Pragmática y discurso en lengua inglesa

CONTENTS

Unit 1. Introduction
1.1. Defining pragmatics
The importance of context
Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure
1.2. Defining discourse analysis
Field, tenor and mode of discourse
Text types and genres

Unit 2. Cohesion and coherence

2.1. Cohesive devices
Lexical cohesion
Grammatical cohesion
2.2. Deixis
Types of deixis
Deixis and reference
2.3. Thematic structure and information structure
The concepts of Theme and Rheme
Unmarked and marked Themes
Thematic progression

Unit 3. Speech Act Theory

3.1. Performative and constative acts
3.2. The utterance as act
Locutive, illocutionary and perlocutionary force
Felicity conditions
3.3. Types of speech acts
Direct and indirect speech acts
3.4. Cross-cultural pragmatics

Unit 4. Conversation Analysis (CA)

4.1. Defining conversation analysis
4.2. Turn-taking organization
4.3. Sequence organization
Adjacency pairs
Preference organization: preferred versus dispreferred responses
4.4. Repair mechanisms

Unit 5. Grice and the Cooperative Principle

5.1. The Cooperative Principle and Gricean Maxims
5.2. Non-observing the maxims
5.3. From presupposition to implicature
Conventional implicature
Conversational implicature
5.4. Beyond Gricean maxims: Relevance theory
The principle of relevance
Explicature and implicature
Unit 6. Politeness Theory
6.1. Lakoff’s approach to politeness
6.2. Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness
Goffman’s concept of “face”
Face-threatening Acts
Positive and negative politeness
Politeness and implicature
6.3. Leech’s Politeness Principle and its maxims
6.4. Watt’s and Locher’s Relational Model
Politic behaviour and politeness
Unit 1: Introduction to Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis.

1.1. Defining pragmatics

-The importance of context
-Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure

1.2. Defining discourse analysis

-Field, tenor and mode of discourse
-Text types and genres

———————————————————————————————————————————

1.1. Defining pragmatics

• People do not always or even usually say what they mean. E.g. “It’s hot in here”

• Two important questions arise:

– How do we work out what this means on one specific occasion? Background
knowledge
– Why don’t people say what they mean? Politeness.
 
• These issues, among many others, are studied by Pragmatics.

Historical background
• Within Linguistics, there are different areas that focus on different aspects of language:
– Phonetics and phonology
– Morphology
– Syntax
– Semantics
– Pragmatics (the biggest one in linguistics). Meaning context: differences between
semantics and pragmatics is context.

“young” and “waste-paper”

Many people call pragmatics “Young” and “waste-paper”. Pragmatics is relatively recent.

• The “antisyntactic” tendency:

– “reaction” against the formalist view of linguistics (Noam Chomsky in the late 60s): “Ideal
language use”
 
• The “philosophical” tradition: Britain
– UK but unknown outside until the late 1960s. Represented by John Austin, Searle or
Grice, who followed philosophers such as Bertrand Russell or Wittgenstein.
– Focus on “ordinary language use”
 
• The “ethnomethodological tradition”:
– Late tendency.
– Emphasis is on communication rather than grammar (conversation analysis).
– Harvey Sacks, Schegloff and Gail Jefferson.

• Since the early 1970s, there has been a growing and unstoppable interest in Pragmatics.
• “Interest for what really goes on in language, for what people actually `do with words’” (Asher)
• (In the 80s) P. defined as “meaning in use” or “meaning in context”:
– performance vs. competence -> Act vs. know. Pragmatics is about acting, using words.
– However, this definition is too general.
• To define Pragmatics is a hard task, since it implies setting boundaries and limits and separating
Pragmatics from other disciplines such as Semantics or DA.

• More recently, two approaches to Pragmatics:

– “speaker meaning”: focuses on the “producer” of the message and takes a more social
view of the discipline.
– “utterance interpretation” (i.e. what the hearer understands). This approach focuses on
the “receiver” of the message and takes a more cognitive view of the discipline.

• Only one of these sides also has important limitations. A more reasonable definition of
pragmatics is considering it as meaning in interaction.
• “Meaning is not something which is inherent in the words alone, nor is it produced by the
speaker alone, nor by the hearer alone. Making meaning is a dynamic process” (J. Thomas,
1995: 22)

(In the exam, never speak about sentence. Sentence is utterence)

The importance of context

• We can trace the concept of “context” back to Malinowski in the 1920s and Firth in the 1950s.
• The importance of context in figuring out ambiguities in written or spoken language is
undeniable.
“It’s a long time since we visited your mother”
Context A: married couple talking in their living room.
Context B: married couple in the zoo, in front of the hippos.
(J.L. Mey, 2002: 41)
*Context can change the meaning of words

“Here she comes in all her vastness” (J. Thomas, 1995)

Who is she? We don´t know. The only thing we know is that she is a female. But we
don´t know who.
Context: A TV reporter talking about a ship while the camera was focusing on the
Queen mother.

• The term “context” is very common but “elusive of definition” (Widdowson, 2004: 36)
• Context is dynamic and involves three different dimensions:
– Situational context: refers to the time, the place where language is used. That is, the
immediate physical environment surrounding speaker and hearer.
• Could you please open the window?
* If you tell someone to clse the window and there is no window, he will be shocked.

– Co-text: refers to the linguistic context in which a particular utterance occurs. * If you
say “hello and I am”… in the middle of a conversation it will be shocking. For example,
in adjacency pairs such as the following:
• A: Are you coming to the cinema?
• B: I’ve got an exam tomorrow.
*Everything B tell me, I will take it as an answer. B´s utterance means NO.

Ex: Mary got married. She got pregnant. - First gets married and then goes
pregnant. She refers to Mary,
Ex: She got pregnant. Mary got married. - First, she got pregnant, then she marries.

– Cultural context (background knowledge): as speakers within a particular community,

we have some background knowledge that also helps us “construct meanings” that
speakers belonging to other cultural communities might not share. This is also referred
to by other linguists as “mutual knowledge” or “common knowledge”.
 • A: How is your new tennis partner?
• B: He has much in common with John McEnroe.
*We need the background context of John McEnroe. He was aggressive,
complained a lot.
______________
• A: Good server?
• B: Bad temper.
*Here, there has been pragmatic failure. There is no understanding.

Context and ambiguity

• Context is also crucial in cases of ambiguity since it allows us to disambiguate
• Ambiguity takes place when a word/phrase/clause can have more than one meaning
• The most frequent types are:
– Lexical ambiguity (the most common of all)
– Syntactic or structural ambiguity
– Combination of both (syntactic ambiguity and lexical ambiguity)

Ex: The Bishop walked among the pilgrims eating their picnic lunches: Syntactic ambiguity.
Ex: John is looking for his glasses: Lexical ambiguity (Polisemy)
Ex: John saw her duck: Both lexical and syntactic
Duck: animal - John-saw-her-duck
Duck: Going in the water. John-saw her-duck (doing that)
Saw: Serrar. John-saw (serrar) - her-duck

Types of “ambiguity”
• Lexical (“polysemy”):
– The coach left the stadium after the match. Coach: Entrenador, Coach: Bus. We have to
know the context. I we see the `entrenador´ or the `bus´.

– John and Bill passed the port in the evening - Port: Glass of wine and port for ships.

• Syntactic or structural:
– They are cooking apples-> A: They-are-cooking-apples. B: Cooking apples: Apples
specially made for cooking them.

– Visiting relatives can be boring-> A: Visiting-relatives-can-be-boring. B: Relatives who

visit you can be boring.

– For those who have children and don’t know yet, there will be a picnic next weekend-> A:
Don´t know there is a picnic next weekend. B: they don´t know they have children.

• In the case of structural ambiguity, we are already doing Discourse Analysis (see 1.2)
Pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure

Pragmalinguistic competence: The ability to use language in a contextually appropriate fashion.

(When we don´t interpret thing correct it is pragmatic failure)
(Pragmatic competence is when you know how to behave in a moment)

• If pragmatic failure happens among members of the same culture (and language), it is even
more likely to happen when interlocutors share different pragmatic conventions.

Examples:
• Sociopragmatic failure: wrong words in the ongoing social context.
(At a job interview)
A: Thanks a lot, we’ll call you in a couple of days to let you know.
B: Ok, cheers man! (inappropriate)
• Pragmalinguistic failure: when someone says something and you miss interpret the intentions
behind.
(On the phone)
A: Morning, is Mr. Jones there?
B: Yes, he is. (A wasn´t asking yes/no question, he want a request)
A: huh, could you put him through, please?

Practice: what kind of failure is taking place? Why?

(A and B belong to different cultures but use English as a lingua franca)

A: Hi there! Long time no see. You look thinner, by the way.

B: thanks! I’ve been exercising.
A: No, I didn’t mean that. Have you been ill or something?
B: (embarrassed silence) huh, no, not really…

->Pragmalinguistic failure. (misinterpretation) The problem is B. B misinterpret a utterance. B

thinks that A means that it look better is it a positive comment. But A means as a negative
compliment.
B is Spanish. A is British.
In Spanish when you says “estás mas delgado” is a positive comment. Moreover, in Spanish you
have a greeting plus a positive comment when you haven´t see a person for a long time. That´s
why the Spanish thinks it is a compliment.
1.2. Defining Discourse analysis
• In the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Crystal (1992) defines DA as:
– the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger meaningful units
such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.
– It is beyond the “sentence level”= discourse
• DA and pragmatics are hence very closed related (in fact, some authors even use the two terms
to refer to the same discipline)
• For us, however, some differences can be found related to their fields of investigation

Pragmatics Discourse

-User´s point of view -Analysis of language (spoken and /or written) as

used in actual communication

-Uttering/ interpreting -Much focused on language form and function and

the relationships between words in a text.

-Much focused on context -What makes a text a text

-For some authors, pragmatics is wider than DA

since it includes more than language (discourse)
and provides the basis for DA.

The “context of situation”

(situation context: settling, place, time)

(co-text: language environment)

• Halliday and Hassan (1989)

i. Field → what / social action (what´s going on)
ii. Tenor → who / relations, statuses, roles (the people involved in the social action)
iii. Mode → language / written, oral, mixed (what language are they used / verbal, written,
combination)

• Context is dynamic and its relationship with language is bilateral.

(If we have a context we can predict the type of language but if we see the language we can
predict the context -> pragmatic competence)

• In other words, we can understand the text thanks to context but we can also guess the context
from the text.

Practise: guess the context of situation

• Once upon a time… a fairy tale

• This is to certify that… this is a formal context, a notary an a patient - written
• Four hearts: card game (poker), oral language, players
• On your marks: a race, runners, oral language
• 30 please: an exchange situation, customers, shop
• Just a trim, is it?: hairdresser, customer, spoken
• Rail strike: newspaper (headline) or tain station or radio, written or oral
• 348-1929: telephone number
• Sea slight on a low swell: a poem, oral
• Hands up: a robbery or a teacher in an exam
• Hands up all those who’ve finished: a teacher asking students (background knowledge part of
our pragmatic competence)
• Add the eggs one at a time: recipe, written or oral (tv program)
• From here, a short walk takes you to the fountain: tourist guide, oral
• Remove battery holding down bolts: introduction, written
• Fifteen-love: tennis (you need to know that context)

Worksheet 1: The importance of Context

Exercise 1
Read the following text taken from a US newspaper.

Peyton Manning threw three interceptions, the most he’s had in a game since his rookie year. Brett
Favre threw three interceptions and fumbled twice. And Mark Brunell fumbled four snaps, losing
two, and threw interceptions on consecutive possessions before being pulled.
Yes, even the best of NFL quarterbacks can have off days. And when they do, their teams lose, as
the Colts, Packers and Jaguars did Sunday.

Activities:
(a) What background knowledge does it assume for its readers?
Readers must know what is NFL, who are the people motioned in the article and what teams are
those mentioned in the article.

(b) The text makes no concession to those who do not understand the reference of the
specialised vocabulary. Why do think this happens?
The text does not make any concession because we have a lack of knowledge, so we cannot
connect concepts.

Exercise 2
Read the following anecdote and try to explain the breakdown in communication according
to context.

When it was announced that T.S. Eliot had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, he
was making a lecture tour of the US. A Mid-Western reported asked him if he had been given the
prize for his great work The Waste Land. “No”, replied Eliot, “I believe I have been given it in
recognition of my whole corpus.” Accordingly, the journalist wrote: “In an interview with our airport
correspondent this morning, Mr. Eliot revealed that the Swedish Academy had given him the Nobel
Prize not for The Waste Land but for his poem My Whole Corpus.”

-Pragmalinguistic failure. The reporter misinterpret the information because of the context.

Exercise 3
Think about different situational contexts where these utterances could have taken place
and try to explain the different interpretations according to situational context. In other
words, what could the “FIELD, TENOR AND MODE” be for each of them?

(a) Fill it up - F: in a bar, gas station M: oral T: client

(b) Out of order - something that doesn't work, someone inc charge or that, written
(c) Car crash in road 15 - the news (informative) T: the authority, the journalist, the readers M: oral
or written
(d) 50 please - like 30 please
(e) It’s very smoky in here - F: something is burning let´s get out / kitchen (open the window)

Text types and genres
• We can do what we did because of certain “conventions”:

Genre
• It is more specific than text type (although closely related, even subordinate)
– E.g. Cooking recipes (expository – they give instructions but in a very specific way we all
recognise)
• We can identify a “genre” (or subtype of text) when it has certain common characteristics with
other similar texts (belonging to the same genre)
• Our background knowledge (i.e. we have seen examples of these genres before) leads us to
have some expectations and allows us to identify the genre by the principle of analogy.

Examples of genre
• There are numerous genres (e.g. in literature, in music, in films, etc.). Here are only some
examples:
– Journal Entries
– Personal Letter
– Greeting Card
– Schedule/Things to Do List
– Classified or Personal Ads
– Personal Essay or Philosophical Questions
– Top Ten List/Glossary or Dictionary
– Poetry
– Song Lyrics
– Autobiographical Essay
– Contest Entry Application
– And a long etcetera…

Studying text types and genre

• In DA, we can try to identify the linguistic features of a text to determine what text type and genre
it belongs too
• Among other things, we pay attention to:
– the kind of lexis used
– the verbs (tenses, etc.)
– the type of discourse connectors (structural, stance markers, etc.)
– the referential system (e.g. does the author refer to the reader?)
– the visual layout (e.g. a comic versus an email)
– Etc.
 Worksheet 2: Identifying genre

Read the following texts (or extracts) and, analysing the language used, say what genre
they belong to:

Text 1

Dear Gillian,
Recently I have put on a lot of weight. I lost my job some weeks ago and cannot face going out to
find a new one especially looking the way I do. I have no social life, all my friends are still working
and I feel really ugly and a total failure.

(Problem-page) A letter to a psychologist that is in a magazine. Normally in female magazines.

Text 2
Too much exposure to books, newspapers, and computers today could produce eyestrain
headaches, Cancer, so try to exercise a little caution when working with small print or computer
text. Thoughts of love and romance could interfere with your ability to do your work effectively. You
may be tempted to spend most of your time on the phone. We all have days like this, so don't fight
it. Just make sure you're feeling great when the evening rolls around!

An article in a magazine, it is a horoscope. Principle of analogy: they talk about money, health.

Text 3
At least seven people have been killed in a series of apparently random shootings in the Michigan
city of Kalamazoo, police said.
Five people were killed at a restaurant and two at a car dealership. A 14-year-old girl was among
those killed. The attacks are being linked to an earlier shooting at a car park, which left one woman
seriously injured. Police have taken a 45-year-old male into custody and said that the threat to the
public was now over. The man did not resist when approached by officers, and weapons were
found in his car, police said. "These are random murders," Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Paul
Matyas said, describing the spree as his "worst nightmare”.

Newspaper article. Written because there is too much subordination for oral speech and also a
lot of passive voice.

Text 4
Umberto Eco, who has died aged 84, was a polymath of towering cleverness. His novels, which
occasionally had the look and feel of encyclopedias, combined cultural influences ranging from TS
Eliot to the Charlie Brown comic-strips. Linguistically technical, they were at once impishly
humorous and robustly intellectual. For relaxation, Eco played Renaissance airs on the recorder,
and read dictionaries (he was a master of several foreign languages).

Obituary. When someone famous dies in the paper they usually publish an obituary in the
newspaper. Expositure time.
Unit 2: Coherence and cohesion

2.1. Cohesive devices

• Lexical cohesion
• Grammatical cohesion
2.2. Deixis
• Types of deixis
• Deixis and reference
2.3. Thematic structure and information structure
• The concepts of Theme and Rheme
• Unmarked and marked Themes
• Thematic progression

———————————————————————————————————————————

Defining coherence and cohesion

• Coherence comes from a Latin word meaning “to stick together”

• Something is “coherent” when all of its parts fit together well and this whole “makes sense”
• In DA, we will study how texts become coherent units, with “texture” –i.e. all its parts make it a
coherent whole which has sense (cohesion)
• Cohesion refers to the use of linguistic devices to join sentences together (e.g. conjunctions,
reference words, substitution and lexical devices such as repetition of words, collocations and
lexical groups)

Are coherence and cohesion the same thing?

• They are closely related but they are not the same thing
• A text is cohesive if its elements are linked together, and coherent if it makes sense.
• So a text may be cohesive (i.e. linked together), but still incoherent (i.e. meaningless)
• In other words, cohesion is a formal feature of texts (it gives them their texture), while coherence
is the extent to which the reader (or listener) is able to infer the writer's (or speaker's)
communicative intentions.
• Thus, cohesion is objectively verifiable while coherence is more subjective. A text may be
coherent to you, but incoherent to me.
• However, the most common thing is to have a cohesive text which is also coherent.

2 examples

-Cohesive but incoherent

“She is a singer. Music is very important. The importance of being Ernest is a play by Wilde. Lions
are wild animals. Don’t be an animal and come to the party. There are more political parties in
Spain right now.”
*That hasn’t got any sense

Coherent but incohesive

* We can interpret that with background knowledge


2.1. Cohesive devices

LEXICAL COHESION GRAMMATICAL COHESION

-Cohesion and cohesive devices

• A good way to create a coherent text is to use cohesive devices

• These devices can be divided into two types:
- Lexical cohesion
- Grammatical cohesion

LEXICAL COHESION

Lexical cohesion

• It concerns the way the different lexical items in a text relate to each other so that textual
continuity is created
• Lexical cohesion concerns two distinct but related aspects:
– Reiteration (*1) – Collocation (*2)

(*1) REITERATION:
-repetition: we repeat the same word “The Prime Minister gave a round press. There, the Prime
Minister explained the new economic measures”
-synonym:”They gave a romantic walk along the riverside, picking up flowers on it shore”
-hyponym: use of a sub-category within a general one. “He hit the dog with a stick. The poor
animal started barking”
-hypernym: use of general category “The roses were beautiful. She put the flowers in a vase”

(*2) COLLOCATION: (words than often go together, they are in the background knowledge)
• Collocation is more difficult to define but it refers to two or more words that often go together.
• It can also be used to include words in a text that belong to the same semantic fields
• And to words which are related in our background knowledge –even if indirectly from the formal
point of view.

Example

Pit: How was the party?

Joe: It was awesome, lots of gorgeous girls
Pit: Great, and I missed it! Did you hit it on with any of them?
Joe: huh, well, most of them were not too friendly. They all seemed to be there with their
boyfriends...
Pit: sure...

-Semantic field: T: Pit and Joe, conversation about party. We are activating the whole schemata
of a party, gorgeous, awesome…. Collocation don’t need to go together as a lexical words.
GRAMMATICAL COHESION

• Grammatical cohesion is constructed by the grammatical structures tying up the text components
• Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify grammatical cohesion into 4 major classes:

-Reference (aka co-reference)

• Reference occurs when one item in text points to another element for its interpretation.
• When there is no previous mention of the referent in the text, we call it exophoric reference
(dependent on the context outside the text for its meaning)
• When the referring expressions refer to items within the same text, we call it endophoric
reference.
A: I went with Francesca (exophoric) and David. (exophoric reference) B: uh uh?
A: Francesca’s room-mate. And Alice’s (exophoric ref.) –a friend of Alice’s from London. There
were six of us. Yeah, we did a lot of hill walking. (endophoric)

• When a referring expression links with another referring expression within the co- text, we say it
is cohesive with the previous mention of the referent in the text.
• Endophora also avoids unnecessary repetition and is a central part of grammatical cohesion.

Rewrite the following text in a more cohesive way by means of referential expressions
“We have been established by an Act of Parliament as an independent body to eliminate
discrimination against disabled people and to secure equal opportunities for disabled people. To
achieve the aim of eliminating discrimination against disabled people and securing equal
opportunities for disabled people, we have set ourselves the goal of: “a society where all disabled
people can participate fully as equal citizens.”

(done) “We have been established by an Act of Parliament as an independent body to eliminate
discrimination against disabled people and to secure equal opportunities for them. To achieve
this, we have set ourselves the goals….
• There are two types of endophora (cohesion in the text):
• anaphora: the pronouns link back to something that went before in the preceding text (as in
the previous example: “them” and “this”). (more frequent)
• cataphora: the pronouns link forward to a referent in the text that follows. It can be a stylistic
choice, to keep the reader is suspense as to who or what is being talked about.

Example

• “Students (not unlike yourselves) compelled to buy paperback copies of his (cataphora) novels
–notable the first, Travel Light, [...] imagine that Henry Bech, like thousands less famous than
he, is rich. He is not.” (anaphora)
Types of reference.
-Personal reference is reference through the category of PERSON:
-personal pronouns: she, he, it,
-possessive determiners: my, your, her,…
-possessive pronouns: mine, yours, hers, …
-Demonstrative reference uses determiners and adverbs to point to other items in the text
(deixis): This-That, These - Those / Here, there, then
-Comparative reference establishes relationships of similarity or comparison between elements
in the text: more, better, same as, etc.

Worksheet 3: Reference
Exercise: This text is taken from the opening page of chapter of Virginia Woolf’s Between the
Acts (1941). Identify all the cases of endophoric co- reference (both anaphoric and
cataphoric).
The cesspool
1 It cataphoric was a summer’s night and they were talking, in the big room with the
2 windows open to the garden, about the cesspool. The county council had
3 promised to bring water to the village, but they (the country council) anaphoric hadn’t.
4 Mrs Haines, the wife of the gentleman farmer, a goose-faced woman with
5 eyes protruding as if they (eyes) saw something to gobble in the gutter, said
6 affectedly: “What a subject to talk about on a night like this(the night)!”
7 Then (at that moment; background knowledge?) there was silence; and a cow coughed; and
that (a cow coughed) led her to say how odd
8 it was, as a child, she had never feared cows, only horses. But, then (at the time she was a
child), as a
9 small child in a perambulator, a great cart-horse had brushed within an inch
10 of her face. Her family, she told the old man in the arm-chair, had lived
11 near Liskeard for many centuries. There were the graves in the churchyard
12 to prove it(her family had lived near…)
13 A bird chuckled outside. ‘A nightingale?’ asked Mrs Haines. No,
14 nightingales didn’t come so far north. It was a daylight bird, chuckling over
15 the substance and succulence of the day, over worms, snails, grit, even in
16 sleep.
17 The old man in the arm-chair –Mr Oliver, of the Indian Civil Service, retired
18 –said that the site they (they country council) had chosen for the cesspool was, if he (Mr
Oliver) had heard
19 aright, on the Roman road. From an aeroplane, he said, you (exophoric) could still see,
20 plainly marked, the scars made by the Britons; by the Romans, by the
21 Elizabethan manor house; and by the plough, when they (Britons, Romans…) ploughed the hill
22 to grow wheat in the Napoleonic wars.
anaphoric and cataphoric

-Substitution
• It is the replacement of one item by another (pronouns are references but words like “so” are
substitution)
• It is similar to reference (think of “pronouns”) but here it is more in the “wording” than the
meaning. e.g. “he” versus “so”:
– Peter is a moron. He is always showing off. (Ref)
– I know. I’ve told you so. (Substitution)

-Types os substitution:
-Nominal substitution: One(s): “I don’t like the red dress. I prefer the blue one”
Same: “She missed her old coat and wished she could have the same
again”
-Verbal substitution: Do/did: “Do you remember that day?” “I do”
-Clausal substitution: So: “Have you finished your exercises?” “I think so”
Not: “Is the exam next week?” “I hope not!”

-Ellipsis
• Ellipsis is the process in which one item within a text or discourse is omitted or replaced by
nothing.
– Sue was deeply offended but (-) said nothing
– Have you been running? Yes, I have (-)
– Mary has a red coat. Helen (-) too.

• It is not always easy to distinguish between substitution and ellipsis.

• In fact, some authors(Taboada,2004:162) considers ellipsis is also a sub-kind of substitution “in
that it involves substitution by zero”.
• Alike substitution, ellipsis can therefore be: nominal, verbal or clausal.
• The important thing, however, is to be aware of these grammatical cohesive devices and the role
they play in making a text cohesive (and hopefully coherent)

-Conjunction
• It refers to a specification of the way in which what is to follow is connected to what has gone
before.
• Conjunctions usually structure a text/discourse and help the reader follow the author’s train of
thought –i.e. conjunctions are what we also call “discourse markers”, “connectors,” “linkers”, etc.

-Types of conjunctions (Halliday and Hasan)

1.- additive: and, or, furthermore, similarly, in addition
2.- but, however, on the other hand, nevertheless
3.- so, consequently, for this reason, it follows from this
4. temporal: then, after that, an hour later, finally, at last
 Worksheet 4: Cohesion
Exercise 1: Read the following texts1 and choose the one you think is “better” written.
Justify your choice.
A.
While Japan is the world leader for recycling plastics, that has not always been the case. It
recycled less than 40% of plastic waste in 1996 in comparison to the current figure that stands at
just over 75%. The change has come about partly as a result of legislation and partly from a clearly
focused educational programme. Several laws requiring businesses and consumers to separate
plastic waste have been brought into effect since 1997. Those measures have been supplemented
with a series of public service advertisements explaining the benefits of separating out plastic.
B.
Nowadays, Japan is the world leader for recycling plastics and on average slightly over three
quarters of plastic waste is recycled. Notwithstanding the fact that there was only a modest
increase in this figure from five years previously, it represented a massive improvement in
comparison to 1996 when less than 40% of waste was recycled. Nevertheless, the change has
come about partly as a result of legislation and partly from a clearly focused educational
programme. In addition, businesses and consumers are now required to separate plastic waste in
accordance with a series of laws that the government has introduced since 1997. Consequently,
the authorities have subsidised a series of public service advertisements which explain the benefits
of separating out plastic.

Text A. Because it is going more to the point and has better cohesion, the overuse of connectors,
as in exercise B does not make a better essay.
Exercise 2: Look for cases of lexical cohesion and classify them (i.e. collocation, reiteration:
synonymy, etc.)

REITERATION REITERATION REITERATION REITERATION

Repetition Synonymy Hyponyms Hypernyms COLLOCATIONS

plastic legislation measures (public in comparison to

services advert.)

waste laws be brought into

partly separating come about

recycle recycling as a result of

recucling world leader

plastic waste

educational
programme

public service

current figure
2.2. Deixis

TYPES OF DEIXIS DEIXIS AND REFERENCE

• Deixis means pointing at something, that something is the reference (reference change with the
context). Ex. I depends on who says “I”
• E.g. “I am here now” (3 indexical I, here, now.
• The phenomenon of deixis has been of considerable interest to philosophers, linguists and
psychologists -> natural languages (face-to-face interaction)
• As people take turns talking, the referents of I, you, here, there, this, that, etc. systematically
switch too –difficulty for children in language acquisition.
• In simple terms, deixis is organised around a “deictic centre” (the speaker) and his/her location in
space and time at the time of speaking although the location of the addressee is also taken into
account, forming a two-centred system.
• Deictic categories: personal, time, spatial, discourse, social.

-Personal deixis(I, you, he, she, we/ I am including you in my deictic center)
• Traditional grammatical category of person, reflected in pronouns and verb agreement, involves
the most basic deictic notions.
1st person encodes the participation of the speaker and temporal and spatial deixis are organised
primarily around the location of the speaker/addressee at the time of speaking.
– Speaker inclusion (1st person)
– Addressee inclusion (2nd person)
• As far as is known all languages have 1st and 2nd person pronouns but not all have 3rd person
pronouns (e.g. Macedonian)
• Other languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns – those
that do and do not include their audience.
• For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual,
trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela ("you two and I").

Examples:

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." (Oscar Wilde)
"From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some
day I intend reading it."
(Groucho Marx)
"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store,
and he asked for my autograph."
(Shirley Temple)
"I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine." (Rita Rudner)

-Time deixis( now, then, yesterday)

• “now”, “tomorrow”, “ten years ago”, “this week”, “this November”, etc. take the speaker’s location
in time at the time of the utterance.
• However, the most pervasive aspect of temporal deixis is “tense”.
• The grammatical categories (tenses) are a mixture of deictic time distinctions and aspect, often
hard to distinguish.
• Some languages (e.g. Chinese or Malay) have no tenses as such.

-Spatial deixis (here, there)

• Deictic adverbs like “here” (including speaker) and “there” (remote from the speaker) are the most
direct examples of spatial deixis.
• Other spatial deictics are “this” and “that” (some languages have a three-way distinction, e.g.
Latin or Spanish or even a seven-way, e.g. Malagasy.
• Spatial deixis is also frequently encoded in verbal roots or affixes, with a typical basic distinction
between “motion towards speaker” (e.g. come) and “motion away from speaker” (e.g. go)

-Discourse deixis (connectors)

• In a spoken or written discourse, it is frequent to refer to earlier or forthcoming segments of the
discourse (e.g. “in the previous/next paragraph”)
• Since a discourse unfolds in time, it is natural to use temporal deictic terms (“next”) although
spatial terms are also frequent (“in this chapter”)

-Social deixis (man, sr)

• This includes “honorifics”, frequent in most languages of the world
• Honorifics are not exactly personal deictics since they involve a separate dimension: they encode
the speaker’s social relationship to another person (usually the addressee but not always), on a
dimension of rank.
• There are two main kinds of honorifics:
– Referent honorifics: where the honoured party is referred to:“usted”, “vous”, “lei”, “Mr”. “Mrs”, etc.
– Non-referent honorifics: we can signal respect without referring to the addressee by choosing
between different lexical and grammatical options. E.g. Japanese (-san, -chun, -kan, etc.), Korean
or Javanese.
*Honorifics -> to show respect to the reader Ex. Tu and usted.

Practice: Identify and classify the deictics

• You'll have to bring that back tomorrow, because they aren't here now.
You: personal
that: spatial
tomorrow: time
they: personal
here: spacial
now: time

• -Where are you going now? –Over there.

you: personal
now: time
going: verb of movement (out of my circle)
there: spatial

• This is intolerable, Mister Smith.

this: spatial (Here, in my deictic centre)
mister: social (honorific)

Deixis and Reference

• The act of using language to refer to entities in the context is known as reference: an act in which
the speaker uses linguistic forms to enable the hearer to identify something.
• These linguistic forms are known as referring expressions and enable the hearer to identify the
entity being referred to, which is in turn known as the referent.
• E.g.“I went with Francesca and David”
I: personal deixis. It is also reference because deixis is always referent.
Went: move form my deictic centre
Francesca and David: are referring expressions

*THE NAME IS THE REFERENT EXPRESSION. REFERENT AND REFERRING EXPRESSION

ARE CONNECTED BUT THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. REFERENCE IS THE PERSONAL
ITSELF.

• Deixis and reference are very closely related. Apart from deictics, there are other types of words
and phrases that can be referring expressions:
– Proper names (e.g. Aristotle, Paris): these name persons, institutions and objects whose
reference is clear as opposed to common nouns (e.g. a philosopher, a city).
– Singular definite terms (e.g. the woman standing by the table)

*Paris is referring expression. Referent could be the Eiffel tower. If I say a city isn’t a referring
expression, we cannot image `a city´in general, there are a lot.
*A woman standing in a table. We activate a woman image and a table. They are referring
expressions.

2.3. Thematic structure and information structure

THE CONCEPTS OF THEME AND RHEME UNMARKED AND MARKED THEMES THEMATIC
PROGRESSION

-Theme and rheme

• Theme (sometimes also called “topic”) is the point of departure of a clause and shows the
addressee what the message is about; hence, changing the theme changes what the message is
about, e.g.
– The boy is walking the dog in the park (The boy is the theme)
– The dog is being walked in the part (by the boy) (the dog is the theme)
– In the park, the boy is walking the dog
– In the park, the dog is being walked
– Walking the dog is what the boy is doing
• The “new information” we add to the topic is the rheme (also called “comment”)
• Theme = given information / Rheme = new information

*As a writer you can chose your theme and decide what is more important.
*Rheme is the new information or comment
*Theme = given information /rheme = new information

-Unmarked theme
• When the theme coincides with the first constituent of each mood structure, it is unmarked (the
expected one):
– Subject in a declarative clause -> John went to the theater last Sunday
– Operator + Subject in polar interrogatives -> Did you like it?
– WH-element in WH-interrogatives -> Where did she go?
– Imperative in imperative clauses -> Give it back!

-Marked theme
• When a clause constituent is moved to initial position (thematic fronting or thematisation):
– One she kept for herself, the other she gave it away
– What you expect from me I can’t say
– Never have I seen such a thing
– You shut up!
– Last Saturday, we went out for dinner.

-Single and multiple theme

• Single theme is constituted by one element (the topical theme linked to the ideational
metafunction: a process, a participant or a circumstance)
• Multiple theme is constituted by more than one element (either interpersonal and/or textual theme
+ topical theme)
– Well, now, darling, what do you think of this?
– Much to our surprise though the film was a bore
Examples:
-I went to the cinema yesterday
theme: I -unmarked because is the subject - single
-Yesterday, I went to the cinema
theme: yesterday - marked - single
-To the cinema I went yesterday
theme: to the cinema - marked - single
-Going to the cinema is what I did yesterday
theme: going - marked - single

-Mary, please, can you shut up?

theme: Mary, please, can you - marked* - multiple
*marked because the first element should be can you shut up?

-Well, now, darling, what do you think of this?

theme: Well, now, darling, what - marked - multiple
-Much to our surprise though the film was bore
theme: much to our surprise though the film - marked - multiple

-Thematic progression
• The sequence of themes selected throughout a text are not random.
• The sequence of themes in a text are chosen by the writer so as to create a coherent /
cohesive text.

• This is called “Thematic progression” (Danes, 1974; Eggins, 1994)

-Types of thematic progression
(1) Constant theme progression
Theme (1) ——-> Rheme (1). Th(1) ————> Rh (2)
(2) Linear theme progression
Theme (1) Rheme (1)
————————->
Theme (2)
(3) Derived theme progression
Theme (1: Hypertheme) ————> Rheme (1)
Theme (1b)
Theme (1c)

Examples:
• Constant theme progression
Mary was very unhappy with her boyfriend. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t sleep or eat.
She had to find a solution
• Linear theme progression
Mary was very unhappy with her boyfriend. He didn’t pay any attention to her needs. These were
not many, but...
• Derived theme progression
Mary was very unhappy with her boyfriend. Her sister had often told her to talk to him. Her friends
had recommended the same. However, her whole situation was not that easy.

Worksheet 5: Theme and thematic progression

Exercise 1: Identify the theme in the following clauses. Is it single or multiple?
1. In most side sea resorts, there is a huge increase of the population in the summer. unmarked -
single (circumstance acting as a subject)
2. She bursted out laughing. unmarked - single (subject)
3. I've bought flowers this afternoon - unmarked - single (subject is subject position)
4. He looked absolutely delighted with the news. unmarked - single (subject in subject position)
5. In my days, they gave you nothing. - marked - single (circunstances, not common but
participant)
6. However, the truth is difficult to admit. - However is a discourse marker - unmarked -
multiple
7. Do you like your cocktail? - operator + participant - unmarked - single
8. Can you pass me the sugar, please? - single - unmarked
9. Maybe we could go to the mountain next Christmas. - multiple - marked
10. Mike, were you at the party too? - Mike is a vocative - you is innecesary because were is not
an operator, here it has a meaning (Mike, were you drinking yesterday? - here were is an
operator) - marked - multiple
11. Luckily, nobody was hurt in the accident. - Luckily is a stands marker** - marked - multiple
** connectors are discourse markers
**adverbs are the opinion of the writers and they are stands markers

12. Oh, they've moved back to Leeds. - marked - oh is a kind of stands marker - multiple
13. Yes you will (do your homework). - Yes is not a participant is a kind of marker - multiple -
unmarked?
14. So they actually do it like this. - so is a discourse marker + particpant - mulple and unmarked
15. Therefore, we could point out that… - therefore is a discourse marker - marked - multiple
16. No, well, I mean they don't know. - *** There are 2 posibility: -Like that and No, well, I mean
they, because i mean can work as a kind of maker that means as an explanation. - marked -
multiple
Exercise 2: Turn the marked themes into unmarked themes and vice versa. What effect can
you observe?
(a)Out went the little girl. (marked) - The little girl went out
(b) I don’t know how to explain it to you. (unmarked)
- How to explain it to you I don´t know.
- To you I don´t know how to explain.
(c) The house was a real bargain.(unmarked)
-A real bargain the house was.
(d) Give it back right now! (unmarked)
-You give it back right now
-Right now, give it back!
(e) What she wants is a new life. (marked)
-She wants a new life

EXAM!!Exercise 3: Try to rewrite the following clause using different thematic choices. In what
sense does “meaning” change? All of them are possible combinations in English. Which ones,
however, sound “odd”?
1. Rebecca bought a wonderful scarf in Paris last week
2. It was in Paris where Rebecca bought a wonderful scarf last week.
3. A wonderful scarf (PARTICIPANT AND SUBJECT) was bought by Rebecca last week in Paris.
(UNMARKED)
4. Wonderful is the scarf that Rebecca bought last week in Paris.
5. In Paris Rebecca bought a wonderful scarf last week
6. What Rebecca bought last week in Paris was a wonderful scarf
7. A wonderful scarf what was Rebecca bought last week in Paris
8. In Paris last week Rebecca bought a wonderful scarf
9. Last week Rebecca bought a wonderful scarf in Paris
10.Last week Rebecca bought in Paris a wonderful scarf
11.A wonderful scarf in Paris is what Rebecca bought last week

EXAM!!!Exercise 4: In many cases, thematic progression is defined by genre conventions. For

example, encyclopedic entries often resort to constant theme or derived themes whereas in
instructions, the theme is usually a verb (imperative). In the following extracts, analyse the
themes and say what kind of progression it prevails:
Extract 1: -> Derived theme progression
Ecuador is situated on the equator in the northwest of South America. The economy is based on
oil and agricultural products. More oil is produced in Ecuador than any other South American
country except Venezuela. Bananas, coffee, and cocoa are grown there. The people are mostly
of Indian origin. Several Indian languages are spoken there. The currency is called the Sucre.
Extract 2: ->Constant them progression
Oprah Winfrey was born in Mississippi on January 29, 1954. When she was 19 years old, she
became the first African-American news anchor on WTVF-TV in Nashville. She began The Oprah
Winfrey Show, one of the most popular talk show in the United States. She got remarkable
success in this programme. She finally formed a company and bought her own show.
Extract 3: ->Linear theme progression (repeat the same kind of thing all over again. It is a
process)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 8x4 inch loaf pan. In a medium
bowl, mix together the salmon, bread crumbs, carrots, mustard, eggs, milk, butter, lemon juice,
parsley, salt and pepper using your hands until evenly blended. Press into the greased loaf pan.
Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool 5 minutes before serving.

Extract 4:
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed
gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her
realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots(COMPLEX SUBJECT,
SECOND THEME) have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics. -> DERIVED
THEME PROGRESSION
Austen (SUBJECT, FIRST TIME) lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the
lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She (SAME THEME THAN THE FIRST ONE) was educated
primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast
support of her family (SECOND THEME) was critical to her development as a professional writer.
From her teenage years (CIRCUMSTANCE) into her thirties she experimented with various literary
forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and extensively revised
three major novels and began a fourth. -> DERIVED THEME PROGRESSION
From 1811 until 1816, (CIRCUMSTANCE) with the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811),
Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a
published writer. She (THEME) wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion,
both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon,
but died before completing it. -> LINEAR THEME PROGRESSION
Unit 3: Speech Act Theory

3.1. Performative and constative acts

3.2. The utterance as act
• Locutive, illocutionary and perlocutionary force
• Felicity conditions
3.3. Types of speech acts
Direct and indirect speech acts
3.4. Cross-cultural pragmatics

———————————————————————————————————————————

3.1. PERFORMATIVE AND CONSTATIVES

The origins of SA theory

• John Austin: How to do things with words(1962)

• Reaction against logical positivism–>truth-conditional sentences
– The King of France is bald
• In Austin’s view, there were some ordinary declarative sentences that could not be either true or
false. Truth and falsity conditions were simply irrelevant.
• Performatives vs. constative acts
*performatives about doing something and constative telling something that can be true or false.

Examples:

• I bet you six pence it will rain tomorrow.- constative?

• I hereby christen this ship the Queen Elizabeth II. - performatives
• I declare war on … - performative?
• I apologise.
• I object.
• I bequeath you my Picasso.

**features in common
-1st person subject
-performative verbs
-same tense: present simple

Performatives

• Cannot be true or false.

• Syntactically, performatives seem to share three common features:
– They are declarative sentences in present simple.
– The subject is always the first person pronoun – referring to the speaker(s).
– Performative verbs will take the adverb “hereby” .
• “I hereby declare you Mayor of Canterbury”.
• (?)“I hereby jog ten miles on Sundays.”

Some problems with the theory…

• However, these distinctive features are not so clear and Austin soon had to reformulate his
perfomative hypothesis.
• When faced with examples as the following ones, we see that:
– “I betted you five pounds...”
(Performative verbs can be used non-performatively)
– “You are hereby warned”
(The subject is not necessarily the first person pronoun)
– “Guilty!”
(Sometimes, there are cases that do not contain a verb at all)

A possible solution

• It is possible then to distinguish two kinds of performatives (Levinson, 1983; Thomas, 1995: 47)
• explicit performatives (or primary performatives in Austin’s terms) that speakers use when they
want to be unambiguous.
• implicit performatives, which also carry out an action but using other devices such as mood,
adverbs, intonation, etc.

Examples of explicit and implicit performatives

• “Shut the door”

• “I order you to shut the door”. • “I’ll be there without fail”
• “I promise I’ll be there”.
• “Therefore, ...”
• “I conclude that...”

Yet one more problem!

• “I state that I am alone responsible”

• Can be considered as both a performative and a constative (based on true-false conditions)
• Austin’s solution:
– the performative/constative dichotomy was untenable since there is no real incompatibility
between utterances being truth-bearers (constatives) and simultaneously performing
actions (performatives).
– Finally, Austin admitted a whole family of speech acts where constatives and
performatives were particular members

3.2. The Utterance as Act

LOCUTIVE, ILLOCUTIONARY AND PERLOCUTIONARY FORCE

-When we utter a sentence we are also performing actions

• Austin isolates three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed when saying something:
1. locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence (the actual words uttered) -> lo que dice (las
palabras)
2. illocutionary act (aka illocutionary force): the force or intention behind the words (promising,
offering, warning, etc.) -> (la intención de porque lo dice)
3. perlocutionary act (aka perlocutionary effect): the effect on the hearer(s). -> (la reacción del
receptor)

Examples:

• “Shoot him!”
1. locutionary act: “shoot him!”
1: shoot him; 2: order, begging; 3: kill the hearer
2. illocutionary force: ordering, advising, urging the addressee to shoot him, even begging
(to prevent an animal from suffering)
3. perlocutionary effect: the addressee might shoot that person, who could probably die.
• “Is that your car?
1: is that your car?; 2: warn to someone that the car is robbed, ask because they want to but the
car, ask because he want to drive to a place, ask because he love it, criticizing the car; 3: depends
of the situation

3.3. FELICITY CONDITIONS (right context, with the right participant, the right form)

-For performatives to perform…

• There must be the proper felicity conditions (especially in the case of performatives)
• Austin distinguished three categories:
1. There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect. The circumstances and
persons must be appropriate, as specified in the procedure.
2. The procedure must be executed correctly and completely.
3. Often, the persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, as specified in the
procedure, and if consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant parties must do so.
• Searle extended these felicity conditions to the other categories of speech acts

Examples:

Examples:
1. “I hereby divorce you”. (the performative is not successful because some of the felicity
conditions are not fulfilled (A, i).

2. Curate: Will thou have this woman to thy wedded wife... so long as both shall live? Bridegroom:
Ok, why not? (the performative is not successful because felicity condition (B. i) is not fulfilled
(the bridegroom’s words are not the correct ones)

3. Speaker: I bet you ten pounds she will fail again. (If there is no satisfactory uptake on the
hearer’s part –“you’re on” or something similar, condition B (ii) is not fulfilled).

3.3. Types of Speech Acts

SEARLE’S TAXONOMY DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS

Searle´s taxonomy (1969, 1975)

1. Representatives: The speaker states what s/he believes to be the case (describing, claiming,
insisting, predicting, etc.) (Austin’s constatives) -> they talk about reality: this is a computer
E.g. “It’s cold in here”
2. Directives: The speaker aims at making the hearer do something (commanding, requesting,
inviting, forbidding, suggesting, etc.) -> wanting the listener to do something
E.g. “Be quiet, please”
3. Commissives: The speaker commits him/herself to future action (promising, offering,
threatening, refusing, vowing, volunteering, etc.)-> to commit, to promise yourself to do something
in the future:
E.g. I’ll help you if you have any problems.
4. Expressives: The speaker states what s/he feels (apologising, praising, congratulating,
deploring, regretting, etc.) -> emotions, feeling, cajón desastre, evaluations of something,
apologizing:
E.g. I feel I should have apologised for my behaviour.
5. Declaratives: The speaker changes the world by the very utterance of the words. (Austin’s
performatives)
E.g.“I hereby declare you husband and wife”
Examples:

• The fact that girls have been outstripping boys academically has been acknowledged for the past
12 years or so. (Glasgow Herald: 28 November 2000). -> representatives
• From ghoulis and ghosties and long-leggety beasties / and things that go bump in the night, /
Good Lord, deliver us. (Scottish prayer) -> directive (you want lord makes something)
• I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / till China and Africa meet, / and the river jumps over the
mountain / and the salmon sing in the street. (Auden) -> comissives and also expresives
• To a hostess who had sent an invitation stating “Mrs Eleanor Higgins will be at home 10 April 7-9
pm”, Bernard Shaw succintly replied: “So will G. Bernard Shaw”. -> directive (an invitation)
comissives (replied)

-Direct speech acts

• According to Searle, we can make a distinction between direct and indirect speech acts.
• Direct speech acts are those where a speaker wants to communicate the literal meaning that the
words conventionally express. There is a direct relationship between the form and the function.
• (Imperative form) “Get me one” → order
• (Declarative form) “I am hungry” → statement
• (Interr. form) “Do you like tuna?” → question

-Indirect speech acts

• Indirect speech acts are those where a speaker wants to communicate a different meaning from
the apparent surface meaning. The form and function are not directly related:
• (Interr. form) “Would you get me a sandwich?” → request
• (Declarative form) “It’s hot in here” → request (open the
window)
• (Imperative form) “Come for a walk with me” → invitation
• Indirect speech acts are much more common than direct speech acts and form part of everyday
life.

*”Give me that”-direct
*indirect is when looks something but it is something else
*grammatical form of direct speech for directive: imperatives
*There are only three grammatical forms: declarative (no declarative as a macro-category, but as
grammatical form), interrogative and imperative and 4 macro categories: representative, directive,
comissive, expressive, declarative
*Most of the time we are going to produce indirect speech, and no direct.

-Problems with the dichotomy

• the classification of utterances in categories of indirect and direct speech acts is not an easy task.
• much of what we say operates on both levels and utterances often have more than one of the
macro-functions.
E.g. “I’ve seen Rivers. Which reminds me, he wants to see you, but I imagine it’ll be all right if you
dump your bag first.”
*He wants to see you
→ statement describing Rivers’ wishes.
→ order or a suggestion to the hearer. (Go and see him)

• Because of politeness), most speech acts we produce every day would be indirect according to
Searle’s distinction (i.e. directives)
• Speech acts and their linguistic realisations are also culturally bound and varies from country to
country.
→ “How fat you are!” (praising / criticising)
*There are many times that one act can be many things at the same time. (Much of what we say…)
E.g: “I´ve seen Rivers (representative: declarative sentence). Which reminds me, he wants to see
you (directive), but I imagine it´ll be all right if you dump your bag first (directive)”.

He wants to see you

->statement describing River´s wishes.
->order or a suggestion to the hearer. (Go and see him)

3.4. CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS

• The two most studied aspects in cross-cultural pragmatics have been speech acts and
politeness.
• From the beginning, studies in speech acts have suffered from anglocentrism. Since theories
started to develop in English-speaking countries, they mainly focused on English examples and
considered as “general” what was particular of English (e.g. difference between ‘direct’ and
‘indirect’ speech acts)
• However, what holds true for English doesn’t necessarily hold true for other languages.

Same speech acts, different realizations

• Offers and invitations (in English vs. Polish) (Wierzbicka, 1991):

• In Polish = “Mrs. Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit!”
• In English = Have a seat, please. Will you sit down? Won’t you sit down? Would you like to sit
down? Sit down, won’t you?
• In English, a tentative offer tends to refer to the addressee ́s desires and opinions “sure you
wouldn’t like a beer?” (Tact, non imposition)
• In Polish, interrogatives like “are you sure...?”, “would you like a beer?” would be interpreted as
real questions, not as offers (impolite)
• Hence, speech acts may be considered “universal” (i.e. we all make promises).
• However, the way they are linguistically realised may vary cross- culturally, creating
pragmalinguistic failure (see Unit 1):
E.g. (example from Cuba)
A = British woman / B = Cuban woman

A: Is Mr. Perez there?

B: Yes, he is.
A: Em... can I speak to him, please?
B: Yes, wait a minute.

• The question “is Mr. Perez there?” was intended as an indirect request for the hearer to bring Mr.
Perez to the phone. B only hears an interrogative with the function of direct representative
checking whether Mr. Perez is at his place of work.

Consequences..
• Intercultural Pragmatics
– Misunderstandings
– Stereotypes (The English are very indirect / The Spaniards are too direct)
• Need to “teach” Pragmatic competence in FL and SL:
– knowing a language is more than knowing vocabulary and grammar
 Worksheet 6: Speech Acts (adapted from Mey 2002)

Exercise 1. Consider the following utterances:

(a) Do you know what time it is?
-Directive speech act in an indirect way, do you know…? It seems to be a yes/no question but the
speaker is asking the listener to tell him/ her the time. INDIRECT DIRECTIVE

(b) Do you have the correct time?

-Expressive speech act in an indirect way. If I am in a lesson and I am really tired, so I ask my
classmate what time is it and there is a lot of time left to leave the classroom, I would be
indirectly saying I´m really tired, I which it was time. (?) It could be directive if my clock does
not work and I truly ask you to tell me the correct time.

(c) Can you tell me how to get to the men’s (ladies’) room?
-Directive speech act in an indirect way, can you tell me…? It seems to be a yes/no question but
the speaker is asking the listener to tell him/ her where is the men´s room is. INDIRECT
DIRECTIVE

(d) Do you see the salt anywhere?

-Directive speech act in an indirect way, do you see the salt…? It seems to be a yes/no question
but the speaker is asking the listener to pass him/ her the salt or to help him/her looking for the
salt because he/she can´t find it. INDIRECT DIRECTIVE

(e) It’s cold in here

-Directive speech act in an indirect way. When saying It´s cold in here you are indirectly asking
the listener to close the window… . It could also be a representative, if I only mean it´s cold in
here, there would be representative and direct.

(f) Isn’t this soup rather bland?

-Direct if you ask form simply information (yes/no). I could be expressive saying it´s disgusting,
or directive saying please change it.

*Casi siempre, dependiendo si es indirecta la mayor parte del tiempo sera `directive´
* Pueden ser directas o indirectas, dependiendo de si lo que dices, realmente es lo que quieres
decir, como en el caso del b o no. Todas pueden ser directas o indirectas, depende del contexto.

Questions
(1) What kind of speech acts are we dealing with? Name the individual utterances as being either
direct or indirect and specify their illocutionary force.
(2) In what sense is utterance (a) different from utterance (b)?
A is more frequent than B. If the speaker is telling something that is different, it might have an extra
meaning.
(3) What is the difference between a question like (b) or (c) and a question like (f)? Where does
question (d) belong?
B is not frequent in English and C is very common. The important difference is that some acts
(specially directive) have become so frequent that they are conventional request, so it is very easy
for a listener to identify them as a request. Ex. See you in September means a representative, just
offering information but it has an extra meaning behind. You have failed the exam.

-Can you pass me the salt is so conventional also.

-F is a negative interrogative. There is usually a hidden extra meaning. (`No te parece que..´? No
está muy alto?)
-D is conventional. More conventional that f and less conventional than c, due to the fact that
conventional and non conventional are not closed boxes, there is a continuous progress with some
kind of degree.
EXAM: DIFFERENT UTTERANCES AND SAY WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE.

Exercise 2. Consider the following utterances:

(a) Sitdown - Direct order. DIRECT DIRECTIVE
(b) Please sit down - Direct order. DIRECT DIRECTIVE
(c) Please have a drink - An invitation, request, offer. INDIRECT DIRECTIVE. Commissive in the
way of i´ll invite you.
(d) Please have a nice vacation - INDIRECT. Is not a direct because there is not an ability by the
listener. It´s depends on some circumstances that the listener can not control.
(e) Please be good to me - DIRECT. It is a request -beginning the other person can be good to me
or not

*When using please, there are not orders.

Question
Notice that all five utterances contain an imperative. Would you say that means they have to be
classified as speech acts of ordering? Why (not)?

Exercise 3. What is wrong with the following speech acts?

(a) I hereby promise to set fire to your house - Hereby goes with declarative speech act and here it
is a commisive. Typical promise is to offer something positive for the listener.
(b) I hereby warn you that you will be awarded the Nobel prize in literature - warn is a little bit
expressive and also a kind of directive (negative directive). Hereby is used for declarative.
warnings are usually negative for the listener but this is not a problem.
(c) WARNING: your lawn will turn brown in November - it is not a warning, you know it will happen
anyway. We are representative reality with our words, so it is a representative. It is infelicitous.

Exercise 4. The following notice poses a problem:

UNDER PENALTY OF LAW: DO NOT REMOVE THIS PAGE

(text on tags attached to all bedding material purchased in the US prior to 1981)

Compare with the current notice:

UNDER PENALTY OF LAW THIS TAG NOT TO BE REMOVED EXCEPT BY THE CONSUMER

Questions
(1) Why do you think the new formulation was chosen? For normal people, you know that if you
buy something you can remove it before using it. The consumer shut them because they didn´t
remove the tag after buying it.
(2) Does it contain the same speech act as the old one? They both are directive, but it specifies
who can remove or not the tag.
(3) Do you think the addition was necessary? Why (not)? For normal people it is not necessary but
in this case it seems to be necessary.
Unit 4: Conversation analysis

4.1. Defining conversation analysis 4.2. Turn-taking organisation

4.3. Sequence organisation
• Adjacency pairs
• Preference organization: preferred versus dispreferred responses
4.4. Repair mechanisms

———————————————————————————————————————————
Examples:
(Domestic scene between husband (A) and wife (B) A: That’s the telephone!
-conversation (you have language)
B: I’m in the bath! *(it looks like representative, but it is an indirect directive) *(it not achieving
the perlocutionary force because she does not pick it. Again, it is a indirect directive. I´m not
catching the phone.
A: OK (and picks up the phone himself) *(is a commisive, he says ok and he has to pick the
phone up)
A indicates by pointing and tapping his ear that the phone is ringing in another room
B points to the cat asleep on her lap
A shrugs and gets up
-Social interaction (you have not language)
Would you say both are examples of conversation or of social interaction? How can we interpret
the “sequence”?

4.1. Defining Conversation Analysis

• Area of discourse analysis focused on the analysis of conversation as structured (far from casual)
patterned discourse
• Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), Coulthard (1977): focused on classroom interaction and the
structure more than the language
• Sacks et al. (1974), Schegloff & Sacks (1973), Tsui (1994): focused on turn-taking distribution
• Its aim is “to identify the regularities of conversational structure by describing the ways in which
participants take turns at speaking” (Brown and Yule, 1983: 230)

*Conversation is not casual (Area of…)

-(Sinclair…) Classroom interaction between teacher and students. Very clear structure in a
classroom, they found out that usually there was what they call IRF. Initiation move, move is
how we divide conversations, thing we do when we have a conversation turn. (Ex, ´Hello´/
Question: How do you say… by the teacher), Response move (response to the initiation move
(´Hello´by the students /It´s …), Follow up move is volunteer, sometimes it appears and
sometimes not (Very good, Yes)
-Sack…) -
Its aim …) -What conversation analysis is supposed to do. How we divide the conversation. How
do we know, when we have to talk, when the other person has to talk…
4.2. Turn-taking organisation

• Conversation is far from chaotic (although it may seem so occasionally):

From a very young age we are taught how to take turns: this helps shape conversations for
the rest of our lives (Coates, 2004: 111)
• Even when still not “speaking”, human beings already display turn- taking skills:
• Turn taking is a cyclical process
• It begins with one person speaking (“turn”), and continues as the speaker gives up control to the
next person. The second speaker now has the conversational floor and so on. The turn taking
cycle stops when there is nothing left to say (Woodburn et al., 2011: 5).
• Turn taking has two central aspects:
1) Frequency
2) Control of contribution

-Frequency
• refers to the amount of turn taking within a conversation.
• for example, a conversation between two people has high frequency
• and a lecture has low frequency (Woodburn et al. 2011: 8).
* how many turns you have. In a conversation of friends, it depend on the amount of people to
know how many turns you have, of you are two there is a fifty-fifty, of you are fifty you don´t have
so much turns. Lecture has low prequency: Teacher has the majority of turns and some of them
(not too much) are for the students.

-Control of contribution
• refers to the amount of control a person has over what to say and how much to say.
• for example, an email allows the person complete control over what is written while a religious
ritual provides less control over what a person can say therefore, it is seen as rule-dependent.
*if you control what you want to say or not. If you write an email you have full control, you are
writing and you can save it … FULL CONTROL. A Wedding ceremony you can´t say all you want
to. REULE-DEPENDENT. Conversation with other person. NEGOTIATE.

No gap, no overlap model

• Ideally, conversation should proceed fluently and smoothly, without any gaps or overlaps
(although there are important cross-cultural differences here)
• To do so, interlocutors follow what we call TRP (transition relevant points) –i.e. hints in the
conversation which show other interlocutors they can take the conversational floor, e.g.:
• When the current speaker asks a question it might be a cue for someone else to take over
• If the current speaker trails off, it could be a cue for someone else to take over
• If the speaker indicates that they are done speaking with a closing statement (“And so that’s all...”
• Discourse markers words: but, so..., well... (O’Grady and Archibald, 2009: 480)
• Listeners, however, can also request for the turn: • “may I say something?”
• “are you finished?”

* if you control what you want to say or not. If you write an email you have full control, you are
writing and you can save it … FULL CONTROL. A Wedding ceremony you can´t say all you want
to. REULE-DEPENDENT. Conversation with other person. NEGOTIATE.
However...
• Turn taking violations (Coates, 2004) may happen such as:
Interruptions: When an interrupter inhibits the speaker from finishing their turn
Grabbing the floor: it is a kind of interruption but the listener not only interrupts the current
holder of the floor but also takes over the conversational floor
Overlaps: When the next speaker overlaps the first speaker’s turn; an anticipation before
speaker is finished. The first speaker is still able to finish their turn with the overlap –i.e. when
two interlocutors speak at the same time
Hogging or monopolising the floor: When a speaker takes a long time on the floor and ignores
others attempting to take the floor
Silence: Often a sign of turn taking violations, and can follow interruptions or when someone
hogs the floor for too long

• This turn-taking violations can be considered extremely impolite.

• However, in cross-cultural situations, where turn-taking rules may differ, impolite behaviour may
be unintended.

Turn-taking and gender (Coates 2011)

Female interlocutors Male interlocutors

-Cooperative / collaborative -Competitive

-Ask questions to keep conversation flowing -Ask questions to gain information

-Open up conversational floor -Tend to answer rather than start conversation

-Overlapping is normal -Tend to answer rather than start conversation-

Prefer one speaker at a time, little overlap

-Produce minimal responses Minimal responses are avoided

-Simultaneous speech is understood: multilayered -Verbal sparring: rapid-fire turns

conversations

4.3. Sequence organisation

• Adjacency pairs: pair that usually goes together. Initiating move in the conversation and this is
follow by a response move. It´s a unit that organise conversation.
• Preference organization: preferred versus dispreferred responses

Adjacency pair
• Schegloff and Sacks (1973) noticed that there is a class of sequences which is widely operative
in conversation:
• They call this adjacency pair, characterised by:
• Being two-utterance length, where one is the INITIATING MOVE and the
following one is the RESPONSE MOVE
• Adjacent positioning of component (i.e. one utterance follows the other) • Different
speakers producing each utterance
• E.g. Question-answer, greeting-greeting, offer-acceptance/refusal

Compare the following exchanges:

Invitation – acceptance
A: Would you like to join us for a coffee?
B: Sure!
Invitation – refusal
A: Would you like to join us for a coffee?
B: Well, huh, I’d love to but I’m really busy right now. Next time!
The production of a dispreferred second generally requires more conversational effort than a
preferred second.
In example 2, one can distinguish the following components in B's turn: delaying a response +
expressing appreciation of the offer + declination itself /giving a reason for why one has to decline
+ promise of future compliance

According to Levinson (1983), these are some examples of adjacency pairs:

4.4. Repair mechanisms

What is “repair”?
• The domain of repair was first defined by Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (1977) as the set of
practices whereby a co-interactant interrupts the ongoing course of action to attend to possible
trouble in speaking, hearing or understanding the talk (Sidnell and Stivers, 2013)
• These problems includes, for example, “misarticulations, malapropisms, use of a ‘wrong’ word,
unavailability of a word when needed, failure to hear or to be heard, trouble on the part of the
recipient in understanding, incorrect understandings by recipients” (Schegloff, 1987a: 210), among
others.
• Repair is used to ensure “that the interaction does not freeze in its place when trouble arises [...]
and that the turn and sequence and activity can progress to possible completion” (Schegloff, 2007b
: xiv).

* -All this mechanisims that implies continues with the conversation

-misarticulations: when people don´t speak well because they have a cold, they are drunk, nervous
-malapropism: utilizar una palabra que suena casi igual pero no es lo apropiado “Los anales de las
historia por los canales de la historia”

Example

Cordelia Chase: I just don't see why everyone's always picking on Marie-Antoinette. I can so relate
to her. She worked really hard to look that good, and people just don't appreciate that kind of effort.
And I know the peasants were all depressed.
Xander Harris: I think you mean oppressed.
Cordelia Chase: Whatever. They were cranky.
(Charisma Carpenter and Nicholas Brendon in "Lie to Me." Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1997)

4 types of repair
1) Self-initiated self-repair: Repair is both initiated and carried out by the speaker of the trouble
source. You know, she don’t... she doesn’t really want to
2) Other-initiated self-repair: Repair is carried out by speaker of the trouble source but initiated by
the recipient.
A: Yes, Helen, she told me...
B: Wait, Helen?
A: oops, I don’t know what I’m saying, I meant Belle... She told me that…

3) Self-initiated other-repair: The speaker of a trouble source may try and get the recipient to repair
the trouble -for instance if a name is proving troublesome to remember.
A: Yes, you know, that actor who played Four Weddings... Hank something?
B: Oh, you mean Hugh Grant
A: yeah, that’s the one... well, I read the other day that he […]

4)Other-initiated other-repair: The recipient of a trouble source turn both initiates and carries out
the repair. This is closest to what is conventionally called 'correction.'(Hutchby and Wooffitt,
Conversation Analysis, 2008)
A: Yes, Helen, she told me...
B: Hang on a moment, you mean Belle, don’t you?

Some criticism to CA

• CA has been criticised for its lack of systematicity. For example, there is not an exhaustive list of
all adjacency pairs or how they and TRPs might be exactly recognised (Eggins and Slade, 1997)
• Frequently, there can be «inserted sequences» within adjacency pairs, e.g.:
A: Have you seen Tom?
B: Tom who?
A: Carol’s husband
B: Ah, ok, that Tom...
B: No, I haven’t today. Why, is anything the matter with him? [...]
• Some scholars (Tsui, 1994; 1989) also suggest that a better description of conversational units
should revolve around a three-part exchange rather than adjacency pairs
• This third move is known as the follow-up move and its presence or absence can be rather
significant.
• CA is mostly qualitative and cannot lead to quantifiable results (although in more recent research,
this is changing and there is a growing combination of corpus linguistics and CA)
• CA proper did not take into account pragmatic or sociolinguistic aspects of interaction, the
background context, social context, etc. since CA proper focused upon the “sequential progression
of interaction” (Cutting, 2008: 31)
• CA “sees context as something created in talk, rather than talk as something created by
context” (Cutting, 2008: 32)
• A more recent approach (which does take context into account) as well as sequential progression
of conversation is Interactional sociolinguistics.
Unit 5: Grice and the Cooperative Principle

5.1. The Cooperative Principle and Gricean Maxims

5.2. Non-observing the maxims
5.3. From presupposition to implicature
Conventional implicature
Conversational implicature
5.4. Beyond Gricean maxims:
Relevance theory
The principle of relevance
Explicature and implicature

———————————————————————————————————————————

5.1. THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE AND GRICEAN MAXIMS

• Austin → distinction between what speakers say (locutionary act) and what they mean
(illocutionary force)
• Grice → hearer getting from what speakers say (expressed meaning) to what it is meant (implied
meaning)

Examples:

• “We must remember your telephone bill”, she said, hinting that Louise had talked long enough.
“Goodbye”, said Louise, ringing off. (Mary Wesley, 1983; Harnessing peacocks)
Q: Did Louisa understand the hint correctly?
Q: How do you deal with ending up a phone call?

• Late on Christmas Eve 1993 an ambulance is sent to pick up a man who has collapsed in
Newscastle city centre. The man is drunk and vomits all over the ambulanceman who goes to help
him. The ambulanceman says: “Great, that’s really great! That’s made my Christmas!”
Q: Did the ambulanceman mean what he said? What did he really mean?

A: What time is it?

B: The bus just went by. (in Mey, 2002)
Q: Is B’s answer relevant? In other words, does it answer A’s question?
Q: Do you think A will have problems to know what time it is?

-The Cooperate Principle

• The CP is a theory about how people use language.
• There is a set of assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation (“maxims”) → efficient and
effective use of language in conversation on a co-operative basis.

-Definition of CP

“Make your conversational contribution what is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”
(Grice quoted in Levinson, 1983: 99)

-The Grice´s four conversational maxims.

1.- Quantity
2.- Quality
3.- Relevance
4.- Manner
-The maxim of Quantity
• The maxim of Quantity is subdivided into two related sub-maxims:
– try to make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the
exchange.
– do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Examples:
• A: Did you like the film?
• B: yes, it’s quite entertaining.
– B is being cooperative
• A: Did you like the film?
• B:Well, Woody Allen’s style is quite peculiar and he is loyal to himself throughout the film but I still
found it inferior to his past films, when he was younger and bolder and when...
– Be is not not being cooperative, by offering too much information

-Are interlocutors cooperative?

A: How are your classes going?
B: Well, students are making progress.
Cooperative
————————————————————————————
A: Would you like something to drink?
B: yes
A: Huh, what would you like?
Not cooperative (when there is hesitation is there a kind of pragmatic failure)
---------------------------------------------------------
A: Would you care for a beer?
B: No thanks, I don’t drink.
Cooperative (if the answer where just No, it will be cooperative but no politeness)
-----------------------------------------------------------
A: Mary, have you seen the garage keys?
B: yes, certainly.
A: well, could you tell me where they are?
Not because there is not enough information

-The maxim of Quality (it is about being true or not. We should’t lie.
• The maxim of Quality is subdivided into two related sub-maxims:
– do not say what you believe to be false.
– do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Examples:
A: I’ll ring you tomorrow afternoon then.
B: Erm, I shall be there as far as I know, and in the meantime have a word with her.
Hedges (erm) and then as far as I know shows that the person talking is not sure about the
information given but you tell what you know saying “I don´t want to lie, but I am not 100% sure”
----------------------------------------------------------------
A: When will dinner be ready?
B: I hope it’ll be ready soon, but it depends on the oven.
It is cooperative. You don´t know it for sure and the listener knows you are trying to be honest but
don´t you have entire truth.
------------------------------------------------------------------
A: Are you sure you saw him steal the wallet?
B: yes, positively sure. I saw him. (I know for sure but that is not true)
A: Were you even there?
B: No, I was in another room
A: So, you didn’t see him
B: Well, maybe heard him
A: That’s not the same. Please stick to the facts.
Policeman and lawyer questioning. B is not cooperative. He is not 100% sure about the information
give. He does not say anything to mark he does not know the information 100%. The big problem
is positively sure, he said I know this is true and I tell you.

-The maxim of Relevance (contestar con otra cosa completamente distinta para no responder a la
pregunta)
• It is considered the most important by many pragmatists
• Gives rise to Relevance Theory (Unit 6)
• “Make your contribution relevant to what is going on”
Examples:
• A: There’s somebody at the door.
• B: I’m in the bath.
Q: What does B’s utterance mean? - You open
Q: Is it easy to interpret? In other words, do you think A will understand?

*It easy to interpret. According to Griece B is not cooperative. He is not answer and that is not
relevance. If B is not talking about the topic it’s flouting the relevance. Fully cooperative: I´m in the
bath I cannot open. You open.

***Si se duda entre quantity or manner is manner!!!

-The maxim of Manner

• The maxim of Manner is defined by Grice as: “be perspicuous”
• More specifically, the speaker should:
– avoid obscurity
– avoid ambiguity
– be brief
– be orderly

Examples:
• Thank you Chairman. Just–just to clarify one point. There is a meeting of the Police Committee
[…] -> Cooperative
• They washed and went to bed (Grundy, 2000: 75) – (we all assume it happens in that order) ->
Coperative
• I don’t know, maybe I know, maybe not, who knows? I know what I know but who else knows
that, huh? -> not cooperative. Maxim of manner.

5.2. NON-OBSERVING THE MAXIMS

-Observing the maxims
• Speakers often try to observe the maxims, as in the following example:
– A: Where are the car keys?
– B: They’re on the table in the hall. ->He is respecting the maxims. Fully cooperative.
• “Hedging” or intensifying metalinguistic comments are frequently used to show we are trying to
abide by the maxims
– All I know is that she was feeling a bit better. -> Use of hedge. Follow the maxim of quality
because he/she wants to say the truth but he/she doesn’t know all the information.
-Identify the hedges/intensifiers and the maxim(s) speakers are trying to observe:
hedges/intensifies
• Put plainly, I prefered the other film. -> Manner (the speaker doesn´t want to be ambiguous)
• The point is that she didn’t call him and he got really annoyed. ->Relevance (vamos al grano)
• What’s your name by the way? -> Relevance *By the way goes always with relevance.
• As far as I know, they could be home tomorrow. ->Quality
• They say this is Woody Allen’s best film. ->Quality
• It might be really dangerous to do it. ->Quality

-A discursive example:

Well Minister, if you asked me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see,
looking at it by and large, and taking one time with another, in terms of the averages of
departments, then, in the final analysis, it is probably true to say that, at the end of the day, in
general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably
wasn’t very much in it one way or the other, as far as one can see, at this stage. (From Yes
Minister, quoted by Grundy, 2000: 79)
Questions:
1. Identify the hedges when you are tying to mitigate the message, to pospone the message:
well… you know… (we use more hedges) / intensifiers when you say I know and you are sure…
2. What maxim(s) is the speaker hedging or intensifying?
Violating the maxim of relevance and manner, quality,

Not abiding by the maxims…

• is more frequent than it may seem at first sight, as shown by the previous examples and by
others like:
– I’m a man (uttered by a man) Quantity, everybody knows that you are a man. (Flouting the
maxim of quantity) -> implicature
• According to Grice, there are four ways of non-observing the maxims

-Ways of non-observing the maxims

• Flouting (the most studied in Pragmatics) => Implicature
• Violating
• Infringing
• Opting out
• Suspending

-Flouting is…(Lo haces a propósito. Ser irónico para crear un extra meaning)
• When a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim because the speaker wishes to prompt the
hearer to look for an “extra” meaning which is different from, or in addition to, the expressed
meaning.
– Additional meaning = implicature
• E.g. “I’m a man” (uttered by a man) might “imply” different things

-Flouting the maxim of quantity (giving more or less information that is needed)
A speaker flouts the maxim of Quantity by blatantly giving either more or less information than the
situation demands:
Example (by Cutting) A: Well, how do I look? B: Your shoes are nice… (B, doesn’t want to say the
true and A know it)

Example (by Thomas)

A: How are we getting there?
B: Well, we’re getting there in Dave’s car. (you are not coming with us)

Example (Shakespeare)
Petruchio has come to ask Baptista for his daughter’s hand in a
marriage:
Pet: And you, good sir! Pray, have you not a daughter call’d Katherina, fair and virtuous?
Bap: I have a daughter, sir, call’d Katherina. (Baptista is giving more information but less because
he is not giving more information needed so is quantity. So the hidden message is that Katherina is
not virtuous.

Example (Thomas)
At the time of the recording, all the cast were members of the BBC
Drama Group.
(The speaker, a BBC announcer, is giving more information than required)-> some of us were not
longer for the BBC Dram Group.

-Flouting the maxim of quality(you are lying and it´s obviously that it doesn’t represent what they
want to say)
The speakers flouting the maxim of quality by saying something that obviously does not represent
what they think.
Example (Thomas)
(Two friends talking about a mutual friend’s new boyfriend)
A: Is he nice?
B: She seems to like him -> B doesn’t like him.

(To a shop assistant)

“This looks awful on; I don’t want it”. -> cooperative
“I’ll go away and think about it and maybe come back later”. -> flouting quality
A: Would you like to go out with me tonight? -> invitation
B: Sorry, I’m washing my hair. -> B doesn’t want to go out with A tonight.

-Hyperboles (related with quality)

• Examples:
• I could eat a horse.
A: I’m starving
(B): I don’t think you are dying of hunger –you don’t even look thin!

• Example:
• Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to
hear that the phone is for you. (Leobowitz 1985: 368)

-Conventional euphemisms
• “I’m going to wash my hands” → “I’m going to urinate”.
• “She’s got a bun in the oven” → “She’s pregnant”.
• “He kicked the bucket” → “He died”.
-Irony and banter
• According to Leech (1983:144), “irony is an apparently friendly way of being offensive (mock-
politeness), while banter is an offensive way of being friendly (mock impoliteness).” Sarcasm is like
irony but intended to hurt.
Example:
“This is a lovely undercooked egg you’ve given me. Yummy!”
“You’re nasty, mean and stingy. How can you give me only one kiss?”

Decide whether the following utterances are flouts, and if so, of which maxims.
1. It’s part of the culture–it survives because it survives (Commentator on the Miss American
competition) -> quantity (the structure is clear that is way it´s not manner)
2. Have you seen that room of hers? ->Manner (the structure make that it is not clear) Her room
is a disaster or her room is wonderful.
3. A:Have you done your homework?
B: My friend had her ear pierced today -> relevance. He ddin´t do his homework or maybe he
wants a ear pierced
4. Dogs take lead from owner (The Times, 1997) -> quality because it is not true. It is ambiguous
and it is flouting manner.
*Puns go with manner*

-Flouting the maxim of relevance

Speakers flouting relevance expect the hearers will be able to imagine what the utterance did not
say, and make the connection between their utterance and the preceding one(s).

Example:
A: What do you think of Mary?
B: Her sister is incredibly pretty. →Implicature: Mary is not very pretty.

Example:
A: Have you made your bed today?
B: Today, today it’s quite lovely and sunny, isn’t it?
→Implicature: B has not made his/her bed.

Example (Thomas)
We were discussing the ordination of women. The bishop asked me what I thought. Should women
take the services? So long as it doesn’t have to be me, I wanted to say, they can be taken by a
trained gorilla.
“Oh yes,” Geoffrey chips in, “Susan’s all in favour. She’s keener than I am, aren’t you, darling?”
“More sprouts anybody?” I said.
→Implicature: Susan does not want to talk about the topic, either because she is not interested or
because she doesn’t want to give her opinion publicly.

-Flouting manner
Those who flout the maxim of manner, appearing to be obscure, are often trying to exclude a third
party:

Example (Cutting)
Mother: Where are you off to?
Father: I was thinking of going out to get some of that funny white stuff for somebody.
Mother: Ok, but don’t be long –dinner’s nearly ready.
Example (Thomas)
This interaction occurred during a radio interview with an un-named official from the
US Embassy in Haiti.
Interviewer: Did the US government play any part in Duvalier’s departure? Did they, for example,
actively encourage him to leave?
Official: I would not try to steer you away from that conclusion. (instead of simply saying “yes”)

*suspending: in poetry and songs where maxims are not working anymore.

Advertisements often use flouts. Can you identify the flouted maxims?
• Money doesn’t grow on trees but it blossoms at our branches (Lloyd’s Bank) - Quality
• In cordless technology we have the lead (Black & Decker) Manner
• The best 4 x 4 x far (Land Rover) - Manner
• First and fourmost (Land Rover) - Manner
• BA better connected person (British Airways) - Manner
• Acts on the spot (Acne preparation) - Manner

-Other ways of non-observing the maxims.

Apart from flouting a maxim, Grice also distinguished other four ways of non-observing:
• Violating
• Opting out • Infringing

• Suspending

-Violating a maxim
• Violating a maxim: “unostentatious non- observance of a maxim. If a speaker violates a maxim
s/he “will be liable to mislead” (1975: 49)
• Violating a maxim is done “quietly and unostentatiously”
• The difference with flouting is that the speaker does not want the hearer to infer any
implicature

Examples
• Husband: Is there another man?
• Wife: No, there isn’t another man.
• (when in fact there is another woman but the husband
does not even suspect it)
Example:
• Girlfriend: Do you love me?
• Boyfriend: Yes.
• (supposing you don’t really: quietly violates maxim of quality; hence, it is a lie –there is no
implicature)

-Opting out of a maxim

• the speaker indicates unwillingness to cooperate while wishing to avoid generating a false
implicature or appearing uncooperative.

• The speaker gives explicit information that s/he cannot satisfy the question.

Example (adapted from J. Thomas):

A conservative MP, Teddy Taylor, had been asked about talks he had had with Colonel Gadaffi.
• “Well, honestly, I can’t tell you a thing, because what was said to me was told me in
confidence.”
A colleague asks, How is the job search going? and I respond, Sorry, that’s confidential.
Example
• A: Did you go with him or not?

• B: I won’t dignify your question with an answer

-Infringing a maxim
• It is the result of imperfect linguistic performance for different reasons: imperfect command
of the language (e.g. a child or a foreigner) cognitive disability, drunkenness, nerves, etc.

• The difference with flouting is that it is not done blatantly but unawares.

Examples
• A: Are you feeling better?
• B: Oh, my gooshness, er, you talking to me, man, me?
• (The maxim of manner is being infringed because of the speaker’s B’s drunkenness.)
Example (Mooney, 2004):
• A: Would you like ham or salad on your sandwich? (Talking to a foreigner)

• B: yes.

-Suspending a maxim
– There is no expectation on the part of any participant that maxims will be fulfilled (e.g. poetry
or taboos)
– Suspension of the maxims can be culture-specific. Example (Thomas, 1995: 77):
They told him he could not be cured, Bistie’s daughter said in a shaky voice. She cleared her
throat, whipped the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘That man was strong’, she continued.
‘His spirit was strong. He didn’t give up on things. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t hardly say
anything at all. I asked him. I said, My father, why- She stopped “Never speak the name of the
dead, Chee thought. Never summon the Chindi to you, even if the name of the ghost is Father”

• Chee suspends the maxim of quantity when mentioning a name of a dead person, a taboo in
her culture

5.3. From presupposition to implicature

CONVENTIONAL IMPLICATURE CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE

-2 types of implicatures
• Conventional implicature
– also known as presupposition or entailment by
some authors (Levinson, 1983)
– It is “triggered” by the semantic nature of some words –i.e. attached to the linguistic meaning
of the word(s)
• Conversational implicature
– produced when we flout one of the Gricean maxims

-Conventional implicature
• Relatively few examples of conventional implicatures.
• Levinson (1983: 127) lists four: – but, even, therefore and yet,
– We can also include for
-but, even, therefore and yet

Examples.
• “She plays chess well, for a girl”
• “She was cursed with a stammer, unmarried
but far from stupid”

• “My friends were poor, but honest”

-Conversational implicature
• Produced when there is flouting of the maxims
• In his work “Logic and Conversation” Grice discussed six “tests” for distinguishing semantic
meaning (i.e. conventional implicature) from implied meaning (i.e. conversational implicature)
-Testing conversational implicatures
• Thomas (1994: 78-84) sums these six tests up into four properties:
– Conversational implicatures change with context
– Defeasibility
– Non-detachability and non-conventionality
– Calculability