Into to Ling 2

Communicative functions of language (Jakobson’s)

• referential ("This is a lecture")

• emotive (“Wow!")

• conative (“Don’t go")

• phatic ("How are you?")

• metalingual ("What do you mean by ‘communicative function'?"), (6) poetic (“My love is like a red, red rose")

Karl Bühler‘s Organon Model (1934)

1. expression (sender) = symptom

2. representation (objects/relations) = symbol

3. appeal (addressee) = signal

Semantic prototypes

a prototype is a cognitive reference point, i.e the proto-image of all representatives of the meaning of a word or of a category (= mental concept)

Componential analysis

lexical decomposition via semantic features / sense components ex; man – woman – boy – girl* man = human x male x adult woman = human x female x adult boy = human x male x non-adult girl = human x female x non-adult

Collocations

a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance ex; heavy rain vs. thick rain high temperature vs. tall temperature scenic view vs. scenic picture have an experience vs. do/make an experience

Words

• Inflected words - has a changed spelling or ending that shows the way it is used in sentences

• Complex words - a word consisting of a main part and one or more other parts (inconvenience = {in-} + {convenient} + {-ce} = „the state of not being convenient“)

Semantic meaning types

compositional - complex words or sentences

non-compositional - simple words (dis- -er like) OR expressions (eye to eye)

Meaning contrasts

complementarity - two lexemes exclude each other; either-or-relation ex; alive – dead; unmarried – married; smoker - nonsmoker

converseness - describes the same fact from two different points of view ex; brother – sister; younger – older; buy - sell

Homonymy

two linguistic signs with a different meaning have the same form;

Homography

• (only the spelling is identical) ex; 'record (N) - re 'cord (V) − 'conduct (N) - con' duct (V)

Homophony

• (only the pronunciation is identical) ex; write - right – rite, brake - break

Polyseme

one linguistic sign has two or more different meanings ex; handsome, job

Sense relations

• recurrence (i.e. they are recurrent in the lexicon)

• discrimination (i.e. they help to define differences)

• lexicalizability (i.e. they can be expressed in language)

Paradigmatic

relation between signs with the same (denotative) meaning (synonimity) ex; fatherly – paternal, buy - purchase

Denotation

the association we have with a lexeme

Connotation

a feeling or an idea which a word invokes

Axioms of Human Communication

1. One cannot NOT communicate.

2. Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect.

3. Every communication sequence is defined by the way the interactants punctuate communication events.

4. Interpersonal contacts are digital and analogical.

5. Communication relationships are either symmetrical or complementary.

Speech Act Theory (J. L. Austin)

• “constatives” (true or false) “The present king of France is bold”

• “performatives” (successful or non-successful) “I name this ship the Queen Elisabeth”

Three components of speech acts

• Locution - refers to the linguistic form of a speech act

• Illocution - refers to the communicative intention of the speaker

• Perlocution - refers to the effect produced on the hearer

Typology of Speech Acts

• representatives - assert, claim, state, predict, describe

• directives - order, ask, command, request

• commissives - promise, vow, pledge

• expressives - thank, welcome, congratulate, apologize

• declaratives - appoint, declare, excommunicate, resign

Felicity conditions of speech acts

• propositional content conditions (e.g. we cannot promise things in the past)

• preparatory conditions (e.g. can speaker keep promise?)

• sincerity conditions (e.g. does speaker really intend to keep promise?)

• essential condition (classfies speech acts, e.g. I promise IS a promise)

Rules

Regulative rules - speech acts may be successful without e.g. fulfilling the propositional content or the sincerity condition

Constitutive rules - rules based on the essential condition are constitutive, i.e. utterances which do not follow the constitutive rule associated with a particular speech act cannot be used to perform that speech act (= constitutive rule)

Cooperative Principle by H.P. Grice

• Maxim of Quanitity - make you contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange and not more informative as required

• Maxim of Quality - make you contribution one that is true. Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

• Maxim of Relation - be relevant. Do not change the topic

• Maxim of Manner - be perspicious: Avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be brief and orderly

• Politeness

Ruining maxims

• violating a maxim telling a lie (violating Maxim of Quality)

• opting out of one maxim as far as I know (Quality), I can’t say any more (Quantity), I don’t know if this makes sense (Manner)

• flouting a maxim - “Conversational Implicature” ex; He is a father; he therefore has at least one child

Politeness Theory

Negative Face - an individual’s right to freedom of action and their need not be imposed on by others

Positive Face - an individual’s desire to be accepted and liked by others.

• positive politeness (strategies) orients to preserving the positive face of others

• negative politeness (strategies) orients to maintaining the negative face of others

In reality, many types of speech acts intrinsically threaten face (complaints, disagreements, request) = face threatening acts (FTAs)

variables to measure strength or weightiness of FTA

• social distance (between speaker and addressee)

• relative power (of addressee over speaker)

• absolute power (of imposition in particular culture)

3 Vs

• variety - a non-judgmental term to refer to any kind of realization/form of language

• variable - the general or abstract feature that socio-linguistic research concentrates on: e.g., non-prevocalic /r/.

• variant - the concrete realizations of the variable under investigation; e.g., pronunciation with or without non-prevocalic /r/.

sociolinguistics and types of languages

• language: political (e.g., autonomy, power), cultural (e.g., media, invention of print; the court etc.) and ethnic factors define a particular variety as a language.

• standard language: formally a dialect that – due to historical reasons – has become the official language of a nation/country. It is the variety used in the media, taught in school and foreign language teaching and other official situations.

3 types of varieties

• regional varieties (diatopic) – dialects

• social varieties (diastratic) – sociolects

• functional varieties (diaphasic) – register / style

+ a person‘s individual variety = ideolect

Functional varietes

• register: vocabulary chosen

• style: formal – informal (i.e. also grammatical structures)

Development of Sociolinguistics

• Regional (traditional) dialectology (focus on regional variation in how people talked)

• Urban (modern) dialectology (from 1960s on) / social dialectology (focus on how people from different social classes talked differently)

Isoglosses

bundle of linguistics features (phonological or lexial) that demarcate the boundary between one dialect and another; e.g. rhotic vs. non- rhotic accents in GB