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27 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is the definition of pragmatics? |
Pragmatics deals with the relationship among the meaning of words, what speakers mean when uttering those words, the particular circumstances of their utterance, their intentions, their actions, and what they manage to communicate -> context |
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What is the difference between literal and actual meaning? |
• Literal meaning/ meaning of sentence constructed out of its individual components - sentence meaning. • Actual meaning (non-literal)/ meaning in a particular context- utterance meaning. |
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Define the words: sentence, utterance, proposition. |
• Sentence: grammatical string of words; abstract. • Utterance: spoken or written sentence; unique and concrete manifestations of sentence. • Proposition: meaning expressed by the utterance of the sentence. |
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What are deixis and which are the categories? |
Deixis ( deictic or indexical expressions) lack any independent paraphrasable sense; their reference is relative to the situation in which they are used. • person deixis (I, you, he) • temporal deixis ( now, tomorrow) • spatial deixis (demonstratives: this (proximal), that (distal) • social deixis (du, Sie) • discourse deixis (this, that, it) |
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What is the difference between presupposition and entrainment? |
Presupposition: refers to the background assumption or beliefs that a speaker assumes to be true or takes for granted when making a statement. Entailment: is a logical relationship btw. two sentences , where if one is true, the other must be also true. It involves a necessary inference based on the meaning of the expressions used.
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What types of predispositions are there? |
- Existential (The X -> X exists) - Factive (I regret leaving-> left) - Non-factive (He pretended to be happy-> he wasn‘t happy) - Lexical (He managed to escape-> he tried to escape) - Structural (When did she die?-> she died) - Counterfactual (If I weren’t I’ll-> i am ill) |
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What are the special devices in Relevance Theory? |
Languages have special devices that can be seen as facilitating this inferencing. - Grammatical category e.g. verb forms - evidentials (indicate that speaker didn’t witness the event they are reporting). - Conversational particles e.g. after all. - Usage of after all usually only if the hearer already knew the content of the proposition. |
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Explain John Austin’s Speech Act Theory (1962). |
Speech acts (the force of linguistic expressions) are acts that we perform in any utterance: • Locutionary act of saying shy., expressing the basic, literal meaning in the words chosen. • Illocutionary act performed in saying sth, using words to warn, promise, thank, etc., the speaker does not only say sth, he actually verbally does sth: corresponds to the intent of the speaker. • Perlocutionary act performed by saying sth, producing an effect in the hearer by means of the utterance (encouraging someone to continue, dissuading someone from doing sth): the effect that the utterance might have on a hearer (to amaze, to bore, to frighten). |
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Explain the sentence “Don’t you dare speak to me like that” using different speech acts. |
Locutionary: literal meaning- do not speak to me in this particular way. Illocutionary: scold someone, threaten someone. Perlocutionary: dissuade someone from continuing to speak in a particular, possibly offensive way. |
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What are some examples for Illocutionary speech act and name what the Illocutionary acts can have. |
Examples: asserting, questioning, ordering, promising, thanking, requesting, congratulating, greeting, advising, naming, swearing, scolding, apologizing, guaranteeing, warning. Illocutionary acts can have: • Explicit performative function: I am warning you. • Implicit performative function: you will get hurt. |
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What do felicity conditions stand for? Give an example. |
In order to be successful, a speech act needs to be performed along certain types of conditions, named by John Searle appropriateness conditions or felicity conditions. • Propositional content condition: requires the participants to understand language, not to act like actors e.g. a promise must be about the future. • Preparatory condition: requires that the speech act is embedded in a context that is conventionally recognized, thus, just by uttering a promise, the event will not happen by itself. • Sincerity condition: requires that the speaker is sincere in uttering the declaration, e.g. a promise is only effective when the speaker really intends to carry it out. • Essential condition: requires that involved parties all intend to the result, e.g. a promise changes state of speaker from non-obligation to obligation. |
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What is the logic of conversation according to Paul Grices Cooperatice Principle? |
According to Grice, conversation is (and should be) governed by the Cooperative Principle, the general, rational principle stating that the participants in a conversation work together to manage/facilitate/achieve their speech exchange in the most efficient way. |
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Describe Grice’s Maxims. |
The maxim of quality: do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say anything for which you lack adequate evidence. The maxim of quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required for the purpose of the exchange. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. The maxim of relevance/ relation: make your contribution relevant. The maxim of manner: avoid obscurity and ambiguity. Be brief, be orderly. => Obeying those maxims should lead to a maximally effective exchange of information. |
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Describe the non-observance of Grice’s Maxims. |
1) Flouting a maxim: - the speaker wishes to raise the hearer’s attention to the implicit meaning which is different from the expressed one. - exploitation of an infringement to create a conversational implicature; carried out by means of indirect, contradictory utterance, or figure of speech such as irony, metaphor, overstatement, understatement, tautology. 2) Violating a maxim: - the speaker intends to deceive the recipient, often using an implicature with the intention to mislead. 3) Infringing a maxim: - occurs when the speaker has an imperfect knowledge of a given language, e.g. a learner of foreign language, stressful situation, excitement. 4) Opting out from a maxim: - refusing to participate in a conversation, e.g. do not to give away a secret. 5) Suspending a maxim: - there is no expectation that the maxim will be fulfilled. |
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Explain the Relevance Theory. |
• An utterance is relevant when the hearer can gain positive cognitive effects from that utterance-> useful information. - The most relevant interpretation of an utterance must lead to inferences that the hearer would not otherwise have been able to make. - These inferences must be accessible to the hearer in the sense that it must be possible to draw those inferences in a short space of time with relatively little effort. • If the inferential process requires too much effort, the inference cannot be drawn. |
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Explain the Communicative Principle of Relevance. |
• When someone communicates in some way, that communicative act brings with it a guarantee of its own optimal relevance. • A hearer computes relevance by selecting the most obvious (accessible) interpretation, and this process stops when the hearer achieves some kind of relevant interpretation (or gives up). => Central Element: performing inferences to understand utterances. |
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What types of presuppositions are there? |
- Existential (The X -> X exists) - Factive (I regret leaving-> left) - Non-factive (He pretended to be happy-> he wasn‘t happy) - Lexical (He managed to escape-> he tried to escape) - Structural (When did she die?-> she died) - Counterfactual (If I weren’t I’ll-> i am ill) |
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What are the special devices in Relevance Theory? |
Languages have special devices that can be seen as facilitating this inferencing. - Grammatical category e.g. verb forms - evidentials (indicate that speaker didn’t witness the event they are reporting). - Conversational particles e.g. after all. - Usage of after all usually only if the hearer already knew the content of the proposition. |
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Explain John Austin’s Speech Act Theory (1962). |
Speech acts (the force of linguistic expressions) are acts that we perform in any utterance: • Locutionary act of saying shy., expressing the basic, literal meaning in the words chosen. • Illocutionary act performed in saying sth, using words to warn, promise, thank, etc., the speaker does not only say sth, he actually verbally does sth: corresponds to the intent of the speaker. • Perlocutionary act performed by saying sth, producing an effect in the hearer by means of the utterance (encouraging someone to continue, dissuading someone from doing sth): the effect that the utterance might have on a hearer (to amaze, to bore, to frighten). |
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Explain the sentence “Don’t you dare speak to me like that” using different speech acts. |
Locutionary: literal meaning- do not speak to me in this particular way. Illocutionary: scold someone, threaten someone. Perlocutionary: dissuade someone from continuing to speak in a particular, possibly offensive way. |
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What are some examples for Illocutionary speech act and name what the Illocutionary acts can have. |
Examples: asserting, questioning, ordering, promising, thanking, requesting, congratulating, greeting, advising, naming, swearing, scolding, apologizing, guaranteeing, warning. Illocutionary acts can have: • Explicit performative function: I am warning you. • Implicit performative function: you will get hurt. |
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What do felicity conditions stand for? Give an example. |
In order to be successful, a speech act needs to be performed along certain types of conditions, named by John Searle appropriateness conditions or felicity conditions. • Propositional content condition: requires the participants to understand language, not to act like actors e.g. a promise must be about the future. • Preparatory condition: requires that the speech act is embedded in a context that is conventionally recognized, thus, just by uttering a promise, the event will not happen by itself. • Sincerity condition: requires that the speaker is sincere in uttering the declaration, e.g. a promise is only effective when the speaker really intends to carry it out. • Essential condition: requires that involved parties all intend to the result, e.g. a promise changes state of speaker from non-obligation to obligation. |
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What is the logic of conversation according to Paul Grices Cooperatice Principle? |
According to Grice, conversation is (and should be) governed by the Cooperative Principle, the general, rational principle stating that the participants in a conversation work together to manage/facilitate/achieve their speech exchange in the most efficient way. |
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Describe Grice’s Maxims. |
The maxim of quality: do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say anything for which you lack adequate evidence. The maxim of quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required for the purpose of the exchange. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. The maxim of relevance/ relation: make your contribution relevant. The maxim of manner: avoid obscurity and ambiguity. Be brief, be orderly. => Obeying those maxims should lead to a maximally effective exchange of information. |
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Describe the non-observance of Grice’s Maxims. |
1) Flouting a maxim: - the speaker wishes to raise the hearer’s attention to the implicit meaning which is different from the expressed one. - exploitation of an infringement to create a conversational implicature; carried out by means of indirect, contradictory utterance, or figure of speech such as irony, metaphor, overstatement, understatement, tautology. 2) Violating a maxim: - the speaker intends to deceive the recipient, often using an implicature with the intention to mislead. 3) Infringing a maxim: - occurs when the speaker has an imperfect knowledge of a given language, e.g. a learner of foreign language, stressful situation, excitement. 4) Opting out from a maxim: - refusing to participate in a conversation, e.g. do not to give away a secret. 5) Suspending a maxim: - there is no expectation that the maxim will be fulfilled. |
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Explain the Relevance Theory. |
• An utterance is relevant when the hearer can gain positive cognitive effects from that utterance-> useful information. - The most relevant interpretation of an utterance must lead to inferences that the hearer would not otherwise have been able to make. - These inferences must be accessible to the hearer in the sense that it must be possible to draw those inferences in a short space of time with relatively little effort. • If the inferential process requires too much effort, the inference cannot be drawn. |
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Explain the Communicative Principle of Relevance. |
• When someone communicates in some way, that communicative act brings with it a guarantee of its own optimal relevance. • A hearer computes relevance by selecting the most obvious (accessible) interpretation, and this process stops when the hearer achieves some kind of relevant interpretation (or gives up). => Central Element: performing inferences to understand utterances. |
