语言学资料 Pragmatics

Directives: trying to get the hearer to do something (inviting, suggesting, requesting, advising, warning, threatening, ordering, begging, asking, pleading, commanding, entreating) E.g. I order you to leave right now. Open the window, please. Your money or your life! You’d better go to the clinic. Would you like to go to the picnic with us?

Eg: The bag is heavy. The meaning of an utterance is based on the sentence meaning; it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication. Utterance meaning is richer than sentence meaning; it is identical with the purpose for which the speaker utters the sentence.

E.g. It is cold in here. You have left the door wide open. Morning !
*** the most important part = the illocutionary acts E.g. ---- (the telephone rings) ----H: That’s the phone. (a) ----W: I’m in the bathroom. (b) ----H: Okay. (c)
Classification of Speech Acts

John Searle (1932- ), an American philosopher and linguist five general categories: Assertives/representatives Directives Commissives Expressives Declarations

Commissives: committing the speaker himself to some future course of action (promising, undertaking, vowing, offering, pledging) E.g. I promise to come. I will bring you the book tomorrow without fail. If you do that again, I’ll beat you to death.

Assertives/representatives: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believes to be true (stating, believing, swearing, hypothesizing) E.g. I think the film is moving. I’m certain I have never seen the man before. I solemnly swear that he had got it.


Sentence Meaning Utterance Meaning


Sentence – a grammatical concept; an abstract, self-contained unit in isolation from context. Utterance – what people actually utter in the course of communication. Sentence meaning -- abstract and contextindependent meaning; literal meaning of a sentence; having a dyadic relation as in: What does X mean? Utterance meaning -- concrete and contextdependent meaning; intended meaning of a speaker; the sum total of sentence meaning and context; having a triadic relation as in: What did you mean by X?
Some Basic Notions in Pragmatics

Pragmatics, Semantics
Semantics---- is the study of the literal meaning of a sentence (without taking context into consideration). Pragmatics---- the study of the contextual meaning (taking context into consideration) and the appropriateness of naturally occurring utterances.


A locutionary act may have different illocutionary forces in different contexts. E.g. Don’t you think it’s too stuffy in here? Similarly, an illocutionary act can be performed by different locutionary acts. E.g. Open the door please. Would you please open the door? The doorbell is ringing.
Chapter 6
Pragmatics
What is Pragmatics?

a comparatively new branch of study in the area of linguistics developed and established in the 1960s and 1970s Pragmatics is --- the study of language in use or language communication. --- the study of language production & language comprehension. --- the study of meaning in context. --- the study of language in relation to its users.
Context

a basic concept in the study of pragmatics generally considered as constituted knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer the linguistic knowledge and the extra-linguistic knowledge the extra-linguistic knowledge including knowledge of the world /cultural background, knowledge about the specific situation / time, place, manner, etc., knowledge about each other /the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, etc

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Constatives & Perfomatives


Constatives: utterances serving to state a fact, report that something is the case, or describe what something is; verifiable (either true or false) E.g. I go to the park every Sunday. I teach English. Performatives: utterances which do not describe or report anything, but perform acts and cannot be verified (cannot be said to be true or false). E.g. I do. I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth. I bequeath my watch to my brother. I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow. I promise to finish it in time. I apologize. I declare the meeting open. I warn you that the bull will butt.


Speech Act Theory

the Oxford philosopher of language John Austin (1911-1960) How to Do Things with Words (1962) analyzing the role of utterances in relation to the behavior of the speaker and the hearer in interpersonal communication aiming to answer the question: “What do we do when using language?”
Austin’s New Model of Speech Acts

a speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking:
Locutionary act----an act of saying something, i.e. an act of making a meaningful utterance (conveying the literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology). Illocutionary act----an act performed in saying something (expressing the intention of the speaker while speaking). In saying X, I was doing Y. In saying “I will come tomorrow”, I am making a promise. Perlocutionary act----an act performed as a result of saying something, the consequence or the change brought about by the utterance, the effect on the hearer.