This is a summary of the book 'Understanding Pragmatics' which is used for the course Pragmatics and Pragmatiek. It contains a summary of the chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Samenvatting Understanding Pragmatics - Gunter Senft, H. 1-5
Pragmatiek/Pragmatics (Understanding Pragmatics of Senft + lecture notes)
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Communicatie- en Informatiewetenschappen
LNB001P05 Pragmatiek
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,Chapter 1 Pragmatics and philosophy
Pragmatics deals with the means of the language by signs and the meaning of language by
studying the contexts. Context is the information outside the sign that we assume to be
relevant for the interpretation of the sign.
1.2 John Austin’s speech act theory
A distinction has to be drawn between the meaning expressed by an utterance and the way
in which the utterance is used
1.2.1 Statements vs utterances that do something: Constatives versus performatives
Constatives (statements) certain utterances which do not contain a performative verb that
would direct the other party perform an action (only used in descriptions and assertions).
Thus, a constative (1) conveys a message, (2) can be compared to the ‘real world’ and (3)
declared as true or false.
- False statement: ‘’She wears a black t-shirt’’(the referent may have changed their
clothes causing that the statement is false)
- Unclear sentences: ‘’I have forgotten my umbrella’’ ‘’That is unfair’’(it is not clear what
‘that’ is, or why I object to it)
- Non existence of referent: ‘’The king of France is bald’’(the referent does not exist)
Performatives (utterances) when instead of saying something a speaker may be doing
something or be performing an action. There must be (1) a conventional procedure heaving
a conventional effect, (2) the circumstances and persons must be appropriate, (3) the
procedure must be executed correctly and completely and (4)he persons must have the
requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions
- Implicit performatives: what the speaker has in mind by saying it is not specifically
indicated
- Explicit performatives: a speaker has to indicate the speech act involved by inserting
the performative verb before the
- Happy performatives: well chosen and appropriate utterances
- Unhappy performatives: not well chosen and inappropriate utterances
1.2.2 Utterances which say something, do something and produce effects:
locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts
! It is not easy to decide whether an utterance is performative or constative
(constative can be also a felicity condition) → he proposes a framework in which all
speech acts can be described
The study locutions
- To perform a phonetic act (the act of uttering certain noises)
- To perform a phatic act (the act of uttering certain words in a certain grammatical
construction)
- To perform a rhetic act (the act of using words in a certain meaning)
A locutionary act (phonetic, phatic or rhetic act) means just saying something meaningful in
its normal sense. The performance of this act involves an illocutionary act which has a
,certain force (urging, advising, ordering or forcing). The achieved effect of this illocutionary
act on the listener is the perlocutionary act.
1.3 John Searle’s speech act theory
Speaking is performing illocutionary acts in a rule-governed form of behavior
- Regulative rules: can be paraphrased as imperatives
- Constitutive rules: create and define new forms of behavior
1.3.1 Illocutionary acts and their constitutive rules
Searle extracts the set of rules for the use of any function indicating device for promising:
- Propositional content rules: what speech is about
- Preparatory condition rules: the necessary prerequisites for the speech act
- Sincerity condition rules: whether the speech act is performed sincerely or not
- Essential condition rules: what kind of illocutionary act the utterance is to count as
However the illocutionary acts may be different (an order, an predication or an expression of
a wish) the acts of reference and the act of predication have a common content (=
propositional act) → illocutionary acts have (1) a specific illocutionary force and (2)
propositional content (the relation between subject and predict stays the same)
A sentence has two parts:
- A proposition-indicating element (what illocutionary force the utterance is to have)
- A function-indicating device (what illocutionary act the speaker is performing in the
utterance of the sentence)
The basic categories of illocutionary acts (differences between speech acts: illocutionary
point, direction of fit and expressed physiological states)
- Representatives: speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed
proposition ‘’Obama is the forty-fourth president of the US’’
- Directives: speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action ‘’Go
home’’
- Commissives: speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action ‘’I will have
written this paper next week’’
- Expressives: speech acts that expresses on the speaker’s attitudes and emotions
towards the proposition ‘’What a wonderful paper, Mark’’
- Declarations: speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the
declaration ‘’I now pronounce you as man and wife’’
Direct speech act when there is a direct relationship between the function of a speech act
and its structural form
Indirect speech act when there is no direct relationship between a structure and a form but
rather an indirect one
- Conventional indirection
- Inferrentional indirection
1.4 Pieter Seuren’s social binding force theory
Every linguistic utterance has a force in it that creates social binding relation consisting on:
, - A commitment on the part of the speaker
- An appeal issued to the listener
- Institution of a rule of behavior with regard to the proposition expressed
- An appellation (vocatives)
The social partners with regard to whom the speech act is valid form the force field, this
principle binds persons who have certain rights and duties, responsibilities and personal
dignity (axiomatic and defining)
1.5 H. Paul Grice’s theory of conversational implicature
There is a differences between what is said and what is actually meant, one could also say
what is implicated, by the speaker. The hearer has to make certain inferences to recognize
and understand this actual meaning which is implicated by the speaker in what he said
1.5.1 Grice’s cooperation principle and constitutive conversational maxims
‘’Make your conversational contribution such as required, at the state at which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or direction of talk exchange in which you are engaged’’
The controversational maxims are defined as follows:
- The category of quantity relates to the quantity of information to be provided, and
under it fall the following maxims
1. Make your contribution as informative as required
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required
- The category of quality is a supermaxim ‘’try to make your contribution on that is
true’’, and under it fall two more specific maxims
1. Do not say what you believe to be false
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
- The category of relation, and under it falls the following maxim
1. Be relevant
- The category of manner is relating to how what is said to be said, and under it fall the
following maxims
1. Be perspicuous
2. Avoid obscurity of expression
3. Avoid ambiguity
4. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)
5. Be orderly
1.5.2 Five properties of implicatures
Implicatures can be distinguished from other deductive processes by five characteristic
properties:
- Implicatures are cancellable
- Implicatures are defeasible
- Implicatures are alculable
- Implicatures are unconventional
- Implicatures are not fully determinable
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