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PRAGMATICS

PRAGMATICS. Pragmatic differen ces across cultures. Deborah Tannen level of indirectness tolerated paralinguistic signals of different speech acts : attention, turn taking, silence

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PRAGMATICS

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  1. PRAGMATICS

  2. Pragmatic differencesacross cultures Deborah Tannen • level of indirectness tolerated • paralinguistic signals of different speech acts: attention, turn taking, silence • different cultural expectations - stereotypes (the pushy New Yorker, the stony American Indian, the inscrutable Chinese)

  3. Example 1: TAKING THE FLOOR Indian English (by raising volume) British English (by repeating the introductory phrase)

  4. polite listening: waiting for the other person to finish accompanying with signals of acknowledgement “cross-chatting” is acceptable Attention and interest: Hungarian

  5. Example 2: ‘Thanksgiving dinner’ situation A: In fact one of my students told me for the first time, I taught her for over a year, that she was adopted. And then I thought – uh – THAT explains SO many things. B: What. That she was – A: Cause she’s so differentfrom her mother B: smarter than she should have been? Or stupider than she should’ve been. A: It wasn’t smart or stupid, Actually, it was just she was so different. Just different. B: [hm]

  6. Silence • Taboo in most Western cultures • Make your voice heard (in schools) • Small talk • Politeness in Nordic cultures • Keep your joys and sorrows to yourself! • No small talk – defend your private world! • Lack of inner depth in China • Listen to your thoughts!

  7. Ethnocentric view of speech acts and the Gricean maxims? Intellectual traditions behind expectations of directness colelctivism individualism

  8. Anna Wierzbicka • Cross-cultural differences in directness • Mrs Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit! • Will/Won’t/Would you sit down? • Please, have a little more! You must! • Would you like to have some more? How about a beer? • What’s the time? • You wouldn’t happen to have the correct time, would you?

  9. Indirectness and politeness • You are to get off. Not to show oneself to me here! • Why don’t you bloody get off? Get off, will you. • Go to hell! ?Would you go to hell? • Open your books! Would you like to open your books? • Underlying beliefs • individualism/ collectivism • „compromise”

  10. Should you not make your utterance more informative than required?(How are you?) • Should you always be truthful? (I’m fine thanks. No, I really couldn’t take more) • Should you always be relevant and straightforward? (Arab business, collectivism)

  11. Communicative competence • „An aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meaning interpersonally within specific contexts” (Dell Hymes , 1967) • CALP and BICS

  12. Communicative competence(Celce-Murcia, 2008:36) SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE DISCOURSE COMPETENCE FORMULAIC COMPETENCE STRATEGIC COMPETENCE INTERACTIONAL COMPETENCE

  13. Interactional competence • Speech acts: expressing intentions • Implicature: reading between the lines • Conversation management • Non-verbal communication Grice’s Interaction Theory (1975) • Maxims of • Quality • Quantity • Relevance • Manner • Cooperation

  14. Sociocultural competence • Dialect • Can I help you duck? • Register • Email/letter style, address forms • Naturalness • Good bye, birthday boy! • Pá’, viszlát, jó napot! • I just love that levander shirt! (F/M) • Cultural references & figures of speech • I need it like a hole in my head.

  15. Goals of a pragmatic theory • produce a classification of speech acts, • analyse and define speech acts, • specify the various uses of expressions, • relate literary and direct language use to • linguistic structure, • the structure of the communicative situation, • the social institutions, • speaker-meaning, • implication, presupposition and understanding.

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