Unit 7 Pragmatics

Though strict semantic analysis can provide many insights into

linguistic meaning, most semantic models necessarily examine
the meaningfulness of sentences rather than utterances. That is,
semantics is interested in the possible meanings of isolated forms
of language in principle, without regard to the complex variations
that are brought into effect if that sentence is considered in its
context of use. The consideration of meaningfulness in social
context is the concern of pragmatics.

Speech Act Theory

Modern pragmatics developed out of the work of language
philosophers such as J.L. Austin, H. Paul Grice and John Searle.
They were all interested in the systematic reasons why sentences
that denoted one particular thing were often used (and
understood) to mean something completely different. Austin
developed the notion of speech acts, to foreground the idea that
when we say something we are actually doing something in the
world that will have an intended and an actual effect in the world.
He differentiated three dimensions involved in the act of uttering:
 locutionary act - this is the act of saying something
that is grammatically well-formed. The uttered
sentence (the locution) has an evident truth-value and
refers to something.

 illocutionary act - this is the social force of the

utterance. For example, the locutions 'I'm sorry' or 'pick
that up' or 'can you help me?' represent the
illocutionary acts of apology, command and question
respectively. As locutions, they are framed as
declarative, imperative, and interrogative, as
appropriate.

 the perlocutionary act is the actual effect of the

utterance, its social consequences. Usually this will
match the intended meaning, but of course the
perlocution might not be exactly what the utterer
intended to convey.
There is not always a direct locutionary form for an illocutionary
act, and the perlocution actually performed might be different
from the intended utterance. For example, 'Can you pass the
salt?' is usually taken to be a request for the salt to be passed
straight away, not as an inquiry about the addressee's physical
abilities. Occasionally some witless pedant might reply 'yes', and
then do nothing, deliberately taking the locution not as having the
illocutionary force of a request for the salt but as having the
speech act value of an inquiry about ability. Such people do not
understand that this sort of indirectness is part of the pragmatics
of politeness (see more below), and they do not deserve to have
friends.

Activity
Fill in the blanks in this table:
Locutionary form Illocutionary act Example

Interrogative Question Is he singing?

Imperative Command Sing!
Declarative Statement He is singing
.... Insult You call that singing?
.... Promise ....
.... .... Please help me!
.... .... Can you help me?
.... Threat ....
.... Proposal ....
.... .... I bet it wins
.... .... Can I place a bet?
Put this �10 on number 6 to
.... ....
win

Austin also pointed out a special kind of speech act that enacts its
illocutionary force in the process of utterance. These are
called performatives. For example:
I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth
I do (uttered at a wedding)
I promise I'll be there
I bet you �10 I get there before you
I am writing to inform you that...
I sentence you to 10 years in prison.
Of course, these can only function as performatives if certain
conditions are true. The last example must be uttered by a judge
in a court room at the end of a trial in which a jury has found the
accused person guilty of a serious crime. It is not a performative if
uttered by one of my students at the end of a seminar, or by my
local greengrocer when selling me some bananas, or even by the
judge while relaxing in a bar with some legal mates. Only if
these felicity conditions are satisfied is the performative
'happy'.
'Happy' performatives, then, depend on the fact that
 the circumstances under which the speech act is
performed are felicitous (e.g. the bride is unmarried,
the speaker is standing in front of a ship with a bottle
of champagne on a rope, and so on), and

 the speaker is 'authorised' to perform the act (e.g. is a

qualified judge, is able to keep the promise, has �10
and is willing to hand it over, and so on), and

 the person involved in the speech act is sincere (e.g.

saying 'I apologise' and not meaning it, or making a
promise that you know you cannot keep).
Again, there could be a mismatch between the intended meaning
and the perlocutionary effect if these felicity conditions are not
met. Such breakages of pragmatic 'rules' can be known as 'lying',
'fraud', 'deceit', 'irony', 'sarcasm', 'acting', 'joke-telling',
'impersonating', and 'fiction'.

Indirect Speech Acts and Implicatures

A mismatch in locution, perlocution and felicity conditions is one
way of identifying indirect speech acts. 'Can you pass the salt? is
an interrogative ostensibly about ability but is actually a request
for action. Saying 'it's chilly in here' is a declarative statement
that can be correctly interpreted as a command to close the
window, especially if the utterer is more socially powerful than the
addressee.
According to Grice, mutual understanding of pragmatic meaning
works successfully mainly because a co-operative
principle (CP) operates. This is a basic assumption that
interlocutors normally intend to accomplish purposeful and
effective communication in conversation. Grice developed a
means of accounting for indirect meanings using the notion
of conversational maxims. These are a set of principles which
constitute the co-operative principle:
 Maxim of Quality
- do not say that which you believe to be false
- do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

 Maxim of Quantity
- make your contribution as informative as is required
for the purpose of the exchange
- do not make your contribution more informative than
is required

 Maxim of Relation
- make your contribution relevant in the context

 Maxim of Manner
- avoid obscurity
- avoid ambiguity
- be brief
- be orderly
The point about Gricean maxims is not that they are linguistic
'rules' at all, but that in fact they are often and routinely broken
or 'flouted'. When the maxims are flouted, the interlocutor
assumes the CP still holds, and assumes that some intention is
being represented that is indirect but nevertheless still
meaningful. These meanings are known as implicatures. For
example:
 flouting the maxim of quality:
Juliet is the sun (spoken of a person called Juliet)
What a beautiful day! (said on a rainy, windy,
miserable day)

 flouting the maxim of quantity:

He attended my classes (being the sum total of a
written character reference)
A: Where are you going? B: Out!

 flouting the maxim of relation:

A: What time is it? B: The bar's just closed
(A is complaining to B about C when C suddenly enters
behind A, and B interrupts) 'Yes the holiday was lovely,
we had a marvellous time...'
  flouting the maxim of manner:
(such as deliberately ambiguous poetry or advertising)
All of these generate implicatures and can be interpreted as being
meaningful. The social force of such implicatures can often be
understood as expressing humour, irony, exasperation,
annoyance, a poetic metaphor, a fictional moral, and so on.

Supermaxims: Relevance and Politeness

Several linguists have proposed qualifications and critiques of the
standard pragmatic account of maxims and implicatures. It has
been suggested that a 'supermaxim' be polite determines the
form of all the other maxims, or that being relevant subsumes
other details of maxim and implicature.
.
The chapter focuses on the model of politeness developed by
Brown and Levinson, which is based on the notion of face. Like
Sperber and Wilson, this also makes some theoretical moves into
psychological and cognitive processing areas, though in both
cases there is little empirical evidence or actual recorded data
presented in support of the theories. Furthermore, pragmatic
models from Grice onwards and including Sperber and Wilson and
Brown and Levinson have been criticised for being insufficiently
open to the inequities in social status, power and wealth of
interlocutors. Much recent sociolinguistic work has highlighted
this oversight in traditional pragmatic frameworks.
For example, the social phenomenon known as phatics or phatic
communion manifests social power differences quite well. Phatic
tokens are those units of language whose primary purpose is not
their content so much as their effect in social solidarity.
Greetings, terms of address and farewells are the most obvious
examples of phatic token: 'good morning', 'how are you', 'nice to
have met you', 'lovely weather we're having', 'beautiful view',
'yours faithfully', and so on, are all typical examples.
According to work done by Laver (1975), phatic choices reveal
strong indicators of social status. Phatic tokens, by definition:
 have positive polarity (they tend not to use negatives)

 are emotionally and ideologically uncontroversial (such

as talking about the weather)

 expect a positive but fairly non-committal response

(mild agreement is the norm)
Any alteration from these norms will (like implicatures) generate
certain effects. Compare:
A: Nice weather we're having
B: Hmm, beautiful
with
A: Nice weather we're having
B: Rubbish. It's going to pour with rain. You're an idiot
and
A: (said to a complete stranger on the street) You look terrible
and
A: (said to a stranger) Are you interested in politics?
Only the first of these would count as a successful phatic opening.
All of the non-phatic tokens are nevertheless in the position
normally occupied by phatics. They generate effects such as
aggressive hostility, over-intimacy and a pushy beginning of a
political discussion (this last is a favourite ploy of political
newspaper sellers, since it is difficult to say 'no').
Laver also developed a further social dimension to the token-type
used. He identified three types of phatic token:
 neutral tokens: reference is to the context of
situation that is common to both participants ('nice
weather', 'great view', 'these trains need cleaning')

 other-oriented tokens: reference is to the addressee

('that looks like hard work', 'you're looking well', 'how
do you do')

 self-oriented tokens: reference is to the speaker

('hard work, this', 'I'm warm today', 'I'm pleased to
meet you').
In Laver's framework, neutral tokens are used between complete
strangers. When a socially more powerful participant speaks first,
they will use an other-oriented token. When a socially inferior
person speaks first, they will use a self-oriented token. (With the
added point that it is more often the social superior who will
assert their superiority by being the first to speak in any case).
Laver's extreme example for illustration concerns a peasant
building a wall and a baron riding past. The baron would say,
'That looks like hard work', but the peasant is more likely to start,
'Hard work, this'.
Again, like implicatures, these social and pragmatic norms can be
exploited so that people can claim apparent social power by using
the stereotypical patterns associated with power.

Activity
What has gone wrong - or 'misfired' - in each of these (invented!)
exchanges, according to Laver's framework? What is the effect
that is consequently generated?
You: Beautiful day!
Stranger: Well no, actually, I think you'll find that there is an
approaching cold front bringing heavy precipitation from the
north-west, followed by high winds tonight.
You [in passing along the road]: Alright?
Passer-by: No, I've just got out of hospital, had a terrible time of
it, the old problem playing me up again, still, mustn't grumble I
suppose, I'll tell you all about it.... [and so on, and on]
[On meeting the Queen of England] You: By God, your Majesty,
that's a terrible boil on your neck there!
[On meeting the Queen of England] Queen: I'm completely
knackered after that!
Someone rings your doorbell, you open the door, and the person
standing there says: Yes?
Your bank manager begins a meeting with you by saying that his
cat has just died.
Held at gunpoint by terrorists, you comment to your fellow
hostage on how good the weather has been recently.

Phatic communication is popularly known as small talk: the

nonreferential use of language to share feelings or establish
a mood of sociability rather than to communicate information or
ideas. The ritualized formulas of phatic communication (such as
"Uh-huh" and "Have a nice day") are generally intended to attract
the attention of the listener or prolong communication. Also known
as phatic speech, phatic communion, phatic language, social
tokens, and chit-chat.
The term phatic communion was coined by British anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski in his essay "The Problem of Meaning in
Primitive Languages," which appeared in 1923 in The Meaning of
Meaning by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards.
Etymology
From the Greek, "spoken"
Examples
 "How are you?"
 "How ya doin'?"
 "Have a nice day!"
 "Cold enough for you?"
 "This train is really crowded."
 "What's your sign?"
 "What's your major?"
 "Do you come here often?"
 "Sincerely yours"
 "How about those Mets?"
 "Some weather we're having."
Observations
 "Speech to promote human warmth: that is as good a
definition as any of the phatic aspect of language. For good
or ill, we are social creatures and cannot bear to be cut off too
long from our fellows, even if we have nothing really to say to
them." (Anthony Burgess, Language Made Plain. English
Universities Press, 1964)
 "Phatic communication refers also to trivial and obvious
exchanges about the weather and time, made up of ready-
made sentences or foreseeable statements. . . . Therefore this
is a type of communication that establishes a contact without
transmitting a precise content, where the container is more
important then the content." (F. Casalegno and I.M.
McWilliam, "Communication Dynamics in Technological
Mediated Learning Environments." International Journal of
Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, November
2004)
 "Phatic communication, or small talk, is an important social
lubricant. In the words of Erving Goffman, 'The gestures
which we sometimes call empty are perhaps in fact the fullest
things of all.'" (Diana Boxer, Applying Sociolinguistics. John
Benjamins, 2002)
 "Phatic communication was identified by Roman Jakobson
as one of the six functions of language. It is content-free:
when someone passes you in the corridor and inquires 'How
are you?' it would be a breach of manners to take the question
as having content and actually to tell them what a bad day
you've had." (John Hartley, Communication, Cultural and
Media Studies: The Key Concepts, 3rd ed. Routledge, 2002)
 "[The] strictly rhetorical, 'phatic' purpose of 'keeping in
touch' for the sake of keeping in touch [is] best illustrated by
the 'uh-huh' that lets the listener on the other end of a
 telephone connection know that we are still there and with
him." (W. Ross Winterowd, Rhetoric: A Synthesis. Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1968)
 "'Nice weather we're having' is perfect, Leonard. It's a subject
that lends itself to speculation about future weather,
discussion of past weather. Something everyone knows about.
It doesn't matter what you say, it's just a matter of keeping
the ball rolling till you both feel comfortable. Eventually if
they're at all interested you'll get through to them." (Phil in
the one-act play Potholes by Gus Kaikkonen, 1984)
 "[P]hatic utterances constitute a mode of action just in their
being voiced. In short, a phatic utterance communicates not
ideas but attitude, the speaker's presence, and the speaker's
intention of being sociable." (Brooks Landon, Building Great
Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to
Read. Plume, 2013)
 "What the anthropologist Malinowski called 'phatic
communion' might seem close to 'pure persuasion.' He
referred to talk at random, purely for the satisfaction of
talking together, the use of speech as such for the
establishing of a social bond between speaker and spoken-to.
Yet 'pure persuasion' should be much more intensely
purposive than that, though it would be a 'pure' purpose, a
kind of purpose which, as judged by the rhetoric of advantage,
is no purpose at all, or which might often look like sheer
frustration of purpose." (Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of
Motives, 1950)