semantics
the study of meaning in language
pragmatics
the study of meaning in relation to context
theory of speech acts
a subfield of pragmatics that studies how words are used not only to present information but also to carry out actions
cross-cultural pragmatics
how the ways people communicate differ around cultures
situational (physical) context
speaker, hearer, place, time
background knowledge (context)
collection of facts & assumptions
co-textual context
everything that was said before a particular utterance
negation of meaning
one and the same word or sentence can mean two different things depending on context
locutionary act
literal meaning of what we say (speaker controlled)
illocutionary act
what an utterance is supposed to do (speaker controlled)
perlocutionary act
the effect that our utterance has on other people (lack of speaker’s control)
direct speech act
use of performative verbs or commands (ex. Help me, please.)
indirect speech act
use of modal verbs to make a request (ex. can you pass the salt?)
felicity conditions (1)
conditions that a speech act must fulfil to be successful
felicity conditions (2)
procedure, circumstances, attitude, abuse vs misfiring
co-operative principle
how to make a contribution in a conversation
maxim of quality (truth)
do not say what you believe is false or for which you lack evidence
maxim of quantity (content length and depth)
make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more of less than is required
maxim of relation (relevance)
be relevant, omit any irrelevant information
maxim of manner (clarity)
be clear, brief and orderly
metalinguistic hedges
to cut a long story short, correct me if i’m wrong etc
overlap of maxims
sometimes we need to choose which one of two maxims we need to obey
how to deal with CP?
obeying (accept it), flouting (a hearer realises the meaning on tehir own), violating (we don’t want a hearer to realise we violate maxims - ex. we lie), opting out (we indicate that we’ll not cooperate)
implicature
we assume that the speaker is following the maxims or at least the cooperative principle
particularised conversational implicature
we need to know the context to figure out the meaning (ex. coffee and staying awake or going to bed)
generalised conversational implicature
goes beyond what is said (ex. most of my friends believe in marriage)
conventional implicature
no connections with the maxims (ex. he’s chinese, so he knows how to use chopsticks)
inferrence
connecting literal meaning with one’s general knowledge & contextual knowledge
pragmalinguistics
the study of differences between linguistic resources that different languages provide
sociopragmatics
the study of social norms connected with performance of speech acts
sociopragmatic failure
it occurs when a speech act abuses the social norms of the hearer’s culture
pragmalinguistic failure
it occurs when learners fail to get the meaning of an utterance due to the fact that the communicative conventions behind such an utterance used are different