Pragmatics and Discourse 2018-2019

1. Pragmatics and Discourse 2018-2019

2. Final exam(s) • Lingua Inglese III: • Written exam + oral exam (General English)  50 % + • Oral exam (Linguistics)  50% • = 9 CFU

3. References • 1) Cruse A., 2011, Meaning in Language, OUP: Oxford; pp. 28-29, 42-43, 364-377 , 401-407 , 414-424, 426-432; (Lingue library) • 2) Cutting J., 2008, Pragmatics and Discourse, Routledge: London & NY; Sections: 1 (A-D), 2 (A-D), 3 (A-D), 4 (A-D), 5 (A-D) (Lingue library) • 3) Douthwaite J., 1991, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Sei: Torino; Only Chapter 2: “Sociolinguistic Aspects of Language and Language Teaching” (Lingue library) • 4) Douthwaite J., 2000, Towards a Linguistic Theory of Foregrounding, Edizionidell’Orso: Alessandria; pp. 51, 54, 60-65, 72-74, 100; (section “bacheca” of my personal page + Aulaweb) • 5) Grice H. P., 1975, “Logic and Conversation”, In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts, P. Cole & J. L. Morgan, Academic Press : NY; pp. 45–47, 49 (section “bacheca” of my personal page + Aulaweb) • NB: for the references of the practice part (‘Lettorato’) please check Denys Jones’s, Sean Grimes’s and ElgaNicolini’spersonal pages and Aulawebplatforms.

4. Enrolments • Signing up for the written exams (Lettoratoscritto) and the oral exams (Modulo Teorico) is OBLIGATORY. • Failure to do so in time (using the the enrolment forms available on the Lingue and Culture Moderne and on the University websites) will result in automatic exclusion from exams. • In other words, NO EXCEPTIONS

5. General Aims of the 3rd year theoretical module • To lead students to ask themselves questions about how we communicate and look for the answers  development of their criticalthinking skills • To lead students to develop their theoretical understanding and of the general mechanisms lying at the basis of human communication and practical ability to apply them, thus leading them to develop their own communicative/relational skills

6. Expected outcome • Students will be required to show the ability of • explainingthe theoretical frameworks which lie at the basis of modern pragmatics clearly and with terminological appropriateness(propositional meaning ≠ connotational meaning; communication ≠ conversation; formal ≠ polite; etc.) and • of elaborating them critically; • showing the ability to apply the theoriesthey have studied both to their own communicative behaviour and to brief pragmatic analyses of texts.

7. Bloom’s taxonomy of critical thinking skills (1956) (Bloom Benjamin et al., 1956, Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company)

8. Beware • “Because pragmatic data consist of everyday utterances, the first impression of pragmatics tends to be that it is really quite easy: the examples and the ways in which they are described seem to accord closely with our intuitions about everyday talk. […] But as time goes on, we realize that the underlying ideas in pragmatics are really very difficult indeed”. (Grundy P., 2000, Doing Pragmatics, OUP, NY, my emphasis)

9. Some definitions of pragmatics • “Pragmatics is the study of those principles that will account for why a certain set or sentences (e.g. ???Fred’s children are hippies, and he has no children) are anomalous, or not possible” AND “pragmatics is the study of language from a functional perspective, that is, that it attempts to explain facets of linguistic structure by reference to non-linguistic pressures and causes” (Levinson S, 1983, Pragmatics, CUP, Cambridge).

10. “The term ‘pragmatics’ […] is now generally applied to the study of the relation between the language and its users (speakers and hearers), or more specifically, to the contextual conditions governing the speaker’s choice of an utterance and the hearer’s interpretation of it.” (Leech G., Short M., 1981, Style in Fiction, Longman, London) • “[Pragmatics is] Meaning in use or meaning in interaction” (Thomas J, 1995, Meaning in interaction: an introduction to Pragmatics, Longman, London). • “[Pragmatics is] the study of how people make sense of each other linguistically” (Yule G, 1996, Pragmatics, OUP, Oxford). • “Pragmatics is the systematic study of meaning by virtue of, or dependent on, the use of language. The central topics of inquiry in pragmatics include implicature, presupposition, speech acts and deixis.” (Huang Y, 2007, Pragmatics, OUP, Oxford)

11. COHESION • LANGUAGE MAKING LINKS WITH ITSELF, e.g. MAKING ITS GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL RELATIONSHIPS EXPLICIT. VERBAL SIGNALS PRESENT IN THE TEXT. (remember co-text is only made up of linguistic elements!) Halliday M., Hasan R.,1976, Cohesion in English, Longman, London.

12. COHESIVE DEVICES (language items which refer to other language items in the text and help create the structural unity of the text itself) GRAMMATICAL COHESION • REFERENCE • SUBSTITUTION • ELLIPSIS • CONJUNCTION LEXICAL COHESION • REPETITION • LEXICAL REITERATION

13. Communication as a process • Therefore, human communication is a complex, hypothesis-testing (cf. assumptions), information-processing, decision-makingprocess of interaction and negotiation and Modern Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis recognise it as such.

14. AdaptedfromSearle 1969 S = speaker H = hearer A = Act

15. Cooperation Paul Grice published what is known as the Cooperative Principle in 1975, which sees conversation as a spontaneously cooperative effort between speakers.

16. WHAT IS CONVEYED WHAT IS SAID WHAT IS MEANT (IMPLICATED) propositional meaning Implicature (e.g. entailments) conventional conversational

17. What is said • A: What is your name? • B: Elisabetta. What is said (Propositional meaning): my name is Elisabetta [including entailment(s): I have a name; my name is that of a female, etc.] What is implicated: //

18. What is meant: conventionally • Certain linguistic elements are conventionally attached non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, called CONVENTIONAL IMPLICATURES. In other words they do not impact on the truth/falsity of the utterance, at the semantic level, but contribute to its overall meaning at the pragmatic level (e.g. the difference between ‘and’ and ‘but’): • She’s poor and happy. (conventional implicature: ‘She’s happy because she’s poor’) • She’s poor but happy. (conventional implicature: ‘She’s happy in spite of the fact that she’s poor’) 3) He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave. (conventional implicature: ‘He’s brave because he’s an Englishman’) • Even Bill likes Mary. (conventional implicatures: a) ‘Other people besides Bill like Mary’; b) ‘Of the people under consideration, Bill is the least likely to like Mary.’)

19. The Politeness Principle Leech (1983) established that there is a politeness-oriented behaviour which is adopted (or should be adopted) by speakers. He theorised the Politeness Principle to fill the gap he identified in the Cooperative Principle, namely to explain why speakers so often flout the maxims the CP: for politeness’ sake. This implies that sometimes we break the Maxims of Cooperation to respect those of Politeness.

20. The Politeness Principle (2) Minimize (all things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs; maximize (all things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs. The six maxims which make the Politeness Principle operational are: 1) The TactMaxim: Minimize the expression of beliefs which imply costto other; maximize the expression of beliefs which imply benefitto other. 2) The GenerosityMaxim: Minimize the expression of benefitto self; maximize the expression of costto self. 3) The Approbation/PraiseMaxim: Minimize the expression of beliefs which express dispraise of other; maximize the expression of beliefs which express praise of other. 4) The ModestyMaxim: Minimize the expression of praise of self; maximize the expression of dispraise of self. 5) The AgreementMaxim: Minimize the expression of disagreement between self and other; maximize the expression of agreement between self and other. 6) The SympathyMaxim: Minimize the antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy between self and other.

21. Brown and Levinson Brown and Levinson’s theory (1987) revolves around the concept of FACE, first introduced by the sociologist Goffman. They claim that, in order to socialize successfully, we need to show and acknowledge the awareness of others’ and of our own FACE = public self-image, the sense of self.

22. In general, communication aims at SAVING FACE (others’ and ours): we respect each others’ expectations regarding self-image, we take other people’s feelings (and ours) into account. • In short, we try and avoid performing Face Threatening Acts (FTAs), namely those linguistic acts that can threaten, in any way, our hearers’ POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE FACE.

23. The polite-impolite scale

24. Do the FTA: with redress - Negative Politeness • FTAs which contain Negative Politeness strategies are used to pay attention to the hearer’s negative face, namely to avoid ‘intruding’ hearers’ territory too much. Speakers use them to soften the imposition of their utterances, by giving hearers options and space, and creating social distance, thus trying and saving hearer’s negative face. • Such strategies include: apology and hesitation (‘Excuse me, I’m not even sure I should be asking you’), hedges(= mitigating strategies: ‘if possible’, ‘sort of’, ‘bit of’, ‘I wonder if’, etc.; ‘Could I ask you a quick question, if at all possible?’), questions which give hearers the chance to say no (e.g. which hand them an excuse to say no ‘on a plate’: ‘I know you’re very tired, but…’ ), pessimistic remarks(‘I don’t suppose I’m still in time for your office hours?’), admitting hearers’ ‘superiority’ in the matter under discussion (‘I’m just unable to use computers…could you please give me a hand, you high-tech genius?’), pre-sequences: • EX1: A) You remember that film I wanted to see? (= pre-sequence) • B) Yeah, I know, it’s in theatres these days, pity I’ve got so much to do…

25. Do the FTA: with redress - Positive Politeness • FTAs which contain Positive Politeness strategies are used to pay attention to the hearer’s positive face, by demonstrating/creating closeness and solidarity, appealing to friendship and common wants, emphasising shared ground, thus saving the hearer’s positive face. • They include: reference to shared knowledge (‘I know you hate parties, but come anyway please!’), expression of interest, sympathy, approval (‘What he said to you was horrifying, I completely support the way you reacted’), vocatives (‘c’mon Jen!’), use of in-group identity markers, such as nicknames (‘Jen, darling, could you…?’), shared slang and dialect (The party’s going to be so cool, you simply can’t miss it, period.), politically correct language (e.g. gender neutral or ethnic neutral pronouns), pseudo-agreement: EX: A) What’s the most important contextual variable? B) It’s time. A) Yeah, time is one of the variables, what else?

26. Do the FTA: on record, without redress (badly) • When an invitation, request, comment, order etc is made/issued blatantly [e.g. it contains an imperative], without any linguistic strategy which tries to weaken the imposition, it represents a BALD ON RECORD FTA – it is a direct speech actwithout redress: • EX1: A) Shut the door. • EX2: A) Come to the cinema with me tonight. • EX3: A) Do this for me by tomorrow.