Overview

Chapter 6 “Pragmatics”shows the study of language in context, focusing on how context influences meaning. It explores how speakers use language to achieve communicative goals, considering factors like social relationships, situational context, and cultural norms. The chapter delves into key concepts such as speech acts, implicature, deixis, and politeness, illustrating how these principles govern everyday interactions. It also discusses the role of pragmatics in understanding irony, metaphor, and other figurative language, emphasizing the importance of context in interpreting intended meaning. Overall, this chapter highlights the dynamic nature of language and its ability to convey meaning beyond the literal, underscoring pragmatics as a crucial aspect of linguistic competence.

6.1SEMANTIC VS. PRAGMATIC MEANING

6.1.2Pragamatics

Pragmatics focuses on the meaning that the speaker actually wants to convey.It aims to tell the true meaning behind the words instead of their literal meaning.It studies how the contexts contributes to the meaning of the words. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted(Mey, Jacob L. 2006).It considers the speaker's intentions, the listener's assumptions, and the social and cultural context in which communication takes place.Pragmatics is the study of the implicature,speech acts and conversation.

6.1.2.2Speech acts

peech acts refers to something that not convey the information but also perform an action.For example,if someone says to the waiter, “my cup is empty,can you help me to fill it up?”,it conveys that someone’s desire to drink and also show an request that he wants the waiter to help him to get the water for him.There are five kinds of the speech acts_representatives,directives,commissives,expressives and declarations.The speech acts focuses on the use of the language,as the wittgenstein said, “don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use”,reflecting more and more people had pay attention to the social use of the language.Therefore,the speech acts has been applied to many field in the modern society such as education,legislation,business,psychology,etc.

6.1.3Comparing the semantics to the pragmatics

They are all the branches of the linguistics and they focus different views of the language.Semantics focuses on the relationship between the forms and meaning.It is not related to the context.Pragmatics focuses on the language in use.It studies the using of the language in the social situation.There are similarities and differences between the pragmatics and semantics.

6.1.3.1Similarities

Both of the two consider the importance of the context in understanding of the meaning.Pragmatics refer to the immediate of the context in the conversation and semantics consider the cultural context.They also focuses on the inference in meaning.Pragmatics uses the implicature that the inference take into account the intended meaning of the speaker.Semantics uses more logical inference to understand the meaning.They all play an important role in the communication of the humans.They are complementary so when we study the language,we ought to take both semantics and pragmatics into consideration.

6.1.3.4 Differences

Pragmatics pay more attention the use of the language in real life,it study the meaning of the actual meaning that the speaker want to convey in the real conversation.On the other hand,semantics study the abstract of the meaning such as the structure,syntax,etc.They use different ways to do the research.For example,pragmatics likely to do the research on the group of people and then analyze the collection of their conversation.They also interview some people and record them as the data of the research.Semantics prefer to do research in an more logical and strict way,they focus on the structure and formula of the context.Pragmatics is concerned with the implicature,metaphor and non-literal meaning.Instead,semantics focus the literal meaning,for example,one word relates to one or more meanings.

6.1.4Conclusion

Though three major kinds of semantics that I have introduced,we can know that semantics focuses on the study of the literal meaning and uses the logical and academic way to study the language.And the kinds of the pragmatics I have mentioned,we can learn that the pragmatics is more focused on real-life language use and the speaker’s intended meaning.Though the examples i make in the real life, we are able to know that the pragmatics is the study of the use of the language in our society.Semantics and pragmatics are different,. Semantics is concerned with the literal, de-contextualized meaning of words,phrases, and sentences, while pragmatics focuses on the contextualized meaning that speakers intend to convey.They have similarities,Only by studying both semantics and pragmatics together can we achieve a comprehensive understanding and study of language.They all can help us to convey our meaning more efficient.

6.2.2.6:”What”

      “What” mainly about the event. For example, when you play computer games with your friends, when they say “you’re terrible”, it can have two different meanings. One is you play so well and the other one is you play really bad. .

6.3.1 Register and appropriacy

6.3.1 Introduction

         In the last part, we know that different elements of the sentence can greatly change the context. This part mainly explains how the environment and other elements change the language we use and how to make our speech suitable.

6.3.2 Definition of Register and Appropriacy 

        Register is a concept that describes the variety of language because of different situations.

       Appropriacy is a concept that describes whether the language is appropriate. 

6.3.4: Appropriacy

    Appropriacy is closely related to register. Appropriacy determines the choice of appropriate words, and the intonation patterns people use to interact with one another. We need to pay attention to the appropriacy to make our language suitable or we may face embarrassment. (Gairns & Redman, 1986) For instance, when a teacher greets the class with "Good morning, class," students are expected to respond with polite expressions to demonstrate respect. It would be inappropriate for students to reply with informal phrases such as "What's up" or "Hey bro," which are more suitable for peer interactions.  Just as Hymes (1971) pointed out, there are rules of use without which rules of grammar would be useless. So that in daily communication, we should analyze the environment and combine the context to increase the appropriacy.

Reference

 1.AHD Staff (2022). "Semantics". American Heritage Dictionary. Harper Collins. Archived from the original on 31 January 2024. Retrieved 31 January 2024.

2.Pustejovsky, J. (2005) Lexical Semantics: Overview in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, Volumes 1-14 

3.Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1, 105, 7–15, 33–39. ISBN 9780521667708.

4. Mey, Jacob L. (2006). "Pragmatics: Overview". In Brown, E. K.; Anderson, Anne (eds.). Encyclopedia of language & linguistics (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 51–62.

5.Levinson, Stephen C. (2013). "Action Formation and Ascription". In Stivers, Tanya; Sidnell, Jack (eds.). The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 101–130.

6.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman 

7.Joos, M. (1961). The five clocks. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. 

8.Gairns, R., & Redman, S. (1986). Working with words - a guide to teaching and learning vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Questons

1.  Semantics primarily focuses on:

A. The use of language in specific social contexts

B. The actual intentions that speakers want to convey

C. The structure and literal meaning of words, phrases, and sentences

D. The implied meanings in language communication

2.  “Implicature” in pragmatics refers to:

A. What the speaker directly expresses

B. What the speaker intends to convey but does not explicitly state

C. The difference between the literal meaning of language and its actual use

D. The structure and grammatical rules of language

3.  A main difference between pragmatics and semantics is:

A. Pragmatics focuses on the literal meaning of language, while semantics focuses on the actual use of language

B. Semantics uses logical reasoning to understand meaning, while pragmatics focuses on the speaker’s intentions

C. Pragmatics focuses on the actual use of language in specific contexts, while semantics focuses on the structure and literal meaning of language

D. Semantics mainly studies metaphors and non-literal meanings, while pragmatics focuses on the direct meaning of words and sentences

Correct Answers:CBC

6.4.1 Origin of Grice's Cooperative Principle

6.41.1 The speech act

Austin and Searle (1969) had largely been concerned with the relationship between direct and indirect speech acts. It examines how utterances function as actions. They announced that the idea that utterances can be performative, meaning they do not just convey information but also perform actions (e.g., promising, apologizing).

6.4.1.2 Grice's Cooperative Principle

Then Grice was concerned with this distinction between saying and meaning. In order to explain how speakers assume that their addressees will reliably understand their intended meanings, Grice discovers a mechanism behind the process of interpretation, which is called “Cooperative Principle”.

6.4.2 Overview of the notion “Cooperative Principle” and the maxims.

6.4.2.1 What's Cooperative Principle?

Grice's Cooperative Principle is an assumed basic concept in pragmatics and a branch of linguistics concerned with language use in context, yet its interpretation is often problematic. It was proposed by the British philosopher H.P. Grice in his 1975 paper "Logic and Conversation". Bethan Davis said in his article that “cooperation” is a term often used in linguistics to characterise human behaviours in conversations”. Therefore, Cooperative Principle elaborates that effective communication relies on the assumption that participants in a conversation typically work cooperatively to achieve some certain interpersonal-communication purposes.

6.4.2.3 Conclusion

Cooperative Principle thus provides a robust framework for understanding in the process of communication, making the interaction more “readable” and “reasonable” from both conversation encoders and decoders.

6.4.3 Why has Cooperative Principle become prevalent?

6.4.3.1 Collaborated efforts

Initially, the Cooperative Principle addresses the fundamental assumption that conversation is a collaborative effort, which means that speakers need to pass on messages precisely and listeners must comprehend the speakers’ intensions for conversation to be successful. In language research, this assumption allows linguists and researchers to decode the underlying intentions behind spoken words, making it easier to study and understand human interaction. In daily communications, the principle offers an instruction on how to achieve a double-wins situation while communicating.

6.4.3.3 Conclusion

In summary, Grice’s Cooperative Principle is widely used because of it highlighting the collaborating effort in communication, applicability across different contexts and cultures and its explanatory power.

6.4.4 Flouting and violating of the Cooperative Principle

Although in the Cooperative Principle, people should follow the four maxims in order to achieve smooth communication, quite often we see maxims being flouted deliberately for various reasons. These violations can add layers of meaning to conversations, making them more dynamic and complex.

6.4.4.1 The differenve between "flouting" and "violation"

The violation of maxim is the condition in which the speakers don't purposefully fulfill or obey the four maxims (Zebra, 2017). Speakers can be said to violate the maxims by deliberately generate a misleading implicature when they know the reciever will not figure out the truth and will only believe in the surface meaning of the words. The speakers may say something insincere or vague, but will also make hearers assume that they are cooperating. Flouting shows little differences. Usually we find some flouting in the form of tautology, metaphor, overstatement, understatement, rhetorical questions and irony (Zebra, 2017).  According to Grundy (2000: 78), flouting maxim is a silent way of getting attentions from addressees to draw inference to recover an implicature.  Flouting maxims means that speakers purposefully don't obey the Cooperative Principle and intend their hearer to be aware of this. 

6.4.4.2 Functions of flouting and violating 

Flouting or violating the CP occurs when a speaker intentionally disregards the norms of the principle. Flouting or violating could produce various significant functions, such as creating humor, expressing dissatisfaction, or misleading the listener. Dr. Wang raised these examples in the book Introduction to Language Studies. In the case of the police interrogating a suspect, the suspect could choose not to follow the maxim of “Quality”, which suggests that we need to be authentic in communications. Here is another example for violating “quantity”. When someone asks, "Where do you live?" and the response is "Somewhere in the south," the speaker is violating the maxim of quantity by not 

providing enough information. These violations can add layers of meaning to conversations, making them more dynamic and complex.

Also, when something is regarded as taboo in the society, people tend to break the maxims being clear. For example, if a male professor forgot to zip up his trousers, a student might say “Excuse me, sir, there is something on your shoes”. When the professor looks down, he will see his zipper and realize what the student really wants to convey.

References

1. Davies, B. (2000). Grice’s Cooperative Principle: Getting the Meaning Across. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics, 8, 1- 26.

2. Wang, L. (2011). Introduction to language studies. Singapore: Pearson Custom Publishing.

3. Zebua, E., Rukmini, D., & Saleh, M. (2017). The violation and flouting of cooperative principles in the ellen degeneres talk show. Journal of Language and Literature, 12(1), 103–113.

4. Herawati, A. (2013). The Cooperative Principle: is Grice's Theory Suitable to Indonesian Language Culture? Jurnal Lingua Cultura, 7(45), 43-48.

5. Shuwei, Y. (2014). The use of Grice’s cooperative principle in Chinese TV talk shows/Yang Shuwei (Doctoral dissertation, University of Malaya).

Reference

1. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (No. 4). Cambridge university press.

2. Lakoff, Robin. "The Logic of Politeness; or, Minding Your P's and Q's." Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1972, pp. 292-305.

3. Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words. Harvard university press.

4. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University.

5. Butler, J. (2021). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. routledge.

6. Butler, J., & Trouble, G. (1990). Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Gender trouble, 3(1), 3-17.