Pragmatics and Text
Analysis
Chapter 6
Introduction
• Pragmatics is the study of language usage from a
functional perspective and is concerned with the
principles that account for how meaning is conveyed
by the speaker (writer) and interpreted by the
listener (reader) in a certain context.
Introduction
• Different from semantics, pragmatics studies the
contextual meaning. This distinction can be seen in
the following example:
• Mike: What happened to that bowl of cream?
• Annie: Cats drink cream.
Introduction
• Pragmatics concentrates on those aspects of meaning
that cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge
alone and takes into account our knowledge about
the physical and social world.
Introduction
• The four utterances in the following dialogue are all
syntactically incomplete, but pragmatically they are
all "appropriate" in the particular context.
• Jane: Coffee?
• Steve: Sure.
• Jane: White?
• Steve: White.
Introduction
• Like pragmatics, text analysis is also concerned with
language used in particular contexts. It is the
linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected
spoken or written texts.
• In other words, it is the study of linguistic units larger
than sentences or clauses.
Speech Act Theory
• As pointed out by the British philosopher Austin in
1962, sentences are not always uttered just to say
things, but rather, they are used to do things.
• Based on this assumption, Austin advanced the
Speech Act Theory.
• All linguistic activities are related to speech acts.
Therefore, to speak a language is to perform a set of
speech acts, such as statement, command, inquiry
and commitment.
• According to Austin, when a sentence is uttered, the speaker is
performing three kinds of speech acts at the same time:
locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act .
• Among these kinds of speech acts, pragmatists are most
interested in illocutionary act.
• In order to perform a certain performative
speech act, particular conditions should be
met.
● Essential conditions
● Propositional conditions
● Preparatory conditions
● Sincerity conditions
• Essential conditions
• For example, when the speaker ORDERS/COMMANDS
the hearer to stand up, the following essential
conditions should be met:
• the speaker has the authority to command while the
hearer has the obligation to carry out this command.
• Propositional conditions
• For instance, if the speaker APOLOGIZES, the
propositional content of the apology must be an
action which he or she did or was responsible for in
the past.
• Preparatory conditions
• For example, if the speaker makes a PROMISE /
COMMITMENT, two preparatory conditions should be
presumed.
• (1) the speaker should have the ability to carry out
the promise/commitment.
• (2) what is promised/committed should be beneficial
to the hearer.
• Sincerity conditions
• For example, when the speaker makes a
STATEMENT, he or she also expresses the
mental state of "belief".
• An utterance may be interpreted as a
direct or indirect speech act.
• "Don't you think it's too stuffy in here?"
• What is the speaker is saying?
• Similarly, an illocutionary act can be performed by
different locutionary acts.
• a. Command: Open the door please.
• b. Request: Would you please open the door?
• c. Statement: The doorbell is ringing.
Indirect Speech Act
• Indirect speech act refers to an indirect
relationship between the propositional
content and illocutionary force of an utterance.
• Example A below is an explicit performative in
which the speech act of request is directly
coded by the performative verb request.
Example B is an indirect performative in which
the speech act of request is indirectly expressed
by a question:
• A. I request that you help me with the luggage.
• B. Can you help me with the luggage?
• A: What are the police doing?
• B: I've just arrived.
• A: Let's go to the movie tonight.
• B: I have to study for an exam.
The Cooperative Principle
• the literal meaning and the non-literal meaning.
• Grice in 1967 found that tacit agreement exists
between the speaker and the hearer in all linguistic
communicative activities. They follow a set of
principles in order to achieve particular
communicative goals.
• Thus, Grice proposed the cooperative principle and
its maxims.
• The maxim of Quality
• try to make your contribution one that is true,
especially: (i) do not say what you believe to be
false and (ii) do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence.
• The maxim of Quantity
• (i) make your contribution as informative as is
required for the current purposes of the
exchange, and (ii) do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
•
•
•
•
The maxim of Relevance
make your contribution relevant.
The maxim of Manner
Be perspicuous, and specifically: (i) Avoid
obscurity of expression; (ii) Avoid ambiguity;
(iii) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) and
(iv) Be orderly.
• But in real communication, the participants often
flout the cooperative principle and its maxims.
• In this example, B flouts the quantity maxim by not
making his or her contribution as informative as is
required:
• A: When are you going to the airport?
• B: Sometime this morning.
• A: The hostess is an awful bore, don't
you think?
• B: The roses are lovely, aren't they?
• A: Let's get the kids something.
• B: Okay, but I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.
The Politeness Principle
• In order to explain why in many cases people express
themselves implicitly and indirectly by flouting the four
maxims of the cooperative principle, Brown and Levinson
(1978) advanced the Face Theory.
• Leech (1983:132) developed the face theory further and
formulated the politeness principle.
The Face Theory
• According to this theory, everybody has face wants, i.e. the
expectation concerning their public self-image. In order to
maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships and ensure
successful social interaction, we should be aware of the two
aspects of another person's face.
• the positive face
• the negative face
• A: Bob is really mischievous, isn't he?
• B: Children are children.
• a. I order you to answer the phone.
• b. I want you to answer the phone.
• c. Would you answer the phone?
• ● Tact （得体）maxim
• (i) Minimize cost to other
• (ii) Maximize cost for self.
• ● Generosity Maxim
• (i) Minimize benefit to self
• (ii) Maximize praise of other.
• ● Approbation （赞扬）Maxim
• (i) Minimize dispraise of other
• (ii) Maximize dispraise of self.
• ● Modesty Maxim
• (i) Minimize disagreement between self and other
• (ii) Maximize sympathy between self and other.
• ● Agreement Maxim
• (i) Minimize disagreement between self and other
• (ii) Maximize agreement between self and other
• ● Sympathy Maxim
• (i) Minimize antipathy between self and other
• (ii) Maximize sympathy between self and other
presupposition
• Presupposition: any kind of background assumption
against which an expression or utterance makes
sense;
• conditions that must be met in order for the
intended meaning of a sentence to be regarded as
acceptable.
• Their team won this year’s African finals.
• Their team played in the African finals.
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
• It is found that some spoken texts can be represented by
variations of recursive exchanges.
• Exchange: the minimal unit of interactive spoken texts.
• An exchange may be of a two-part question-answer type, like
(1), or of a two-part greeting-response type like (2). It may
also be a typical three-part teacher-pupil talk like (3):
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A: What time is it by your watch? (Question)
B: Nine thirty. (Answer)
(2) A: Hello. (Greeting)
B: Hi. (Response)
(3) Teacher: What's the capital of France? (Initiation)
Pupil: Paris. (Response)
Teacher: Right. (Feedback)
Exchange and Adjacency Pair
• There are some automatic sequences that indicate
the logical relationship in spoken texts
• adjacency pairs: a first part + a second part,
• For example:
• Anna: Hello.
• Bill: Hi.
Cohesion
• Halliday and Hasan (1976): Cohesion in English
• A text is not a collection of lexical items and/or
sentences in random. In other words, it must have
texture, i.e. the property that distinguishes a text
from a non-text.
• The unity of a text can be achieved by a number of
semantic and lexicogrammatical means, among
which the most important is cohesion .
• Cohesive ties:
• grammatical devices such as reference, ellipsis
and substitution, and conjunction
• lexical devices such as general words,
reiteration and collocation.
Reference
• Reference refers to the semantic relation in which a
word or words are used to enable the addressee to
identify someone or something.
• John has moved to a new house. He had it built last
year.
Substitution and Ellipsis
• Substitution: the replacement of one item by
another
• Ellipsis: the omission of an item.
• They are a relation between linguistic items and are
two closely related processes.
• A: I ate two eggs and a cup of milk for my breakfast.
• B: I ate the same.
Conjunction
• Conjunction in grammar refers to a word or
expression like and, but, or that connects
words, phrases, clauses and/or sentences.
Lexical Cohesion
• Lexical cohesion: the cohesive effect achieved by
the choice of lexical items.
• English lexical cohesive ties: reiteration and
collocation.
• Reiteration: repetition, synonymy, antonymy, and
hyponymy and meronymy.
Theme and Rheme
• According to Halliday (1994) ,theme can be defined as
the element which serves as the point of departure of
the message conveyed by the clause. It is the ground
from which the clause is taking off. In English, this
element always takes the first position of a clause. The
remaining part of the message, the part in which the
Theme is developed, is called the Rheme .
My parents gave me
a new bicycle
Theme
Rheme
Given + New
• An information unit usually consists of two
components.
• To Halliday (1994), the part which the speaker invites
the addressee to attend to as unexpected, or
important is the New, and the part which the speaker
presents as being already known to the addressee is
the Given. In the tone structure, the New is always
signaled by the tonic accent.
• The duke gave my aunt that teapot.
• End of lecture
• Thank you for your attention