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    A Summary of Pragmatics in Linguistics PDF

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    Beldjilali Tamany
    Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed between speakers and listeners based on context. Three main theories of pragmatics are speech act theory, Grice's cooperative principle, and the politeness principle. Speech act theory examines the actions performed through language. Grice's cooperative principle proposes that conversation is a cooperative effort based on quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The politeness principle addresses positive and negative face needs and different politeness strategies used in conversation.

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    A Summary of Pragmatics in Linguistics PDF

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    Beldjilali Tamany
    180 views1 page
    Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed between speakers and listeners based on context. Three main theories of pragmatics are speech act theory, Grice's cooperative principle, and the politeness principle. Speech act theory examines the actions performed through language. Grice's cooperative principle proposes that conversation is a cooperative effort based on quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The politeness principle addresses positive and negative face needs and different politeness strategies used in conversation.

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    Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed between speakers and listeners based on context. Three main theories of pragmatics are speech act theory, Grice's cooperative principle, and the politeness principle. Speech act theory examines the actions performed through language. Grice's cooperative principle proposes that conversation is a cooperative effort based on quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The politeness principle addresses positive and negative face needs and different politeness strategies used in conversation.

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    180 views1 page

    A Summary of Pragmatics in Linguistics PDF

    Uploaded by

    Beldjilali Tamany
    Pragmatics studies how meaning is conveyed between speakers and listeners based on context. Three main theories of pragmatics are speech act theory, Grice's cooperative principle, and the politeness principle. Speech act theory examines the actions performed through language. Grice's cooperative principle proposes that conversation is a cooperative effort based on quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The politeness principle addresses positive and negative face needs and different politeness strategies used in conversation.

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    A Summary of Pragmatics in Linguistics

    Linguistics as the scientific study of language consists of several branches. These include phonetics,
    phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. While semantics studies the meaning conveyed by words,
    pragmatics studies the meaning as conveyed by the speaker and interpreted by the listener. This so-called
    speaker's meaning has become the subject of many theories in pragmatics, namely speech act theory, Grice's
    maxims and Penelope's Politeness principle.

    The first theory which attempted to explain speaker's meaning is the so-called speech act theory by
    Austin and Searle. The basic definition of a speech act is the action we can do with language. The different
    actions we do by language have been classified into taxonomies, namely assertives, directives, commisssive,
    expressives and declaratives. These speech acts can be analysed by three levels locutionary, perlocutionary
    and illocutionary. The locutionary aspect refers to the syntactic and semantic structure of an utterance. The
    perlocutionary aspect is the real intended meaning. The perlocutionary aspect is the effect the utterance has
    on the hearer. However, speech act theory was harshly criticized for not showing any cooperation between
    participants in a conversation.

    The second theory which appeared in reaction to the speech act theory is the so-called cooperative
    principle by Grice. The latter argued that when people are speaking, they are cooperating between each other
    to reach meaning. This cooperation is achieved through four maxims, namely quantity, quality, relation and
    manner. The maxim of quantity requires the participants to make their contribution as informative as
    required; the maxim of quality requires participants not to say what they believe to be false or for which they
    lack evidence; the maxim of relation requires from participants to be relevant; the maxim of manner requires
    from participants to be clear and orderly. Although the cooperative principle went so far as to define the
    relationships between participants, it paid a little attention to the notion of politeness in linguistic interaction.

    The third theory in pragmatic studies is the notion of Politeness Principle by Goffeman, Penelope
    and Levinson. The latter came up with the concepts of face which is the public self-image the speaker
    intends to protect in communication. There is a negative and a positive face. While the positive face
    involves a desire for connection with others, negative face means the freedom from imposition or
    impingement. However, there are some speech acts like order and request which are face-threatening acts. A
    face threatening act is an act that inherently damages the face of the addressee by acting against his wants or
    desires. The opposite of a face-threatening act is a face-saving act. There are four politeness strategies for
    face-saving, namely bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record (indirect) strategies.
    Generally speaking, these strategies seek to minimize damage and maximize esteem. However, the whole
    theory of politeness has been criticized for not accounting for the paralinguistic features of speech
    interaction.

    All in all, linguistics consists of several branches which attempt to study language scientifically. One
    of the subfileds of linguistics which has attempted to study the meaning as conveyed by a speaker and
    interpreted by a listener in a context. Such a study has become the subject of many theories, namely speech
    act, cooperative principle and politeness principle.

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