PRAGMATICS

An Overview
 There is more involved in what one communicates than
in what one literally says, more is involved in what one
means than what the standard, conventional meanings of
words one uses.
 The term pragmatics was coined in the 1930’s by the
philosopher C.W.Morris, but was not developed as a
field of linguistics until 1970’s.
Pragmatics deals with:

 The study of contextual meanings,

 The study of speaker’s meaning,
 The study of how more gets communicated than what is said,
 The study of what people mean in a particular context,
 How the context influences what is said.
Pragmatics : The Wastebasket

 Language use is so marginal in the studies of syntax and

semantics that it is pushed to the edges of their “worktables”
or thrown up in the wastebasket. Any language use
phenomenon that didn’t find explanation in the theories of
syntax and semantics was pushed away in the waste basket.
Pragmatics is interested in the content of that wastebasket.
Pragmatics, Semantics, and Syntax

 MORRIS CARNAP PIERCE

1. Syntax : Relations of signs to one another, form of
utterance, grammar rules
2. Semantics : relations of signs to what they denote, the
meaning of the utterance
3. Pragmatics : relations of signs with their users, the study of
language use in context
DEIXIS
 Deixis are linguistic items useful to show or point at
something. They serve to encode or encapsulate the spatio-
temporal context and subjective experience of the encoder in
an utterance
 deictic expressions are context-sensitive. That is, they are
dependent of the context where they are used. The context is
the cognitive center of orientation of the speaker: What is
“here” for me may be “there” for you. The essential role of
deixis is that it determines the structures, the identity of the
speaker as well as the addressee, the time and the place of the
utterance, objects, and events in the actual situation of
occurrence.
 Many types of deixis are identified. Proximal, Distal, Person
and Spatial deixis.
 Proximal are near the speaker: This, here, now. Distal deixis:
Distal is when you refer to an entity that is away from the
speaker: That, there,then
 Person deixis such as I, you and pronouns. In conversation
personal deixis shifts all the time depending on the speaker.
 In French, the change in the choice of person deixis “tu” to
“vous” indicates higher status (honorifics”-----social deixis.
 In deictic terms, the third person is not a direct participant in
a basic “I” – “you” interaction. Using a third person deixis,
when a second person form is possible is one-way of
communicating “distance” (non-familiarity)
 It can also be done in English with and an ironic
and humorous purpose: For instance: Would his
highness like some coffee? Addressing yourself here
to your friend. In potential accusations also:
Somebody didn’t clean after himself.
 Spatial deixis: The concept of distance is clearly
relevant to spatial deixis. The relative location of
people and things is being indicated: “Here”, “There”
indicate the meaning of motion toward or away from
the speaker. In considering spatial deixis, it is
important to remember that location can be fixed
physically as well as mentally (deictic projection)
 Temporal deixis:
The use of deictic terms indicating the “time” which coincides
with the speaker’s utterance. It is physically the moment of
the utterance. It is related to the speaker’s referent time. It is
worth noting that we have also non-decitic temporal
references like calendar time and clock time.
 Deixis and Grammar
The distinction made in English grammar between direct and
indirect speech:
 Are you planning to be here this evening? --- Proximal
 I asked her if she was planning to be there that evening ---
Distal because of “that”
 When the context shifts, then the previous utterance is
marked deictically as RELATIVE to the circumstances of
asking, which are near the speaker/away from the speaker.
DEIXIS AND GRAMMAR
 The distinction made in English grammar between direct
and indirect speech:
 Are you planning to be here this evening? -------
Proximal
 I asked her if she was planning to be there that evening -
----- Distal because of “that”
 When the context shifts, then the previous utterance is
marked deictically as RELATIVE to the circumstances of
asking, which are near the speaker/away from the
speaker.
 It is important to mention that deictic
expressions were all to be found in the
Pragmatic Wastebasket. Their
interpretation depends heavily on the
context, the speaker’s intention, and they
express relative distance.
REFERENCE AND INFERENCE
 Reference -------------------------------- Speaker
 Inference --------------------------------- Listener
It is the speaker who refers, because words do not refer
to anything in themselves. It is people who decide what
words may refer to.
Reference may be regarded as an act in which the
speaker, or writer uses linguistic forms to enable a
listener, or reader, to identify something
(meaning).
 The key-process to successfully achieve reference is
INFERENCE
 Inference is connecting prior knowledge to text-
based information to create meaning (interpretation)
beyond what is directly stated.
 What is said-------- INFERENCE--------------What
is meant
 REFERENTIAL VS. ATTRIBUTIVE USE
 Referential Use: Mesaying: “The Bank Manger” in order to
draw attention to Adelaid, instead of using her name. I have
a person on mind, but instead of using her name, I chose a
referring expression. Why? Because I think you would be
more interested in hearing that this woman is a bank
manager (a rich person) than know her simply by name.

 Attributive Use: Me requiring whether you know who is the

Irish woman who brought the cake (looking for her name)
> What distinguishes the two cases is that in the referential
you use the description to a specific thing (known), while
the attributive case doesn’t refer to anything in particular .
CO-TEXT

 Co-text is one kind of contexts. It is the linguistic context.

That is the set of words used in the same phrase or sentence.
It has a strong effect on what we think the word probably
means.
 Brazil (referent) wins the world cup (co-text) Brazil here
refers to the team of football
ANAPHORIC REFERENCE
 ANAPHORA ------- I went out with Sally. SHE looked
gorgeous
 CATAPHORA: when the antecedent (referent) comes before
the referring expression
 Although I phoned HER every week, MY SISTER
complains that I don’t keep in touch with her
 ELLIPSIS: Zero anaphora, omission of anaphora and
maintaining reference
CLARIFICATION: Difference between anaphora and
deixis

 Anaphora, in linguistic sense, makes use of deictic

expressions
Sam went home because he was tired (anaphoric
expression referring to Sam) and at the same time it is a
deictic expression
 But, Deictic expressions are not necessarily related to an
anaphora:
You, you, and YOU come over here
>There is no anaphora here, because YOU is referring to three
different entities.
PRESSUPPOSITIONS AND ENTAILMENTS

 Presuppositions are implicit meanings subsumed by a

particular wording in the sense that the interpretation of the
latter is conditional upon the tacit acceptance of these
implicit meanings. A pressupposition is always assumed to be
true
 Your brother is waiting for you
 By saying your brother you presuppose that the person to
whom you talk has a brother
 Mary’s cat is cute > Presupposes that Mary has a cat
 The King of France has red hair> Presupposes that France
has a king
Presupposition VS Entailement
 Presupposition is what the speaker assumes to be the case
prior to making an utterance. While entailment (which is not
a pragmatic concept) is what logically follows from what is
asserted in the utterance. Speakers have presuppositions
while sentences have entailments. For instance:
 Emily’s sister bought two cars --- This presupposes that
Emily exists, she is alive, she has a sister, and even that she
may have only one sister, and that she is a rich. However, all
these presuppositions can be WRONG.
 But for entailments: The President was assassinated------
entails the President is dead , it can not be WRONG
 PRESUPPOSITIONS RESIST NEGATION
 Mary’s cat- is cute (A)
 Mary’s cat is not cute (B)

>Both sentences still presuppose that Mary has a cat

 If the speaker denies A, the negation doesn’t change the
presupposition. That is why we say presuppositions resist negation.
They are constant under negation. This is not the case of entailments:
 If X presupposes Y, then the negation of X still presupposes
Y
 If X entails Y, the negation of X does not entail Y
 The President of Russia is a bachelor ----- entails the President of
Russia is not married, The president of Russia is NOT a bachelor,
doesn't entail he is not married , which is the case of the Non
negated sentence.
TYPES OF PRESUPPOSITIONS
 Existential Presuppositions: Assumption of the
EXISTENCE of the entities named by the speaker For
instance: Tom’s car is new ---Tom exists / Tom has a car
 Factive Presuppositions: Assumption that something is
true due to the presence of some verbs like “know”, “realize”:
She didn’t realize she was ill ------ Someone “SHE” was ill
I am glad it’s over --------- It is over
 Lexical Presuppositions: Assumption that in using one
word, the speaker can act as if another meaning (word) will
be understood:
Andrew stopped running ----He used to run
You are late again ------You were late before
 Structural Presuppositions: It is the assumption
associated with use of certain words, structures, phrases, wh
questions: When did you travel to the USA? ---- She travelled

 Non-factive Presuppositions: Assumptions that

something is not true(using verbs like dream, imagine,
pretend):

 Counterfactual Presuppositions: Assumptions that what

is presupposed in NOT ONLY untrue, but the OPPOSITE of
what is true, contrary to facts: (Conditional structures)
 THE PROJECTION PROBLEM

 It occurs when a simple sentence becomes a part of a more

complex sentence, So the meaning of some presuppositions as a
part of the utterance does not survive to become the meaning of
a more complex sentence as a whole:
A. Nobody realized that Kelly was unhappy
B. I imagined that Kelly was unhappy
C. I imagined that Kelly was unhappy and nobody realized that
she was unhappy.
 A presupposes she was unhappy
 B presupposes she was not unhappy
 C we can’t clearly understand what the speaker means because
the two parts have opposite meanings.
This shows that entailments (necessary
consequences of what is said) are simply more
powerful than presuppositions (earlier
assumptions). The power of entailments can even
be used to cancel existential presuppositions.
A unicorn is waiting in the garden.
Grice’s theory of Conversational
Implicatures
 Grice distinguished between what is said , and
what is implicated. What is said is governed by
the conventional meaning of words, and what is
implicated is associated with the existence of
some ‘rational’ maxims which assures the success
of the conversation, by respecting these maxims,
both speaker and listener in the conversation are
adhering to the cooperative principle .
Maxims
Grice proposed the four maxims which can be regarded as the
basis for cooperative principle
1. Quantity: say only what is needed; give the exact amount
of information
2. Quality: say the truth, Do not say what you believe to be
false, or that for which you lack adequate evidence
3. Relation: be relevant
4. Manner: be clear

> Grice attributes to these principles the essential role in the

interpretation of the conversational implicatures.
 Grice doesn’t suggest that this is an exhaustive list nor give
equal importance of each one them, in fact , being relevant can
cover all of them , but Grice tried to describe the NORMS
governing the natural human conversation, so that if one the
maxims is being violated , we understand that speaker is trying
to add more meaning to the conventional meaning of words,
this is what we call conversational implicature.
Hedges
The use of some words to indicate that we are not respecting
the maxims of the conversation, but we are concerned with
following them while being cooperative participants in a
conversation. Words that indicate we are not really sure
whether what we are saying is correct, or sufficient .
 Sort of , kind of > hedges on the accuracy of our statement,
principle of quality: As far as I know, I’m not absolutely sure
but, now correct me if I am wrong, but…likely, I think,
some, few, anyway, well, by the way…
Types of conversational implicatures
 Generalized :no special knowledge of context is needed to
calculate implicature. ( use of indefinite pronouns)
 Scalar : hierarchically ordered quantifiers; selects most
informative (Quantity) & truthful (Quality) quantifier on the
scale in context; selected quantifier implicates negative of
all those higher on the scale;
 Particularized : cases in which an implicature is carried by an
utterance on a particular occasion in virtue of special features
of the context.
Characteristics of conversational
implicatures
 They are cancellable: the implicature is contextually
cancelled if one can find situations in which the utterance
would simply not carry the implicature.
 They are non-detachable :You can say the utterance in any
way you want , changing words, won’t change the
implicature . Simply because they are heavily dependant on
context , and not the conventional meaning of words.
 They are calculable : it is possible to work out the steps that
must followed to infer an implicature from an utterance.