Lecture 1

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

Defining pragmatics and its scope

 Pragmatics focuses on interpersonal meaning as it emerges in interaction.
 This meaning does not equal the sentence meaning. That is, what is meant may be different from what is
said.
 From the cognitive perspective, pragmatics attempts to explain how interactants produce and interpret
meaning in interaction, that is, what pragmatic principles they follow and what cognitive mechanisms are
responsible for meaning emergence in interaction.
 From the social perspective, pragmatics wants to show how participant’ choices in context depend on
culture and on such contextual variables like status/power, social distance/closeness, gender, age, or
discourse type (private vs. institutional, etc.).

Examples:
A: Mr. Major’s going to be at Wincanton today.
B: Oh is he? I didn’t know that.
A: No, the horse, not the Prime Minister.
B: Oh, the grey.

A: Are you coming to the cinema?

B: I’ve got an exam tomorrow.

A: Out you go!

B: Er, Fawlty’s the name. Mr Faulty.

A: D’you want a lift?

B: Well, if you’re going near the campsite, yes, please.

Definitions of pragmatics: an overview

Charles Morris, 1938, Foundations of the Theory of Signs
semiotics:
syntactics – formal relation of signs to one another
semantics – relations of signs to the objects to which they are applicable (their
designata)
pragmatics – relation of signs to interpreters
Pragmatics deals with all the biotic aspects of languages use: psychological, biological and
sociological

S.C. Levinson, 1983, Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of those relations between languages and context that are grammaticalized, or
encoded in the structure of a language: deixis, honorifics, presupposition and speech acts (a list of
phenomena)

G. Leech, 1983, Principles of Pragmatics

Grammar (the abstract formal system of language) and pragmatics (the principles of language use) are
complementary domains within linguistics.

General Pragmatics
/ \
[Grammar]<-Pragmalinguistics Socio-pragmatics->[Sociology]
 Semantics vs. pragmatics:
Sentence meaning vs. utterance meaning
Rules vs. principles
Truth-conditional meaning vs. non-truth conditional meaning
Context-free meaning vs. context-dependent meaning
Linguistic meaning vs. illocutionary force

J. Mey, 1994, Pragmatics: an Introduction

Pragmatics: a ‘component’ of or a ‘perspective’ on linguistics?
The ‘component view’ – based on a ‘modular’ conception of human mind (different faculties are
independent but cooperating units).
The ‘perspective view’ - pragmatic aspects of various divisions of linguistics.

The ‘grammatical’ point of view: linguistic elements considered in isolation, as syntactic structures or parts
of a grammatical paradigm (case, tense, etc.)
The ‘user-oriented’ point of view: how these linguistic elements are used in a concrete setting (context) to
generate meanings

Pragmatics is the science of langue as real, live people use it, for their own purposes and within their
limitations and affordances. It gives us greater understanding of how human mind works, how people
communicate, how they cooperate, how they manipulate each other, i.e. what they are trying to do with
their language, what motivates people to use language, when they consider their language use to be
successful, when not.

Micropragmatics (reference, implicature, speech acts) vs. macropragmatics (society, context, discourse,
conversation analysis, metapragmatics)

J.Thomas, 1995, Meaning in Interaction

Pragmatics: meaning in interaction
Two ‘camps’ in pragmatics:
 Pragmatics as speaker meaning (social constraints on utterance production)
 Pragmatics as utterance interpretation (cognitive approach)
3 levels of meaning:
Abstract meaning: They met at the bank. (two abstract, dictionary meanings of ‘bank’)
Two levels of Speaker’s meaning:
Contextual/utterance meaning: In context, one of the meanings of ‘bank’ is chosen, the deictic form
‘they’ is fixed, the real time of the utterance is specified.
Force: the utterance functions as an act of ‘informing’, ‘warning;, etc.

Making meaning is a dynamic process, involving the negotiation of meaning between speaker and hearer,
the context of utterance (physical, social and linguistic) and the meaning potential of the utterance

G. Yule, 1996, Pragmatics

Semantics: how words literally relate to things.
Pragmatics: the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms. It is about
how people make sense of each other linguistically (people’s intended meanings, their assumptions,
purposes and goals, and the kind of actions they perform - requests, refusals, compliments).
Her: So – did you?
Him: Hey – who wouldn’t?

J. Verschueren, 1999, Understanding pragmatics

There is a distinction between:
 The linguistics of language resources (traditional components of a linguistic theory each of which has its
own unit of analysis)

1
  The linguistics of language use: a general functional (i.e. cognitive, social and cultural) perspective on
language, where the cognitive, the social and the cultural are inseparable and combine in a pragmatic
perspective

Micropragmatics (the pragmatics of small-scale interaction) vs macropragmatics (macro-processes in language

use like intercultural and international communication, discourse and ideology)

Lecture 2
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

Reference and Indexicality

1. Sense: “(linguistic) meaning”; the relationship inside the language: linguistic boundaries of a word in a
particular language and how the word relates to other words in a language (semantic relationships like
synonyms, antonyms, polysemy, metonymy).
 Kinship terms (mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles) and color terms differ across languages (the
color spectrum is the same).
 Venus (the name of a planet):
Two senses: the morning star, the evening star
The referent: the planet itself

2. Reference: how the word relates to real world concepts.

Most descriptions refer to (‘pick out’) different referents (persons, objects, notions) in the world on each
occasion when they are used.

Reference can thus mean:

(a) Extralinguistic relationships between language and the world’s entities, states of affairs, etc.;
what a word or expression denotes or indicates.
(b) An act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or reader, to
identify something: words themselves do not refer, people refer!

Referring expressions:
Proper noun: Fred hit me vs. There's no Fred at this address
Definite NP: I met the author of the book.
Elaborate definite NP: Remember the old foreign guy with the funny hat?
Vague NP: the blue thing, or what’s his name (S cannot remember/does not know X)
Indefinite NP: What a beautiful place!
Pronouns (used deictically): Take this! Look at him! (shared visual contexts)

The choice depends on what S assumes H knows, depends on S’s goals and beliefs.
Successful reference is collaborative!

Referential and attributive uses of referring expressions:

(a) A physically present entity: There is a man waiting for you.
(b) An entity assumed to exist or unknown:
There was no sign of the killer.
attributive use – ‘whoever did the killing’
referential use – the killer had been identified
He wants to marry a woman with a lot of money.
(c) An entity probably does not exist:
We’d love to find a nine-foot-tall basketball player.

Names and referents

In a community who share a common language and culture there are conventions that certain referring
expressions will be used to identify certain entities on regular basis )a pragmatic view of reference):
2
 Can I borrow your Shakespeare?
Where is the cheese sandwich sitting?
Brazil winds World Cup. (Brazil = a soccer team)
Japan wins the first round of trade talks. (Japan = its government)

The role of co-text and context: they limit the range of reference (possible interpretations) of a particular
referring expression (according to local socio-cultural conventions):
The cheese sandwich is made with white bread.
The cheese sandwich left without paying.
The heart-attack mustn’t be moved.
Your ten-thirty just cancelled.
A couple of rooms have complained about the heat.

Anaphoric reference/Anaphora: keeping track of who/what we are talking about.

John came to the room. He was laughing.
Antecedent anaphor

Expressions used in English for anaphoric reference:

Peel an onion and slice it. a pronoun
Peel and slice six potatoes. Put them in cold water. a pronoun; the entity changes!
Drop the slices into hot water. a definite NP
Cook for three minutes. zero anaphor/ellipsis

Sometimes the anaphoric expressions don’t seem to be linguistically connected to their antecedents.
Proper inferences are based on assumed background knowledge.
(a) I just rented a house. The kitchen is really big. (inference: a house has a kitchen)
(b) We had Chardonnay for dinner. The wine was the best part.(Chardonnay is a kind of wine)
(c) The bus came on time, but he didn’t stop. (a bus has a driver)

Cataphoric reference/Cataphora: an expression “referring” forward to another expression.

I turned the corner and almost stepped on it. There was a large snake in the middle of the path.

3. Deixis (Gr. deixis ‘display, demonstration’; indexical/deictic expressions, indexicals)

Linguistic forms (pronouns, tense, place & time adverbs), which take their meaning and pragmatic
interpretation from the situation/context (who uses them, when, where) rather than from a stable
semantic value; their interpretation is situationally anchored to the identity of S and the addressee, their
locations, and the time of the utterance,1 e.g. I'll put it there; Will you come here?

Deictic vs. non-deictic use:

1. Deictic: the referent is identified.
i. Gestural: You, you, but not you, are dismissed. What about you Jack? (accompanied by
some gesture, like eye-contact) It might work now (S presses a button on the printer)
ii. Symbolic: What did you say? I owe you a fiver. That one is nice. There was a good
crowd there. If I go now then I will risk a lot.
2. Non-deictic (reference is general, independent of context)
You can never tell what they really want (you=people in general)
There was a good crowd there.

Deixis vs. anaphora/cataphora

Deixis is associated with context outside the text, and the referent is located in the situational or
background knowledge context.
Anaphora/cataphora are associated with the context of the text itself, or the co-textual context,
thus the referent is located in the preceding/forthcoming text.

1
Yang, Y. 2011, A Cognitive interpretation of Discourse Deixis, Theory and Practice of Language Studies, 1/2, 128-135.
3
 Sometimes a term can be used both deictically and anaphorically:
I was born in New York and have there ever since.
there simultaneously refers backwards to New York and contrasts with here in the space
deictic dimension.

deictic centre/origo2: ’egocentric’ organization of deixis

(1) the central person is S, (2) the central time is the time of the utterance, (3) the central place is
S’s location at the time of utterance, (4) the discourse center is the point which S is currently at
in the production of the utterance, and (5) the social center is S’s social status and rank.

Basic categories/types of deixis:

proximal deixis - near S (e.g. this, here, now)
distal deixis - away from S (e.g. that, there, then); both interpreted in terms of S's location, or
the deictic center; e.g. Japanese: 'sore' - that, near addressee; ’ore’ - that, distant from both S and
H; 'kore' - this, near S

Person deixis
The identity of the interlocutors in a communicative situation.
3 deictic categories: speaker (I/we), addressee (you), the other(s) (he, she, it, they)
The pronouns I and you are typically deictic; other pronouns (he, she, it, they), although
on occasion deictic, are typically anaphoric in their reference.
we-inclussive-of-addresee: I + you (the addressee)
we-exclusive-of-addressee: I + someone else
'I' vs. 'you' - not easy for children, e.g. Read you a story instead of Read me ...

Social deixis
Those aspects of language structure that encode the social identities of participants or the relationship
between them (honorifics, titles, T/V pronouns).
Absolute social deixis: forms of address uniformly attached to social roles, e.g. Your Honour,
Mr President
Relational social deixis: forms of address referring to the social relationship between S and the
addressee e.g. my husband/teacher/cousin/baby son

T/V distinction: pronouns of power and solidarity.3

Brown and Gilman argued that there are two factors determining the distinction between the
‘intimate/close’ pronoun T and the ‘polite/distant’ pronoun V: the direction of power and degree of
solidarity, in conjunction with the symmetrical vs. asymmetrical use. Now we see other factors that
influence the T/V distinction: identity, age, gender

T/V distinctions:
Fr tu/vous, Grm du/Sie, Sp tú/Usted
English: archaic thou/thee vs. you (pl.)
Hungarian Te vs. Maga/Ön; Tetszik-form; conjugation of the verb
3rd person Sg (when 2nd person Sg is available):
Nagyon megütötte magát?4 vs. Nagyon megütötted magad? 'Did you hit yourself?’

Spacial/place deixis
Location from S's perspective, relative to the deictic center.
Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
2
Latin orīgo, a beginning.
3
Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman. 1960. "The pronouns of power and solidarity." In Sebeok T.A. Style in language. 253–276.
4
The other meanings: ‘Did he hit himself?’ and ‘Did he hit you?’
4
 Deictic adverbs of place: here, there
Verbs of motion: come, go, bring, take
Modern English: here, there, left, right, up, down, etc.
Older English texts, dialects: yonder (more distant from S), hither (toward S), thence (away from
S)
Deictic projection: I'll come later (=movement to addressee's location); on an answering machine: I'm
not here now.

Emphathetic deixis
S is personally involved with the entity, situation or place to which s/he is referring or is identifying
him/herself with the attitude or viepoint of the addressee (Lyons 1977).
Psychological distance - a true pragmatic basis of spacial deixis? Physically close/distant
objects treated as psychologically close/distant, e.g. That man over there, but also I don't like that! when
sniffing a physically close bottle of perfume.

Temporal/time deixis
The encoding of temporal points relative to the time of the utterance
Simple adverbs: now, then, tomorrow, yesterday
Now - a proximal form, coinciding with S's utterance
Then - a distal form, to both past and future
Complex adverbs: this month, next year, last week, next Monday
Tenses: present tense – proximal; past tense – distal, I could swim when ... ; If I were rich…
Non-deictic temporal reference: calendar time (dates) and clock time (hours)

Coding time (CT): the moment of the utterance

Receiving time (RT): the moment of reception
CT and RT can be identical (face-to-face conversation) or different, e.g. Back in an hour.

Psychological basis - the same as spatial deixis; metaphors, e.g. the coming week, the approaching
year, the days gone by, the past week, this Thursday;
In English, direct vs. indirect (reported) speech, e.g. I asked her if she was packing.

discourse deixis (text deixis)

A deictic reference to a portion of the preceding or following discourse relative to S’s current location in
the discourse; it focuses H’s attention on aspects of meaning, expressed by a clause, a sentence, a
paragraph or an entire idea (it is not the same as anaphora, which refers to the same entity, without
pointing).
Listen to this story; That was a good joke; In the last /next/preceding/following chapter/paragraph …;
That was the funniest story I’ve ever heard.

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS
Lecture 3

I. Speech Acts
 Utterances can be described in terms of actions they perform:
You are fired.
You are so intelligent!
You're welcome.
 There are labels/descriptive terms of speech acts: apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise,
request, warning, instructing.
 One utterance can be used to perform more than one speech act, and one speech act can be performed by
various utterances.
 The circumstances surrounding the utterance (a speech event) can determine the interpretation of the utterance
as a speech act, e.g. 'This tea is really cold', on a wintry day (a complaint) vs. on a hot summer's day (a praise).

5
II. Speech Act Theory: Austin

J.Austin, 1962, How to do things with words

Ordinary language philosophy (how ordinary people use languages in everyday life) vs. logical positivism and
truth conditional semantics
'Early' Austin (the performative hypothesis)
Constatives (can be true or false) I am a student.
Performatives (can be (in)felicitous or ‘(un)happy’): I (hereby) apologize (Simple present singular) vs. I
apologized; *I hereby fry this egg.

Felicity conditions:
I hereby declare the ceremony open.
(1) There must be a conventional procedure (circumstances and persons)
having a conventional effect
(2) The procedure must be executed correctly and completely
(2) Often, the persons must have the requisite thoughts, feeling and intentions
and may be obliged to follow a specified conduct afterwards

Four categories of performatives:

metalinguistic performatives - self-referential, self-verifying, non-falsifiable, always felicitous, I say/I
protest/I deny/I promise/ I apologize
I apologize vs I’m sorry
I plead not guilty vs I’m innocent
I object.
ritual performatives - subject to felicity conditions)
I absolve you from your sins.
I hereby christen this ship the H.M.S. Flounder.
I declare war on Zanzibar.
I sentence you to ten years of hard labour.
I hereby declare you husband and wife
collaborative performatives - depend on uptake
e.g. betting, challenging, I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.
group performatives - commonly or necessarily produced by more than one person, e.g. a verdict of a
jury, e.g. We judge you to be guilty of …
The above categories overlap and there are cross-cultural differences in the use of performatives, e.g. in
English, the verb to divorce cannot be used performatively, in many Muslim countries it can.

'Late' Austin (collapse of the performative hypothesis)

 Austin abandons the performative/constative distinction
- No grammatical basis to distinguish performatives from non-performative utterances
Your employment is hereby terminated, I’m denying that …
- Many SAs have no corresponding performative verbs (e.g. fishing for complements, insulting, letting the
cat out of the bag) or they are not regularly used (offering, inviting, boasting, hinting)
- Utterances which fit the definition of constatives can be used in a performative way

 Austin defines SA in terms of three distinct acts:

Locutionary act (locution): the physical act of utterance, producing a meaningful
linguistic expression;
llocutionary act: the intended communicative force of an utterance:
I've just made some coffee - a statement, an offer, an apology
Perlocutionary act: the effect achieved through the locution and illocution, such as
persuading, inspiring, convincing (H to drink some coffee)

NOW: speech act=the illocutionary force of the utterance

6
Explicit performatives: I hereby order you to clean up this mess! (performative verb;
unambiguous, no possibility for misunderstanding, often formal, forceful, implies a set of
rights)
Implicit performatives Clean up this mess! (depend on other devices like mood, adverbs,
intonation, context)

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS
lecture 4

II. Speech Act Theory: Searle

J. Searle, 1969, Speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language; attempted to systematize and formalize
Austin’s work.

Illocutionary Force Indicting Device (IFID)

- The most obvious device: the performative verb, I (Vp) you that ..., e.g. I'm asking you whether ..., I’m
telling you she’s not here
- Other IFIDs: word order, intonation, stress, voice quality (e.g. lowered voice for a warning or threat)

Searle's (felicity) conditions for speech acts:

SA of promising:
Propositional content condition: S predicates a future act (A) of S
Preparatory condition: S believes that act A is in H's best interest
Sincerity condition: S intends to do act A
Essential condition: S undertakes an obligation to do act A
(What is the most essential difference between a promise and a threat?)

SA of requesting:
Propositional content: S predicates a future act (A) of S
Preparatory: S believes H can do A
It is not obvious that H would do A without being asked
Sincerity: S wants H to do A
Essential: Counts as an attempt to get H to do A

Speech act classification

Five types of general functions performed by SAs:
 Declarations - change the world via their utterance; S has to have a special institutional role and be in a
specific context, e.g. Priest: I now pronounce you husband and wife
 Representatives - state what S believes to be the case (assertions, conclusions, descriptions) e.g. The earth is
flat; It was a warm sunny day.
 Expressives – express S’s psychological state (thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating), I'm really
sorry; Congratulations!; I like your new hair style.
 Directives - S’s attempts to get H to do something (commands, orders, requests, suggestions, advice),
 Commissives - commit S to some future course of action. (promises, threats, refusals, pledges), I'll be back;
I'm going to get it right next time; We will not do that.

Note: people’s criteria for classifying something as a particular SA (e.g. lying) are very complex. Not only ‘formal’
criteria but also functional (in relation to S’s goal in the context of an utterance), psychological and affective
factors count. Also, in reality it is often impossible to assign a SA to a clear-cut category.

Speech act type Direction of fit S = speaker

X = situation
Declarations words change the world S causes X
Representatives make words fit the world S believes X

7
Expressives no direction of fit S feels X
Directives make the world fit words S wants X
Commissives make the world fit words S intends X

Direct and Indirect SAs

Three basic sentence types and their general communicative functions:
declarative > statement, e.g. I always wear a seat belt.
interrogative > question, e.g. Do you always wear a seat belt?
imperative > command/request, e.g. Wear a seat belt!

ISAs - "cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another". Searle
(1979:60):

OR: whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct SA, otherwise
(when form and function do not match), e.g. when a declarative is used to make a request, we have an indirect SA.

It's cold outside direct SA: ‘I (hereby) tell you about the weather’
Indirect SA: ‘I hereby request of you that you close the door'
Move out of the way! (DSA)
Could you move out of the way? (ISA)
Do you have to stand in front of the TV? (ISA)
You're standing in front of the TV. (ISA)
You'd make a better door than a window. (ISA)

Conventionality in indirect requests in English:

I want you to close the door
Could/can you close the door?
Would/will you close the door?
Would you mind closing the door?
May I ask you to close the door?
I am sorry to have to tell you to please close the door.
Did you forget the door?
How about a bit less breeze?

Content condition Future act of H: 'WILL you do X?'

(H WILL do X)
Preparatory cond. H is able to do act: 'CAN you do X?'
(H CAN do X)

Indirectness as a sociopragmatic phenomenon

- universal phenomenon.
- rational, motivated behaviour
- intentional vs. unintentional indirectness.
- implicatures and inferences.
- costly and risky
A: What would you like to drink?
B: I've been on whisky all day.
(=I want some more whisky, then)
(=I don't want any drink)
- ISAs are often associated with greater politeness than DSAs.
Student: I would like to discuss my major paper with you.
Teacher: Very well. My office hours are on Wednesday, from 12 to 1 p.m. but there is someone
coming at twelve.

8
How do we know how indirect to be?
Universal factors governing indirectness (which can be negotiated by S and H):
(a) the relative power of S over H
reward power (e.g. employer over employee; in the army)
coersive power (-"-)
legitimate power (e.g. parents over children)
referent power (H admires S and thus S has power over H)
expert power (e.g. doctor over patient)
(b) the social distance between S and H
To a friend: Got a change for fifty pence, DB?
To a stranger: Excuse me, could you change fifty pence for me? I need tens or fives
for the coffee machine.
(c) size of imposition
e.g. asking for 'free' vs. 'non-free' goods (E. Goffman), like time, money, age, weight, credit card, etc.
(d) Relative rights and obligations between S and H
e.g. getting off a bus at a scheduled stopping place vs. where there was no official stop

Indirectness from a cognitive perspective:

transparency/opacity of meaning; H's processing time
Stand! (no processing)
Would you like to stand? (minimal processing)
I think we would sing better if we stood. (more processing)
Elizabeth Bennet could refuse Mr Collins to marry him (J.Austin, Pride and Prejudice) in one of the following
ways:
(1) No, I won't marry you.
(2) I don't respect you and I could never marry a man I do not respect.
(3) I could never marry a clergyman.
(4) I could never marry a buffoon!

(1) directly expresses the proposition that E.B. refuses to marry Mr C.

(2) does not directly express it but logically implies it.
(3) directly pragmatically implies the proposition - we need shared knowledge between S and H which is
unstated (that Mr is a clergyman)
(4) indirectly pragmatically implies the proposition - that Mr C. is a buffoon is not shared knowledge
between them and Mr C has to construct it (rather than retrieve it from memory)

Also relevant for calculating/measuring indirectness: activity type, Ss beliefs and background knowledge, co-text,
Ss goals (what S wants).

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS
Lecture 5

Presupposition and entailment

 Presuppositions as shared assumptions

 Pragmatic presupposition
Non-conventional background assumptions, something that S assumes to be the case prior to making an
utterance related to the context in which U is uttered; a S-dependent notion, Ss, not sentences have
presuppositions!
Tell Madonna I’m at lunch.
Pragmatic presupposition: ‘I’m expecting Madonna soon and since I know that you know what she
looks like and I know that you are willing to pass on the message that I am at lunch, tell her that I’m at
lunch’.
 Conventional/logical presupposition

9
 Not determined by context but triggered by lexical or structural items: ‘there is such a person as Madonna,
there is a referent that matches the description, a ‘conventional’ understanding of the definite description.
 Entailment - something that logically follows from what is asserted in the utterance (sentences, not
speakers, have entailments!)

Mary's brother bought three horses.

Possible conventional and pragmatic presuppositions:
‘Mary exists, she has a brother, only one brother, he has a lot of money.’
All of these are S's presuppositions and all of them can be wrong.
Entailments (logical consequences):
‘Mary's brother bought something; bought three animals, bought two horses; bought one horse (and many other
logical consequences)’.
These entailments follow from the sentence, regardless whether S's beliefs are right or wrong.

Conventional presupposition remains constant (true) under negation (is truth-conditional).

(Pragmatic presuppositions do not survive under negation)
p – proposition; q – presupposition; >> - presupposes
p: Mary's dog is cute/ Mary's dog isn't cute.
q: Mary has a dog.
p/NOTp >> q

Types of (potential) conventional presuppositions:

Type Example Presupposition
Existential TheX, Y’s X >> X exists
Factive I regret/know/realize that X/-ing >> X is a fact (‘I regret telling him
Non-factive He pretended/dreamed/imagined that X >> X wasn’t true
Lexical He managed/didn’t manage to escape >>He tried to escape (and escaped)
Structural When/where did she buy it? >> She bought it
Counterfactual If I weren't ill, … >> I am ill
(contrary to facts)

The projection problem:

The meaning of certain conventional presuppositions (as 'parts' of a more complex sentence) may not
survive to become the meaning of some complex sentences (as 'wholes').
I imagined that Kelly was ill and nobody realized that she was ill.
John doesn’t regret having failed, because in fact he passed.
(Difference between S’s and H’s state of knowledge and consequent reaction to ‘regret’)

LECTURE 6
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

Gricean pragmatics

The Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975)

‘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.’

 The maxims (unstated assumptions we have in normal conversation):

 Quantity: make your contributions as informative as required (not more).
 Quality: make your contribution one that is true, do not say what you believe to be false or for
which you lack adequate information.
 Relevance: be relevant.
 Manner: avoid obscurity of expression or ambiguity, be brief and orderly.

During lunch:
10
 A: How do you like your hamburger?
B: A hamburger is a hamburger.
Two people and a dog in a park:
A: Does your dog bite?
B: No.
(A reaches down to pet the dog, which bites his hand)
A: Ouch! Hey! You said your dog doesn't bite.
B: He doesn't. But that's not my dog.

Hedges - when utterances do not fully adhere to the maxims. Hedges are indicators that Ss are aware of
maxims and that they are trying to observe them. Also, hedges communicate S's concern that their Hs judge
them to be cooperative conversational partners.
As far as I know/ I may be mistaken but/ I guess, they're married. (hedge on quality)
So, to cut a long story short/ as you probably know, we grabbed our stuff and ran. (quantity)
I don't know if this is important, but some of the files are missing. (relevance)
I don't know if this is clear, but I think the other car was reversing. (manner)

 Non-observance of maxims
 Flouting: when S blatantly fails to observe a maxim, with the intention to generate implicature.
A: Uhm, I-I have failed the exam...
B: Really? Great! My congratulations. (flouting of Quality)
A: What's the time?
B: The postman hasn't come yet. (flouting of Relevance)
 Violating: the unostentatious non-observance of a maxim, in order to mislead (used in politics, at trials).
 Infringing: an accidental failure to observe a maxim, with no intention to create implicature or to mislead.
 Opting out: when S indicates unwillingness to cooperate ('I cannot say any more', ‘My lips are sealed’, No
comment’, which can also create their own implicatures)
 Suspending: in some contexts there is no expectation to fulfill the requirements of maxims, and their non-
observance does not create implicature.

Gricean concept of meaning: the ways in which utterances can convey meaning

MEANING
/ \
What is said & entailed what is implied
/ \
Conventionally conversationally (maxim-based)
/ \
Generalized particularized
 What is said & entailed
Communicated truth-conditional meaning.
Her can run 100m in 9.9 seconds. entails ‘not less than 9.9’
The president was assassinated. entails ’The president is dead’
Entailments cannot be cancelled without creating contradiction.

 What is implied: implicatures

Implicatures are communicated non-truth-conditional meanings.
Implicatures are the part of what S means that goes beyond what the speaker literally says.
Implicatures are not part of sentence meaning,

 Conventional (non-conversational) implicatures

Implicatures associated with particular lexical items.
He was poor but honest. 'but' suggests some 'contrast' between the two propositions.
Even John came to the party. 'contrary to expectations’
Dennis isn't here yet. ‘the present situation is expected to change soon’
11
 Oh what a pity! ‘the following proposition has only recently become apparent to me’
Well, we are a bank, not a charity organization. ‘the following proposition is not what H is hoping to hear’
She had breakfast and left the house. ‘p & q + > q after p’

 Generalized Conversational Implicatures

They arise irrespective of context and are derived from the utterance alone, most often from the maxim of
Quantity.
scalar implicatures: scales of “less” to “more”:
Numbers: 1 < 2 < 3…
Quantifiers: some < many < most < all
Frequency: sometimes < often < usually < always
Likelihood: possible < likely < certain
Obligatoriness: permitted < expected < required
Temperature: lukewarm < warm < hot
Goodness: OK < good < excellent
Logical Operators: or < and

A: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.

B: Ah, I brought the bread. > not the cheese
I have completed some of the required courses. > not most, not all)
They are sometimes interesting. > not always, > not often)
It's possible that they were delayed. > not certain)
It should be stored in a cool place. > not must, > not frozen)
John has 2 kids. > not 3 or more
You can have tea or cake > not tea and cake

When Ss correct themselves, they typically cancel one of the scalar implicatures:
e.g. I got some of this jewelry in Hong Kong - um actually I think I got most of it there.

 Particularized conversational implicatures

They are derived not from the utterance alone but from the utterance in context, most often from the maxim
of Relevance.
A: Hey, coming to the party tonight?
B: My parents are visiting. (Relevance maxim flouted)

A: What?! Has your boss gone crazy?

B: Let's go get some coffee. (Relevance maxim flouted)
A: Where are you going with the dog?
B: To the V-E-T. (Manner maxim fluted)

A: Do you like ice cream?

B: Is the Pope Catholic? (Relevance flouted)
(Implied answer: 'obviously yes! You needn't have asked the question')

 Properties of conversational implicatures

(1) Non-detachability
The same propositional content in the same context will always give rise to the same conversational
implicature, in whatever form it is expressed
A visitor looks at the host's big-size cat and says:
'Underfed/frail/puny/skinny/delicate, isn't he?' (implying 'fat')
‘John is genius/a mental prodigy/an enormous intellect/a big brain (> John is stupid)
Unlike implicature, semantic aspects of meaning can be changed (‘detached’) by relexicalization,
e.g. 'interrogation' for 'questioning', 'bribe' for 'offer'.
(read J. Thomas, ch.3, on how implicature becomes semantic meaning!)
(2) Non-conventionality

12
 Implicatures are non-conventional as they are not part of the conventional meaning of linguistic
expressions. Conventional meaning is known before you can calculate its implicatures in the
context.
'How old are you?' has the same semantic meaning but different implicatures in different contexts.
(3) Defeasibility
Implicatures are deniable, can be reinforced or suspended.
You have won five dollars! > ONLY five
You've won five dollars, in fact, you've won ten!
You’ve wan five dollars, that’s four more than one!
You've won at least five dollars!
A: Are you free tonight?
B: I do not feel like going out.
A: This is not what I meant.
(4) Calculability
Implicatures can be calculated by Ss via inference (cognitive steps), which means that implicatures (in
contexts) are not random.

 Some problems with Grice’s theory:

 It is difficult to decide which implicature was intentional (if at all).
A note to all staff: The window cleaners will be in the building ... Please clear your windowsills
and lock any valuables away.
 It is difficult to distinguish between types of non-observance
 Maxims are different in nature: Quality - yes/no maxim, Quantity & Manner – degree.
 Maxims may overlap/co-occur
A: Where are you going?
B: Out. (relation? quantity?)
 Calculability problems
How do we know when to seek a comparison, an opposite or an unrelated
proposition? ‘He is the sunshine of my life/I love waiting for hours/ Out.

LECTURE 7
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

Conversation analysis
CA: interface between sociology, linguistics and social psychology
Sociology and social psychology:
Erving Goffman: everyday interpersonal interaction as a site of social/interactional order; topics: the presentation
of self (the self is a ‘performed character’ and a ‘dramatic effect’), territories of the self, the ritual
and moral nature of face-to-face interaction.
Harold Garfinkel: social order found in ethno-methods: people’s commonsense knowledge revealed in
everyday interactions (stand in a line/queuing: we are "doing" being a member of a line)
>.ethnomethodology

CA perspective:
 Talk - a central activity in social life, highly organized, an interactive accomplishment;
 Participants – active, knowledgeable agents
 Questions: How is talk organized? How do people coordinate actions? What is the role of talk in wider
social processes?
 The analysis should be based on naturally occurring data (vs. SA theory)
 The analysis should not be initially constrained by prior theoretical assumptions.

Beginnings and origin:

Lectures of Harvey Sacks, University of California, LA, later Irvine, 1964-1972
(Sacks, H., 1992, Lectures on Conversation, ed. G. Jefferson)

13
A radical research program – a corpus of telephone call to a ‘suicide prevention center’
A: This is Mr. Smith, may I help you
B: I can’t hear you.
A: This is Mr. SMITH
B: Smith
The key insights /methodological basis:
- Order at all points.
- Talk-in-interaction is methodic:
How to get someone’s name without asking for it (give yours)
How to avoid giving your name without refusing (initiate repair)
How to avoid giving help without refusing (treat the circumstances as a joke)

Basic concepts
 Floor – the right to speak
 Turn – when we have control over the floor, a valued commodity

Mundane/everyday conversation:
 Turn-taking system – getting control over the floor by different speakers, a set of conventions for getting,
keeping and giving away turns, like: ‘I speak-you speak-I speak’
Turn construction units: one word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, etc.
Transition Relevance Place (TRP) - any possible change-of-turn point, like the end of a syntactic unit and
a pause, where a transition from one speaker to another becomes relevant.
Turn allocation
1) Current S selects next
2) Next S self-selects
3) Current S continues
Consequences/grossly apparent facts
 Only one S usually speaks at a time
 Order and distribution of turns is not fixed or determined in advance, i.e. is locally managed
 The size/length of turns varies
 What participants say and what actions they performed in not restricted or specified in advance
 Speaker change occurs

Conversational style
High involvement style - some Ss expect active participation in conversation, with almost no
pausing between turns, some overlap or turn completion
High considerateness style - slower, longer pauses, no overlap or interruption; non-imposing style
Conversational style as a personality trait:
Slower-paced speakers often considered shy, boring, stupid
More rapid-fire speakers considered noisy, pushy, domineering, selfish, tiresome
Middle-class English speakers:
 Only one participant speaks at a time.
 Smooth transitions from speaker to speaker valued
 Long silences between turns or substantial overlaps felt awkward (taken to imply distance, or a
problem in communication)

 Adjacency pairs (E. Schegloff and H. Sacks)

An adjacency pair is a unit of conversation – an exchange (by different speakers) of two turns, or, a sequence of
two utterances (a first pair part and second pair part) which are functionally related to each other in that the first
turn requires a certain type of second turn, or, makes that turn conditionally relevant.

First pair part Second pair part

Greeting-greeting
A: Hello. B: Hi.

14
 Goodbyes
A. See ya! B: Bye.
Question-answer
A: How are you? B: Fine.
A: What's up? B: Nothin' much.
A: How's it goin'? B: Jus' hangin' in there.
A: How are things? B: The usual.
A. How ya doin'? B: Can't complain.
A: What time is it? B: About eight-thirty
Thanks-acceptance
A: Thanks. B: You're welcome.
Request-acceptance
A: Could you help? B: Sure.

 Preference structure
An observed, socially determined structural pattern in talk (that has nothing to do with individual's mental or
emotional desires): a first pair is made in the expectation that a specific second part will be provided.

First part Second part

Preferred Dispreferred
Assessment agree disagree
Invitation accept refuse
Offer accept decline
Proposal agree disagree
Request accept refuse
Can you help me? Sure.
Want some coffee? Yes, please.
Isn't that great? Yes, it is.
Let's go for a walk. That'd be great.

 How to do a dispreferred
Sandy: But I'm sure they'll have good food there.
(1.6)
Sandy: Hmm (.) I guess the food isn't great.
Jack: Nah (.) people mostly go for the music.

Cindy: So chiropodists do hands I guess.

Julie: Em (.) well (.) out there (.) they they mostly work on people's feet.

Becky: Come over for some coffee later.

Wally: Oh (.) eh (.) I'd love to (.) but you see (.) I (.) I'm supposed to get this finished (.) you know.

Dispreferred seconds are marked.

The strategies/patterns associated with dispreferred seconds in English:
Delay/hesitate pause (.); fillers: er; em; ah
Preface well; oh
Express doubt I'm not sure; I don't know
Token Yes that's great; I'd love to but
Apology I'm sorry; what a pity
Obligation statements I must do X; I'm expected in Y
Appeal for understanding you see; you know
Make it non-personal everybody else; out there
Giving accounts too much work; no time left
Use mitigators really; mostly; sort of; kinda
Hedge the negative I guess not; not possible

15
 Repair
Self-initiated, other-initiated; self-repair, other-repair
A: She was givin' me a:ll the people that were go:ne this yea:r I mean this quarter

A: Lissena pigeons.
(0.7)
B: Quail, I think.

A: Have you ever tried a clinic?

B: What?
A: Have you ever tried a clinic?

Signals of self-repair: glottal stops, lengthened vowels, long schwa, etc.

Other-initiation of self-repair: What? 'Scuse me?, echo-questions, repetitions of problematic items with
stress on problem syllables.
Preference for self-initiated self-repair.

 Silence/Pauses
Non-attributable silence
(A student and his friend's father are talking)
Mr.S.: What's your major, Dave?
Dave: English (.) well I haven't really decided yet.
(3.0)
Mr.S.: So (.)you want to be a teacher?
Dave: No (.) not really (.) well not if I can help it.
(2.5)
Mr.S.: Wha(.)//Where do you (.) go ahead
Dave: //I mean It's a (.) oh sorry I em
Attributable silence
(Jan is talking to her boyfriend)
Jan: Dave I'm going to the store.
Dave: (2.0)
Jan: Dave?
(2.0)
Jan: Dave (.) is something wrong?
Dave: What? What's wrong?
Jan: Never mind.

 Overlaps
Overlap as lack of coordination between strangers (see above)
Overlap as solidarity/closeness in expressing similar opinions/values
Min: Did you see him in the video?
Wendy:Yeah (.) the part on the beach
Min: Oh my god // he was so sexy
Wendy: he was just being so cool
Min: And all the waves // crashing around him!
Wendy: yeah that was really wild!
Overlap as competition: interruption
Joe: when they were in // power las(.) wait CAN I FINISH?
Jery: that's my point I said (.)

 Floor holding devices

16
Filling the pauses:
I wasn't talking about (.) em his first book that was (.) uh really just a start and so (.) uh isn't (.)
doesn't count really
Projecting a larger a structure (an extended turn):
There are three points I want to make (.) first ....

 Extended structures:
Insertion sequences
(one adjacency pair within another)
Agent: Do you want the early flight? (=Q1)
Client: What time does it arrive? (=Q2)
Agent: None forty-five. (=A2)
Client: Yeah (.) that's great. (=A1)

Jean: Could you mail this letter for me? (Q1=Request)

Fred: Does it have a stamp on it? (Q2)
Jean: Yeah. (A2)
Fred: Okay. (A1=Acceptance)

Presequences
Pre-invitations
A: Whatcha doin?
B: Nothin'
A: Wanna drink?
B: OK.

A: Hi John
B: How ya doin=say what'ryou doing?
A: Well we're going out. Why?
B: Oh, I was just gonna say come out and come over here an' talk this evening, but if you're out you
can't very well do that

Pre-requests (a re-analysis of ISA?)

A: Do you have hot chocolate?
B: mmhmm
A: Can I have hot chocolate with whipped cream?
B: Sure ((leaves to get))

A: So uh I was wondering would you be in your office on Monday (.) by any chance (2.0) probably not
B: Hmm yes=
A: =You would
B: Yes yes
(1.0)
A: So if we came by could you give us ten minutes or so?

A: Hullo I was just ringing up to ask you if you were going to Bertrand's party
B: Yes I though you might be
A: Heh heh
B: Yes would you like a lift?
A: Oh I'd love one
B: Right okey um I'll pick you up from there ...

A: Have you got Embassy Gold please?

B: Yes dear ((provides))

17
 Most preferred: Pre-request
Response to non-overt requests

Next preferred:Pre-request
Offer
Acceptance of offer

Least preferred: Pre-request

Go ahead
Request
Compliance

Pre-announcements
A: hh Oh guess what.
B: What.
D: Professor D. came in and ...

A: Didn't you know about Melvin? (.) oh it was last October...

 Utterances in a series and back channel signals

Caller: if you use your long distance service a lot then
Mary: uh-uh
Caller: you'll be interested in the discount I'm talking
Mary: yea
Caller: about because it can only save you money to switch to a cheaper service
Mary: mmm

 Telephone openings
Canonical structure:
1. Summons – answer sequence
2. Identification sequence
3. Greetings
4. How-are-you sequence/initial enquiries

After A. Pomerantz (1980):

((ringing))
B: Hello::,
A: HI:::.
B: Oh: hi:: 'ow are you Agne::s,
A: Fi:ne. Yer line's been busy.05 B: Yeuh my fu (hh) .hh my father's wife called me.

LECTURE 8
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

CA: talk in institutional settings

An organization:
 A social collective, produced, reproduced and transformed through the ongoing, interdependent, and goal-
oriented communication practices of its members.
 Members’ discursive practices contribute to the development of shared meaning and creation of social
reality.
 Thus, organizations – social collectives where shared meaning is produced.

Organizational discourse (spoken and written, dialogue, narratives) – both an expression and creation of
organization structure.

18
CA approach to institutional dialogue:
 The study of how people use language to perform and pursue their respective institutional tasks and goals,
such as teaching, medical consultations, psychiatric interviews, cross-examining, making inquiries,
negotiating, interviewing, meetings, sales talk, telephone calls, corridor conversations (gossip); it describes
the talk that people produce in different settings and demonstrates that talk is where the "institutional"
nature of institutions is accomplished, where institutions are ‘talked into being’
 Institutional/organizational settings/routine social spaces: courtrooms, classrooms, shops, banks, the media,
doctor’s consulting rooms, etc.
 Still, for CA, the institutionality of interaction is not determined by its setting: what characterizes
interaction as institutional is the special character of speech exchange systems that participants are found to
orient to!
 Context is not taken for granted, but aspects of context are analytically dealt with only if the participants
themselves demonstrably orient to them, that is, make them procedurally relevant. The relevance of such
categories as gender, class, status or power should not be assumed a priori, but demonstrated by the way
they become locally enacted and demonstrably produced, expressed, signaled, enacted or in general
'indexed' in talk.

For CA, context of interaction is NOT:

 a 'container' which people enter and which exerts a casual influence on them, or
 an abstract force imposing itself on participants

The critical approach (CDA) to institutional discourse:

 Focus on the questions of power and social control in organizations
 Organizations – sites of struggle where different groups (multiple interest groups) compete to shape the
social reality of organizations in ways that serve their own interests and where inequities are reproduced.
 For CDA, properties of context may be quite relevant for talk even if such an influence is
not explicitly expressed, but inferrable by other means.

Institutional forms of talk-in-interaction - either the reduction or the systematic specialization of the range of
practices available in mundane conversation5.
Participants: professionals/representatives and clients/customers/students
Research methods: audio/video records (CA) and traditional data collecting procedures (questionnaires,
unstructured interviews, ethnographic observation, participants’ commentary, self-reports, diary studies).

Institutional orientations in talk:

 Institutional talk is task- and goal-oriented (emergency calls – top-down, community-nurse visits – bottom-
up; cooperative – medical consultation, conflictual – a courtroom cross-examination; lay and institutional
participants may pursue different goals)
 Institutional talk imposes constraints on contributions (certain conversational actions may be promoted,
others inhibited, e.g. asking personal questions; constraint on professionals to withhold expressions on
sympathy, agreement, surprise, affiliation)
 The special character of inferences (reasoning, implicatures) in institutional contexts (e.g. the above
withholding interpreted as disaffiliative in a conv.context)

Five dimensions of analysis:

 Lexical choice: “lay” vs. “technical” vocabularies; the use of such vocabulary can embody claims to
specialized knowledge and identities; selection of descriptive terms fitting their roles:
Emergency service:
Desk: Hello? What’s the problem?
Caller: We have an unconscious diabetic

5
Mundane conversation - a technical category, defined by a turn-taking system in which the order, size and type of turns are free to vary.
The turn-taking mechanism of mundane conversation is often treated as a bench-mark against which other forms of talk-in-interaction can
be distinguished.

19
 (Institutional over personal identity)
 Turn design: (a) selection of an action, (selecting the verbal shape of an action
Attendance office clerk at an American high school calls the home of a child suspected of being truant:
AC: hhh (.) Well he wz reported absent from his third an’ his fifth period classes tihday
M: Ah ha:h,
AC: A:n’ we need him t’come in t’the office in the morning t’clear this up
(Clerk “reports”, he only announces a suspicion of absence that needs further confirmation)
 Sequence organization – pre-allocation of questions and answers
 Overall structural organization – order of phases, task-related standard shape, six phases in family doctor-
patient consultations
 Social epistemology and social relations – professional “cautiousness”/a “neutralistic” position,
interactional asymmetries (inequalities of/right to states of knowledge, status/role, rights/obligations, topic
control, individual as a “routine case”)

Two types of institutional settings can be distinguished:

 formal, the institutional character of interaction is embodied in its form, mostly distinctive forms of turn-
taking; courts of law, the broadcast news interview, job interviews, traditional classroom teaching.
A strict turn-taking format (oriented to by participants)
Turn-type pre-allocation, typically, chains of question-answer sequences, in which the institutional figure
asks the questions and the witness, pupil or interviewee is expected to provide the answers.

 non-formal, less formal, loosely structured, less uniformity, private settings, room for negotiation and
stylistic variation but still task- and role-based character/orientation, lay\professional encounters, e.g.
medical, psychiatric, social service, business.

Examples:

(1) Classroom interaction: the three-part sequence (initiation-reply-evaluation)

T: What’s it called?
S: Tools.
T: Good.

(2) The transcript of a rape trial, A is the defense attorney, B is the alleged rape victim, both restrict themselves
to producing questions and answers:
A: You have had sexual intercourse on a previous occasion, haven't you
B: Yes.
A: On many previous occasions?
B: Not many.
A: Several?
B: Yes.
A: With several men?
B: No.
A: Just one?
B: Two.
A: Two. And you are seventeen and a half?
B: Yes.

(3) The chairman of the Price Commission (C) is being interviewed about the commission's
report on tea prices.
C: What in fact happened was that in the course of last year the price went up very sharply and the
blenders did take advantage of this to raise their prices to retailers. They haven't been so quick in
reducing their prices when the world market prices come down. And so this means that prices in
the shops have stayed up rather higher than we'd like to see them.
Int: So you're really accusing them of profiteering.
C: .hhh No they're in business to make money that's perfectly sensible.
20
 (The interviewer is using a strategy of 'formulation' )

(4) A doctor-patient consultation: physical examination

D: Yeah.
(0.3)
D: That's shingles.
(1.2)
D: That's what it is:
(0.6)
P: Shingles.
D: Yes.

(5) A doctor-patient consultation: diagnosis

D: It's not a vein: (.) it's a muscle in spa:sm.
P: Is it?
D: Yeah.
P: Oh.
D: And I think what's causing it to be in spasm ...

(6) A talk radio program. The caller is complaining about the number of mailed requests for charitable
donations she receives.
C: I: have got three appeals letters here this week. (0.4) All a:skin' for donations. (0.2) .hh Two: from
tho:se that I: always contribute to anywa:y,
H: Yes?
C: .hh But I expect to get a lot mo:re.
H: So?
C: .h Now the point is there is a limit to
H: What's that got to do with ....

LECTURE 9
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE – functional dichotomies:

Bühler (1934) – referential/motive, Jakobson (1960) – ideational/interpersonal, Halliday (1970) –
descriptive/interpersonal, Lyons (1977) – descriptive/social-expressive, Brown & Yule (1983/1991) –
transactional/interactional

Linguistic Politeness
FACTORS DETERMINING POLITENESS.
- external to the interaction: relative status/power, social distance, age, gender, affect
- internal to the interaction: speech event, degree of )in)formality, type of speech act, amount of imposition,
degree of friendliness

MODELS OF (LINGUISTIC) POLITENESS:

(a) Politeness as etiquette, the social-norm view, politeness as ‘polite social behavior’, ‘good manners’.
(b) The conversational-maxim view, relies on Grice.
Lakoff (1973): Politeness – the avoidance of offence; a device used to reduce friction on personal
interaction; conflict between clarity (CP) and politeness.
(1) Be Clear (Grice’s maxims)
(2) Be Polite
Rule 1: Don’t Impose (when Formal/Impersonal Politeness required)
Rule 2: Give Options (when Informal Politeness required)
Rule 3: Make A Feel Good (when Intimate Politeness required)

21
 Leech (1983), Politeness Principle: minimize the expression of beliefs which are unfavorable to H and
(less importantly) maximize the expressions of beliefs which are favorable to H; six interpersonal
maxims:
Tact maxim: minimize H’s costs; maximize H’s benefit
Generosity Maxim: minimize your own benefit; maximize H’s benefit
Approbation maxim: minimize H’s dispraise; maximize H’s praise
Modesty maxim: minimize self-praise; maximize self-dispraise
Agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and H; maximize agreement
Sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and H; maximize sympathy
‘Relative Politeness’ vs ‘Absolute politeness’; Negative Politeness’ vs ‘Positive Politeness’

(c) The face-saving view, the best known approach.

Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987), politeness as the means employed to show awareness of another person's
face, accomplished in situations of social distance and closeness (Brown and Levinson's theory)
Face (Goffman 1967) - the public self-image of a person; the individual’s self-esteem; the emotional and
social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize; face can be lost, maintained,
enhanced.

Brown & Levinson: negative and positive face

Negative face wants - the need to be independent: freedom of action, non-imposition
Positive face wants - the need to be connected: accepted, liked, treated as a member of the same group, when
one’s wants are shared by others.

Negative politeness - face saving acts which are oriented to the person's negative face, e.g. which show
deference, emphasize the importance of the other's time or concerns, include apology for the imposition or
interruption.
Positive politeness - face saving acts which are concerned with the person's positive face, e.g. show solidarity,
emphasize that both speakers want the same thing, that they have a common goal.

A: Excuse me, Mr. Buckingham, but can I talk to you for a minute? (negative politeness)
A: Hey, Bucky, got a minute? (positive politeness)
Face threatening act (FTA) - when sg is said that represents a threat to another individual's expectations
regarding self-image.
Face saving act - when sg is said in order to lessen the possible threat.

Brown and Levinson's taxonomy for performing FTAs:

The basic assumption is that face is typically at risk when the self needs to accomplish something involving
the other.

Low face risk to the participant

▲ Baldly - without redress
│
│ On record / Positive politeness.
│ / Do FTA / \ With redress /
│ \ \
│ Off record Negative politeness
▼ \ Don't do FTA
High face risk to the participant

Ss determine the seriousness of a face-threatening act (independent, culturally-sensitive variables):

Wx = D(S,H) + P(H,S) + Rx

(3) You arrive at a lecture, pull out your notebook to take notes, but discover that you don't have anything to
write with. You think the person next to you may provide the solution.
1. Say nothing
22
 A: (Rummages in his/her bag)
B: (Offers a pen) Here, use this.
2. Say something: off and on record
2.1. Off record (indirect)
After your search through the bag, you produce a statement not directly addressed to the other:
Uh, I forgot my pen.
or: Hmm, I wonder where I put my pen.
2.2. On record (direct)
2.2.1. Bald on record - without redress
The most direct approach, using imperative forms.
Give me your pen/ Lend me your pen.
or: Give me your pen, please/would you? (mitigating devises added)

NB: There are social circumstances where using bald on record commands is considered appropriate, e.g.:
Have some more cake!
Gimme that wet umbrella.
Don't touch that!
2.2.2. With redress
2.2.2.1. Positive (Solidarity) politeness
Appealing to a common goal, common ground, assuming friendship:
Hey, buddy, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me use your pen.
Hi. How's going? Okay if I sit here? We must be interested in the same crazy stuff. You take a lot of
notes too, huh? Say, do me a big favor and let me use one of your pens.
Orther strategies: exchange of personal information, use of nicknames, sometimes abusive terms (among
males), shared dialect or slang expressions, inclusive terms such as 'we' and 'let's', e.g.:
Come on, let's go to the party. Everyone will be there. We'll have fun.
2.2.2.2. Negative (Deference) politeness
Used in most English-speaking contexts. It is expressed via the use of conventional indirectness, modal
verbs, apologies, requests for permission, etc.. it emphasizes H’s right to freedom, it is impersonal, as if
nothing is shared, expressions referring to S or H are often avoided ('Customers may not smoke here'), no
personal claims are made, (There's going to be a party, if you can make it. It will be fun).

Could you lend me a pen?

I'm sorry to bother you, but can I ask you for a pen or something?
I know you are are busy, but might I ask you if - em - if you happen to have an extra pen that I
could, you know - eh - maybe borrow?
.
(d) Spencer-Oatey: Rapport Management Framework
(A development of Brown and Levinson’s theory)
Rapport management: the use of lg to promote, maintain or threaten harmonious social relations.

Bases of rapport: Sociality rights, face sensitivities and interactional goals

Rapport management (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 15)

Face management Sociality rights
(personal/social value) (personal/social entitlements)
Personal/independent perspective Quality face Equity rights
(B&L’s positive face) (B&L’s negative face)
Social/interdependent perspective Identity face Association right

Face:
(1) Quality face (cf. Brown and Levinson’s positive face), a fundamental desire to be evaluated positively
in terms of personal qualities (competence, abilities, appearance), and is closely related to self-
esteem
23
 (2) Identity face, a fundamental desire of people that their social identities or roles (as a group leader, a
valued customer, a close friend) be acknowledged and upheld, and is closely associated with our
sense of public worth.

Sociality rights (Sociopragmatic interactional principles or SIP).

(1) Equity rights (cf. Brown and Levinson’s negative face) represent a fundamental belief that we are
entitled to personal consideration from others: that we are treated fairly, not unduly imposed upon
or ordered about, not taken advantage of or exploited (which includes the notion of cost-benefit and
the issue of autonomy-imposition)
(2) Association rights, or a fundamental belief that we are entitled to an association with others, in terms
of interactional (conversational) involvement with others as well as affective (sharing concerns,
feelings and interests) association-disassociation.

Managing face, sociality rights/obligations and interactional goals

Rapport-threatening/enhancing behavior:
 Goal-threatening/enhancing behavior: others hamper/support what we want to achieve (a supervisor fails
to send/ provides a letter of support)
 Sociality rights threatening/supporting behavior: others infringe on/ respect our sense of social
entitlements (a supervisor was obliged to send a letter of support; someone forced us to do sth although
s/he had no right to do that; someone spoke to us in a too personal way)
 Face-threatening/enhancing behavior: when we feel devalued or honored (somebody criticized/
complimented us)
One particular behavior may simultaneously threaten/support goals, rights and face.

Domains of rapport management:

 Illocutionary domain (rapport-threatening/enhancing implications of performing speech acts)
Rapport sensitive acts:
Orders and requests
They may infringe on our rights, affect our autonomy, devalue our sense of self
They may please and honor us and thus ‘give’ us face (a request for help)
Apologies
They can threaten S’s face in terms of personal competence and general reputation (when the offence
was big and the apology very public)
They can threaten the offended person’s face and sociality rights if no apology is forthcoming
Compliments
Typically enhance face (convey support and approval of H’s attributes)
They may threaten H’s face and rights
(see p.22ff for speech act strategies)
 Discourse domain
Content of structure of an interchange: topic choice and management, organization and sequencing of
information (e.g. sensitive, personal topics)
 Participation domain
Procedural aspects of interchange: various aspects of turn-taking, inclusion/exclusion of some
participants
 Stylistic domain
Tone (serious, joking), genre-appropriate lexis and syntax, terms of address
 Non-verbal domain
Gestures, body movements, eye contact, proxemics

Factors influencing strategy use:

Rapport orientation (enhancement, maintenance, neglect, challenge)
Contextual variables:
 Relations among participants: power and its types, distance/closeness/familiarity
 Message content: cost-benefit (requests: costs of time, effort, inconvenience, risk
24
  Social/interactional roles (friend, teacher-student, employer-emplyee)
 Activity type (a job interview, a dinner party)
 Pragmatic principles and conventions: sociopragmatic principles (Leech’s maxims) and
pragmalinguistic conventions

(e) Watts’ theory of politeness

Discursive approach: politeness is native Ss’ assessment/interpretation of the on-going, dynamic
interaction, as polite or impolite.
Politeness1: folk, lay, commonsense, evaluative and culture-specific interpretations of politeness (please;
thank you; sorry); politeness often interpreted as hypocritical, dishonest, unfeeling (Have a nice day!);
politeness1 is used in our interpretations of other people’s behavior.
Politeness2: technical terms used in pragmatic models of politeness

POLITIC/APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

nonnon
no non-
polite polite

positively marked
Unmarked
behavior behavior
Negatively marked behavior
Impolite over-polite

rud
e

rude
NON-POLITIC/INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR
Watts (2005): Relational work

You have booked two tickets to see a play. Before the play is due to begin you find that someone else is already
sitting there. You say the following:

Excuse me. I think you’re sitting in our seats/but those seats are ours.
I’m sorry. I think there must be some mistake/but are you sure you’ve got the right seats?

These responses are merely politic – there is not much else you can say in the situation!

I’m so sorry to bother you, but would you very much mind vacating our seats?

This utterance is beyond what can be expected and is likely to be perceived as aggressive but polite. (Watts
2003: 257-258).

Brown and Levinson's main strategies and examples:

Bald on record
Speaking in conformity with Grice's maxims:
I need another $1000.
Enjoy yourself!

25
Add three cups of flour and stir vigorously.
Positive politeness
Claim common ground
1.Notice, attend to H (his interests, wants, needs, goods):
You must be hungry, it's a long time since breakfast.
How about some lunch?
2.Exaggerate interest, approval, sympathy with H:
What a fantastic garden you have!
3.Intensify interest to H:
I come down the stairs, and what do you think I see?
A huge mess all over the place ...
4.Use in-group identity markers
4.1 Address forms: Come on, mate/honey/buddy.
4.2 Use in-group language or dialect, jargon or slang:
Lend us two quid then, wouldja mate? (BrE)

Lend us two bucks then, wouldja Mac? (AmE)

4.3 Contraction or ellipsis: Mind if I smoke?
5.Seek agreement
5.1 Safe topics
5.2 Repetition:
A: I had a flat tire on the way home.
B: Oh, God, a flat tire!
6.Avoid disagreement
6.1 Token agreement: Yes, but ...
A: That's where you live, Florida?
B: That's where I was born.
6.2 White lies
6.3 Hedging opinions: It's really beautiful, in a way.
7.Presuppose/raise/ assert common ground
7.1 Gossip, small talk
7.2 Point of view operations: You know/ you see; Do you want to come with me?
8.Joke: How about lending me this old heap of junk? (new Cadillac)
Convey that S and H are cooperators
9.Assert or presuppose S's knowledge of and concern for H's wants
Look, I know you want your car back by 5.0, so
should(n't) I go to town know?
10.Offer, promise: I'll drop by sometime next week.
11.Be optimistic: I'll help myself to a cookie - thanks!
12.Include both S and H in the activity: Let's stop for a bite.
13.Give (or ask for) reasons
14.Assume or assert reciprocity
15.Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)

Negative politeness
Be direct
1.Be conventionally indirect
Don't presume/assume
2.Question, hedge: I suppose/guess/think that Harry is coming.
Don't coarse H
3.Be pessimistic: Could/would/might you do X? I don't imagine there is any possibility of you ..;
Perhaps you'd care to help me/ for a lift.
4.Minimize the imposition: I just want to ask you for a little paper.
5.Give deference: Honorifics (Professor, Sir); Would you care for a sandwich?

26
6.Apologize
6.1 Admit the impingement: I'm sure you must be very busy, but
6.2 Indicate reluctance: I hate to impose, but ...
6.3 Give overwhelming reasons: I'm absolutely lost ...
6.4 Beg forgiveness: Please, forgive me if ...
7.Impersonalize S and H
7.1 Impersonal verbs: It seems/appears (to me) that…
7.2 Passive voice: It is regretted/expected that…
7.3 Indefinite pronoun: One might think ...
7.4 pluralization of 'you' and 'I': We cannot accept the responsibility.
7.5 Point-of-view distancing: I was kind of interested in knowing …
8.State the FTA as a general rule: Passengers will please refrain from ..
9.Nominalize: Your good performance on the examination impressed us favorably; Your failure to ...; It is our
regret that we cannot ...
Redress other wants of H's
10.Go on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting H
I'd be grateful if you would ...
It wouldn't be of any trouble, I'll have to go there
Anyway.

LECTURE 10
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS

PRAGMATICS OF IMPOLITENESS, CONFLICT AND POWER

Popliteness: research into affiliative/cooperative discourse (social harmony (lecture 9)
Impoliteness: research into antagonistic/confrontational discourse (social disharmony), models based on existing
approaches to politeness

Lakoff (1989), The limits of politeness: Therapeutic and courtroom discourse

(1) polite behavior – Ss adhere to politeness rules whether expected or not; ensures comity, social harmony,
counterbalances potential conflict
(2) non-polite behavior – non-conforming with politeness rules where conformity is not expected
(3) rude behavior – politeness is not conveyed even though expected; deviation from whatever counts as
politic, inherently confrontational and disruptive to social equilibrium; conspicuous, calling for redress:
(1) & (2) – politic behavior, i.e. in accordance with socially sanctioned norms of behavior; usually goes
unnoticed
I didn’t mean to be rude – S acknowledges violating politic norms
I didn’t mean to be polite – rare; Ss indirectly implies being in accordance with CP (quality)

Kasper (1990), Linguistic politeness: current research issues, J. of Prgm. 14

(1) motivated rudeness
(2) unmotivated rudeness > ignorance (children), pragmatic failure, (cross-cultural) miscommunication (ethnic
stereotyping), e.g. a child: I’m hungry. I want a cookie.
 Three types of (motivated) rudeness:
(1) Rudeness due to lack of affect control
German, French societies – affect restraint (esp. in public) increasingly developed in the noble classes since
the Middle Ages; from the 18th c. – a particular form of middle class conduct; mainstream American
society – unrestrained expression of joy or sorrow experienced as embarrassing, expression of aggressive
behaviors as rude; in everyday conversation rudeness is subject to negative sanction if self-initiated;
‘reactive’ rudeness seen as legitimate, as fair play (Turn that damned radio off!).
(2) Strategic rudeness – to achieve a goal; e.g. Lakoff’’s analysis of American courtroom discourse: the
prosecutor is licensed to attack the defendant in a manner incompatible with politic behavior; rude attacks
serve to break down the defendant’s control; the addressee not licensed to retaliate > the symbolic
withdrawal of defendant’s social rights.

27
 (3) Ironic rudeness – a subset of strategic rudeness (deliberate, goal-directed); irony conveys impolite beliefs
in an overtly polite manner (DO help yourself), as an aggressive act in a non-confrontational form;
sarcastic utterances – the rude force is aggravated (Do you have to spill ash on the carpet?);
‘banter’/’mock-impoliteness’ – utterances which are overtly impolite yet blatantly false (understood as
joking) (ritual insults); ironic rudeness depends on the context, on the participants’ relationship and the
appropriate symbolic forms).

Culpeper (1996):
 The need for a model of impoliteness, because in certain contexts (army training, literary drama)
impoliteness behavior is not marginal (vs. Leech's claim that conflictive communication tends to be rather
marginal under normal circumstances)

Impoliteness: the use of strategies that are designed to have the effect of social disruption, oriented towards
attacking face, an emotionally sensitive concept of self.

 Interrelation between (im)politeness and language – two views:

(1) Leech, B&L:
(a) relative politeness, relative to a particular context
(b) absolute politeness, where certain illocutions are inherently polite or impolite; certain
acts intrinsically threaten (orders, threats, criticisms).
B&L: politeness presupposes the potential for aggression and seeks to disarm it; politeness is a means
of minimizing confrontation in discourse: (1) the possibility of confrontation occurring at all, and (2)
the possibility that confrontation will be perceived as threatening.
(2) No sentence is inherently polite/impolite; the condition (context) under which they are used determine the
judgment of politeness.

 Inherent impoliteness - an act (in a context) that cannot be completely mitigated for its face threatening
effect by any surface realization of politeness, like pointing to s.o.'s apparent deficit in performing something
(e.g. a nervous driver who leaves the wipers on though it is not raining will always be embarrassed when
reminded to turn them off) or drawing attention to s.o.'s anti-social habit (e.g. picking one's nose or ears) or
other undesirable aspect of the addressee. Here, the FTA can be mitigated but the face damage cannot. (also,
consider accepted/expected flaws vs. unaccepted ones!)

 Mock impoliteness or banter - when it is understood that it is not intended to cause offence, e.g. using
derogatory terms, like 'You bastard!'. When S says s.g. obviously untrue and impolite (clearly at odds with
expectations!) H interprets it as banter, in (a) intimate contexts, but even more in (b) contexts of high social
distance (e.g. an Australian advertising slogan ‘Eat meat – you bastards’), and (c) when S and H like each other
(affect).
Ritualized forms of banter: the speech event of 'sounding' or 'signifying' (formulaic, ritual obscene insults
in the form of rhyming couplets) amongst black adolescents in America; 'organized' swearing in many
cultures.
(NB. 'weak' insults, ones that are not outrageously bizarre and untrue, are more dangerous to be interpreted
as personal insults!)
Ritual banter also functions as a societal safety-valve, because "in ritual we are freed from personal
responsibility for the acts we are engaged in" (Labov, 1972, Language in the inner city, 352-353)

 When are we impolite?

B&L: People cooperate in maintaining face in interaction when there exists mutual vulnerability of face
(everyone's face depends on everyone else's being maintained) and so it is in their best interest to maintain each
other's face.
o Impoliteness in unequal relationships:
When the vulnerability of face is unequal (e.g. courtroom discourse), there is an imbalance of power,
and the more powerful participants have more freedom to be impolite through
(a) reducing the less powerful participant's ability to retaliate with impoliteness (e.g. through the
denial of speaking rights), and
28
 (b) threatening this retaliation should it occur
In courtroom:
 the witness has limited capacity to negotiate positive and negative face wants
 the barrister has almost unlimited possibility to threaten/aggravate the witness's face
Conflict of interests: in some circumstances it is not in a participant’s interest to maintain the other's
face (in legal cases, sport games, when only one participant can win)

o Impoliteness in equal relationships (close friendship, a married couple):

Complex factors; more scope for impoliteness (participants know each other’s weak points), evidence
that spouses are more hostile to each other than to strangers; correlation between negative affect and
impoliteness; escalation of verbal aggression into physical aggression (lack of default mechanism by
which one participant achieves the upper hand).

 Impoliteness strategies:
(1) Bald on record impoliteness
(2) Positive impoliteness:
Ignore, snub the other - e.g. fail to acknowledge the other's presence
Exclude the other from the activity
Disassociate from the other - e.g. deny association, avoid sitting together
Be disinterested, unconcerned, unsympathetic
Use inappropriate identity markers - e.g. use T+LN when a close relationship pertains
Use obscure or secretive language - e.g. mystify the other with jargon
Seek disagreement - e.g. select a sensitive topic
Make the other feel uncomfortable - e.g. do not avoid silence, joke or use small talk
Use taboo words - swear, use abusive or profane language
Call the other names - use derogatory nominations
(3) Negative impoliteness:
Frighten - instill the belief that action detrimental to the other will occur
Condescend, scorn or ridicule - emphasize your relative power. Be contemptuous - Do no treat the other
seriously. Belittle the other (e.g. use diminutives)
Invade the other's space - literally or metaphorically (e.g. ask for or speak about information which is too
intimate given the relationship)
Explicitly associate the other with a negative aspect - personalize, use "I" and "you"
Put the other's indebt ness on record
etc.
(4) Sarcasm (mock politeness for social disharmony)
(5) Withhold politeness (where it would be expected)

EXAMPLES
Impoliteness in an army training camp:
Training philosophy: the best way of producing an 'ideal soldier’ is to destroy the recruits' individuality
and self-esteem, and then rebuilt it in the desired mould.
Impoliteness in the army is deployed by the sergeants in a systematic way as part of their job and is used to
depersonalize the recruits (politeness involves recognition that the interlocutor is a person like oneself,
impoliteness denies that recognition).

Oppressing recruits' negative face wants

Denying a recruit the opportunity to present a more favorable version of events
Strategies:
Denying speaking rights: Shut up, Alves
Interrupting
Ignoring recruits' contributions
Attacking recruits' positive face
Expression of impolite beliefs:

29
 Attack the recruit's role as an American citizen: You don't deserve to live in the USA
Her role as a soldier: Disgrace to the uniform that's what you are, you don't even deserve to wear it
on your little body
Her potential role as a mother: I doubt if you could accept the responsibility of a child, do me a
favor, don't have children
Her role as a human being: You haven't functioned as a human being
Her personal value: You are despicable, a damn liar
Her competenc: You can't do anything right
Her mental stability: I think she is nutso
Paralinguistic and non-verbal aspects of impoliteness
shouting, close to recruit's ear, making recruits physically uncomfortable (e.g. forced to stand to
attention)

Impoliteness in drama dialogue

Verbal conflict employed to further the development of the character and the plot:
equilibrium > disequilibrium (impoliteness) > re-establishment of equilibrium.
Lady Macbeth to Macbeth in the banquet scene, after the appearance of the ghost:
LM: Are you a man?
(...)
A woman's story at a winter fire
Authoris'd by her grandam. Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces?
(...)
Quite unmann'd in folly?
(...)
Fie! For shame!

LM's impoliteness helps divorce M from the values that cause him guilt. During the course of the play he shifts
from a man of conscience to a desensitized murderer.

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOPRAGMATICS
Lecture 11

Pragmatics and culture

1.Coherence
Speakers have an assumption of coherence, that what is said/written will make sense in their normal experience of
things. Familiarity and knowledge are the basis of coherence.
Identical structure, different interpretations:
Plant sale > someone sells plants
Garage sale > someone is selling household items from their garage

We often create a coherent interpretation from a text that potentially does not have it:
How many animals of each type did Moses take on the Ark?
We often construct familiar scenarios:
A motor vehicle accident was reported in front of Kennedy Theatre involving a male and female.
2. Background knowledge
Pre-existing knowledge structures or schemata (sg. schema) – familiar patterns from previous experience that we
use to interpret new experiences, to arrive automatically at interpretations.
Our schemata of making sense of the world are culture-specific.
Frame – a fixed, static pattern of the schema, a prototypical version of something, e.g. an apartment frame with
components such as kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.
Apartment for rent, $500, 763-6683.
Script – a more dynamic schema, event sequence, e.g. going to a doctor’s office, a movie theatre, a restaurant, a
grocery store.

30
Most of the details of frames or scripts are unlikely to be stated.
I stopped to get some groceries but there weren’t any baskets left so by the time I arrived at the check-out
counter I must have looked like a juggler having a bad day.
3. Culture
Culture:
1. culture = civilization (culture as manners, social institutions, excellence in arts and literature vs.
‘barbarism’); unilinear progress from barbarism to civilization; value-judgments.
2. Culture = socially acquired knowledge, by virtue of being a member of a particular society, covering both
practical/procedural (how to do sg) and propositional/encyclopedic knowledge (knowing that sg is or is not
true).

Sapir-Worf thesis of linguistic relativity (universal concepts: kinship terms, color terms, numerals,
grammatical categories, deeper concepts of time, space, number, matter; culture-bound concepts depend
for their understanding upon socially transmitted knowledge: “honesty”, “sin”, “kinship”, “honor”,
“nervous breakdown”, “supply and demand”, “the survival of the fittest”.

John Gumperz: culturally colored interactional styles, expectations and interpretive strategies.

Dell Hymes: ethnography of speaking, speech communities share detectable patterns of speech, “cultural
ways of speaking”, speech as a cultural phenomenon; .the role of speech in the creation and affirmation of
cultural identity.
Anna Wierzbicka: cultural ‘ethos’ and ‘cultural scripts’, natural semantic metalanguage and semantic
primitives (I, you, someone, something, this, kind of, good, bad, want, say, think, know, can, like,
because).

3. Research in pragmatics and culture

Cross-cultural pragmatics – pragmatic contrastive analysis of the realization of discourse phenomena in two or
more different languages such as speech act types, directness levels, modality markers, conversational structure
(e.g. opening and closing sequences; back-channel signals).

Intercultural pragmatics – analysis of pragmatic phenomena that appear when Ss of different cultures interact with
each other, e.g. when doing business or working together.

Interlanguage pragmatics – the ways nonnative language users select and realize speech acts in L2.

Pragmatic (communicative) interference – influence of learners’ native language and culture on their second
language performance; a source of cross-cultural miscommunication.

Positive transfer – when transferred forms from L1 to L2 result in successful communication, e.g. ‘Tudnád
... ?’ > ‘Could you ..?’ in directives (requests)

Negative transfer – e.g. when Russian speakers when asking for directions in English say ‘Tell me, please,
how to get to …’, or: Ne haragudj > Don’t be angry, Értsen meg! > Understand me, Nem történt semmi >
Nothing happened.

Pragmalinguistic transfer (failure) – when native procedures and linguistic means of speech act
performance are transferred (see above)

Sociopragmatic transfer (failure) – when learners assess the relevant situational factors (distance or
familiarity, age, gender, relative status) on the basis of their native sociopragmatic norms.
Situation: Students ask their teachers to give then more practice in conversation in class instead of
grammar.
Native English:

31
 You are right/thanks for letting me know/thanks for the suggestion, although
grammar is also important.
Native Hungarian: Majd én eldöntöm, hogy milyen ütem szerint haladunk.
Native Hung. in Eng.: I’m the teacher and I know what you need to learn.

4. Cross-cultural pragmatics

Research methods:
1) Spoken interaction (Oral data)
a) Authentic discourse (field notes and audio/video recording)
b) Elicited conversation (staged; conversation tasks, sociolinguistic interview)
c) Role-play (context control but valid representation of conversational practices?)
(1) Closed role-play (sit.description+single-turn response to standardized initiation)
(2) Open role-play (role card, info. gap, goal conflict, outcome not predetermined)
2) Written responses (survey methods, most commonly used)
i) Production questionnaires
(a) Discourse completion test (DCT) (with a rejoinder)
Jim and Charlie have agreed to meet at 6 o’clock to work on a joint project. Charlie arrives on
time and Jim is an hour late.
Charlie: I almost gave up on you!
Jim: ………………………… ..
Charlie: O.K. Let’s start working.
(b) DCT, open response format (free recall task, the choice to opt out)
Open item, verbal response only:
It’s your birthday, and you are having a few friends over for dinner. A friend brings you a
present. You unwrap it and find a blue sweater.
You say: ……………………………………………………..
Open item, free response:
You: ………………………………………………………….
ii) Multiple choice
Rrecognition task, closed format, fixed response alternatives; info. on production, comprehension and
metapragmatic judgments.
You are having dinner with your friend’s family. The food that you friend’s mother prepared is
delicious, and you want some more. What would you say?
1. I would wait until the mother saw my empty plate and offered more food.
2. ‘Please give me more food.’
3. ‘This food sure is delicious.’
4. ‘Could I have some more please?”
iii) Scaled response instruments (3/5/7-point Likert scales of appropriateness, politeness, etc.)
iv)
3) Interviews
Structured (detailed schedule) or open-ended:
Obtain narrative self-reports; need preparation; good to obtain long-term memories of generalized
knowledge states, attitudes, cultural/emic meanings of communicative practices or past events.
Think-aloud protocols (TAB):
Short-term memory: concurrent or consecutive/retrospective reports of thought processes during
engagement in a task, e.g. filling in a questionnaire.
4) Diaries (journal entries)
Least pre-structured, entirely participant-directed, focus on past experience, subjective theories; e.g. to
study learner strategies, immigrant perceptions, etc.

FOCUS PROCEDURE

32
 interaction comprehension production metapragmatic Online/ Interaction
offline with
researcher
Authentic + + + - on -/+
discourse
Elicited + + + - on -/+
conversation
Role play + + + - on -
Production + + + - off -
quesitonnaire
Multiple choice - + + + off/on -
Scales - - - + off -
Interview - - - + off +
Diary - - - + off -
Think-aloud - + + + on -
protocols

CCSARP (Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project, 1989)

Goal: to establish patterns of request and apology realizations under different social constraints across a
number of languages and cultures, including both native and nonnative varieties.
Languages investigated and population: students enrolled in American, Australian, British, Canadian,
Danish, German and Israeli universities, equal numbers of males and females
Instrument: DCT, consisting of scripted dialogues that represented socially differentiated situations; 16
situations, half of which elicit requests, the other half apologies;
Situational variation - the participants’ role relationship (e.g. teacher-student, waiter-customer), i.e. the
dimensions of Dominance, +/- D, (social power) and Social Distance (familiarity), x=y, x<y, x>y.
Data analysis: all the data were analyzed by native speakers, within a shared analytical framework – the
coding scheme (speech-act set).

REQUESTS:
Judith, I missed class yesterday, do you think I could borrow your notes? I promise to return them by tomorrow.

1) Alerter: Judith; also Darling, You fool, Mr X

2) Pre-posed supportive move: I missed …
3) Head act: could I …
4) Downgrader: do you think
5) Post-posed supportive move: I promise …
6) Supportive move, aggravating: Stop bothering or I will call the police.
7) Supportive move, mitigating: Could you clean up the mess? I am having some friend over for dinner.

Head Act
(a) Strategy types:
Mood derivable: Leave me alone
Perfomatives: I am asking you to clean up that mess
Hedged performatives: I would like to ask you …
Obligation statements: You’ll have to …
Want statements: I really wish you’d stop bothering me.
Suggestory formulae: How about cleaning up?
Query preparatory (reference to preparatory conditions as convenmtionalized in any specific language):
Could you .., Would you mind moving your car?
Strong hints (partial reference to object or element related to request): You have left the kitchen in a right
mess.

33
 Mild hints (no reference to such elements but interpretable by context): My parents are visitng
(b) Perspective
speaker oriented: Can I have it?
Hearer oriented: Can you do it?
Impersonal: It needs to be cleaned.
(c) Internal modifications (downgraders and upgraders); lexical, phrasal and syntactic.
Consultative devices: Do you think I could borrow your notes?
Understaters: Could you tidy up a bit before they come?
Intensifiers: Clean up that disgusting mess!
Expletives: Why don’t you get your bloody ass our of here!
Modal verbs: Can/could, will/would you …

APOLOGIES:
1) IFID: routine formulae: I’m sorry; I apologize; Excuse me.
2) Taking responsibility:
i) Lack of intent: I didn’t mean to upset you.
ii) Self-humbling
iii) Self-deficiency: I’m so forgetful!
iv) Self-blame: It’s my fault.
v) Justify hearer: You’re right to be angry.
vi) Expression of embarrassment: I feel awful about it!
vii) Admission of facts but not responsibility: I missed the bus.
viii) Refusal to acknowledge quilt
(a) Denial of responsibility: It wasn’t my fault.
(b) Blame the hearer: It’s your own fault.
(c) Pretend to be offended: I’m the one to be offended.
3) Explanation or account (external mitigating circumstances): The traffic was terrible.
4) Offer of repair: I’ll pay for the damage.
5) Concern for the hearer: Are you all right?
6) Promise of forbearance: This won’t happen again.

Examples:
I’m sorry. I missed the bus, and there was a terrible traffic jam. Let me make another appointment. I’ll make sure
that I’m here on time.

Situation:
You bump into an elderly lady in a department store, spill her things all over the floor and hurt her leg.

AmE response: Oh, I’m so sorry! A re you all right? Let me help you with your things.

H response: Kérem, ne haragudjon. Nagyon ügyetlen voltam. Jöjjön, segítek összeszedni

a csomagokat. Nem ütötte meg magát? Remélem, nem súlyos.

LECTURE 12
INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

The applications of pragmatics to the teaching of languages

(J. Thomas, Pragmatics and English Language Teaching)
pragmalinguistics > sociopragmatics

(1) Disambiguation of meaning in context

(a) Disambiguation is probabilistic; however, probabilities vary between languages
a bank - a financial institution/ a river bank
At the end of the road was a bank, a steep mud bank
BrE station = ‘railway station’; AmE, also ‘bus/coach station’, etc.

34
 Order of probability:
Fr. assister á > to attend, to assist, to assist/to take part in, witness
G. Depardieu: J’ai assisté á un viol (’I witnessed a rape’)
Translated as: ’I took part in a rape’ (when G.D. was interviewed on American
television)

(b) Interpretive bias

The Hotel Mercure in Grenoble, an advertisement for fine wines:
Des plaisirs raffinés á des prix incroyables
Translated for English quests as: ‘Refines pleasure at an incredible price’
Fr. incroyable – incredibly low (most probable interpretation)
Eng. incredible – incredibly high
Votre chat est particulier - positive interpretative bias, 'individual + GOOD > unique
Your cat is peculiar - negative interpretative bias, 'individual + BAD > odd, weird, strange

(c) What is polysemous in L1 may not be polysemous in L2

(Core meaning vs. extensions of meaning)
'Wing' (fill in for Hungarian!)
English Hungarian
Wing of an airplane +
Wing of a building +
Wing of a stage +
Wing of a political party +
Flank (of an army) -
Position in football +
Blade (of a propeller) -

(2) The assignment of complete meaning

The meaning of many (most) words is underspecified by its semantics; deictics are only truly meaningful in
context; grammatical words like and, for require pragmatic reasoning in order to ‘fill out’ the complete meaning.
We can fill out meaning in a similar but not identical way, in other languages.
The girls were punished for playing truant. (because they ...)
I gave her an omelet for her lunch (to eat for ...)
I gave her $2 for her lunch (so that she could buy ...)
She was given three years for burglary (as a punishment for …)
That remote control is for the video (belongs to …)

It's difficult to park at the university (geographical location)

The university is in debt. (legal entity)
When I was at university ... (life-stage) > in Fr. and Russ. ‘When I was a student (at university)
The university is offering premature retirement. (The administration)

Filling out meaning often involves metonymy (pars pro toto, totum pro partum). The little existing research
suggests that different languages favor different forms of metonymy.

The ham sandwhich just left without paying (The customer who had a ham sandwich)
Brussels has agreed to compensate British beef farmers (The EC Commission)
(Russ) Prijti v obed - to come at lunch(time) ('activity'>'time of activity)
I’ll fill up your car.

(3) Distinguishing sentence meaning from speaker meaning

Semantic meaning (the meaning of a word/sentence) is a two-part relationship: X means Y
Student: What does anthropogenic mean?
Lecturer: From human resources.

35
 Pragmatic meaning is a three-part relationship: S means Y by X
(A arrives at a meeting which she was supposed to attend)
Chairman: It was good of you to come.
A: What do you mean? (Thanking, welcoming, criticizing?)

X means Y Fleet Street > headquarters of national newspapers

S means Y by X A politician means 'newspaper journalists' by 'Fleet Street'

Technically: locution vs. illocution

Locution: Is that your car?
Illocution: S would like H to give him/her a lift.

SA of requesting could be performed by a number of different (not interchangeable!) utterances. The choice of
speech act strategy (e.g. direct imperative vs. indirect hint) is determined by both linguistic (pragmalinguistic) and
social (sociopragmatic) considerations.

Cross-cultural differences in choice of speech act strategy:

Sp. Give me one kilo of potatoes and two of pears.
Eng. Can I have ... please/ I'd like .... please

Pragmalinguistics: the pragmatic force associated with a particular linguistic structure/form in a given language.
Could you tell me…?/Have you anything to declare? - more polite in Eng., less in Russ.
Couldn't you tell me ...? - more polite in Russ, less in Eng.
English teacher: Would you like to read?
Russian teacher: Read!
A: Would you like something to drink?/Is it open?
B: Of course.
In Russ. konechno is a 'good' response in such situations, in Eng. is has negative implications (fault
or ignorance on the part of the addressee); a good response is sure/great/you bet!

Different spectrum for directives:

Eng. invite > suggest > request > order
+good for H +/-good for H -good for H -good for H & S has power over H

Chinese have fewer SA verbs covering this spectrum, which can lead Chinese learners to invite someone to do
something not necessarily seen as pleasurable or beneficial to H.

Sociopragmatics: the underlying reasons for choosing one form over another, assessments of social value of a
given SA. Important (universal) parameters in decision making - power, distance, size of imposition, rights and
obligations. Those parameters may be negotiated (decreased or increased) differently in different cultures, for
instance, British culture favors reducing the size of imposition, while American culture seems to favor reducing
social distance.

The way the following parameters are interpreted varies from culture to culture:
Status and social distance:
Child-parent relationship as close, non-authoritarian (T-forms) vs. distant, authoritarian (V-forms)
Student-teacher relationship (teachers' rights vs. students' obligations)

Size of imposition:
Borrowing a car in BG is a 'big deal', in the USA it is less so.
In Laos it is common to ask how much one weighs, in Western countries it can cause offence.

Cross-cultural differences in the observance of Gricean norms:

In India, local residents do not want to upset foreigners by giving them bad news so answer their questions
too optimistically, for instance, regarding how far it is to their destination.

36
 The Malagasy Republic people regularly provide less information than is required.

Cross-cultural differences in observance of interpersonal maxims:

Great emphasis on modesty and agreement (‘Do you think so?’ functions as indirect disagreement) in
Japanese society; agreement (‘Yes, but …) in Anglo-Saxon culture, tolerance of contradiction/cross talk in
India.

Politeness:
Central to western notion of politeness is giving options, but not in Chinese - the host will choose dishes
for you in a restaurant without consulting you, and a linguistic expression of optionality in, for instance,
inviting someone to one's home, is not seen as polite.

Levels of communication differences:

(Deborah Tannen, 1984, The Pragmatics of Cross-cultural communication)

When to talk, e.g. Athabaskan Indians consider it inappropriate to talk to strangers, thought of as
uncooperative.

What to say, e.g. Australian Aborigines never ask the question 'why?', New Yorkers of Jewish origin are
more likely to tell friends stories about their personal experience, non-Jewish Californians tend to talk
about events without focusing on how they feel about them.

Pacing and pausing, i.e. how fast one speaks and how long one waits following another S's utterance.

Listenership, how it is shown (gaze; 'Wow', 'No kiding' used by New Yorkers, but frightening and
confusing for Californians)

Intonation, e.g. Asian women using falling intonation; speakers of BrE use loudness only when angry,
speakers of Indian English use it to get the floor, which makes BrE speakers believe they are angry and
leads to a heated discussion.

Formulaicity, i.e. what is conventional in a language, e.g. Greeks use plenty of formulaic, poetic figures of
speech in everyday language.

Indirectness, e.g. American 'sticking to facts' in business and education vs. Japanese or Arab, for whom
'small talk' is essential for business dealing. In Greek, 'You can go if you want' (from father or husband)
means 'no'.

Cohesion and coherence

Cohesion - surface level ties showing relationships between elements in discourse
Coherence - organizing structure making the words and sentences into a unified discourse that has
cultural significance.

e.g. argumentation in Arabic is by accretion and repetition - highlighting by saying over and over
again the same point.

37