UNIVERSITETET
I OSLO
Institutt f or litteratur, områdestudium og europeiske språk
HJEMMEEKSAMEN
2011/HØST
3 sider
ENG4157 – Semantics and Pragmatics
Eksamen varer i 3 dager
12.–15. des. 2011
Oppgavene skal besvares på engelsk.
Besvarelsen leveres i Fronter i emnets fellesrom i mappen "Eksamensinnlevering" som
stenges kl. 12.00 på innleveringsdagen.
Besvarelsens forside skal inneholde: kandidatnummer (hentes fra StudentWeb),
emnekode, emnenavn, semester, år og oppgavens tittel. IKKE kandidatens navn! Alle
sider skal nummereres.
Mal (Word-dokument) for oppsett av oppgaven og utfyllende informasjon om
innlevering i Fronter finnes i en instruks som er lenket opp på alle instituttets
emnebeskrivelser under "Vurdering og eksamen".
Answer TWO of the questions below. Write 2,000–2,500 words for each answer.
1. Discuss the similarities and differences between the theories of politeness advanced by Leech on
the one hand and Brown and Levinson on the other. Include in your discussion an account of how
each theory would explain the use of language in two or three relevant quotes from the excerpt
from Alan Bennet’s The Uncommon Reader (2007). You find the excerpt attached. Consider
whether any of the theories is better equipped to explain politeness phenomena, and give
reasons for your view.
2. The theories of politeness all have a linguistic-pragmatic aspect as well as a social-pragmatic
aspect. Give an account of the Relevance theoretic approach to communication and discuss the
extent to which Relevance Theory can contribute to improve Politeness Theory. You may use
Christie, C. (2007) ‘Relevance Theory and politeness’ in Journal of Politeness Research 3, 269-294
as reference in your discussion. Illustrate your arguments with examples, which you may take
from the attached excerpt from Bennet’s book referred to in Question 1.
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3. Answer both A) and B).
A) Identify the situation type, tense and aspect of the verb phrases underlined in the text excerpt
below. Then establish the relative temporal references of the situations referred to in the finite
sentences, and give semantic reasons for your judgments as far as possible.
B) What is meant by the linguistic concept presupposition? Identify the presuppositions in the last
sentence of the text below, provide two ways of accounting for them and argue briefly for a
potential preference of one over the other.
From J.D.Salinger Nine Stories (1953)
The following text excerpt is taken from the beginning of the story ‘Just before the War with
the Eskimos’.
Five straight Saturday mornings, Ginnie Mannox had played tennis at the East Side Courts
with Selena Graff, a classmate at Miss Basehoar’s. Ginnie openly considered Selena the
biggest drip at Miss Basehoar’s – a school ostensibly abounding with fair-sized drips – but at
the same time she had never known anyone like Selena for bringing fresh cans of tennis balls.
Selena’s father made them or something. But this business of dropping Selena off at her house
after tennis and then getting stuck – every single time – for the whole cab fare was getting on
Ginnie’s nerves.
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Context:
Alan Bennett (2007): The Uncommon Reader is a humorous story about the Queen of England’s
sudden interest in reading English fiction as she has stumbled on a travelling library while walking
her dogs. Her private secretary, Sir Kevin, is vexed by this growing interest of hers, which takes
much of the Queen’s time and which she makes a topic in most of her meetings, often to great
embarrassment of the visitors. Sir Kevin considers it an absurd obsession. Seeing her almost
daily, Sir Kevin is able to nag the Queen about this, and to devise different approaches.
“I was wondering, ma’am, if we could somehow factor in your reading.”
Once she would have let this pass, but one effect of reading had been to diminish the Queen’s
tolerance for jargon (which had always been low).
“Factor it in? what does that mean?”
“I’m just kicking the tyres on this one, ma’am, but it would help if we were able to put out a press
release saying that, apart from English literature, Your Majesty was also reading ethnic classics.”
“Which ethnic classics did you have in mind, Sir Kevin? The Kama Sutra?”
Sir Kevin sighed.
“I am reading Vikram Seth at the moment. Would he count?”
Though the private secretary had never heard of Vikram Seth he thought he sounded right.
“Salman Rushdie?”
“Probably not, ma’am.”
“I don’t see”, said the Queen, “why there is any need for a press release at all. Why should the
public care what I am reading? The Queen reads. That is all they need to know. ‘So what?’ I
imagine the general response.”
“To read is to withdraw. To make oneself unavailable. One could feel easier about it,” said Sir
Kevin, “if the pursuit itself were less ….. selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“Perhaps I should say solipsistic1.”
“Perhaps you should.”
“Were we able to harness our reading to some larger purpose – the literacy of the nation as a whole,
for instance, the improvement of reading standards among the young….”
“One reads for pleasure,” said the Queen. “It is not a public duty.”
“Perhaps”, said Sir Kevin, “it should be.”
“Bloody cheek,” said the duke when she told him that night.
1
Solipsistic (adj) : of or characterized by solipsism, or the theory that only the self exists, or can be
proved to exist
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