTA’s?

• baldly, on record

  • i want coffee

• with positive indirectness

  • i know you make the most delicious tea on earth, but would it be ok if I had coffee instead?

• with negative indirectness

  • isn’t it too much of a trouble for you to make me a cup of coffee

• entirely indirectly, off-record

  • i wonder if the coffee machine is still working

→Brown and Levinson’s bald-on-record strategy is in conformity with Grice’s Maxims

Schiffrin and Fraser (-)

Garfinkel

Ethnomethodology

→ focuses on how objective reality is produced, understood and negotiated
→ objectives: document the methods through which social order is produced
→to investigate social practices of real people in real setting

Concepts/Notions/Principles:

• Accountability - actors are to design their actions in such a way that their sense is clear right away or explicable on demand

  • intelligible, reportable, analysable, describable

e.g. standing in line:

• people show that they are doing just that by the way they position their bodies

• they are also able to understand and answer a question (are you standing in line?)

Accounts

• ways in which people explain specific situations

• accounts reflect how social order is possible

• Sense-making procedures

  • situations with sharp discrepancies between existing expectations and practical behaviour

  • necessitate extraordinary sense-making efforts

  • naturally occurring - studies of transsexual behaviour

  • artificially created - breaching experiments

e.g. asking if people are standing in a line or not

• Breaking experiments

• attempts at discovering ‘perceived normality’ by turning to disrupt it

• language is not the basis of communication - previous and present interactions are

e.g. tic tac toe (breaking/discovering new rules)

Goffman, Garfinkel, Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson

Conversation analysis

Goffman - interaction order
Garfinkel - sense-making procedures, accountability
Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson - integration, methodological innovation

Intro

• interaction is orderly (openings, closings)

• organised by complex rules and practices for implementing them

• rules shape conduct, shared “definitions of the situation”

• rules operate at every level of detail: sequence of action, individual actions, word choices, non-vocal behaviour

Sequence and action

• sequential organisation: recurrent patterns in the relationship between some action and the next one

• some patterns are tight (narrow range of next actions): greeting-greeting, question-answer
  some patterns are loose (wide range of next actions): news announcements, stories

• rules are a social norm→ accounts, sanctions

  • interpretation ← RULES → action

Adjacency pairs

• opening/closing actions

• question/answer

• invitation/offer/request → accept/reject

• announcement/response

• they are normative

• social norm

• we are normatively accountable for our actions

• departures are also accountable

Accountability QA sequences

• Paxman vs Howard

• “Did you threaten to overrule him?”