pragmatics
from utterance to understanding
Any observation of normal conversational
behavior makes it immediately clear that people
never say exactly what they mean, and people
always infer more than what was said. The
question becomes, how are we able to
accomplish this? How do we manage to say so
little yet communicate so much? How do we
communicate in spite of a language’s limitations?
Some “incomplete” messages
 Wanna get a bite?
 Have you got the time?
 Q: “Where’s Mikey?”
 A: “There was an accident on H-2.”
 Q: “Wanna get a beer?”
 A: “I got a paper due tomorrow.”
 A: “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday.”
 A: “I’m broke.”
communication as a joint activity
Clark begins to answer these questions by
looking at communication as an example of a
joint activity. These are activities in which
persons are seen as collaborating in order to
accomplish some action or goal of mutual
concern. The goal of communication is to
establish a level of understanding sufficient to
serve some secondary purpose.
The construal problem
Clark claims that in order to establish
understanding via communication we must
resolve the construal problem. This refers to
the establishing of some agreement as to what
each party intends by what they have said. We
rarely do this via explicit and effortful
communicative behavior. However we do
assume that our communicative partner is
behaving cooperatively.
The cooperative principle
Grice dealt with our ability to find meaning
beyond the surface meaning of an utterance by
invoking a cooperative principle which states
that one should:
“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.”
conversational implicatures
According to Grice, one way in which we are
able to “mean” more than we say (i.e., activate
more meaning than was evident in a surface
analysis of an utterance) is by using
conversational implicatures and appropriate
inference-making.
Properties of conversational implicatures
Conversational implicatures have three main
characteristics:
 They are non-conventional.
 The implicature is not a logical consequence of
the utterance.
 They are calculable.
 It is assumed that the hearer will be able to figure
out the intended meaning.
 The are defeasible.
 The speaker can cancel or opt out of the
implicature.
conversational maxims
Grice claimed that adhering to the cooperative
principle would manifest in people following four
maxims:
Quantity -- Make your contribution as
informative as is required.
Quality -- Try to make your contribution true, one
for which you have adequate evidence.
Manner -- Be clear. Avoid ambiguity and
obscurity.
Relation -- Make your contribution relevant for
the exchange.
Adhering to conversational maxims
Following the maxims need not be obvious.
Cooperation is assumed; consequently
communicators must figure out how utterances are
consistent with the maxims. For instance a
communicator may flout a maxim. Flouting refers
to violating a maxim so blatantly (i.e., apparently
committing a quality violation) that any reasonable
person knows the utterance is not intended to be
taken at face value.
deception and implicature
What constitutes deception? Most theorists define
deception as bringing about in another a belief that
one does not personally believe. In short, getting
you to believe X even though I don’t believe X.
Most deception theorists identify roughly four
methods of bringing about deception (i.e., four
deception “types”): fabrication, denial, omission,
and exaggeration. The problem is only the first two
actually involve what is commonly perceived as
“lying.” The latter two can lead to deception
without any untruths being told. So why and how
are they deceptive?
information manipulation theory (imt)
Steve McCornack argued that what people
commonly called deception was a function of
Grice’s conversational maxims. Specifically,
McCornack argued that covert violations of the
maxims would be perceived as deceptive.
Remember, flouts appear to be violations of
maxims but they are designed to be overt. So
McCornack argued that the failure to adhere to a
maxim in a manner that was meant to go
undetected would be seen as an attempt to
produce a deception.
information manipulation theory
McCornack et al., (1992) tested IMT by having
research participants read a scenario in which one
of the stimuli persons told something to another
that covertly violated a maxim. In one scenario the
person was completely disclosive (i.e., honest).
Then the participants rated the degree of honesty
of the stimulus person.
Not surprisingly (and consistent with hypotheses)
complete disclosure was rated as most honest and
all of the violations were perceived to be
significantly less honest than complete disclosure.
information manipulation theory
The honest ratings of the maxim violations were
particularly interesting.
 Complete disclosure
 Quantity violation
 Clarity violation
 Relevance violation
 Quality violation
21.88
16.78
13.70
11.71
6.99
Each of the ratings were significantly different
from the others.
information manipulation theory
The results are supportive of IMT but they raise a
new question of theoretical significance:
Why are the various maxim violations perceived as
differing in terms of honesty/deceptiveness?
If deceptiveness were simply a function of covertly
violating a maxim, each of the violations should
have been perceived as equally deceptive. Yet they
are systematically different.
Why?
explaining degrees of deceptiveness
Consider the specific and ordered differences
across the honesty attributions. From “least
deceptive” to “most deceptive” they are ordered:
quantity violation, clarity violation, relevance
violation, quality violation.
What might explain our perceptions that each of
these maxim violations is rated as significantly
more deceptive than the next violation?
Ask the questions, how was the deception
accomplished? who is to blame for the target’s
being deceived?
communicative responsibility theory
Aune (1998) introduced a theory of
communicative responsibility (CRT) that
begins with three simple assumptions:
 Communicators believe the primary goal of
communication is to create a desired state of
understanding between themselves.
 The degree to which they hold themselves and their
communicative partners responsible for creating
this state of understanding is variable.
 Judgments of communicative responsibility will
affect communicative behavior.
communicative responsibility theory
CRT builds on Grice’s theory of conversational
implicature by addressing the question “how do we
know how implicit/explicit to be in any
conversation?”
A message of a given level of explicitness can seem
oblique in one setting, appropriate in another, and
condescending in yet another.
Interrogation can be appropriate in a journalistic
setting but inappropriate between a boyfriend and
girlfriend in casual conversation.
communicative responsibility theory
Communicative responsibility (CR) can be
described using two continua, one for each
communicator in an interaction. Two
continua must be use because they can vary
independently. This leads to two dimensions
used to describe CR in a communicative
event:
 Degree of symmetry in participants’
communicative responsibility;
 Magnitude of each communicator’s CR.
communicative responsibility theory
How does CR affect communicative behavior?
 As personal assessments of CR increase,
communicators will engage in less
implicating and less inference-making.
 As personal assessments of one’s CR
increase, one will increase the extent to
which one is being explicit in message
encoding.
communicative responsibility theory
So a message source can be expected to:
 increase the use of redundancy via:



repetition of information;
creation of associations among units of
information;
incorporation of additional codes and media;
 increase the amount of information offered.
Conversely, increases in CR will lead
receivers to solicit more redundancy of the
forms described above.
communicative responsibility theory
Several aspects of a communicative situation
can produce variance in judgments of CR.
 Locus of Meaning – the extent to which
meaning is seen to reside in one
person is associated with that person’s
CR;
 Common Ground – the extent to which
communicators believe they share
relevant knowledge.
 Communicators’ Ingroup-based Norms.
communicative responsibility theory
 Perceived ability of the participants to
process the message
 How fully articulated the meaning is;
 The extent to which the meaning can be
presented in a commonly shared code;
 The extent to which communicative
participants are believed to be familiar with
the code.
 Motivation to Create Understanding
research support for Crt
Several studies have been conducted to test the
predictions made by CRT. The first study tested
whether people do, in fact, systematically
assign levels of CR to communicative
participants.
Research participants read pairs of scenarios
that were designed to differ in how
symmetrically distributed CR would be between
the communicators in the scenarios.
research support for Crt
 Jordan is studying for a midterm with a
group of friends. She is trying to explain
one of the most important theories to
the group. Jordan believes she
understands the theory and is confident
that she can explain it well to others.
(asymmetric CR)
 Jordan is studying…….understands the
theory but she is not so sure she can
explain it to somebody else. (symmetric
CR)
research support for Crt
 James is giving directions to Chris on
how to get to John’s house. James has
been to John’s house numerous time
before but Chris has never been there.
(asymmetric CR)
 James and Chris are looking at a map
and discussing the best way to get to
John’s house. Neither James nor Chris
have been to John’s house before.
(symmetric CR)
research support for Crt
Ten pairs of scenarios were tested. The
perceived CR was assessed for each character
in the scenario. A difference score was created
by subtracting the CR score of the character
expected to have the lower responsibility from
the CR score of the character expected to have
the higher responsibility.
A positive number would indicate that the
character we expected to have more CR was
indeed perceived by research participants as
having higher CR.
research support for Crt
In 8 of the 10 scenarios the difference score
was positive and 7 of these scores were
significantly different (i.e., probably not due to
chance).
These results provide evidence that we do
make judgments of communicators’
communicative responsibility.
But….do our judgments of communicative
responsibility affect the way we communicate?
research support for Crt
A second study was conducted to assess
whether judgments of CR affect communicative
behavior. Research participants were asked to
give directions – based on a map of a fictitious
town – to a stranger who was described as
another UH student (i.e., culturally similar
condition) or a student from University of
Pretoria, South Africa ( i.e., culturally dissimilar
condition). We were testing the effect of
perceived common ground (i.e., shared
knowledge) on CR and subsequent
communicative behavior. We expected that:
research support for Crt
 Hypothesis: Perceived personal CR would be
higher for the person in the culturally
dissimilar condition.
 Results: Participants giving directions to the
South Africa student rated their CR
significantly higher than did participants
giving directions to the UH student.
research support for Crt
 Hypothesis: Higher CR would lead to
increases in message redundancy and
elaboration.
 Results: A significant positive correlation was
found between participants’ personal CR and
the length of the directions (i.e., number of
words used).
 Additional support: A significant negative
correlation was found between the type-token
ration (i.e., ration of unique words to total
words) and CR, indicating greater repetition.
research support for Crt
Last, after controlling for the total number
of words used, a significant correlation was
found between judgments of personal CR
and the number of references to natural
landmarks. This shows that higher CR
participants were making reference to more
generalizable information.
In sum, CR was shown to vary in a
systematic fashion and that judgments of
CR had both quantitative and qualitative
effects on one’ communicative behavior.
research support for Crt
The studies reviewed so far demonstrate that
we do form systematic judgments of CR and
that these judgments affect our
communicative behavior. The final study was
designed to examine how we respond to
another’s violation of our judgment of his/her
CR. Specifically we exposed research
participants to conversation scenarios that
were created to be interrogation-appropriate
or interrogation-inappropriate.
research support for Crt
We developed a dialogue involving “Anna” and
“Mike” in which Anna interrogates Mike as to his
previous evening’s social behavior, i.e., who did he
go out with? what did he do? where did he go?
However, we manipulated the communicative
context. In one case Anna and Mike were
girlfriend/boyfriend having lunch (interrogationinappropriate condition). In the other situation
Anna was an Anthropology professor who was
researching recreational behavior of college
students. Mike was a research participant
(interrogation-appropriate).
research support for Crt
We assessed perceptions of Mike’s and Anna’s
CR and how inappropriate the communicative
behavior was perceived to be. Results showed
that:
 Anna/anth was judged higher in CR than was
Anna/gf.
 Mike/bf was judged slightly higher in CR than was
Mike/subj.
 Anna/gf’s behavior was seen as more inappropriate
than was Anna/anth’s.
 Mike/bf’s behavior was seen as slightly less
appropriate than was Mike/anth/s.*
Politeness and language production
Communicative responsibility provides one
explanation for the extent to which we engage
in implicature and inference-making in
conversation. Another explanation can be found
in Politeness Theory. The main proponents,
Brown & Levinson, draw heavily from Goffman’s
writings on Face Work. Face is “the positive
social value a person effectively claims for
himself by the line others assume he has taken
during a particular contact.”
Politeness and language production
Brown & Levinson see two aspects to “face:”
positive face – the desire for connection with
others; and negative face – the desire for
autonomy. We may engage in “face work” to
accomplish positive and negative face needs.
Face needs enter into communicative situations
and affect our behavior not only because our
own face needs affect our behavior but because
we infer others’ face needs and adjust our
behavior accordingly.
Politeness and language production
Consider, for example, a compliment. When we
offer a compliment we may feel it adds to our
positive face needs and the person to whom we
offer the compliment. On the other hand, a
compliment can threaten a receiver’s negative
face needs by making him/her feel obligated to
respond in a similar manner, thus imposing on
that person. Similarly requests are inherently
face threatening both to the speaker and the
hearer.
types of face threats
Type of Face Threat
Threat Focus
Negative Face Positive Face
Hearer
Requests
Offers
Compliments
Promises
Acceptance of
Offer
Thanks
Speaker
Disagreements
Criticisms
Complaints
Apologies
Emotional
Leakage
Compliment
Acceptance
Politeness STRATEGIES
So we have an inherent conflict in every
communicative situation: we want to manage
each other’s face needs; at the same time we
want to perform social acts that are inherently
face threatening. In fact we could think of
politeness as any deviation from Grice’s
Cooperative Principle given that politeness
involves deviations from maximal
communicative efficiency. Brown & Levinson
offer a typology of five superstrategies that
range on a continuum from very impolite to very
polite.
Politeness STRATEGIES
 Bald-on-record
 Positive Politeness
 Claim common ground
 Convey cooperation
 Fulfill hearer’s wants
 Negative Politeness
 Conventional
indirectness
 Avoid assumptions
 Avoid coercion
 Communicate desire to
avoid impingement
 Incur a debt
 Off-record Politeness
(face threatening act
must be inferred)
 Violate conversational
maxims:
 Quality
 Quantity
 Manner
 Relation
Speech Act Theory
Debate used to rage over what an utterance
“meant.” Attempts were made to impose truthconditional approaches on language. That
works for
“3+3=6”
or other forms of reasoning such as
“All Xs are Ys. B is an X, therefore B is a Y.”
But linguistic utterances often don’t “mean”
something definitive.
Speech Act Theory
A truth value could be determined for the
following utterance:
It is raining outside.
But not for this utterance:
I apologize for what I said.
John Austin referred to the latter as a
performative utterance and the former as a
constative utterance.
Speech Act Theory
The “rain” utterance could be assessed as true
or false but the “apology” utterance could, at
best, “misfire” or be “infelicitous” (i.e., basically
fail to “work” properly). In other words, the
“apology” utterance may not be seen as sincere,
it may not be well-formed or well-stated, or it
may not “count” as an apology. Consider Clyde
Arakawa’s “apology” for manslaughter:
“I’m sorry for what happened.”
A well-formed apology should indicate
acceptance of responsibility for the offending
action and sincere regret for the action.
Speech Act forces
A speech act is described in terms of three
“forces” associated with any communicative
utterance:
 Locutionary force – the actual utterance;
what is spoken and heard.
 Illocutionary force – what the speaker
intends by the utterance; the intended
meaning to be activated by the utterance.
 Perlocutionary force – the actual effect of the
utterance on the hearer; may or may not be
consistent with the illocutionary force.
Types of Speech Act s
 Directives – world to words (hearer);
requesting, ordering, interrogating.
 Assertives – words to world; asserting,
concluding, informing, reporting, predicting.
 Commissives – world to words (speaker);
promising, threatening, guaranteeing.
 Declaratives – world to words & vice versa;
performing a marriage, declaring war, calling
a runner “out.”
 Expressives – null; thanking, complaining,
greeting, apologizing.
felicity conditions
According to John Searle, for a speech act to be
effective it must satisfy four felicity conditions:
 Propositional content – the MAP as
constrained by the illocutionary force of the
utterance.
 Preparatory conditions – what must be
already true about the world or the
communicators prior to the speech act.
 Sincerity condition – speaker must mean it.
 Essential condition – the utterance must
“count as” a performance of the relevant act.
communication accommodation theory
CAT was developed by Howard Giles and was
referred to originally as Speech Accommodation
Theory. It was developed to explain how and
why convergence and divergence of
communicative behavior occur in
communicative interaction(s). In short, Giles
argued that our communicative styles tend to
converge or diverge as a function of
perceptions of affiliation with conversational
partners.
communication accommodation theory
Convergence and divergence can be
accomplished several ways:
 Upward vs. Downward
 Full vs. Partial vs. Hyper
 Large vs. Moderate
 Uni- vs. Multicodal
 Symmetrical vs. Asymmetrical
 Subjective vs. Objective
communication accommodation theory
Motives for and outcomes of accommodation:
 A speaker’s (often unconscious) need for
social integration or identification with
another.
 Social approval.
 Social attractiveness.
 Perceived similarity.
 Perceptions of power.
 Social influence & Compliance