Meaning as Sign and Action

1. Meaning as Sign and Action Context of Situation: • Within a community, different patterns of speaking are evident depending on contexts. e.g: there would be differences between speakers according to status, like that of children and adults, superior and subordinates, difference in sexes, and occupations.

2. Interpretation of the following utterance: “I didn’t see the stop sign”. - to a policeman - to a friend after jamming on the brakes. - to a friend who waited for your arrival.

3. Context of Situation and Context of Culture: • The context of situation often cannot be divorced from the context of culture. • Behaviour which is culturally linked accompanies the interpretation of signs manifested through language.

4. Together with verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal signs (contextualization cues), interlocutors will be guided in making the situated inferences. • Actions that are carried out through verbal means are called speech acts.

5. Coherence Breakdowns: • Kramsch (1998) terms the act of imposing meaning onto utterance according to the situational and cultural context as establishing pragmatic coherence. • Coherence breakdowns arise as a result of mismatch in expectations or discrepancies in participants’ inferences and frames of expectations’ (Kramsch 1998: 29) • e.g: use of silence

6. DEFINITION • Pragmaticsis a subfield of linguistics • Itstudieshowthe use of languageisbasedontherelationshipestablishedbetweenutterance, context and interlocutors. • (Baena, E. 2002)

7. OBJECTIVES & PURPOSES • Why PRAGMATICS? • Common un everydaylife • Wide subject to be studied • Comes out of languagestudy

8. MakingMeaning • EXAMPLES

9. EXAMPLES

10. THEORIES • SPEECH ACTS THEORY • Words do nothavemeaningbythemselves. • (Searle, J.R. ; Kiefer, F. & Bierwisch, M. 1980)

11. THEORIES • Speechacts can be analysedbythreelevels • Locutionaryact • Perlocutionaryact • Ilocutionaryact

12. THEORIES • LOCUTIONARY ACT • The performance of anutterance • Semantic and sintacticaspects

13. 2. THEORIES • EXAMPLE • ‘CLOSE THE WINDOW’

14. 2. THEORIES • ILLOCUTIONARY ACT • Real intendedmeaning • EXAMPLE: • Thepersonwhoistalkingiscold

15. 2. THEORIES • PERLOCUTIONARY ACT • It’s actual effect • EXAMPLE: • Theaction of closingthewindow

16. 2. THEORIES • RELEVANCE THEORY • Themeaning of a concept isthe subtotal of itsimpicationforpossibleobservations and actions.

17. 2. THEORIES • There are foursubprincipleswithinthistheorycalledmaxims • Quantity. (quantity of information) • Quality (be truthful) • Relevance/Relation (be relevance) • Manner (be clear)

18. Speech Act Speech Event Speech Situation Speech

19. What speech events and acts would you expect in the following situations? • A Trial • A Wedding • A Date • Yum Cha on Sunday

20. Speech Acts • How we ‘do things’ with words • John Austin and John Searle • ‘It’s cold in here.’ • Propositional Content • Locutionary Force • Illocutionary Force • Perlocutionary Force • ‘We would like to thank customers for not smoking while in this store.’

21. Illocutionary Force • Sometimes difficult to identify • Often depends on context • Sometimes spread over several utterances • There may be more than one illocutionary force

22. Kinds of Speech Acts • Representatives (S conveys a belief) • Directives (S tries to get H to do something) • Commissives (S commits to future action) • Declarations (S creates a new external situation—performatives) • Expressives (S expresses personal feelings)

24. Direct and Indirect Speech Acts • Direct speech acts • Use verbs that have the meaning of the act (e.g. ‘I promise I will go’, ‘Did you steal my pencil?’) • Indirect speech acts • Use other ways to perform the speech act • ‘Can you come tomorrow?’ • ‘I didn’t know I made you angry’ • ‘I suggest you get out of my office before I punch you!’

25. What can we do with speech acts? • Recognize what actions users are doing in a natural language based interface • Sometimes mixed with domain level frames to detect what someone wanted in a task based dialogue system (scheduling a meeting, registering for a conference, making an airplane reservation) • If clusters of speech acts are associated with roles, you can use them to identify roles within an interaction • Current work on meeting summarization • Some work on “social positioning” in the mixed-initiative dialogue community in the 90s

26. Speech act inventories

27. What questions can we answer with them? • You could think of them as moves in a game (like chess) • Each move is part of a strategy • Moves work together to accomplish intentions • But each speaker has their own set of intentions – in some sense they are competing • You can explain what strategies were effective or not for accomplishing any of these intentions • From this analysis, you can conclude things about power, positioning, influence, etc. • Why might someone be insulted when you politely explain something to them? • You can talk about different social languages used to enact speech acts (e.g., direct versus indirect)

28. Task

29. How many ways can you express the speech act of A threat or warning? Threats

30. Conditions • Not all speakers can perform all speech acts • There are certain conditions necessary for an utterance to be considered a certain kind of speech act • Felicity conditions

31. Felicity Conditions • Speech acts judged not by ‘truth value’ but by their ‘happiness’ • Language (propositional content) • Context (preparatory condition) • ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’ • Participants/setting • Intention • Speaker is sincere, believes the act will have the desired force

32. Felicity Conditions • Rules that need to be followed for an utterance to work. • A promise: • I say I will perform an action in the future • I intend to do it. I believe I can do it. • I think I would not normally do it. • I think the other person wants me to do it. • I intend to place myself under an obligation to perform the action. • We both understand what I’m saying. • We are both normal, conscious human beings. • Both of us are in normal circumstances. • The utterance contains an illocutionary force indicating device.

33. Task • What are the conditions for: • A marriage proposal • A bet • A request • An order

34. Speech Acts across Cultures • Apologies • ‘Would you like a beer?’ • Have you eaten?

35. 2. THEORIES • COOPERATION THEORY • Theway in whichpeople try to makeconversationswork.

36. The Cooperative Principle • Having identified the structural features that characterise speech, we also need to understand the pragmatic rules that govern how we choose and interpret those features • A key pragmatic framework is known as the ‘Cooperative Principle’, most associated with the work of Paul Grice • Grice came up with a well-known model for analysing conversation according to this principle:

37. The Co-operative Principle: • Grice suggests that there is a set of assumptions guiding the how people conduct conversations. • Grice proposes a general co-operative principle which comprises four basic maxims of conversation.

38. Conversational Implicature • We guess what people mean by referring to certain DEFAULT EXPECTATIONS • When people do not fulfill the default expectations • They create IMPLICATURE (‘special meaning’

39. Implicature • I love you. • Thank you.

40. How is Alan doing in his new job at HSBC? • Oh, quite well, I think. He likes his colleagues and he hasn’t been to prison yet.

41. Default Expectations • Grice • Conversation is ‘rational behavior’ • The Cooperative Principle • Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it is occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

42. Conversational ‘Maxims’ • The Maxim of Quantity • Be only as informative as required for current conversational purposes. • The Maxim of Quality • Say only what you believe to be true and adequately supported. • The Maxim of Relation • Be relevant. • The Maxim of Manner • Be clear: be brief and orderly and avoid obscurity and ambiguity.

43. Maxims vs. Rules • Sets of expectations which we exploit to make meaning. • The point is not that we follow these maxims or that we ‘should’ follow them. • The point is that when we deviate from them we create a IMPLICATURE.

44. Maxim of Quantity • Make your contribution as informative as required for the current purposes of the exchange. • Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

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

46. Maxims of Relevance and Manner • Maxim of Relevance • Be relevant • Maxim of Manner • Avoid obscurity of expression • Avoid ambiguity • Be brief • Be orderly

47. Examples • Which Maxim/s is/are being flouted? • What kind of implicature does it create • Do you have any money on you? • Is there anywhere I can powder my nose? • Isn’t my new boyfriend handsome? • He has a very nice personality.

48. A Well, how do I look? • B Your shoes are nice. • ‘I could eat a horse’ • ‘Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.’ • A So what do you think of Mark? • B His flatmate’s a wonderful cook.

49. A Does your dog bite? • B No. • A [Bends down to stroke it and gets bitten] Ow! You said your dog doesn’t bite. • B That isn’t my dog.

50. Husband How much did that new dress cost, darling? • Wife I know, let’s go out tonight. Now, where would you like to go?