Pragmatics presentainon ppt

Pragmatics
Language and communication
 These points will be focused on:
 Introducing Pragmatics
 Language- particular (= linguistc knowledge)
 Language- general (= non-linguistic knowledge)
 Providing examples
 Model of integrating linguistic & non-linguistic interpretation
 How does the hearer chooses a the right interpretation.

Ruth Margaret Kempson
King's College London
British linguist
From
United Kingdom
specialist in literature and science
Gender
Female
Birth
1 January 1944

Pragmatics
• Is a brunch of linguistics (outer circle).
• Is the study of communication, deals with
invisible (hidden meaning) of sentences,
utterances. Not the literal meaning.
• The study of speakers intended meaning (context meaning)
• The goal of pragmatics is: provide a set of principles to show:
[how knowledge of language and general reasoning] interact
in the process of language understanding.

Language - particular (=linguistic knowledge)
• the knowledge of language illustrates the meaning(i.e.
literal meaning) of words and the way in which they
combine to form sentence and sentence meanings
( under the label of semantics as a part of the
grammar of language). (called: encoded meaning)
 E.g/ A: can you cook? B: I know how to put a kettle on.
The hearer is parsing B’s sentence by using rules of
language till he/she reach the literal meaning which is:
person B: knows how to put a kettle on.
The speaker has the knowledge of doing this
But, is that the intended meaning? (NO) so what?

Non-linguistic (commonsense reasoning principle)
• Means non-encoded part of meaning.
• Using the general knowledge that we have about
the world. [ our experience] interpretation of
things that occur around us.
 Enables hearer to establish some rather different and
richer interpretation.
E.g/ A: can you cook? B: I know how to put a kettle on.
By using non-linguistic interpretation or commonsense
reasoning principle the hearer understand:
The speaker can not cook or doesn’t interest in doing it.

integrating linguistic & non-linguistic interpretation
• Understanding the intended meanings either semantically
(literal meaning) or pragmatically ( context meaning)
requires a mixture of both (linguistic& non-linguistic)
information or interpretation.
e.g/A: Elton sang at Diana’s funeral. Did you see it?
B: I spent the whole day in Kensington gardens.
The smell was amazing. Think!!!!!!
How does B understand what A mean by using it?
How does A understand what the words the smell refer to?
It requires first B’s parsing by using linguistic knowledge to identify
that it refers to is ( the funeral process),

• And A: uses his/her general knowledge to identify
that yes he was there at the time of the funeral
process.
 the different kinds of knowledge – one language –
based, and the much more general store of
knowledge – have to be combined together
 what the words it, the smell, mean in the particular
context in which they are used. That means they rely
on a framework of structure constructed by parsing
the sentence by language- internal rules, in
combination with the general commonsense
reasoning principles.

• Grammar – internal principles articulate both syntactic
and semantic structure of sentences.
• Semantic structure sometimes miss to fill the gap of
intended meaning ( incomplete specification), because
there are such an ironic, metaphoric, indirect
interpretations.
• Pragmatic principles explains and completes the
(incomplete specification) which semantics couldn’t
hold, to yield the full communicative effect of an
uttered sentence whether metaphorical, ironical and
so on.

• When the message of a speaker goes beyond
the literal or logical meaning of the sentences
used, a pragmatic inference is required to
understand the complete meaning of an
utterance.

How does a hearer chooses a right interpretation?
• Principles of commonsense reasoning(=inference)
explains how a hearer selects the interpretation which
the speaker intended. Why?
 Because there are many possible ways of interpreting an
utterance such as: direct, indirect, metaphoric and ironic.
• There are two provided way in which a hearer might
depend on in order to gain the intended meaning of
speakers speech.
• First: cooperative principle (Grice 1975)
• Second: relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995).

• Since we mean more than what we say and
sometimes we mean the opposite of what we
say through ironic, metaphoric or indirect
interpretations. So there must be a way of
understanding each other.
• “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 ˮ
(Grice 1989, cited under Foundational Works,
p. 26)

• Grice says that when we communicate we assume,
without realizing it, that we, and the people we are
talking to, will be conversationally cooperative - we
will cooperate to achieve mutual conversational ends.
This conversational cooperation even works when we
are not being cooperative socially.
• Grice suggests that in order not to go too far in
finding the hidden meaning of utterances and
to achieve meaning easily as soon as possible
we had better to follow cooperative principle in
our conversations.

Cooperative principle
• Cooperative principles is structured by a number of
maxims such as maxims of:
• quality: provide evidence of what you say. Do not say
what you believe is incorrect.
• Relevance: be relevance. Give a reply which fits the
question
• Quantity: be informative as required not more so
• Manner: be brief be orderly. avoid ambiguity.

Weak points of cooperative principles
• They can be VIOLATED. E.g.
If someone violate the maxim of quality, he/she lies.
If violate the maxim of quantity he/she doesn’t give enough
information.
• it is not always the case that people do tell the truth, or are
relevant.
• Philosopher Kent Bach writes: “Grice presented them in the
form of guidelines for how to communicate successfully”.
(Kent Bach 2005)
• They are not sociological generalizations about speech

relevance theory
• believes that, there are two aspects related to utterance
interpretation and the expression.
• First, the decoded information inherently associated with an
expression which is uttered – i.e. words that have been said
and the information that they convey.
• Second, there is the need to make choices which enrich
encoded information to demonstrate what the speaker had
intended to convey by using those words.

Pragmatics presentainon ppt

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Pragmatics presentainon ppt