Instant Download Introducing Pragmatics in Use 2nd Edition Anne O'Keeffe PDF All Chapter

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 84

Full download ebook at ebookname.

com

Introducing Pragmatics in Use 2nd Edition Anne


O’Keeffe

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-pragmatics-in-
use-2nd-edition-anne-okeeffe/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebook from https://ebookname.com


More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Introducing Performative Pragmatics 1st Edition Douglas


Robinson

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-performative-
pragmatics-1st-edition-douglas-robinson/

Where Prosody Meets Pragmatics STUDIES IN PRAGMATICS 8


2009th Edition Dagmar Barth-Weingarten

https://ebookname.com/product/where-prosody-meets-pragmatics-
studies-in-pragmatics-8-2009th-edition-dagmar-barth-weingarten/

Introducing Neuropsychology 2nd Edition John Stirling

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-neuropsychology-2nd-
edition-john-stirling/

Introducing Sociolinguistics 2nd Edition Miriam


Meyerhoff

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-sociolinguistics-2nd-
edition-miriam-meyerhoff/
Introducing statistics 2nd ed Edition Upton

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-statistics-2nd-ed-
edition-upton/

Advances in Agronomy 82 1st Edition Donald L. Sparks

https://ebookname.com/product/advances-in-agronomy-82-1st-
edition-donald-l-sparks/

AC DC First Edition Phil Sutcliffe

https://ebookname.com/product/ac-dc-first-edition-phil-sutcliffe/

Introducing Linguistic Morphology 2nd Edition Laurie


Bauer

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-linguistic-
morphology-2nd-edition-laurie-bauer/

Introducing Linguistic Morphology 2nd Edition Laurie


Bauer

https://ebookname.com/product/introducing-linguistic-
morphology-2nd-edition-laurie-bauer-2/
Introducing Pragmatics in Use

Introducing Pragmatics in Use is a lively and accessible introduction to pragmatics


which both covers theory and applies it to real spoken and written data. This textbook
systematically draws upon a number of different language corpora and the corresponding
software applications. Its primary focus is the application of a corpus methodology in
order to examine core component areas such as deixis, politeness, speech acts, language
variation and register. The main goal of the book is to contextualise pragmatics in the study
of language through the analysis of different language contexts provided by spoken and
written corpora.
Substantially revised and updated, this second edition covers a wider range of topics,
corpora and software packages. It consistently demonstrates the benefits of innovative
analytical synergies and extends this to how corpus pragmatics can be further blended with,
for example, conversation analysis or variational pragmatics. The second edition also offers
a new chapter specifically dedicated to corpus pragmatics which proposes a framework
for both form-to-function and function-to-form approaches. The book also addresses the –
sometimes thorny – area of the integration of the teaching of pragmatics into the language
classroom. All chapters in the second edition include a number of cohesive, step-by-step
tasks that can be done in small groups in class or used as self-study resources.
A wide range of illustrative language samples drawn from a number of English-
language corpora, coupled with instructive tasks and annotated further reading sections,
make this an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate students of
pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics within applied languages/linguistics
or TESOL programmes.

Anne O’Keeffe is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Department of English Language


and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Brian Clancy is Lecturer in Academic Writing and Research Methods, Academic Learning
Centre, and Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Department of English Language and Literature,
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Svenja Adolphs is Professor of English Language and Linguistics and Head of School at
the School of English, University of Nottingham, UK.
Introducing
Pragmatics in Use
Second Edition

ANNE O’KEEFFE
BRIAN CLANCY
SVENJA ADOLPHS
Second edition published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Anne O’Keeffe, Brian Clancy, Svenja Adolphs
The right of Anne O’Keeffe, Brian Clancy, Svenja Adolphs to be identified
as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2011
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-48199-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-48200-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-34295-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Akzidenz Grotesk
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Visit the eResources: www.routledge.com/9781138482005
Contents

List of figures viii


List of tables xi
Acknowledgements xiv

Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 What is pragmatics? 1
1.2 Ways of studying pragmatics 2
1.3 The empirical turn within pragmatics 3
1.4 The main functions of software tools used in corpus
pragmatics 5
1.5 The structure of this book 17
1.6 Further reading 19

Chapter 2 Researching pragmatics 21


2.1 Pragmatics research: from intuitive to empirical approaches 21
2.2 Methods for eliciting language data 26
2.3 Methods for recording language data 34
2.4 Conclusion 44
2.5 Further reading 45

Chapter 3 Corpus pragmatics 47


3.1 Introduction 47
3.2 Key considerations of corpus pragmatics research 48
3.3 Form-to-function research in corpus pragmatics 51
3.4 Function-to-form research using corpora 56
3.5 Conclusion 67
3.6 Further reading 68

Chapter 4 Reference 69
4.1 Introduction 69
4.2 Deixis 72
vi CONTENTS

4.3 The deictic centre 76


4.4 Basic categories of deixis 78
4.5 Reference in use: ‘that’ and speaker attitudes 91
4.6 Conclusion 95
4.7 Further reading 96

Chapter 5 Politeness 98
5.1 Linguistic politeness 98
5.2 The face-saving approach to politeness 103
5.3 Impoliteness 114
5.4 Discursive politeness 119
5.5 Conclusion 122
5.6 Further reading 123

Chapter 6 Speech acts 124


6.1 Introduction 124
6.2 Speech Act Theory 125
6.3 Identifying and analysing speech acts in a corpus 135
6.4 What is a speech act context? 138
6.5 Speech act classification in discourse analysis 140
6.6 Conclusion 143
6.7 Further reading 143

Chapter 7 Pragmatics and language variation 145


7.1 Pragmatics and language variation 145
7.2 Response tokens and variation 147
7.3 Pragmatic markers and variation 154
7.4 Vague language and variation 159
7.5 Speech acts and variation 165
7.6 Further reading 170

Chapter 8 Pragmatics and variation at the level of register 173


8.1 Pragmatics and variation at the level of register 173
8.2 Comparability at the level of turns 174
8.3 Other methods of comparing registers using a corpus 184
8.4 Conclusion 193
8.5 Further reading 194

Chapter 9 Pragmatics and language teaching 196


9.1 Introduction 196
9.2 Implicit versus explicit pragmatic instruction 197
9.3 Technology-based opportunities for pragmatic learning 200
9.4 Developing classroom materials 210
CONTENTS vii

9.5 Conclusion 225


9.6 Further reading 227

Appendix 229
References 233
Index 255
Figures

1.1 A sample of concordance for have in the TED_en corpus sorted 1R


(using Sketch Engine) 10
1.2 Top ten collocates of have in the TED_en corpus (using Sketch Engine),
examining all word candidates three to the left and three to the right of we 11
1.3 Concordance sample of we + have as the node (sorted 1R) 12
1.4 Top ten most frequent words to the right of we + have in the TED_en
corpus (using Sketch Engine) 13
2.1 Language inside as intuitive knowledge and language outside as
empirical data 22
2.2 Researcher interference versus research control (adapted from
Jucker, 2018: 23) 23
2.3 An example of a freer DCT (adapted from Beebe and Zhang
Waring, 2004: 245) 27
2.4 Scenarios from DCT presented to American and Mandarin students in
Liang and Han (2005) 29
2.5 A roleplay prompt 31
2.6 Example of broad transcription (and extract from a political science
lecture from the LIBEL corpus) 38
2.7 Example of narrow transcription from the Hong Kong Corpus of
Spoken English (HKCSE) (Cheng and Warren, 2007) 39
2.8 Web interface for BNCweb: Browse a File Function (search for file
KCT line 7746) 40
2.9 Transcript of file KCT 7752 in BNCweb, marked up for <pauses>,
<unclear> segments and overlapping talk <-|-> 40
2.10 Detailed transcription provided by Rühlemann (2019: 94) 41
2.11 Sample interface from ELAN where image, sound and multi-modal
transcript are aligned in tiers (ELAN How-to Guide, 2017: 15) 42
2.12 Data extract from a cookery instruction session from CLAS 43
2.13 Screenshot of a search for directives marked with the tag <Dir> in
CLAS using AntConc software (sorted 1R) 44
3.1 Form-to-function and function-to-form approaches in corpus pragmatics 48
3.2 Corpus data versus DCT elicited data across form and context
(O’Keeffe, 2018: 593) 51
FIGURES ix

3.3 20 concordance lines of the node word sorry in the BNC2014,


using #LancsBox (unsorted) 52
3.4 20 concordance lines of the node word so in the BNC2014,
using #LancsBox (unsorted) 54
3.5 The four main approaches to form-to-function analysis using CL
(based on Ädel and Reppen, 2008: 2–3) 55
3.6 An inventory of function-to-form approaches (adapted from O’Keeffe,
2018: 598–599) 57
3.7 An example of gratitude clustering across turns in the BNC2014
(using #LancsBox) 62
3.8 Collocate search settings for oops in the spoken component of COCA 65
4.1 Concordance lines for that bloke in the BNC Baby 92
4.2 Concordance lines for that fella in LCIE 94
5.1 Brown and Levinson’s (1987) strategies for performing FTAs 104
5.2 The semantic categorisation of in-group terms of address (adapted
from Leech, 1999) 107
5.3 Distribution of hedges in LCIE (normalised per million words)
(Farr et al., 2004) 113
6.1 20 randomly generated concordance lines for suggest in the BASE
(sorted 1L) 126
6.2 Felicity conditions for requests (adapted from Levinson, 1983: 240) 128
6.3 Felicity conditions for promises 128
6.4 20 concordances lines for Can you…? in LCIE (sorted 1L) 131
6.5 20 concordance lines for Could you…? in LCIE (sorted 1L) 131
6.6 15 randomly chosen concordance lines for why don’t you…? in MICASE 137
6.7 15 random concordance lines for why don’t we…? in MICASE 137
7.1 20 random concordance lines for um in the Spoken BNC2014 151
7.2 20 random concordance lines for well in the Spoken BNC2014 153
7.3 Frequency of use of thanks, thank you and cheers in American English
1800–2008 166
7.4 Frequency of use of thanks, thank you and cheers in British English
1800–2008 166
8.1 Sample of concordance lines for <$1> as search item from LCIE (sorted 1R) 183
8.2 Concordance extracts of sort in the NHS Direct corpus (unsorted) 185
8.3 Sample concordance lines for maybe + we in C-MELT (unsorted) 188
8.4 Extract from concordance lines for <$E> sound of till <\$E> in shop
recordings from LCIE (sorted 1R) 192
8.5 Examples of concordance lines of <$E> inhales <\$E> (unsorted) 193
9.1 Role card for Alex 198
9.2 Two examples of high-frequency imperatives in the MICUSP 203
9.3 Frequencies per 10,000 words of note in the MICUSP. The results for
Physics, Philosophy, Mechanical Engineering, Economics and Linguistics
are highlighted, as these were used in Neiderhiser et al. (2016) 203
9.4 Examples of elicited responses to a request task based on booking a
study room in a university context (SPACE corpus) (taken from Jones
et al., 2018: 145) 208
x FIGURES

9.5 An example of a B2 (Upper-Intermediate) level resource based on findings


from research into the Trinity Lancaster Corpus (Gablasova et al., 2019) 209
9.6 Frequency results for approximately charted across genre and time
in COCA 215
9.7 COCA interface search settings to explore approximately in ACADEMIC data 215
9.8 Profile of approximately in ACADEMIC data across disciplines 216
9.9 Frequency results for may and should across all disciplines in MICUSP 218
9.10 Extract from Beard (2008) 219
9.11 The first 20 results from the Business Letters Corpus search for would you 221
9.12 BNCweb query interface setting for search of That’s 225
Tables

1.1 A range of contextual variables that aid understanding language in use


(adapted from Rühlemann, 2019: 6–7) 2
1.2 A broad summary of the main approaches to gathering and analysing data
in pragmatics research 4
1.3 Top 20 most frequent words in the enTenTen15 corpus, The British
National Corpus 1994 and the TED_en corpus 6
1.4 Ten most frequent two-word, three-word and four-word units in LCIE 6
1.5 Pragmatically specialised functions of MWUs based on O’Keeffe
et al. (2007) 8
1.6 A list of the most frequent verbs that follow we + have + to in the
TED_en corpus with examples 14
1.7 KEYWORD LIST 1: All of the keywords based on comparison of the
Bashir–Diana Panorama interview with Spoken Media Corpus (arranged
vertically in the grids in order of ‘keyness’) 16
1.8 KEYWORD LIST 2: A sample of the 92 keywords based on comparison
of the Bashir–Diana Panorama interview with Spoken Academic Corpus
(arranged vertically in the grids in order of ‘keyness’) 16
2.1 Terminological differences relating to roleplays (based on McDonough,
1986; Trosborg, 1995; Félix-Brasdefer, 2018) 31
2.2 Corpus design matrix for study of pragmatic markers 37
2.3 Typical codes used in a broad transcription of spoken corpora 39
3.1 Comparing form-to-function and function-to-form analyses routes to
examine a research question 49
3.2 Comparing Schauer and Adolphs’ (2006) DCT results with two spoken
corpora 61
4.1 Top 20 most frequent words in LCIE 70
4.2 Classification of referential items according to person, place or time
reference 72
4.3 Frequency counts for the occurrences of we in COCA 80
4.4 Comparison of frequency of occurrence of yesterday, today and tomorrow
with the lexicalised names for days of the week in LCIE (normalised per
million words) 83
xii TABLES

4.5 Frequency of occurrence of nouns (in alphabetical order) 1R of that in the


BNC Baby and LCIE 92
4.6 Top 20 frequency results for that + noun (that _nn*) 95
5.1 Frequency counts per million words for the occurrence of please in Spoken
BNC2014 and ICE-Ireland 100
5.2 15 strategies which Brown and Levinson list in order to avoid threatening
positive face 106
5.3 Ten strategies which Brown and Levinson list in order to avoid threatening
negative face 110
5.4 Culpeper’s (1996) impoliteness strategies 115
5.5 Negative vocatives that can be used in insults 119
5.6 Frequency counts for thank* in service encounters in LCIE 122
6.1 Distribution of speech acts in three speech situations in SPICE-Ireland
(normalised per 10,000 words) 129
6.2 Frequency counts for why don’t you…? versus why don’t we…? in MICASE 136
6.3 Initiating acts (Tsui, 1994) 141
6.4 Requestives (Tsui, 1994: 104) 142
7.1 Levels of variation (Schneider and Barron, 2008: 20–21) 145
7.2 Frequency results for response tokens candidates in OANC (face-to-face)
versus OANC (switchboard) corpora (normalised per million words) 149
7.3 Occurrences of um and well at turn-initial position in the OANC sub-corpora
based on 100-item downsample for each 151
7.4 The turn-taking function of um and well in the OANC spoken sub-corpora
based on 100-item downsample for each 152
7.5 Most frequent two-, three- and four-word clusters in BAWE 155
7.6 The most frequent two-, three- and four-word clusters in LCIE 156
7.7 The ten most frequent two-, three- and four-word chunks in BASE 157
7.8 Comparative frequencies of selected adjunctive VCMs in the LINT and
BASE corpora (normalised per million words) 161
7.9 Frequency counts for the item* that type of thing in COCA 162
7.10 Comparative frequencies of selected disjunctive VCMs in the LINT and
BASE corpora (normalised per million words) 163
7.11 Frequency counts for the item or whatever in COCA 164
7.12 Frequencies of thank, thanks and cheers in the Spoken BNC1994 versus
the Spoken BNC2014 (normalised per million words) 167
7.13 Top ten collocates for thank in the Spoken BNC2014 167
7.14 Top ten collocates for thanks in the Spoken BNC2014 168
7.15 Top ten collocates for cheers in the Spoken BNC2014 169
8.1 Identifying characteristics of situational variation (based on Biber et al.,
1999: 15-17) 174
8.2 Comparison of the top 20 most frequent words in the NHS Direct corpus
and the Spoken BNC1994 181
8.3 Comparison of top 20 most frequent turn initial items in C-MELT and LINT 183
8.4 Keywords of NHS Direct corpus with LCIE as reference corpus 185
8.5 Keywords of C-MELT with LCIE as reference corpus 186
TABLES xiii

8.6 Keywords, minus content items, of C-MELT with LCIE as a reference


corpus 187
8.7 The ten most frequent three-word units in Sherlock Holmes corpus and
Shakespeare corpus 189
8.8 The ten most frequent four-word units in the Jane Austen corpus 191
9.1 The most frequent imperative verbs in the MICUSP across the disciplines
of physics, philosophy, economics, mechanical engineering and linguistics,
in descending order (Neiderhiser et al., 2016) 202
9.2 Sample of A1 Beginners and A2 Elementary entries for future simple
relating to pragmatic competence taken from the English Grammar Profile
(O’Keeffe and Mark, 2017) 207
9.3 A sample of entries from the English Grammar Profile (EGP), illustrating the
use of the affirmative form of the past simple, at A1, and tracking some of
the pragmatic competence developments at B1 and B2 level 208
9.4 Formulaic address in different speaking and writing contexts 211
9.5 Ways in which we make what we say less direct (marked in bold) (based
broadly on Carter and McCarthy, 2006) 214
9.6 A summary of hedging forms (based broadly on Carter and McCarthy,
2006) 217
9.7 Examples of the core functions of discourse markers in speaking 222
Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the support and encouragement we received from Routledge in


bringing the second edition of this book to fruition. In particular, we thank Louisa Semlyen
(Senior Publisher) and our Editorial Assistant, Eleni Steck. We are also grateful to Hannah
Rowe for her assistance at the initial stages of the project. We would also like to acknowl-
edge the insightful blind reviews we received on how the first edition might be improved
upon. One of the many helpful suggestions that came out of these reports was to add tasks,
and this has become a defining feature of the second edition. Thanks also to the following
friends and colleagues who have piloted tasks, given us feedback and advice on various
chapters or have replied to emails seeking screenshots, permission to use data or resource
screenshots, or who have chatted with us about ideas within this book: Cristina Becker
Lopes Perna, Dana Gablasova, Geraldine Mark, Mike McCarthy, Tony McEnery, Pascual
Pérez-Paredes, Ute Römer, Giovani Santos, Ana Terrazas-Calero, Elaine Vaughan, Martin
Weisser, and the students on the Discourse and Pragmatics module of the MA in Applied
Linguistics at Mary Immaculate College. Needless to say, the weaknesses of this book are
ours rather than theirs!
This book contains a lot of real data, as well as published results, from existing corpora,
and we wish to acknowledge these sources: the British Academic Spoken English Cor-
pus (BASE); the British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE); the British National
Corpus (BNC); the BNCweb; the BNC Baby; the Spoken BNC2014; the Business Letter
Corpus; the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA); the Corpus of Historical
American English (COHA); the English Web Corpus (enTenTen); the Hong Kong Corpus of
Spoken English (HKCSE); the International Corpus of English: Ireland component (ICE-Ire-
land); the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE); the Limerick Corpus of Intimate Talk (LINT);
the Limerick and Belfast Corpus of Academic Spoken English (LIBEL); the Cambridge and
Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE); the Cambridge Limerick and
Shannon corpus (CLAS); the Corpus of Meetings of English Language Teachers (C-MELT)
(very kindly lent to us by Elaine Vaughan); the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken Eng-
lish (MICASE); the Michigan Corpus of Upper Level Student Papers (MICUSP); the Not-
tingham Multi-Modal Corpus (NMMC) (funded by the UK Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC), grant numbers RES-149-25-0035 and RES-149-25-1067); the Notting-
ham Health Communication Corpus (NHS Direct component); the Open American National
Corpus (OANC); the Speech Act Corpus of English (SPACE); SPICE-Ireland, the Santa
Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE), and, finally, the TED_en corpus.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv

Throughout the book, we draw upon screenshots of the main corpus tools. We
acknowledge kind permission to reproduce these: AntConc; ELAN; #LancsBox; Sketch
Engine and WordSmith Tools (Lexical Analysis Software Ltd) and web-based search
interfaces for the Spoken BNC2014; the BNCWeb; Business Letters Corpus; Corpus of
Contemporary American English (COCA); Google Ngram Viewer; the Michigan Corpus of
Academic Spoken English (MICASE) and the Michigan Corpus of Upper Level Student
Papers (MUCUSP).
We acknowledge the research output drawn from the English Grammar Profile online
resource (Cambridge University Press), which includes examples from the Cambridge
Learner Corpus. We also reproduce, with kind permission, a screenshot sample from
resources that have been developed using the Trinity Lancaster Corpus (Centre for Corpus
Approaches to Social Science, Lancaster University/Trinity College London). Every effort
has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have been inadvertently overlooked the
publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
Although he did not live to see this second edition, we will always be grateful to the late
Ron Carter for his lasting inspiration. And to our partners Ger, Elaine and Nick, respectively,
we say thank you for your patience, support and love, as always.
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 WHAT IS PRAGMATICS?

Pragmatics is seen as a relatively young sub-field of linguistics and this is underscored


when we see that the Journal of Pragmatics and Pragmatics were established in 1977
and 1991, respectively, and the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), was founded
in 1985. However, the lineage of pragmatic thought within linguistics and philosophy
is much older. In order to define the span of what pragmatics has become, it is best to
try to unravel the threads of its emergence. This route leads to different definitions but
the process of arriving at an understanding of this definitional divergence is important
in itself.
Early foundational work which is centrally associated with pragmatics came from
philosophers of language rather than from linguists (e.g. Morris, Austin, Grice and
Searle). Importantly, pragmatics evolved out of a desire to better understand how we
make meaning when we use language and a refusal to accept that it can be explained
adequately through form and meaning alone. Also central to pragmatics is the quest to
understand language as performance rather than as an internal language competence
of the native speaker-hearer. Although early work was solely introspective (involving
reflection and thought) rather than empirical, it still focused on the conditions of use and
performance.
A perusal of the history of pragmatics shows that two different approaches or schools
of thought began to emerge early on, namely the Anglo-American tradition and the Con-
tinental European tradition (see Jucker (2012) for an overview). The former looks at lan-
guage in more micro-detail, whereas the latter takes a more macro-view of language and
its social contexts. The Anglo-American school of thought treats pragmatics as one of the
core components within linguistics, along with semantics, syntax, morphology and pho-
nology. Within this component view, pragmatics is concerned with the study of presup-
positions, deixis, implicatures and speech acts. This focus is sometimes referred to as
micropragmatics (Mey, 2001). This contrasts with the more macropragmatic position of
Continental European pragmatics which takes a broader understanding of language in
use, giving a different perspective on human communication (Mey, 2001). Continental
European pragmatics is thus sometimes referred to as the perspective view and deals
with a more extensive remit, including the social and cultural dimensions and conditions of
language in use. The differing schools of thought and resultant perspectives, approaches
2 INTRODUCTION

and methods within pragmatics is not problematic. If anything, the vibrant scholarship from
both a micro- and a macro-perspective on the nature, conditions and variables of language
use adds to the breadth and depth of the field as a whole. Because this book involves look-
ing at naturally occurring language use, especially through corpora, there is often cross-
over between micropragmatic items such as deixis or speech acts and how they manifest
at a macro-level across social variables and conditions. While this book does not involve
introspective approaches to research, it benefits greatly from the scholarship in this area
in relation to core areas of pragmatics. Therefore, in defining pragmatics, we embrace the
richness across both component and perspective positions. For us, the best definition of
pragmatics remains a broad one which we cited in the first edition of this book, namely
that of Fasold (1990: 119), who says that it is ‘the study of the use of context to make
inferences about meaning’, where inferences refer to the deductions we make based on
available evidence. In the following section we explore further the notion of context and
how it can be studied.

1.2 WAYS OF STUDYING PRAGMATICS

Within a broad definition of pragmatics, we are looking at language in use and at meaning
in the making. As discussed above, core to this endeavour is trying to account for the vari-
ables of ‘context’ in understanding language in use. Rühlemann (2019) offers some useful
parameters for understanding the contextual variables of language. His non-exhaustive list
is summarised in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 A range of contextual variables that aid understanding language in use (adapted from
Rühlemann, 2019: 6–7)

Variable Description

sequential The utterance(s) that precede and follow an utterance; the utterance(s) that
context can be expected to follow an utterance.
activity context The recognisable activity that the speaker and the hearer are engaged in at
the time of the utterance.
spatiotemporal The time and place when the utterance was made; the receiving, time and
context place of the utterance (for the listener or reader).
multimodal The speaker’s bodily conduct into which the utterance is integrated (e.g.
context posture, direction of gaze, how close they are to the speaker, whether they
move their head or hand when making an utterance, etc.).
intentional What the speaker intends to say in making an utterance, which often may not
context be apparent on the surface structure of the utterance.
emotive context The speaker’s emotional involvement with the entity the utterance is about.
epistemic context The (possibly infinite) range of the speaker’s and the hearer’s knowledge.
social context The power semantic or role relationship that holds between the speaker and
the hearer.

From Rühlemann’s (2019) list we can see that there is a broad matrix within which we
interpret and make meaning, both as interlocutors (speaker and hearer) and as observers
from the outside.
INTRODUCTION 3

TASK 1.1 CONTEXT AND LANGUAGE IN USE

1) Consider the variables in Table 1.1 above. What new variables might be added to
this list? Or, how might any of these be modified or subdivided?
2) In relation to two languages that you are familiar with, discuss how some of these
variables might differ across these languages and related cultures (e.g. in relation
to the activity context).

Language is shaped and reshaped by contextual variables. This is a key consid-


eration when designing ways of researching pragmatics, especially in terms of either
narrowing down or controlling some of these variables, or dealing with their complexity
(e.g. power semantic, role, mode, etc.). We will return to this issue in greater detail in
Chapters 2 and 3.

1.3 THE EMPIRICAL TURN WITHIN PRAGMATICS

While it is noted that the empirical turn came late to pragmatics (Taavitsainen and Jucker,
2015), the field is not without a range of methodological models for gathering data (as we
will discuss in detail in Chapter 2). In order to examine language empirically, a valid and
reliable method of obtaining the data is needed. The main approaches in pragmatics are:
to elicit samples of the pragmatic phenomenon; to observe language and note how it is
used in a given context; to interview speakers about how they might use language or about
their opinions on language use, or to examine samples of recorded language that is stored
electronically in a corpus. Jucker et al. (2018) divide these across the following types of
empirical methodological approaches:

• Experimental pragmatics: e.g. using discourse completion tasks (DCTs), roleplays or


interviews;
• Observational pragmatics: e.g. using ethnographic approaches, involving observation,
field notes and the analysis of recordings;
• Corpus pragmatics: e.g. either through building a small corpus of language or using a
large existing corpus.

We will take a detailed practical look at these methodological approaches in Chapter 2. This
section serves as a general overview.
Over the years, with the growth of studies using empirical data in pragmatics, it cannot
but be noticed that a range of analytical frameworks can be used. We attempt to sum-
marise these in Table 1.2 across six approaches: experimental, ethnographic, ethnometh-
odology/conversation analysis, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and corpus
pragmatics.
In reality, approaches to pragmatics research are rarely siloed. By drawing upon syner-
gies in approaches, the researcher can find the optimum means of gathering and analysing
data. This can, for example, mean that an ethnographic approach will use corpus tools to
4
Table 1.2 A broad summary of the main approaches to gathering and analysing data in pragmatics research

Approach How is language typically collected? How is language analysed?

Experimental Prompts are used to elicit a pragmatic The analytical focus is mostly on how speech acts manifest across variables such as speaker
approach phenomenon (e.g. speech act) using relationship, power semantic, L1 background which allow for pragmatic conclusions resulting
INTRODUCTION

a discourse completion task (DCT), from micro-analysis. Much of the interpretation of DCTs draws upon conversation analysis.
roleplay or interview. The large sample of responses elicited using the prompt task are analysed for patterns of
language use within or across turns, and this is often formulaic or routinised. Where relevant,
turn organisation can be examined and compared across contextual variables.
Ethnographic The researcher is immersed in a Observations, field notes and transcribed recordings are thematically analysed for an in-depth
approach community and makes observation- understanding of how language is used in a specific context. Language use in a community is
based field notes as well as video or analysed in an iterative way, where the researcher moves between hypothesising about how
sound recordings. interactions take place based on observations and close analysis of the actual interactions. This
leads to a ‘thick’ description of community activities (Marra and Lazzaro-Salazar, 2018: 359).
Ethnomethodology Very short recordings are made or Very detailed transcriptions of the turn-by-turn unfolding interactions are analysed so as to
and conversation identified for a very specific context establish turn preference, order and canonical sequencing within given situations. This approach
analysis (e.g. calls to a radio phone-in or involves looking in micro-detail at short stretches of interaction (e.g. a call opening) and, from
emergency helpline). this, generalisations can be made about role, power or context as they emerge through the turn-
taking order and sequence.
Discourse analysis Short recordings or texts from a Spoken or written texts are analysed for pragmatic features (e.g. pragmatic markers) or
specific context are gathered (e.g. a discourse features (e.g. text organisation).
classroom).
Critical discourse Individual recordings of (usually) public Usually, small samples of language are viewed from a critical perspective (e.g. the power
analysis speech events or texts are gathered (e.g. semantics of the pronouns used in a text; the use of modality and stance in political
a political speech, a newspaper article interviews; vagueness or deixis in news reports, etc.).
on Brexit, Tweets on a specific topic).
Corpus pragmatics Large corpora are accessed, usually Corpus tools are used to recall search items from the corpus. Pragmatic items may derive
online, or small corpora can be built from word or multi-word unit frequency lists or from keyword analysis. Alternatively, pragmatic
through text curation or through functions may be recalled if the data has been pragmatically annotated or if existing knowledge
recordings. These are transcribed of speech act manifestations, such as illocutionary force identifying devices (IFIDs), are used
and sometimes annotated (e.g. as the basis for searches. Concordancing is used to look at these search items in a more
for all instances of a pragmatic contextualised way. There is often a need for close analysis of large amounts of concordance
phenomenon). lines to manually categorise the function of a given form.
INTRODUCTION 5

enable large-scale annotation and analysis. A researcher who crowd-sources discourse


completion test (DCT) responses using an online platform may find that corpus linguistics
offers a useful tool for annotating the results and identifying formulaic use of language
across a large sample. Within the same study, the researcher may find that conversation
analysis best aids the interpretation of power asymmetry in the results from the DCT within
a qualitative sample.
Throughout this book, we take the perspective that corpus linguistics offers much
to better our analysis of data in pragmatics. We are now at a stage where we talk about
corpus pragmatics and this approach is evolving in terms of its definition (see Adolphs,
2008; Romero-Trillo, 2008; O’Keeffe et al., 2011; Rühlemann and Aijmer, 2015; Clancy
and O’Keeffe, 2015). The main corpus tools can tell us the most frequent words or phrases
in a corpus as well as the keywords when compared with another corpus (see below).
These can then be examined in much more contextual detail using concordance searches.
However, corpus tools will neither interpret from nor hypothesise about actual language
use. Corpus software will identify strong patterns based on frequencies or other statistical
measures and this will strongly indicate tendencies, but, for a broader understanding of
language in use, other frameworks have been used.
Let us briefly survey the main functions of corpus tools and how these relate to prag-
matics. Within this overview, we will illustrate how some other approaches and frameworks
shown in Table 1.2 interplay in corpus pragmatics.

1.4 THE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF SOFTWARE TOOLS


USED IN CORPUS PRAGMATICS

Word and multi-word frequency lists

The frequency of a word or a phrase (multi-word unit) tells us about its profile and use. If a
word or phrase recurs in a given context, it is usually indicative of a salient feature. For this
reason, frequency lists are seen as a good starting point for the analysis of a corpus. As
a first step into corpus data, a researcher will look at the word list results and this is often
done by comparing it with another word list from a different corpus. When looking at a word
list comparatively, the researcher is normally more concerned with the distribution at the top
of the rank order list (i.e. the top most frequent words or phrases). The British National Cor-
pus (BNC) (see Appendix) offers a benchmark for typical rank order, for example, the, of, an,
to and a are the first five most frequent items (in that order). In order to discover instances
of the pragmatically specialised use of language, we might take this set as our baseline and
follow up on any differences that might occur, as we illustrate in Task 1.2.

TASK 1.2 COMPARING WORD FREQUENCY RESULTS

Consider the word lists in Table 1.3. It shows actual (‘raw’) results for the top 20 most fre-
quent words in three different corpora:1 the EnTenTen15 (internet texts); The BNC1994
(spoken and written) and the TED_en corpus (TED talks). Notice how the rank order of
the first five items is very similar across the three corpora.
6 INTRODUCTION

Table 1.3 Top 20 most frequent words in the EnTenTen15 corpus, The British National Corpus
1994 and the TED_en corpus

EnTenTen15 BNC1994 TED_en

Item Freq Item Freq Item Freq

1. the 936350691 the 6054939 the 139811


2. and 524890456 of 3049448 and 100004
3. of 486715646 and 2624147 to 82141
4. to 428396439 to 2599451 of 77277
5. a 329062259 a 2175967 a 70445
6. in 323377556 in 1945533 that 63294
7. for 182058823 that 1120750 I 55178
8. is 178334830 it 1054366 in 52061
9. that 143529237 is 991771 it 51668
10. on 122967806 was 883547 you 49459
11. with 119656593 for 880805 is 44783
12. it 101713396 I 872236 we 44704
13. as 101373405 on 731234 this 34470
14. are 89170986 you 668407 so 25350
15. I 88646595 with 659976 they 22288
16. this 87053543 as 655175 was 20934
17. be 83961228 be 651542 for 19387
18. by 80782924 he 641241 are 18777
19. at 78206830 at 524061 have 18663
20. from 75534320 by 513428 what 18162

Look at the order of the words from the sixth to the twentieth most frequent (these are
shaded in Table 1.3).

1) Circle the words that stand out as being different in their rank order of frequency.
2) Taking the different types of corpora into consideration, speculate as to why these
words you have circled might be more or less frequent than in the other lists.
3) If you have access to these corpora, examine the words you have identified by
looking at them in concordance lines. Check if your intuition is correct (see also the
section on concordance lines and task 1.4 where we follow up on this).

Corpus software can also count phrases (combinations of words) that frequently recur;
for example, Table 1.4 shows the top ten most frequent two-, three- and four-word units in
the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE) (see Appendix).

Table 1.4 Ten most frequent two-word, three-word and four-word units in LCIE

Frequency Two-word units Three-word units Four-word units


rank

1 you know 4406 I don’t know 1212 you know what I 230
2 in the 3435 do you know 769 know what I mean 215
INTRODUCTION 7

Table 1.4 Continued

Frequency Two-word units Three-word units Four-word units


rank

3 of the 2354 a lot of 522 do you know what 208


4 do you 2332 you know what 379 I don’t know what 134
5 I don’t 2200 do you want 373 do you want to 121
6 I think 2003 I don’t think 338 are you going to 103
7 It was 1939 you know the 323 you know the way 103
8 I was 1891 you have to 308 I don’t know I 91
9 going to 1849 going to be 307 thank you very much 91
10 on the 1801 yeah yeah yeah 297 the end of the 85

This corpus software function has added much to our understanding of multi-word
units (MWUs). The many terms that have evolved under the umbrella term multi-word units
(MWUs) reflects the ongoing attempt to find the best methodology for both counting and
accounting for the fact that some words seem to occur in units with other words. These
terms often come with slightly differing definitions and include, inter alia: formulas, formu-
laic units, formulaic sequences, routines, fixed expressions, prefabricated patterns (prefabs),
clusters, chunks, concgrams, strings, n-grams and lexical bundles/lexical phrases (see
Greaves and Warren (2010) and Gray and Biber (2015) for coverage of differing terminol-
ogy, methodologies and research findings).
For the purposes of this book, we opt to use the umbrella term multi-word unit (MWU)
unless we are discussing a particular study or relevant finding. Some key issues and find-
ings from research to date include the following:

• MWUs are very common and are defined differently across a number of studies. Termi-
nology and definitions are tied up with important variations in retrieval methods (What
constitutes a unit?; What is the frequency cut-off for inclusion?, etc.);
• MWUs can be examined as continuous (e.g. you know what I mean) or discontinuous
(e.g. the * of * ) sequences;
• We can talk about the length of an MWU in terms of whether it is across two-, three-,
for-, five- or six-word slots and, within these units, we can examine the fixedness or
variability of the constituent components;
• MWUs vary in frequency across speech and writing. For example, Biber et al. (2004)
found lexical bundles to be more frequent in speech than in writing. Other studies
found that continuous units were more frequent in speech, whereas writing (espe-
cially academic registers) relies heavily on discontinuous units which act as frames
(Biber, 2009);
• MWUs vary across registers and many units have become pragmatically specialised in
terms of their discourse function (see Chapter 8).

The study of MWUs is important for pragmatic research because they are often asso-
ciated with functions such as stance marking, focus, text organisation and referential mean-
ing. O’Keeffe et al. (2007), for example, examined MWUs in the Cambridge and Nottingham
Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) (see Appendix), and found that many items
had pragmatically specialised functions in spoken interactions, summarised in Table 1.5.
8 INTRODUCTION

Table 1.5 Pragmatically specialised functions of MWUs, based on O’Keeffe et al. (2007)

Function Example

Discourse marking you know; I mean; and then; but I mean; you know what I mean; at the end of the day
Face and politeness do you think; do you want (me) (to); I don’t know if; what do you think; I was
(mitigation) going to say
Vagueness and a couple of; and things like that; or something like that; (and) that sort of thing;
approximation (and) all this/that sort of thing

Other items can be appear to be functionally less specialised but often these items
relate to the world of the speaker or writer. That is, they are frames for referential meaning –
to refer to the shared world of the interlocutors (see Biber et al., 2004; O’Keeffe et al.,
2007; Biber, 2009; Greaves and Warren, 2010). We will explore referential frames in Task
1.3 (based on some selected results from O’Keeffe et al., 2007; Biber, 2009; Gray and
Biber, 2015).

TASK 1.3 EXPLORING MULTI-WORD UNITS

Examine the following high-frequency multi-word units (MWUs) based on existing research
which operate as frames (* marks a slot that can be filled by various possible words):

of the * of it was * at the * of * in the *of on the * of

1) Think of words that might go into the empty slot marked by * and then sort the
phrases that you have generated into the following common referential categories.
Try to come up with three examples for each category.

Referring to time Referring to place Referring to somewhere in a text

2) Which other category might you add to finish categorising the phrases you have
generated?
3) Can you think of longer phrases that these items might frame across these three
functions (e.g. It was getting late; In the beginning of the century, etc.)?

We will be exploring MWUs in terms of their pragmatic meaning and discourse function
in a number of chapters in this book. Within a corpus pragmatic approach, what interests us
most is how these units function pragmatically across different contexts of language use.

Concordance lines

As discussed above, word frequency lists, when examined comparatively, can point to the
possibility of a word having some specialised meaning or use in a particular context. This
INTRODUCTION 9

can sometimes lead to insights about pragmatically specialised uses when a form is fur-
ther investigated. Therefore, it is essential that frequency analysis is complemented by a
detailed consideration of the environment of a word through the use of concordance tools.
A concordance, as defined by Sinclair (2003: 173), ‘is an index to the places in a text
where particular words and phrases occur’. In a concordance, the search word you enter
will appear in the middle of the search screen (see Figure 1.1). This word is referred to as
the node (in Figure 1.1, have is the node). There are, however, some caveats concerning
concordance lines. The first is that although they provide information on a node (the search
word), they do not interpret it. It is the responsibility of the researcher to use the software
to determine the patterns that are salient and to construct hypotheses as to why these
patterns occur. Therefore, as Baker (2006: 89) states, ‘a concordance analysis is … only
as good as its analyst’. We will now exemplify some of the typical phases that a researcher
might undertake in the process of hypothesis formation, moving iteratively between word
lists, concordances and patterns.
In Task 1.2, when looking at words that seem to be at a higher or lower rank order
across the three lists in the task, you may have noticed the word have. It is in the top
20 most frequent words from the TED_en corpus but it does not appear in the top 20
most frequent words in the other two corpora, EnTenTen15 and the BNC. This points to
the possibility of being used in some specialised way in the TED talks data. When we
create a concordance of have in the TED_en corpus and we sort it to the right of the
node (i.e. organise the words immediately to the right of have in alphabetical order), we
can check for any interesting patterns by scrolling down through the screens of results
(see Figure 1.1).
In scrolling through the screens we are trying to identify patterns, and the norm is to
look for patterns both to the right and left of the node word through sorted searches. To
further examine the patterns of have, we can use the ‘collocates’ function, which is normally
available as part of a corpus tool (see more on collocates below). As Figure 1.2 illustrates,
the software will instantly calculate the most statistically salient words that co-occur to the
left and right of the node word have.
Based on the results in Figure 1.2, any of the top collocates listed merit further inves-
tigation based on their statistical salience.2
By way of illustration, we will examine the first item we by looking at the patterns of
we + have in a concordance (as illustrated in Figure 1.3).
Next, we use the software to calculate the most frequent words immediately to the
right of we + have (often referred to as 1R). The top ten results are shown in Figure 1.4.
The results of this search in Figure 1.4 give us more possible routes of investigation.
Let us follow the first line by examining to. The concordance lines of we + have + to will
show us more patterns. In Task 1.4, we will explore the collocates of we + have + to. For
a researcher, this process would be undertaken by close analysis of concordance lines. In
Table 1.6 we have put together some concordance examples by way of illustration.
Reflecting on the patterns in Table 1.6, we can hypothesise that we have to + [verb],
used in TED talks, is gaining a pragmatically specialised use in a requestive context to make
a call for action or a strong appeal. We note that speakers use we rather than you when
addressing their audience so as to make the request inclusive and global. We may also
speculate that this use is particularly associated with contexts of public discourse on the
issue addressing global climate change.
Figure 1.1 A sample of concordance for have in the TED_en corpus sorted 1R (using Sketch Engine)
INTRODUCTION 11

Figure 1.2 Top ten collocates of have in the TED_en corpus (using Sketch Engine), examining all
word candidates three to the left and three to the right of we

There are many ways of examining and interpreting concordance line data and it is a
process that is central to corpus pragmatics. Here we consider it in greater detail based on
the seminal work of Sinclair (1996). Concordance output facilitates an inductive approach
by helping the user notice patterns relating to how a lexical item or MWU is used in context.
In order to describe the nature of individual units of meaning, Sinclair (1996) suggests four
parameters that are important to the process of interpreting a concordance: collocation,
colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody:

1) Collocation: refers to lexical patterning and the probability of two words co-occurring
frequently next to or near each other: blonde hair, make an effort, do one’s duty, tor-
rential rain, strictly forbidden, a major incident. Some collocate relationships are strong
because the possibilities of other combinations are few. For example, make/express/
fulfil + wish are strong collocates because wish does not collocate with a wide range
of verbs, whereas the adjective big + car, town, house are weak collocations because
big can collocate with many words (Carter et al., 2011). Corpus software will help you
calculate the strength of a relationship between two words (see Figures 1.2 and 1.4).
Figure 1.3 Concordance sample of we + have as the node (sorted 1R)
INTRODUCTION 13

Figure 1.4 Top ten most frequent words to the right of we + have in the TED_en corpus (using
Sketch Engine)

2) Colligation: refers to the grammatical patterning of words and the likelihood of the
co-occurrence of grammatical choices. By using a certain verb, for example, this may
co-select a particular syntax. For example, we say I was discharged from the hospital
rather than I was discharged out of the hospital. Even though from and out of both
imply exiting from the building, only from colligates with discharge. When we refer to
leaving a hotel, we use a different verb entirely and we use active voice and out of, as
in I checked out of the hotel. The strength of a colligational pattern is also included by
software in its collocates function (see again Figures 1.2 and 1.4 where a number of
grammatical items are included).
3) Semantic preference: refers to how collocates can, through usage, appear to have
a preference for a particular semantic domain. For example, in his discussion of the
expression ‘the naked eye’, Sinclair (1996) finds that most of the verbs and adjectives
that collocate with this expression are related to the concept of ‘vision’. A search
for the collocates of the naked eye using COCA shows visible, invisible, seen, see,
appears, looks all within the top ten most frequent collocates to the left of the search
phrase.
4) Semantic prosodies: associations that arise from the collocates of a lexical item are
not easily detected using introspection (Sinclair, 1987; Louw, 1993). Semantic proso-
dies have mainly been described in terms of their positive or negative polarity (Sinclair,
1991; Stubbs, 1995). For example, naked eye is often found in relation to objects that
cannot be seen with the naked eye. Carter and McCarthy (1999) illustrate the negative
prosody associated with the get passive in the corpus data they examined (e.g. get
arrested, get sued, get nicked). Rühlemann (2010) notes the negative prosody of set in
(e.g. boredom can easily set in).
14 INTRODUCTION

TASK 1.4 CORPUS LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE


PATTERNS

Table 1.6 shows us the most frequent verbs that follow we + have + to in the TED_en
corpus. Examine these verbs and their examples.

1) What hypotheses can you form about possible pragmatically specialised uses of
we + have + to + [verb] in TED talks, based on Table 1.6?
2) How might you follow up on these hypotheses using the TED_en corpus or another
corpus?

Table 1.6 A list of the most frequent verbs that follow we + have + to in the TED_en corpus,
with examples

Word Frequency Example

1) do 67 … we have to do something now. We have to change now.


2) make 33 We have to make this happen.
3) get 33 So we have to get used to the idea of eating insects.
4) be 30 So we have to be disciplined and focus on things that are critical.
5) go 27 And we have to go also beyond traditional diplomacy to the
survival issue of our times, climate change.
6) have 25 But we have to have these priority changes, we have to have
infrastructure to go with this.
7) start 22 … we have to start seeing it exactly as it is, with all of its problems,
because it’s only by seeing it with all of its problems that we’ll be able to
fix them and live in a world in which we can all be happily ever after.
8) deal 21 But I believe there’s a second climate crisis, which is as severe,
which has the same origins, and that we have to deal with with
the same urgency.
9) change 20 We have to change the culture and the feelings that politicians
and school board members and parents have about the way we
accept and what we accept in our schools today.
10) solve 18 We have to solve the pollution, we have to solve the congestion.

At this point, let us distinguish between collocation, colligation and multi-word units
(MWUs) (detailed above); we note that collocation and colligation are concerned with the
co-occurrence relationship of one word with another word rather than as a unit. Crucially,
the researcher sets out to examine the collocational or colligational relationship of a given
word in a more top-down manner. That is, they choose to examine it as we did here with the
word have and its patterns. A researcher looking at MWUs takes a more open, bottom-up
approach through corpus software searches for n-gram units within the parameters they
set (e.g. a researcher might opt to find two-, three-, four-, five- or six-word units, with a min-
imum frequency cut-off of 20 per million, etc.) (see Greaves and Warren (2010) and Gray
and Biber (2015) for useful background on this topic). Both top-down collocational and
colligational analyses and bottom-up MWU approaches are important to corpus pragmatics
INTRODUCTION 15

and, in both cases, it is through concordance line analysis that we can analyse meaning,
discourse function and ultimately pragmatic specialisation.

Keyword analysis

Keywords can be described as words (or MWUs) which occur with unusual frequency in a
text or a set of texts in a corpus when compared to another corpus. The corpus used for
comparison is called the reference corpus. Keywords are identified on the basis of statis-
tical comparisons of word frequency lists from the reference corpus and the corpus under
investigation (referred to as the target or study corpus). The frequency of each item in the
target corpus is compared with its equivalent in the reference corpus and the statistical
significance or difference is calculated using chi-square or log-likelihood statistics (see
Dunning, 1993). The choice of the reference corpus used as the basis for comparison in the
calculation of keywords is important because it will affect the output of keywords (Gabriela-
tos (2018) offers detailed coverage of this). When generating keyword lists, it is best to try
more than one reference corpus and to consider the differences in the results. In general
terms, the closer the reference corpus is in terms of genre, the fewer keywords will result
because fewer items will be unusually frequent. Conversely, the more distant a reference
corpus is in terms of genre from the target corpus, the more words will have comparatively
more unusual frequencies, and so more keywords will normally result from the comparison.
These differences (as a result of using different reference data) are in themselves telling,
as Task 1.5 illustrates.

TASK 1.5 COMPARING KEYWORD RESULTS

Table 1.7 and 1.8 show two sets of keyword results. Both lists are generated from the
same text but use different reference corpora. The target text was the well-known
1995 BBC 1 Panorama television interview by Martin Bashir with Diana, Princess of
Wales.3
Review and compare the list and consider these questions:

1) What are the main differences between these two lists?


2) What might account for these differences?
3) Which list is most useful and why?

Target corpus: Panorama interview 8,301 words


Reference corpus 1 SPOKEN MEDIA: a corpus of 271,553 words comprising
a range of transcripts from media interviews: 29 political interviews; 46 interviews on TV
chat shows and radio involving known or public personae; and 17 interviews from radio
phone-ins drawn from international English-speaking media sources, including from the
UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Ireland (see O’Keeffe, 2006).
Reference corpus 2 SPOKEN ACADEMIC: a 500,000-word corpus, The
Limerick-Belfast Corpus of Academic Spoken English (LIBEL) (see Appendix).
16 INTRODUCTION

Table 1.7 KEYWORD LIST 1: All of the keywords based on comparison of the Bashir–Diana
Panorama interview with Spoken Media Corpus (arranged vertically in the grids in order of ‘keyness’)

did husband difficult queen your


was had William Were children
Wales uh royal yourself media
prince monarchy my because depression
marriage bulimia role relationship husband’s

Table 1.8 KEYWORD LIST 2: A sample of the 92 keywords based on comparison of the
Bashir–Diana Panorama interview with Spoken Academic Corpus (arranged vertically in the
grids in order of ‘keyness’)

was I’ve I’d because people think


I it’s marriage monarchy difficult never
don’t me people’s myself public wasn’t
husband uh bulimia role there’s Mr.
my yes you’re husband’s yourself princess
I’m didn’t queen couldn’t relationship royal
did had William divorce feel pressures
Wales prince were that’s loved albeit

Some commentary on the keyword lists in Task 1.5 is based on O’Keeffe (2006, 2012) and
Vaughan and O’Keeffe (2015).
On one hand, the results in Table 1.8, based on the more ‘distant’ reference in terms
of its genre, appear more wide-ranging (in all there are 92 keywords from this calculation)
and capture more of the ‘aboutness’ of the target text (Phillips, 1989). We find common
first- and second-person pronouns I, I’m, my, myself, yourself and me arising as keywords
because they are not high frequency in academic lectures and thus arise as ‘unusually fre-
quent’. We also see keyword results (Table 1.8) that reference the more private sphere of the
‘I–you’ domain, including husband–wife relationships, love, bulimia, marital breakdown, etc.,
all of which would not normally be talked about in the more referential world of academia.
Meanwhile, in Table 1.7, we see that by using a reference corpus that was close in genre
to the target text there were far fewer items. In other words, we can say that the results in
Table 1.7 possibly represent more salient keywords because, despite the reference corpus
being close to the target, these words are still used with unusual frequency by comparison.
Therefore, working through concordances of this candidate list might be more productive
(and more doable in scale). Gabrielatos (2018) notes that the size of the reference corpus
is not as important as the representativeness of each corpus, and the principled selection
of corpora to be compared.
Finally, a comment on the challenges of spoken corpora. In Tables 1.7 and 1.8, we
notice that the vocalisation uh appears as a keyword in both lists. This is most likely a
function of the variation in the transcription of vocalisations in the reference corpus which
comprises many media transcripts. Some transcribe the same or similar vocalisation as
INTRODUCTION 17

uhm, erm or ah, among others. This is an important point regarding the analysis of spoken
corpora: if similar words or vocalisations are transcribed differently, this will have a bearing
on keyword calculations (for more on transcription, see Chapter 2).

1.5 THE STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK

This book is structured around nine chapters. These move from introductory matters in
this chapter, including the history, origin and emergence of the field and an overview of the
application of different analytical frameworks in empirical research. In this chapter we also
cover the basic functions of corpus tools because it sets the scene for much of what we
talk about in other chapters.
Chapter 2 looks in detail at how pragmatics can be researched. This chapter show-
cases quite a large toolkit available to a researcher who is interested in gathering data
for pragmatics research. It distinguishes between elicited, observed and recorded data,
and guides the reader through the different instruments that can be used under these
three broad headings. All methods have pluses and minuses and we try to present a
balanced view. Although we clearly have a preference for using corpus data, we are keen
to stress that other methods have a lot to offer in themselves and if used in conjunction
with corpus tools (as we explore in detail in Chapter 3, see below). The main point to
take away from Chapter 2 is that there is a need for methodological awareness. Some
methods can be highly controlled so that the researcher can be very precise in the lan-
guage that they elicit but this is at the expense of the degree to which the researcher
compromises on the naturalness of the data. On the other hand, naturally occurring data
can be elicited and recorded through note-taking or digital recording but the researcher
has little control over the data that results and this can pose challenges for pragmatics
research. What is interesting in Chapter 2 is the range of approaches that have emerged
for gathering research data within the empirical turn in pragmatics, as we have already
alluded to in this chapter.
Chapter 3 focuses on corpus pragmatics, a recent coinage for the coming together of
corpus linguistics and pragmatics. The chapter addresses the processes of doing corpus
pragmatics research in a way that accommodates different approaches. Corpus pragmat-
ics usually works from frequencies of forms to their pragmatic function in what is termed
a form-to-function approach (this is exemplifed in this chapter through our analysis in the
section on concordance lines, for instance). In this approach, the frequency lists and con-
cordance lines ultimately lead us to a conclusion about the use of a form (e.g. we have to in
TED talks; see above). The opposite approach is to begin with the function (e.g. a speech
act), and to try to narrow down the range of possible forms used to perform this and to use
these forms to find language instances in a corpus. For example, the words and phrases
typically associated with a speech act (as a result of experimental research, such as illocu-
tionary force identifying devices (IFIDs)) can be used to search a large corpus to retrieve
examples. This approach is referred to as a function-to-form approach. In an ideal world,
function-to-form approaches are facilitated by pragmatically annotated corpus data so that
all instances of a given speech act or pragmatic phenomenon (such as a pragmatic marker)
can simply be recalled. At the time of writing, pragmatic annotation is fast developing (see
Weisser, 2015; Archer and Culpeper, 2018).
18 INTRODUCTION

Chapter 4 furthers our exploration of key concepts within the study of pragmatics
through its focus on reference. The chapter covers its general definition as well as going
into analytical depth in terms of how deictic reference can be examined using corpus prag-
matics. Deixis represents the intersection of grammar and pragmatics, and the chapter
explores many of these grammatical items such as the personal pronouns you and I and the
demonstratives this and that. This chapter showcases the potential of corpus pragmatics
for examining the relationship between the context of the utterance and the referential
practices therein. This relationship is shown to characterise the very nature of our pragmatic
systems.
In Chapter 5, we explore politeness theory through the lens of a number of different
models. Within these paradigms, we examine some key features using corpus pragmatic
techniques. For example, we explore Brown and Levinson’s (1987) concepts of positive
politeness through a case study of vocatives, and negative politeness through a micro-study
of hedging across different contexts of use. In this chapter, we also look at the concept of
impoliteness in the context of naturally occurring data. Finally, we examine discursive polite-
ness where we look beyond linguistic structures to include the individual’s interpretation of
these structures as (im)polite in instances of ongoing verbal interaction. This brings to the
fore the dynamic notion of relational work.
Speech acts are the focus of Chapter 6, which examines the link between linguistic
forms in the shape of speech acts and their function in context. We provide an overview of
Speech Act Theory and discuss the main arguments and underlying assumptions on which
this theory is based. This includes a discussion of direct and indirect speech acts, performa-
tives and constatives, and the broad taxonomy of different speech act categories such as
directives or commissives. The chapter also looks at the way in which context and co-text
impact upon the analysis of speech acts in a discourse framework. Throughout this chapter,
we explore ways of using corpus pragmatics in the form-to-function analysis of speech
acts. This adds further context to issues discussed in both Chapters 2 and 3.
Drawing upon a range of different corpora, Chapter 7 examines pragmatic variation
within a language. As we note, the study of language variation has traditionally focused on
phonological, lexical and syntactical levels, particularly taking an historic view. The system-
atic study of variation at a pragmatic level is a relatively recent development by comparison.
This chapter also highlights the broadening of the variational focus from phonology, lexis
and syntax to variation in social space. This is achieved through explorations of variation
from a macro-social perspective (e.g. factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, social class,
etc.), and from a micro-social perspective (e.g. more ‘local’ factors such as the degree of
social distance between participants (strangers, friends, family) or power (an employee talk-
ing to her or his boss)).
To contrast with the focus of Chapter 7 on variation within a language, we go a
level deeper in Chapter 8 to examine variation in terms of register. In this chapter, we
will explore the notion that specific registers involve the pragmatically specialised use
of language. In doing so, we will draw upon naturally occurring language from a range
of contexts, including casual conversation, healthcare communication, crime fiction, ser-
vice encounters and Shakespearean drama. The chapter again employs a corpus prag-
matic approach to the examination of features characteristic of these specific situations.
This chapter also builds on Chapter 2 in relation to the synergies between conversation
INTRODUCTION 19

analysis (CA) and corpus linguistics, offering some useful examples of how CA can aid in
the analysis of corpus data.
The final chapter in our book, Chapter 9, looks at pragmatics and language teaching,
and considers the degree to which it is teachable and learnable in the context of the ongo-
ing debate in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies in relation to implicit and explicit
learning. The chapter explores areas of pragmatics that can be addressed in the classroom,
through both hands-on corpus tasks as well as through the curation of teacher-led activi-
ties and materials. The chapter includes a wider range of samples of classroom materials
based around the teaching of politeness and spoken grammar, including pragmatic mark-
ers (discourse markers, response tokens, etc.), as well as vagueness and stance markers.
Developments in learner corpus research in terms of how it can inform language teaching
are showcased through learner corpus-based resources that are differentiated by level of
proficiency. Throughout the chapter, there is an emphasis on modelling corpus tasks based
on existing research findings, as it is argued that this offers a means for bringing focus to
pragmatic competence within curriculum, syllabus and materials design.
Each chapter in this book contains an annotated further reading section intended to
guide the reader to texts that expand upon key topics discussed in each chapter. The book
also includes, as this chapter has demonstrated, tasks which are embedded within key
topics. Some of these tasks involve reader interaction with specific corpus interfaces and
specially designed corpus software. Our goal is to show the reader how the interfaces and
software can be used in corpus pragmatic research – should more information about the
specifics of using these tools be required, there are some very helpful textbooks available
(see e.g. O’Keeffe and McCarthy, 2010; Weisser, 2016a; Anderson and Corbett, 2017). We
do not assume that a reader will undertake all of these activities, but we hope that they offer
an instructive application of the core concepts that we are discussing.

1.6 FURTHER READING

Aijmer, K. and C. Rühlemann (eds), 2015. Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook. Cambridge:


Cambridge University Press.
Because corpora came relatively late to pragmatics, this volume marks an important and
significant stage in the establishment and coinage of ‘corpus pragmatics’ as a sub-field of
pragmatics. In addition to the 16 chapters, the volume includes an important introduction
to the volume by Aijmer and Rühlemann, which takes on a foundational role for the use of
corpora in the empirical study of pragmatics.

Clancy, B. and A. O’Keeffe, 2015. Pragmatics. In D. Biber and R. Reppen (eds), The
Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 235–251.
This chapter showcases the potential of corpus pragmatics to bring insights through
research into forms, their patterns and pragmatic functions in large corpora. It cov-
ers aspects of deixis, pragmatic markers, language and power; discourse organisation,
and provides a case study on the use of a corpus to explore vocative forms and their
functions.
20 INTRODUCTION

Jucker, A. H., 2012. Pragmatics in the history of linguistic thought. In K. Allan and K.M.
Jaszczolt (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, pp. 495–512.
This chapter offers a wide-ranging overview of the emergence of pragmatic thought and
how it developed across two schools, the Anglo-American and Continental European tra-
ditions. By reading this chapter, a student of pragmatics will gain greater insight into why
there are very different approaches within the field, ranging from introspective to empirical
in terms of research method.
Schneider, K.P. and A. Barron (eds), 2014. Pragmatics of Discourse. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
This edited volume brings together 21 chapters addressing approaches to the analysis
of discourse pragmatics, including discourse markers, stance, speech act sequences as
well as an overview of work across different contexts, including legal, medical, media and
classroom discourse domains. In terms of approaches to discourse analysis within which
pragmatics can be viewed, it includes work on conversation analysis, systemic-functional
linguistics, genre analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and multimodal
pragmatics.

NOTES

1 See Appendix for corpus details.


2 Figure 1.2 illustrates the log dice results as a measure of collocation candicacy based
on 4895 co-occurrences of we with have from all the possible 44,704 candidates of we
in the TED_ corpus. For more on statistics in corpus linguistics, see Brezina (2018) and
Gries (2015), among others.
3 Broadcast in November 1995, the interview transcript is available at www.bbc.co.uk/
politics97/diana/panorama.html.
CHAPTER 2

Researching pragmatics

2.1 PRAGMATICS RESEARCH: FROM INTUITIVE TO


EMPIRICAL APPROACHES

While this chapter focuses on ways of collecting and analysing data in pragmatics research,
we acknowledge that it does not represent the totality of research in the area of prag-
matics as a whole. As discussed in Chapter 1, pragmatics has its origin in the philoso-
phy of language and there remains an important ongoing debate on the core concepts
of pragmatics; this also helps to drive and shape the frameworks that we apply within the
empirical side of pragmatics research. Such intellectual endeavour is as important to prag-
matics (and linguistics in general) as it is to philosophy. The non-empirical side of prag-
matics research involves discussion, critique and philosophical debate, but it also draws
upon intuitively derived instances of language use. Jucker (2018) reminds us that intuition
was an important source of data for early philosophers of language and pragmaticists. For
example, Austin and Searle relied on their intuition in their seminal work on speech acts:
‘[t]heir data consisted of their own intuition about the use of language’ (Jucker, 2018: 5).
We note that the term intuitive knowledge better represents what philosophers of language
bring to their theorising process. The term introspection is also sometimes used, though this
is prone to confusion as it has different coinage in other fields (see Clark, 2018; Schneider,
2018). For instance, in experimental cognitive research, introspection can refer to think-
aloud protocols, verbal reports and other means of elicitation (Clark, 2018). Distinguish-
ing between intuitive knowledge and introspection is useful in pragmatics, Jucker (2018)
notes, because when we talk about theorising about language use we draw upon intuitive
knowledge, whereas within elicitation practices (e.g. discourse completion tasks, roleplays),
participants engage in introspection to come up with the language use they consider to
be typical for a given situation. On the other hand, intuitive knowledge, within pragmatics
research, refers to the knowledge a researcher brings to the task of investigating language.
As we illustrated in Chapter 1, the iterative process of analysing language using corpus
data constantly moves between results and intuition as the researcher follows up on hypoth-
eses which frequency results trigger.
Pragmatics offers a framework for understanding language. There are many means
of arriving at a pragmatic understanding of language, ranging from the analysis of texts
to philosophical debate, as discussed. Within the empirical side of pragmatics research,
there are a number of methodologies in use to gather language data. In this chapter we will
22 RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS

look at some of the main approaches. First of all, let us begin with a conclusion: there is no
one right way to gather data in pragmatics research. Pragmatics, as a framework for the
study of intended meaning in social context, has proved to be methodologically inclusive.
When we consider language within pragmatics, we can do so through reflection or intuitive
knowledge or we can examine language from outside by collecting and analysing it (within
a range of data-collection instruments). This chapter focuses on the main options available
to a researcher when gathering language data ‘from outside’ (see Figure 2.1).

LANGUAGE INSIDE
Language as intuive knowledge

Language as empirical data


LANGUAGE OUTSIDE

Figure 2.1 Language inside as intuitive knowledge and language outside as empirical data

Collecting language can take many forms. We can set up controlled tasks so as to
expedite the gathering of data that is most relevant to our research question. For example,
if we want to examine what speakers typically say in response to a compliment, we can
design a discourse completion task or a roleplay which focuses solely on this situation.
This task can ask participants to introspect on what they would typically say next (after the
prompt provided). This type of task is high in terms of the control and precision which the
researcher has over the data being collected but it is also high in terms of the degree of
interference on the part of the researcher (Jucker, 2018). Alternatively, we could use data
from a large general corpus of spoken language and find many instances where speakers
give compliments, and, from these, instances of interlocutor responses could be recalled
by manually sifting through examples. This type of approach gives the researcher far less
control over the data elicitation process and is more challenging and more time-consuming
(see Chapter 3), but this is offset by a low level of interference because the researcher did
not mediate the interaction by means of a controlled task to elicit a compliment. This distinc-
tion between degree of control and degree of interference is very useful when it is plotted
across different types of data. Let us consider this in terms of approaches to gathering
spoken data based on a scale adapted from Jucker (2018: 23) in Figure 2.2.
As we look in greater detail at some of the main methods of eliciting data in pragmatics
research in this chapter, we constantly keep these dimensions of control and interference in mind.

Gathering language data

The most basic way of gathering language data is by noting it down once you have heard
it. This is referred to as attested data and it is not uncommon to see such examples in
RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS 23

Figure 2.2 Researcher interference versus research control (adapted from Jucker, 2018: 23)

pragmatics. Attested data is language which the researcher has said, heard, written or read
incidentally and then recorded (usually by noting it down). Such instances are similar to field
notes that anyone interested in language may collect on a daily basis, as they observe uses
of language around them. The method is used more systematically within ethnographic
approaches to data gathering (see below). The word attest means to show something to
be true, and when a researcher uses attested data, the reader trusts its veracity as part of
our common code of research integrity. Attested data is usually used to illustrate and add
to discussion on pragmatic phenomenon, especially speech acts. Rühlemann (2019: 33)
offers this instance of attested data as a precise example in his discussion of politeness
and indirect speech acts (see Chapter 6):

(2.1)

1 ((Husband opens the window before going to bed))


2 Wife: My hair is still wet.
3 ((Husband closes the window))
(Author’s data) (Rühlemann, 2019: 33)

Normally, attested data is a short snippet (as in extract 2.1) and this aligns with a
researcher’s ability to recall, with accuracy, only a short instance of language. Ad hoc attes-
tation of language used in both broadcast and social media is much easier now because
of audio- and text-capturing facilities, and therefore it is possible to retrieve recordings and
texts of longer stretches of attested media discourse (O’Keeffe, 2012).
In order to gather multiple instances of language data in a more systematic way, there
are two main options beyond attestation. Each option has advantages and disadvantages in
terms of degree of research control and interference, as discussed above (see Figure 2.2):

1) Elicitation of language
Tasks that elicit or ‘draw out’ language are designed to focus precisely on the language
the researcher wishes to examine from a predetermined sample group of participants.
Typical tasks include discourse completion tasks, roleplays and interviews, all of which
are pre-designed with structured prompts (with varying degrees of control).
24 RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS

2) Recording of language
Ideally, a researcher would like to use language that occurs naturally in a given
context and to record it as it is happening in real time. Ethnographic methods
allow for this through situational recording, noting of attested language and field
notes made by the researcher who is embedded within a given context for an
extended period. Language corpora also give the researcher access to large sam-
ples of spoken or written language which the researcher can search for a particu-
lar language item; researchers can also build their own corpora in a more tailored
way which may also involve the researcher being present when the recordings
are made.

TASK 2.1 DATA COLLECTION: APOLOGIES

Imagine you are researching responses to apologies in spoken language. Reflecting on


Figure 2.2, consider your options for gathering data for your study.

1) Give some specific details on an elicitation method (i.e. what type of task would you
use?) and note your thoughts on the main advantages and disadvantages with this
approach.
2) Give specific details on a corpus approach to finding examples of responses to
apologies (e.g. Which corpus would you use? Would you build one?).

ELICITATION APPROACH CORPUS APPROACH

Method
Advantage
Disadvantage

In this section we have seen that there are a number of ways of eliciting data and
recording language, as Figure 2.2 illustrates. Each has strengths and weaknesses which we
will consider in detail in Section 2.2, as we describe the main methodological tools. Let us
first address issues of ethics, integrity and documentation management.

Ethics, integrity and documentation essential to


empirical studies

Before looking at methods, there are some important issues to consider relating to research
ethics, integrity and data management. As is the norm, higher education institutions will
have rigorous protocols in place to ensure ethical approval, research integrity, and data
storage and usage. In the first instance, always seek advice from your institution on the
procedures that are in place. You will normally need, at a minimum, to prepare the following
types of documents for your study.
RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS 25

Research briefing document

This is a short document, written in plain English, explaining what your research is about. It
will include information on how the data will be recorded, transcribed, stored and used. It is
essential to explain to the participant how their data will be used and who will have access
to it. The participant also needs to be assured that they have the right to withdraw from
the research at any point. In addition, a guarantee of anonymity for participants must be
provided by assuring them that their real names or references to any identifying information
(e.g. name of a shop, town, school or business) will be changed or redacted during transcrip-
tion. The briefing document needs to provide the name of the institution and contact details
of the principal investigator or research supervisor whom the participant may contact should
they wish to have further information in relation to the research.

Consent form

A separate form is needed for consent from each participant. It must include the following:

• The name of the project, as well as the department and institution;


• The purpose of the data collection (e.g. We are collecting spoken recordings from
classrooms so as to better understand teacher discourse and teacher–student
interactions);
• A clear statement of what the participant is agreeing to in terms of data. Reference can
be made to any data laws that are relevant (e.g. The data will be stored and analysed
in accordance with EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR); Your personal
information will be stored securely in a database of the recordings but it will not be
shared with a third party; All publications based on the recordings will be anonymised,
and any identifying references to people, places or institutions will be redacted, etc.);
• A declaration, that is, a statement in the first person that the participant signs up to (e.g.
I grant the [Researchers], University of X, the right to store record my speech or writing
and to use the data from these within their research and publications; I understand that
the recordings/texts will be transcribed and stored securely on a computer; I declare
that I am over 18 years old; I declare that all of the information provided is full and
correct; I give this consent freely);
• Write-on lines at the end of the consent form must include a separate line for (1) sig-
nature; (2) name (in block capitals); (3) date; (4) email address; (5) postal address.

Speaker information sheet

This form will gather the demographic details about each participant. If a detail is not rel-
evant in your study, do not ask for it. Typically, certain information is asked for: age range;
gender; first and other language information; nationality and geographical origin. In cor-
pus pragmatic or ethnographic studies especially, speaker roles and relationships will be
required.
26 RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS

By gathering consent forms and speaker information (metadata) and eliciting language
data from participants in a research study, a researcher is taking on the responsibility of hon-
ouring a commitment to protecting (1) these data through secure storage, and (2) the identity
of the participants. This needs to be a key consideration when physically storing these data in
compliance with data protection laws and in line with the ethical procedures of your institution.

2.2 METHODS FOR ELICITING LANGUAGE DATA

Discourse completion tasks (DCTs)

Discourse completion tasks (sometimes referred to as discourse completion tests) (DCTs)


are essentially a type of language questionnaire which elicit or ‘draw out’ language, using a
carefully designed prompt. The challenge for the researcher is to design the optimum task
for a given research question. The researcher, therefore, seeks to design a very precise
prompt to elicit what a participant thinks they would say in a certain situation.

TASK 2.2 DISCOURSE COMPLETION TASKS

Below are two examples of discourse completion tasks (DCTs).

1) Try completing both tasks.


2) Consider how they differ from each other.
3) Look at how you have responded to each task. What are the advantages and disad-
vantages of each based on this?

DCT 1

You are a university student. Your end-of-term assignment is one day late so far. You
knock on your tutor’s door.

What do you say?

DCT 2 (adapted from Tanck, 2002)

You are applying for a position with a multinational company. The interview committee
has requested that you have your professors send letters of recommendation directly
to the company. When you call the interview committee to check the status of your
application, you are told that one of the recommendation letters has not arrived. You
are concerned because you asked your professor for the letter over a month ago.
You stop by your professor’s office to find out what has happened.
RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS 27

Professor: Hi, [your name].


You:

DCTs have been widely and successfully used in the study of speech acts (see Chap-
ter 6) and speech events (e.g. asking the time). They are particularly favoured as a meth-
odology in the study of second-language pragmatic competence (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989;
Sasaki, 1998; Billmyer and Varghese, 2000; Ogiermann, 2018) (see Chapter 9). DCTs can
be used in dialect studies where they focus on very specific structures (see Barron, 2005;
Schneider and Barron, 2008a).
DCTs can be written tasks (as in Task 2.2 above) or they can be presented orally (and
recorded). Schneider (2018) notes that written DCTs have the advantage of allowing for
the collection of samples of language from a large number of informants in a short time;
for example, by administering a written DCT to a large lecture hall, or via email, social media
or crowdsourcing platforms. The other advantage is that large-scale gathering of DCT data
potentially offers the researcher rich metadata for comparative work (e.g. across gender,
nationality, first language, age, etc.).
The degree to which DCTs are controlled can vary. Consider the scenario in DCT 1 in
Task 2.2. The informant has a choice, albeit rather limited, as to the speech act which they opt
for. DCTs can be even more controlled when they are presented in a turn-based format. The
example in DCT 2 in Task 2.2 illustrates how a scenario is set up and then a turn is provided.
This is followed by ‘write-on lines’ (a blank turn) which the informant must complete, and so on.
A further example is taken from Beebe and Zhang Waring (2004). Here the authors
set out to investigate the pragmatic tone (Figure 2.3).

You go to a tourist bookstore where the books are kept behind a counter. You ask
to see a book on display. The lady behind the counter says, ‘If you want to browse,
go to a library.’

You would say:

You would feel like saying:

Figure 2.3 An example of a freer DCT (adapted from Beebe and Zhang Waring, 2004: 245)

An additional attraction of DCTs is their ‘discreteness’. The researcher has a lot of con-
trol over the language they want to elicit. The focus can be limited to a very specific context
of use, as the examples of the above tasks illustrate. Boxer and Cohen (2004) note that
DCTs are used particularly when:
28 RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS

• Gathering examples of rarely occurring speech acts, speech events or listener


responses (see Kasper and Dahl, 1991; Kasper and Rose, 1999; Schauer and
Adolphs, 2006);
• Researching speech acts that readily occur but which are difficult to capture on
recorded data (e.g. requests or complaints);
• Looking at speech acts comparatively and it may be difficult to find corresponding acts
that readily occur in data from two languages.

As Schauer and Adolphs (2006: 120) put it, ‘the aim of discourse completion task research
is to investigate a linguistic act within highly predefined parameters.’
The level of control in DCTs has come in for criticism over the years (see Beebe and
Cummings, 1996; Schauer and Adolphs, 2006; Schneider, 2018). It is argued by some that
DCTs cannot be used to appraise pragmatic competence in the study of foreign-language
users because apart from providing too little context they cannot constrain discourse
options without contaminating the response, for example, where the language of the task
leads the informants to produce certain language (Yoon and Kellogg, 2002). In an effort
to redress this, Yoon and Kellogg (2002) used a cartoon DCT so as to provide a pictorial
context to constrain the response while allowing freedom to elaborate language. Not sur-
prisingly, the criticism that DCT data lacks interactional and prosodic features (in the case
of written DCTs) is frequently reported (see Ogiermann, 2018). Cultural considerations are
also at play. Rose (1994) conducted a study of requests in Japanese and American English
using both DCTs and questionnaires (see more on questionnaires below) and concluded
that DCTs may not be culturally appropriate for Japan.
Another fundamental criticism levelled at DCTs is that the language they elicit is
‘unnatural’ when compared to naturally occurring data. Quite a number of interesting
studies have resulted from the quest to test whether this is the case (e.g. Hartford and
Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; Beebe and Cummings, 1996; Bou Franch and Lorenzo-Dus, 2008;
Maíz-Arévalo, 2015). Ogiermann (2018) offers a succinct overview of these studies and
notes that, overall, they confirm that DCTs and naturally occurring data contain ‘similar
semantic formulae’ (Ogiermann, 2018: 243). As we discuss in greater detail in Chapter
3, Schauer and Adolphs (2006), in a study of expressions of gratitude in DCT data com-
pared with corpus data, illustrate that because DCT data is normally based around single
utterances, the overall reality of a speech act is distorted because the typical extended turn
negotiation and development is lacking. Some studies found the use of predictable for-
mulaic language (Maíz-Arévalo, 2015; Ogiermann, 2018) while others reported that DCTs
produce more direct (less polite) instances. However, Economidou-Kogetsidis’ (2013)
study, which used real requests for information made to an airline reservation centre as
the basis for a DCT scenario which were then administered to 86 people, concluded that
DCT and naturally occurring data were similar in terms of both degree of directness and
lexical modification across turns (see also Beebe and Cummings, 1996; Golato, 2003;
Ogiermann, 2018).
Speech acts related to conflict and disagreement are particularly elusive (essen-
tially because informants are reluctant to be recorded in such situations) and DCTs have
been used as a means of gathering these and many contrastive speech act studies have
resulted. For instance, Liang and Han (2005) looked at disagreement strategies between
American English and Mandarin Chinese. They based their study on five scenarios for
RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS 29

disagreement within a college context. The scenarios vary in the power relationships, rang-
ing from higher to lower status, including peer–peer interactions. Three of the scenarios
are shown in Figure 2.4.

The English version of the discourse completion test

Thank you very much for your time and help. Five scenarios are described below in
which you are expected to disagree with the speaker on different occasions. How
would you respond? Please write out what you are to SAY in real-life scenarios.

Your Age:__ Gender: __Hometown: __

1. Your supervisor questions the originality of the term paper you submit. S/he
says to you, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think these ideas are yours.’ However, they are
yours. In response, you will say:
‘ ................’

2. Your friend makes the following comment on your thesis: ‘I think you should
supply more data to support your arguments. You know, your conclusion is a
little bit weak.’ However, you think that there has been enough evidence and the
problem is how to give a better explanation of the data. In response, you will say:
‘ ................’

3. In a seminar class on the effect of modern technology, one of your classmates


says, ‘The so-called modern technology is endangering the environment. It
causes too much pollution.’ However, you believe such problems are only tem-
porary and can be solved gradually. In response, you will say:
‘ ................’

Figure 2.4 Scenarios from DCT presented to American and Mandarin students (in Liang and
Han, 2005)

Among other findings, Liang and Han (2005) tell us that Chinese students employ more
politeness strategies when disagreeing with higher status interactants. Both the Chinese
and the American students showed fewer politeness strategies when disagreeing with
peers. As Ogiermann (2018: 247) concludes, DCTs have their value and their limitations,
and as long as we are aware of what they can and cannot provide and of what other alter-
native methods we can use in their place, then ‘the DCT has its place in pragmatic research’.

Multiple-choice task (MCT) questionnaires

DCTs can be designed as multiple-choice task (MCT) questionnaires that include scaled
response tasks where participants assess situational contexts and speech acts according
to certain variables. Respondents are not required to produce language. They are not put in
30 RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS

the position of having to comprehend utterances in real time. However, Kasper and Roever
(2005) point out that they do impose a certain cognitive load upon respondents. Essentially,
they demand recognition while scaled response rating means respondents have to perform
judgement tasks. Using MCT questionnaires has the advantage of being quick to administer
and analyse compared to other elicitation methods. However, they have to be carefully designed
to suit the individual research context. The design of multiple-choice questionnaires is particu-
larly demanding (see Kasper and Roever, 2005). All of the response options must be plausible
(unlike multiple-choice options in an assessment context where only one response is plausible
and all others are implausible distractors). For advice on response design, see Schneider (2018).

TASK 2.3 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONNAIRES

1) Think of an insult or other face-threatening situation and design a multiple-choice


task questionnaire using the template below.
2) Use a spoken corpus to search for each of the responses you have come up with. If
the corpus data offers you more enhanced wording of your responses, revise them
accordingly.

Your friend says,


‘……………………………………………………………………………………………’

Which of the following represents what you would say or do?


A) ………………………………………………………………………………………
B) ………………………………………………………………………………………
C) ………………………………………………………………………………………
D) ………………………………………………………………………………………
E) ………………………………………………………………………………………

Schneider (2018) notes that from his direct experience, Asian students find DCTs very
challenging because they struggle to come up with what to write and they find MCTs much
more accessible as a task. By way of caveat, Kasper (2000) and Kasper and Roever (2005)
note that multiple-choice questionnaires in pragmatics research have varying degrees of
success depending on their purpose. Multiple-choice studies which probe situational rou-
tines and implicatures were found to have a satisfactory degree of consistency (see Kasper,
2008), while those studies which look at speech act realisation strategies ‘tend to achieve
notoriously poor reliability scores’ (Kasper and Roever, 2005: 328).

Roleplays

Roleplays are particularly common as a means of eliciting oral data in the study of cross-cul-
tural and inter-language pragmatics, especially when comparing native (NS) and non-native
speaker (NNS) language use in relation to the same task (NS – NS versus NNS – NNS) or
RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS 31

within the same task (NSs – NNSs) (see Félix-Brasdefer (2018) and Schneider (2018) for
detailed coverage). A roleplay usually involves a prompt which is given to speakers. These
vary in terms of control. The participants can also be given contextual information, including
a description of the situation and details about the status of each role (e.g. you are the
employee/employer; student/teacher; friend/friend, etc.). Figure 2.5 is a typical roleplay
prompt, based on Félix-Brasdefer (2018: 310). In this case, it is being used to elicit exam-
ples of refusals to invitations but does not provide much contextual or situational detail.
There are many variations and variables in terms of enhancing the prompt and controlling the
task (see Félix-Brasdefer, 2018). This will be discussed further below (see Task 2.4). The
language generated in the roleplay can then be recorded and analysed.

A friend of yours is leaving to return to China after an academic year abroad. He has
invited you to his farewell party. Unfortunately, you can’t make it.

Figure 2.5 A roleplay prompt

The term roleplay can sometimes be used as a superordinate for a number of variations
(see Table 2.1). Roleplay and role enactment involve taking on social roles (varying in how
related or familiar they are to the participants), while simulated tasks assign discourse roles
to participants who respond as themselves in these discourse roles.

Table 2.1 Terminological differences relating to roleplays (based on McDonough, 1986; Félix-Brasdefer,
2018)

Term For the participant, this means

Roleplay Taking on a role that is not yourself and responding to the situation that is
prompted in that role (rather than as yourself). For example, you are a doctor;
you are a professor; you are a train driver.
Role enactment Taking on a role designed to fit with your known experience and responding
to a familiar situation within that role. For example, [someone who is a
postgraduate student]: you are a postgraduate student and your assignment is
late; [someone who is a waiter]: you are a waiter and you are late for work.
Simulation Taking on a discourse role and responding as yourself to a situation. For
example, (role: direction giver) you are stopped by someone looking for
directions on the university campus. What would you say?

Boxer and Cohen (2004: 17) point out that in certain contexts roleplay data are similar
to spontaneous spoken data, ‘with the caveat that the researcher is able to set up a con-
text for studying speaking’. Demeter (2007) sees roleplay as a method which brings the
researcher closest to authentic data in the study of the production of speech acts. This is
supported by Rosendale (1989), who used roleplays to elicit data for a study on the speech
act of invitation. Based at a Romanian university, Demeter (2007) used roleplay as a means
of data gathering for a study of apologies. One of the explicit aims of his study was to
demonstrate that the use of roleplays is a valid and effective method of collecting data for
the analysis of apologies. To support this, he compared data collected through roleplays with
32 RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS

data collected via a DCT. His study involved 19 university students majoring in English. They
were asked to roleplay an apology in six situations adapted from the US television show
Friends which ran from 1994 to 2004. Some of these situations included the following:

• You did not have time to change before going to the wedding of your best friend, and
therefore you are wearing sports clothes;
• You had promised your spouse that you would stop smoking. However, you started
again, and your wife can tell that you were smoking again;
• You arrive late to your friend’s birthday dinner;
• You took your friend’s blue jeans without telling him or her. Now your friend has found
out and you admit to taking them.

Roleplays have also come in for criticism for being artificial, but Félix-Brasdefer (2018)
notes that they are a powerful tool for the investigation of interactional aspects of communi-
cation (such as turn organisation, turn taking and overlap, etc.), as well as prosodic features
and cues (such as intonations, tone and stress). In addition, they can allow for the explora-
tion of macro-social dimensions (such as gender, age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status),
within and across languages (see Márquez Reiter, 2000; Félix-Brasdefer, 2009; Cohen,
2012). Félix-Brasdefer (2018) offers extensive detail on roleplays as a methodological tool
in pragmatics. Based on Félix-Brasdefer (2018), we summarise some the main broad types
of roleplays:

Closed roleplays: These are essentially oral discourse completion tasks and seek to elicit
one-turn responses. The oral response to the prompt is recorded. Com-
pared to written DCTs, these are argued to produce longer responses,
as well as features, verbal and non-verbal, associated with spoken dis-
course, such as hesitation, backchannels, gestures, etc. that a written
DCT will not capture (see Félix-Brasdefer (2018: 308) for examples).
Open roleplays: An open roleplay is typified by being dyadic. Participants normally read
the situational prompt and are then asked to roleplay how they would
respond. The interaction is recorded for later analysis.

The degree of detail provided in the prompt (degree of formality of setting, relationship and
status of interlocutors) can have an impact on the quality and length of the data it produces
(see Billmyer and Varghese, 2000; Félix-Brasdefer, 2010). A good approach is to pilot your
prompt and then enhance it based on the pilot. Task 2.4 explores the piloting process based
on Figure 2.5.

TASK 2.4 ROLEPLAYS

1) Pilot the following prompt by administering it to four different people.


2) Note your observations on the language they use.
3) Note any questions or confusion they have.
4) Then, enhance the prompt based on this information. For example, what additional
role or contextual information would you add?
RESEARCHING PRAGMATICS 33

A friend of yours is leaving to return to China after an academic year abroad. He has
invited you to his farewell party. Unfortunately, you can’t make it. What do you say?

Félix-Brasdefer (2018: 325ff.) offers extensive methodological and ethical advice which is
essential reading if you would like to use this instrument.

Interviews

Interviews have proved useful in pragmatics research. These interviews are sometimes
sourced from other fields, such as sociolinguistics, and repurposed for pragmatics
research goals (see Kasper, 2008; Schneider, 2007, 2018). For example, Schneider
(2007) compared responses to thanks in closing sequences of interviews. The interviews
were originally conducted in relation to attitudes to regional dialects in England. Others
have used interviews to elicit first-order conceptualisations of politeness, rudeness or
speech acts. For example, interviewees could be asked directly for their definitions of
small talk, banter and gossip, or to share their understanding of insults, threats, and so on
(see Schneider, 2018).
Interviews have also been used in pragmatics research to elicit interviewee examples
of particular speech acts. For example, an interviewee could be asked to detail the last
time they received a compliment or an insult. This information can be used as the basis for
designing DCTs, MCTs or roleplays, as we explore in Task 2.5.

TASK 2.5 INTERVIEWS

Ask someone about the last time they experienced one of the following and use the
details as the basis for a DCT or roleplay prompt:

• received a compliment
• made an apology
• refused an invitation
• congratulated someone
• made a complaint
• insulted someone
• apologised for a mistake they had made at work

Barron (2003) and Woodfield (2012) offer interesting examples of how inter-
views can be used in conjunction with a roleplay or DCT task to gain more follow-up
insight into why informants said something within a task. For example, informants may
be asked, ‘What was going through your mind when you said this?; What made you
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
(This concludes the first lesson, during which the words and
significations of Variability, Variate, Array, and Median will have been
learnt.)
The second lesson is intended to give more precision to the idea
of an Array. The variates in any one of these strung loosely on a
cord, should be disposed at equal distances apart in front of an
equal number of compartments, like horses in the front of a row of
stalls (Fig. 4), and their tops joined. There will be one more side to
the row of stalls than there are horses, otherwise a side of one of
the extreme stalls would be wanting. Thus there are two ways of
indicating the position of a particular variate, either by its serial
number as ‘first,’ ‘second,’ ‘third,’ or so on, or by degrees like those
of a thermometer. In the latter case the sides of the stalls serve as
degrees, counting the first of them as 0°, making one more
graduation than the number of objects, as it should be. The
difference between these two methods has to be made clear, and
that while the serial position of the Median object is always the same
in any two Arrays whatever be the number of variates, the serial
position of their subdivisions cannot be the same, the ignored half
interval at either end varying in width according to the number of
variates, and becoming considerable when that number is small.
Lines of proportionate length will then be drawn on a blackboard,
and the limits of the Array will be also drawn, at a half interval from
either of its ends. The base is then to be divided centesimally.
Next join the tops of the lines with a smooth curve, and wipe out
everything except the curve, the Limit at either side, and the
Centesimally divided Base (Fig. 5). This figure forms a Scheme of
Distribution of Variates. Explain clearly that its shape is independent
of the number of Variates, so long as they are sufficiently numerous
to secure statistical constancy.
Show numerous schemes of variates of different kinds, and
remark on the prevalent family likeness between the bounding
curves. (Words and meanings learnt—Schemes of Distribution,
Centesimal graduation of base.)
The third lesson passes from Variates, measured upwards from
the base, to Deviates measured upwards or downwards from the
Median, and treated as positive or negative values accordingly (Fig.
6).
Draw a Scheme of Variates on the blackboard, and show that it
consists of two parts; the median which represents a constant, and
the curve which represents the variations from it. Draw a horizontal
line from limit to limit, through the top of the Median to serve as
Axis to the Curve. Divide the Axis centesimally, and wipe out
everything except Curve, Axis, and Limits. This forms a Scheme of
Distribution of Deviates. Draw ordinates from the axis to the curve at
the 25th and 75th divisions. These are the ‘Quartile’ deviates.
At this stage the Genesis of the theoretical Normal curve might be
briefly explained and the generality of its application; also some of
its beautiful properties of reproduction. Many of the diagrams
already shown would be again employed to show the prevalence of
approximately normal distributions. Exceptions of strongly marked
Skew curves would be exhibited and their genesis briefly described.
It will then be explained that while the ordinate at any specified
centesimal division in two normal curves of deviation measures their
relative variability, the Quartile is commonly employed as the unit of
variability under the almost grotesque name of ‘Probable Error,’
which is intended to signify that the length of any Deviate in the
system is as likely as not to exceed or to fall short of it. This, by
construction, is the case of either Quartile.
(New words and meanings—Scheme of Distribution of Deviates,
Axis, Normal, Skew, Quartile, and Probable Error.)
In the fourth lesson it has to be explained that the Curve of
Normal Distribution is not a direct result of calculation, neither does
the formula that expresses it lend itself so freely to further
calculation, as the curve of Frequency. Their shapes differ; the first
is an Ogive, the second (Fig. 7) is Bell-shaped. In the curve of
Frequency the Deviations are reckoned from the Mean of all the
Variates, and not from the Median. Mean and Median are the same
in Normal Curves, but may differ much in others. Either of these
normal curves can be transformed into the other, as is best
exemplified by using a Polygon (Fig. 8) instead of the Curve,
consisting of a series of rectangles differing in height by the same
amounts, but having widths respectively representative of the
frequencies of 1, 3, 3, 1. (This is one of those known as a Binomial
series, whose genesis might be briefly explained.) If these rectangles
are arrayed in order of their widths, side by side, they become the
equivalents of the ogival curve of Distribution. Now if each of these
latter rectangles be slid parallel to itself up to either limit, their bases
will overlap and they become equivalent to the bell-shaped curve of
Frequency with its base vertical.
The curve of Frequency contains no easily perceived unit of
variability like the Quartile of the Curve of Distribution. It is therefore
not suited for and was not used as a first illustration, but the formula
that expresses it is by far the more suitable of the two for
calculation. Its unit of variability is what is called the ‘Standard
Deviation,’ whose genesis will admit of illustration. How the
calculations are made for finding its value is far beyond the reach of
the present lessons. The calculated ordinates of the normal curve
must be accepted by the learner much as the time of day by his
watch, though he be ignorant of the principles of its construction.
Much further beyond his reach are the formulae used to express
quasi-normal and skew curves. They require a previous knowledge
of rather advanced mathematics.
(New words and ideas—Curve of Frequency, Standard Deviation,
Mean, Binomial Series).
The fifth and last lesson deals with the measurement of
Correlation, that is, with the closeness of the relation between any
two systems whose variations are due partly to causes common to
both, and partly to causes special to each. It applies to nearly every
social relation, as to environment and health, social position and
fertility, the kinship of parent to child, of uncle to nephew, &c. It may
be mechanically illustrated by the movements of two pulleys with
weights attached, suspended from a cord held by one of the hands
of three different persons, 1, 2, and 3. No. 2 holds the middle of the
cord, one half of which then passes round one of the pulleys up to
the hand of No. 1; the other half similarly round the other pulley up
to the hand of No. 3. The hands of Nos. 1, 2, and 3 move up and
down quite independently, but as the movements of both weights
are simultaneously controlled in part by No. 2, they become
‘correlated.’
The formation of a table of correlations on paper ruled in squares,
is easily explained on the blackboard (Fig. 9). The pairs of correlated
values A and B have to be expressed in units of their respective
variabilities. They are then sorted into the squares of the paper,—
vertically according to the magnitudes of A, horizontally according to
those of B—, and the Mean of each partial array of B values,
corresponding to each grade of A, has to be determined. It is found
theoretically that where variability is normal, the Means of B lie
practically in a straight line on the face of the Table, and observation
shows they do so in most other cases. It follows that the average
deviation of a B value bears a constant ratio to the deviation of the
corresponding A value. This ratio is called the ‘Index of Correlation,’
and is expressed by a single figure. For example: if the thigh-bone of
many persons deviate ‘very much’ from the usual length of the
thigh-bones of their race, the average of the lengths of the
corresponding arm-bones will differ ‘much,’ but not ‘very much,’ from
the usual length of arm-bones, and the ratio between this ‘very
much’ and ‘much’ is constant and in the same direction, whatever be
the numerical value attached to the word ‘very much.’ Lastly, the
trustworthiness of the Index of Correlation, when applied to
individual cases, is readily calculable. When the closeness of
correlation is absolute, it is expressed by the number 1·0; and by
0·0, when the correlation is nil.
(New words and ideas—Correlation and Index of Correlation.)
This concludes what I have to say on these suggested Object
lessons. It will have been tedious to follow in its necessarily much
compressed form,—but will serve, I trust, to convey its main purpose
of showing that a very brief course of lessons, copiously illustrated
by diagrams and objects to handle, would give an acceptable
introduction to the newer methods employed in Biometry and in
Eugenics. Further, that when read leisurely by experts in its printed
form, it would give them sufficient guidance for elaborating details.

Influence of Collective Truths upon Individual Conduct.


We have thus far been concerned with Probability, determined by
methods that take cognizance of Variations, and yield exact results,
thereby affording a solid foundation for action. But the stage on
which human action takes place is a superstructure into which
emotion enters, we are guided on it less by Certainties and by
Probabilities than by Assurance to a greater or lesser degree. The
word Assurance is derived from sure, which itself is an abbreviation
of secure, that is of se- cura, or without misgiving. It is a contented
attitude of mind largely dependent on custom, prejudice, or other
unreasonable influences which reformers have to overcome, and
some of which they are apt to utilize on their own behalf. Human
nature is such that we rarely find our way by the pure light of
reason, but while peering through spectacles furnished with coloured
and distorting glasses.
Locke seems to confound certainty with assurance in his forcible
description of the way in which men are guided in their daily affairs
(Human Understanding, iv. 14, par. 1):
Man would be at a great loss if he had nothing to direct him but what has the
certainty of true knowledge. For that being very short and scanty, he would be
often utterly in the dark, and in most of the actions of his life, perfectly at a stand,
had he nothing to guide him in the absence of clear and certain knowledge. He
that will not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him, he that will not
stir till he infallibly knows the business he goes about will succeed, will have little
else to do than to sit still and perish.
A society may be considered as a highly complex organism, with a
consciousness of its own, caring only for itself, establishing
regulations and customs for its collective advantage, and creating a
code of opinions to subserve that end. It is hard to over-rate its
power over the individual in regard to any obvious particular on
which it emphatically insists. I trust in some future time that one of
those particulars will be the practice of Eugenics. Otherwise the
influence of collective truths on individual conduct is deplorably
weak, as expressed by the lines:—
For others’ follies teach us not,
Nor much their wisdom teaches,
But chief of solid worth is what
Our own experience preaches.

Professor Westermarck, among many other remarks in which I


fully concur, has aptly stated (Sociological Papers, published for the
Sociological Society. Macmillan, 1906, vol. ii., p. 24), with reference
to one obstacle which prevents individuals from perceiving the
importance of Eugenics, ‘the prevalent opinion that almost anybody
is good enough to marry is chiefly due to the fact that in this case,
cause and effect, marriage and the feebleness of the offspring, are
so distant from each other that the near-sighted eye does not
distinctly perceive the connexion between them.’ (The Italics are
mine.)
The enlightenment of individuals is a necessary preamble to
practical Eugenics, but social opinion is the tyrant by whose praise or
blame the principles of Eugenics may be expected hereafter to
influence individual conduct. Public opinion may, however, be easily
directed into different channels by opportune pressure. A common
conviction that change in the established order of some particular
codes of conduct would be impossible, because of the shock that the
idea of doing so gives to our present ideas, bears some resemblance
to the conviction of lovers that their present sentiments will endure
for ever. Conviction, which is that very Assurance of which mention
has just been made, is proved by reiterated experience to be a
highly fallacious guide. Love is notoriously fickle in despite of the
fervent and genuine protestations of lovers, and so is public opinion.
I gave a list of extraordinary variations of the latter in respect to
restrictions it enforced on the freedom of marriage, at various times
and places (Sociological Papers, quoted above). Much could be
added to that list, but I will not now discuss the effects of public
opinion on such a serious question. I will take a much smaller
instance which occurred before the time to which the recollections of
most persons can now reach, but which I myself recall vividly. It is
the simple matter of hair on the face of male adults. When I was
young, it was an unpardonable offence for any English person other
than a cavalry officer, or perhaps someone of high social rank, to
wear a moustache. Foreigners did so and were tolerated, otherwise
the assumption of a moustache was in popular opinion worse than
wicked, for it was atrociously bad style. Then came the Crimean War
and the winter of Balaclava, during which it was cruel to compel the
infantry to shave themselves every morning. So their beards began
to grow, and this broke a long established custom. On the return of
the army to England the fashion of beards spread among the laity,
but stopped short of the clergy. These, however, soon began to
show dissatisfaction; they said the beard was a sign of manliness
that ought not to be suppressed, and so forth, and at length the
moment arrived. A distinguished clergyman, happily still living,
‘bearded’ his Bishop on a critical occasion. The Bishop yielded
without protest, and forthwith hair began to sprout in a thousand
pulpits where it had never appeared before within the memory of
man.
It would be no small shock to public sentiment if our athletes in
running public races were to strip themselves stark naked, yet that
custom was rather suddenly introduced into Greece. Plato says
(Republic V, par. 452, Jowett’s translation):
Not long ago the Greeks were of the opinion, which is still generally received
among the barbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and improper,
and when first the Cretans and the Lacedaemonians introduced naked exercises,
the wits of that day might have ridiculed them....
Thucydides (I. 6) also refers to the same change as occurring
‘quite lately’.
Public opinion is commonly far in advance of private morality,
because society as a whole keenly appreciates acts that tend to its
advantage, and condemns those that do not. It applauds acts of
heroism that perhaps not one of the applauders would be disposed
to emulate. It is instructive to observe cases in which the
benevolence of public opinion has out-stripped that of the Law—
which, for example, takes no notice of such acts as are enshrined in
the parable of the good Samaritan. A man on his journey was
robbed, wounded and left by the wayside. A priest and a Levite
successively pass by and take no heed of him. A Samaritan follows,
takes pity, binds his wounds, and bears him to a place of safety.
Public opinion keenly condemns the priest and the Levite, and
praises the Samaritan, but our criminal law is indifferent to such
acts. It is most severe on misadventure due to the neglect of a
definite duty, but careless about those due to the absence of
common philanthropy. Its callousness in this respect is painfully
shown in the following quotations (Kenny, Outlines of Criminal Law,
1902, p. 121, per Hawkins in Reg. v. Paine, Times, February 25,
1880):
If I saw a man who was not under my charge, taking up a tumbler of poison, I
should not be guilty of any crime by not stopping him. I am under no legal
obligation to protect a stranger.
That is probably what the priest and the Levite of the parable said
to themselves.
A still more emphatic example is in the Digest of Criminal Law, by
Justice Sir James Stephen, 1887, p. 154. Reg. v. Smith, 2 C. and P.,
449:
A sees B drowning and is able to help him by holding out his hand. A abstains
from doing so in order that B may be drowned, and B is drowned. A has
committed no offence.
It appears, from a footnote, that this case has been discussed in a
striking manner by Lord Macaulay in his notes on the Indian Penal
Code, which I have not yet been able to consult.
Enough has been written elsewhere by myself and others to show
that whenever public opinion is strongly roused it will lead to action,
however contradictory it may be to previous custom and sentiment.
Considering that public opinion is guided by the sense of what best
serves the interests of society as a whole, it is reasonable to expect
that it will be strongly exerted in favour of Eugenics when a
sufficiency of evidence shall have been collected to make the truths
on which it rests plain to all. That moment has not yet arrived.
Enough is already known to those who have studied the question to
leave no doubt in their minds about the general results, but not
enough is quantitatively known to justify legislation or other action
except in extreme cases. Continued studies will be required for some
time to come, and the pace must not be hurried. When the desired
fulness of information shall have been acquired then, and not till
then, will be the fit moment to proclaim a ‘Jehad,’ or Holy War
against customs and prejudices that impair the physical and moral
qualities of our race.
LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS FOR PROMOTING
EUGENICS[8]

I propose to take the present opportunity of submitting some


views of my own relating to that large province of eugenics which is
concerned with favouring the families of those who are exceptionally
fit for citizenship. Consequently, little or nothing will be said relating
to what has been well termed by Dr. Saleeby “negative” eugenics,
namely, the hindrance of the marriages and the production of
offspring by the exceptionally unfit. The latter is unquestionably the
more pressing subject of the two, but it will soon be forced on the
attention of the legislature by the recent report of the Royal
Commission on the Feeble-minded. We may be content to await for
awhile the discussions to which it will give rise, and which I am sure
the members of this society will follow with keen interest, and with
readiness to intervene when what may be advanced seems likely to
result in actions of an anti-eugenic character.
The remarks I am about to make were suggested by hearing of a
desire to further eugenics by means of local associations more or
less affiliated to our own, combined with much doubt as to the most
appropriate methods of establishing and conducting them. It is upon
this very important branch of our wide subject that I propose to
offer a few remarks.
It is difficult, while explaining what I have in view, to steer a
course that shall keep clear of the mud flats of platitude on the one
hand, and not come to grief against the rocks of over-precision on
the other. There is no clear issue out of mere platitudes, while there
is great danger in entering into details. A good scheme may be
entirely compromised merely on account of public opinion not being
ripe to receive it in the proposed form, or through a discovered flaw
in some non-essential part of it. Experience shows that the safest
course in a new undertaking is to proceed warily and tentatively
towards the desired end, rather than freely and rashly along a
predetermined route, however carefully it may have been elaborated
on paper.
Again, whatever scheme of action is proposed for adoption must
be neither Utopian nor extravagant, but accordant throughout with
British sentiment and practice.
The successful establishment of any general system of
constructive eugenics will, in my view (which I put forward with
diffidence), depend largely upon the efforts of local associations
acting in close harmony with a central society, like our own. A
prominent part of its business will then consist in affording
opportunities for the interchange of ideas and for the registration
and comparison of results. Such a central society would tend to
bring about a general uniformity of administration the value of which
is so obvious that I do not stop to insist on it.
Assuming, as I do, that the powers at the command of the local
associations will be almost purely social, let us consider how those
associations might be formed and conducted so as to become
exceedingly influential.
It is necessary to be somewhat precise at the outset, so I will
begin with the by no means improbable supposition that in a given
district a few individuals, some of them of local importance, are
keenly desirous of starting a local association or society, and are
prepared to take trouble to that end. How should they set to work?
Their initial step would seem to be to form themselves into a
provisional executive committee, and to nominate a president,
council, and other officers of the new society. This done, the society
in question, though it would have no legal corporate existence, may
be taken as formed.
The committee would next provide, with the aid of the central
society, for a few sane and sensible lectures to be given on eugenics,
including the A B C of heredity, at some convenient spot, and they
would exert themselves to arouse a wide interest in the subjects by
making it known in the district. They would seek the co-operation of
the local medical men, clergy, and lawyers, of the sanitary
authorities, and of all officials whose administrative duties bring
them into contact with various classes of society, and they would
endeavour to collect round this nucleus that portion of the local
community which was likely to be brought into sympathy with the
eugenic cause. Every political organisation, every philanthropic
agency, proceeds on some such lines as I have just sketched out.
The committee might next issue, on the part of the president and
council of the new society, a series of invitations to guests at their
social gatherings, where differences of rank should be studiously
ignored. The judicious management of these gatherings would, of
course, require considerable tact, but there are abundant precedents
for them, among which I need only mention the meetings of the
Primrose League at one end of the scale, and those held in Toynbee
Hall at the other end. Given a not inclement day, an hour suitable to
the occasion, a park or large garden to meet in, these informal yet
select reunions might be made exceedingly pleasant, and very
helpful to the eugenic cause.
The inquiries made by the committee when they were considering
the names of strangers to whom invitations ought to be sent, would
put them in possession of a large fund of information concerning the
qualities of many notable individuals in their district, and their family
histories. These family histories should be utilised for eugenic
studies, and it should be the duty of the local council to cause them
to be tabulated in an orderly way, and to communicate the more
significant of them to the central society.
The chief of the notable qualities, to which I refer in the preceding
paragraph, is the possession of what I will briefly call by the general
term of “Worth.” By this I mean the civic worthiness, or the value to
the State, of a person, as it would probably be assessed by experts,
or, say, by such of his fellow-workers as have earned the respect of
the community in the midst of which they live. Thus the worth of
soldiers would be such as it would be rated by respected soldiers,
students by students, business men by business men, artists by
artists, and so on. The State is a vastly complex organism, and the
hope of obtaining a proportional representation of its best parts
should be an avowed object of issuing invitations to these
gatherings.
Speaking only for myself, if I had to classify persons according to
worth, I should consider each of them under the three heads of
physique, ability, and character, subject to the provision that
inferiority in any one of the three should outweigh superiority in the
other two. I rank physique first, because it is not only very valuable
in itself and allied to many other good qualities, but has the
additional merit of being easily rated. Ability I should place second
on similar grounds, and character third, though in real importance it
stands first of all. It is very difficult to rate character justly; the
tenure of a position of trust is only a partial test of it, though a good
one so far as it goes. Again, I wish to say emphatically that in what I
have thrown out I have no desire to impose my own judgment on
others, especially as I feel persuaded that almost any intelligent
committee would so distribute their invitations to strangers as to
include most, though perhaps not all, of the notable persons in the
district.
By the continued action of local associations as described thus far,
a very large amount of good work in eugenics would be incidentally
done. Family histories would become familiar topics, the existence of
good stocks would be discovered, and many persons of “worth”
would be appreciated and made acquainted with each other who
were formerly known only to a very restricted circle. It is probable
that these persons, in their struggle to obtain appointments, would
often receive valuable help from local sympathisers with eugenic
principles. If local societies did no more than this for many years to
come, they would have fully justified their existence by their valuable
services.
A danger to which these societies will be liable arises from the
inadequate knowledge joined to great zeal of some of the most
active among their probable members. It may be said, without
mincing words, with regard to much that has already been
published, that the subject of eugenics is particularly attractive to
“cranks.” The councils of local societies will therefore be obliged to
exercise great caution before accepting the memoirs offered to
them, and much discretion in keeping discussions within the bounds
of sobriety and common sense. The basis of eugenics is already
firmly established, namely, that the offspring of “worthy” parents
are, on the whole, more highly gifted by nature with faculties that
conduce to “worthiness” than the offspring of less “worthy” parents.
On the other hand, forecasts in respect to particular cases may be
quite wrong. They have to be based on imperfect data. It cannot be
too emphatically repeated that a great deal of careful statistical work
has yet to be accomplished before the science of eugenics can make
large advances.
I hesitate to speculate farther. A tree will have been planted; let it
grow. Perhaps those who may thereafter feel themselves or be
considered by others to be the possessors of notable eugenic
qualities—let us for brevity call them “Eugenes”—will form their own
clubs and look after their own interests. It is impossible to foresee
what the state of public opinion will then be. Many elements of
strength are needed, many dangers have to be evaded or overcome,
before associations of Eugenes could be formed that would be stable
in themselves, useful as institutions, and approved of by the outside
world.
The suggestion I made in the earlier part of this paper that the
executive committee of local associations should co-operate,
wherever practicable, with local administrative authorities,
proceeded on the assumption that the inhabitants of the districts
selected as the eugenic “field” had a public spirit of their own and a
sense of common interest. This sense would be greatly strengthened
by the enlargement of mutual acquaintanceship and the spread of
the eugenic idea consequent on the tactful action of the committee.
It ought not to be difficult to arouse in the inhabitants a just pride in
their own civic worthiness, analogous to the pride which a soldier
feels in the good reputation of his regiment or a lad in that of his
school. By this means a strong local eugenic opinion might easily be
formed. It would be silently assisted by local object lessons, in which
the benefits derived through following eugenic rules and the bad
effects of disregarding them were plainly to be discerned.
The power of social opinion is apt to be underrated rather then
overrated. Like the atmosphere which we breathe and in which we
move, social opinion operates powerfully without our being
conscious of its weight. Everyone knows that governments,
manners, and beliefs which were thought to be right, decorous, and
true at one period have been judged wrong, indecorous, and false at
another; and that views which we have heard expressed by those in
authority over us in our childhood and early manhood tend to
become axiomatic and unchangeable in mature life.
In circumscribed communities especially, social approval and
disapproval exert a potent force. Its presence is only too easily read
by those who are the object of either, in the countenances, bearing,
and manner of persons whom they daily meet and converse with. Is
it, then, I ask, too much to expect that when a public opinion in
favour of eugenics has once taken sure hold of such communities
and has been accepted by them as a quasi-religion, the result will be
manifested in sundry and very effective modes of action which are
as yet untried, and many of them even unforeseen?
Speaking for myself only, I look forward to local eugenic action in
numerous directions, of which I will now specify one. It is the
accumulation of considerable funds to start young couples of
“worthy” qualities in their married life, and to assist them and their
families at critical times. The gifts to those who are the reverse of
“worthy” are enormous in amount; it is stated that the charitable
donations or bequests in the year 1907 amounted to 4,868,050l. I
am not prepared to say how much of this was judiciously spent, or in
what ways, but merely quote the figures to justify the inference that
many of the thousands of persons who are willing to give freely at
the prompting of a sentiment based upon compassion might be
persuaded to give largely also in response to the more virile desire
of promoting the natural gifts and the national efficiency of future
generations.
Footnotes

1. The second Huxley Lecture of the Anthropological Institute, delivered by


Francis Galton, D.C.L., D.Sc., F.R.S., on October 29, 1901.

2. The 80 charitable bequests of and exceeding £9000, made in 1808 alone,


amounted to more than 3–1/2 millions of pounds. (Whitaker’s Almanack to
1909, p. 433).
“It being far more humane to prevent suffering than to alleviate it after it
has occurred, why will not charitably disposed persons leave substantial
sums of money to the furtherance of Eugenic Study and practice, and of
popularising the result? The money would be well bestowed.” Francis Galton,
1909.
I learn on high legal authority that the form of bequest which would be most
appropriate in present circumstances, and be free from the pit-falls that lie in
the way of charitable bequests, is “I bequeath to my trusted friend A.B., of
....., absolutely, the sum of £...... in the hope and confidence that he will
apply the same in furtherance of Eugenic Study and practice, but without
imposing on him any trust or legal obligation so to do.” F.G.

3. Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of Economics


and Political Science (London University), on May 16th, 1904. Professor Karl
Pearson, F.R.S., in the chair.

4. Read before the Sociological Society, on Tuesday, February 14th, at a


meeting in the School of Economics and Political Science (University of
London), Clare Market, W.C., Dr. E. Westermarck in the Chair.

5. Communicated at a meeting of the Sociological Society held in the School of


Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market, W.C.,
on Tuesday, February 14th, at 4 p.m.

6. The Herbert Spencer Lecture delivered before the University at Oxford, June
5th, 1907.
7. Dent’s “Everyman’s Library,” price One Shilling.

8. Address to a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society at the Grafton


Galleries, on October 14th, 1908.
Transcriber’s Notes

Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and


punctuation have been retained.
Two charts have been rendered here only in image
form. They were too visually complex to format as
HTML tables.
1. “STANDARD SCHEME OF DESCENT” just after the
Table of Contents
2. “Illustrations of the Herbert Spencer Lecture 1907.”
on p. 72.
Some tables are wide and may display poorly.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS IN
EUGENICS ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions


will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.


copyright law means that no one owns a United States
copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy
and distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the
General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE


THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the


free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this
work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase
“Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of
the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or
online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and


Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand,
agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual
property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree
to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease
using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for
obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms
of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only


be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by
people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.
There are a few things that you can do with most Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the
full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There
are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™
electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and
help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright
law in the United States and you are located in the United
States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying,
distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project
Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will
support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free
access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the
work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement
by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full
Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge
with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside
the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to
the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying,
displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works
based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The
Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright
status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project


Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other


immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project
Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed,
viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United


States and most other parts of the world at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United
States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is


derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of
the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to
anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges.
If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of
paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use
of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth
in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is


posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder.
Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™
License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright
holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project


Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files
containing a part of this work or any other work associated with
Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute


this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must,
at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy,
a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy
upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,


performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or


providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive
from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who


notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt
that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project
Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of


any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project


Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend


considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these
efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium
on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data,
transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property
infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be
read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except


for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in
paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic
work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for
damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you


discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you
paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you
received the work from. If you received the work on a physical
medium, you must return the medium with your written
explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu
of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.
If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund
in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set


forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’,
WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied


warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this
agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this
agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the
maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable
state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of
this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the


Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless
from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you
do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project
Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or
deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect
you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission


of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new
computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of
volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the


assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™
collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In
2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was
created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project
Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your
efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project


Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-
profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status
by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or
federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions
to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and
your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500


West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact
links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation’s website and official page at
www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission
of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works
that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated
equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly
important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws


regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of
the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform
and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many
fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not
solicit donations in locations where we have not received written
confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine
the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states


where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know
of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from
donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot


make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations
received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp
our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current


donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a
number of other ways including checks, online payments and

You might also like