week 1 - pragmatics Flashcards
what is pragmatics
What is pragmatics?
- The study of appropriate meaning in context.
what is an interlocutor?
an interlocutor is a person involved in a conversation or dialogue. Two or more people speaking to one another are each other’s interlocutors.
what is silence?
The absence of noise, but not the absence of communication.
“there is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses” – Foucault, The Will to Knowledge.
how can we use silence?
- To communicate
- To miscommunicate
- The power of pausing
- Its positive and negative values
- Culture
Silence and positive and negative values
Linkage function- can bond or separate people
Judgemental function- can signal assent or dissent (favour or disfavour)
Activating function- can signal deep thoughtfulness or mental activity.
Comfortable silence v the silent treatment.
What does idiomatic expressions mean?
an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning conventionally understood by native speakers. This meaning is different from the literal meaning of the idiom’s individual elements. In other words, idioms don’t mean exactly what the words say.
What is discourse analysis?
- The study of language in use and the meanings we give language and the actions we carry out when we use language in specific contexts.
inference
reading between the lines.
What is implied
implicature
Joint production of meaning
how do we make inference work?
• The way we recognise indirect speech acts and process them properly, has to do with the way we are ‘set up’ for recognition and action by the context.
• This means that speech acts like commanding, inviting and requesting are more often done indirectly than directly.
– (Mey 2002: 113)
presupposition
A presupposition is something that the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. It’s the speakers, not the sentences that have presuppositions.
For example, if someone tells you, ‘Jane’s sister got married’, there’s an obvious presupposition that Jane has a sister.
what is entailment
Entailment is the relationship between two sentences or propositions, where the truth of one proposition implies the truth of the other because both of them are involved with the meaning of words.
It’s the sentences, not speakers that have entailments. Entailments also depend on the meaning of the sentence, not the meaning of the context.
what are the presuppositions and entailments of “Mary’s brother bought three horses”?
• Presuppositions are:
– Mary exists
– Mary has a brother
– He has money
• Entailments are: – Mary’s brother bought something. – He bought three animals. – He bought two horses. – He bought one horse.
what is a presupposition trigger?
A presupposition trigger is a construction or item that signals the existence of a presupposition in an utterance
examples of the five types of presupposition triggers?
- Definitive descriptions
John SAW THE MAN with two heads»_space; There exists a man with two heads. - Factive verbs
John REALISED that he WAS in debt»_space; John was in debt. - Change of state verbs
John BEGAN to cry»_space; John hadn’t been crying. - Iterations
The flying saucer CAME AGAIN»_space; The flying saucer came before. - Temporal clauses
While Santa was visiting, everyone else was asleep»_space; Santa was visiting.
6- Cleft sentences
It was Henry WHO killed Rose»_space; Someone killed Rose.
7- Comparisons and contrasts
Carol is a better student than Barbara»_space; Carol and Barbara are students
