Lecture 9 - Pragmatism

Question 1

What is pragmatics?

Answer 1

• Role of context when extracting meaning from language
• Study of inferences and implications
• Anaphora: words in a sentence that refer to words in the context previously e.g pronouns and ‘it’/’that’/’those’

Question 2

What is figurative meaning?

Answer 2

• Beyond literal meaning in the words of a sentence.
• Indirect speech e.g can you tell me the time (asking will not can) inc Sarcasm & Metaphors

Question 3

What is the processing problem on figurative meaning?

Answer 3

• Words map onto concepts so how do infer correctly

Question 4

What is the Three-Stage model?

Answer 4

• Find literal meaning
• Sensible in context?
• If not, infer a figurative meaning
• Compute literal meaning before figurative meaning

Question 5

What is the one-stage view?

Answer 5

• Literal meaning is not computed before fig meaning
• Same processes involved in literal and figurative meaning

Question 6

What is Grice’s cooperative principle

Answer 6

• People agree to communicate because they agree to cooperate
• Follow same set of rules in convo: can generate inferences on what you mean

Question 7

What are Grice’s Maxims for coperative speakers?

Answer 7

• Quantity: informative but not too much
• Quality: truthful but not something that is lacking evidence
• Manner: Brief, orderly, not ambiguous or obscure
• Relevance

Question 8

Why should anyone violate the Maxims?

Answer 8

• When maxims are broken = allows inference of further info
• Speaking is a slow way of communicating rather than inference
• Speaking around a topic to avoid hurting other people’s feelings
• Poems can be powerful and emotive

Question 9

How do maxims work in figurative language?

Answer 9

• Maxim broken
• Assume other person is cooperative
• Must mean something else & you must infer

Question 10

How to test the 3-Stage View?

Answer 10

• Gibbs
• Blasko & Connine

Question 11

What did Gibbs do?

Answer 11

• HYP: Slower comprehension times for figurative language
• Looked at reading time study where asked people to read in/direct requests. Sentences were isolated or embedded in context
• Longer reading tasks in indirect and isolated
• When embedded in context = no diff between direct/indirect = evidence against 3-stage model

Question 12

What did Blasko and Connine do?

Answer 12

• Cross-modal priming study
• Heard sentences and had to make a lexical decision on a word connected to the literal meaning or metaphorical meaning
• e.g indecision is a whirlpool, is water a word/non-word, is confusion a word/non-word
• HYP: If literal meaning is accessed first, faster responses to prime (water)
• Found equally fast responses to literal and figurative = evidence against

Question 13

What are the different types of one-stage view (1 is compulsory)

Question 14

What is atypical development with pragmatism?

Answer 14

• Children with autism have social interaction and communication difficulties

Question 15

What are the two sorts of figurative language?

Answer 15

• Understanding other perspectives: What did they mean when they said that e.g metaphor
• Metonymy: automatic, low-level language processing e.g use the name of one thing to refer to another thing with which it is associated e.g Putin invaded Ukraine - no not just him

Question 16

What did Rundblad and Annaz do?

Answer 16

• Looking at children’s understanding of metaphor and metonymy
• Typical and autistic children
• Looking if deficit in fig language is due to lack of understanding other perspectives or GENERAL problem of non-literal meaning
• Gave kids stories with a word that has a figurative meaning that aligns with context e.g flood outside = people/water
• Children with autism have noc hange in their metaphors and metonymy

Question 17

What was the conclusion of the autistic children?

Answer 17

• General impairment when understanding metaphors
• Developing delay on metonymy
• General deficit in figurative language