Pragmatics 1

Conversational analysis

Discourse prgamatics

Cross-cultural pragmatics

Conversational Analysis (CA)

CA

studies conversational interaction in order

to reveal the organisational features of naturally occurring talk

• empirical: analysis based on naturally occurring data rather than intuition

• inductive method: searches for recurring patterns across many records of naturally occurring conversations

http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/courses/pragmatics07/Slides/PD.07.4.ConversationStructure.pdf

CA

• is the study of talk in interaction (both verbal and non-verbal in situations of everyday life)

• attempts to describe the orderliness, structure and sequential patterns of interaction, whether institutional (inschool, a doctor's surgery, court) or in casual conversation

• inspired by ethnomethodology

• developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and his close associatesEmanuel Schlegoff and Gail Jefferson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis

Interaction

'an interpersonal exchange of talk' (Yule 1996:71)

e.g.

a lecturer talking to a student

a doctor talking to a patient

a father talking to his son

a teacher talking to a pupil

A conversation is one form of interaction:

The spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and

feelingshttp://www.thefreedictionary.com

Conversation

Conversation

A conversation is the taking of turns at holding the

floor

Speakers can cooperate to hold the floor

OR

fight to keep the floor or take it from others

• Smooth transitions are generally preferred.

• Long pauses or overlaps are avoided

The structure of conversation

the floor: the right to speak

the turn: having control of the floor

turn-taking: taking control of the floor

(who should talk and when)

local management system: conventions for getting, keeping or transferring turns

transition relevance place (TRP): a point of change-of-turn

local management system

conventions for getting, keeping or transferring turns

Speakers expect their partners to signal that they

are indeed listening:

nods, smiles, facial expressions, gestures, or

backchannels: uh-uh, yes, mmm

Lack of backchannels may be interpreted as lack

of agreement or attention.

a point of change-of-turn

the end of a structural unit (phrase/clause)

usually marked by a pause

Signal that one wants to keep turn:

e.g. Let me tell you a story...

There are three reasons...

TRP markers

Discourse Analysis (DA)

Discourse analysis (DA)

general term for a number of approaches to

analyzing written, spoken, signed language use

or any significant semiotic event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_analysis

DA

According to Yule (1996: 83)

'discourse analysis covers an extremely wide

range of activities, from the narrowly focussed

investigation of how words such as 'oh' and 'well'

are used in casual talk to the study of the

dominant ideology in a culture as represented,

for example, in its educational or politcal

practices.'

DA

• once you have the floor, you have to organise your discourse (Yule 1996: 83)

• focus in pragmatics on what is unsaid or unwritten, yet communicated, within discourse (Yule 1996: 84)

• explores what the speaker has in mind

• in contemporary research, discourse covers both monologues and dialogues, as well as spoken and written language

DA

• Discourse is a communicative event

• requiring a sender (writer, speaker), a receiver (reader, listener), and a message

• message is not just a concatenation of clauses; but forms a unified, coherent whole

• both sender and receiver normally have implicitagreement that the message being communicated is coherent

http://www.autotutor.org/publications/newpapers/Louwerse-Coherence.pdf

Communication is made possible through:

• coherence

• background knowledge

• cultural schemata

Coherence and cohesion

Cohesion and coherence

Cohesion:

unity of text achieved through linguistics devices/techniques:

• anaphora: pronouns

• conjunction: then, however, in fact, and consequently, therefore, so

• linking words/phrases: as stated previously, the aforementioned

Help the reader associate statements with eaqch other

Cohesion and coherence

Coherence...refers to discourse relations which

may or may not be explicitly signalled whereas

cohesive devices are surface, textual indicators

of interconnectiveness.

http://www.readability.biz/Coherence.html

Coherence

Making sense of an expression in terms of one's normal experience:

e.g.

plant sale

garage sale (Yule 1996: 84)

no dogs

no rabbit

Coherence

We automatically fill in details and provide sensible interpretations to make semse of a text:

e.g.

• SIGN IN A CHURCH:

For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

• Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge

• Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

Background knowledge

Background knowledge

We use pre-existing knowledge to create an

interpretation of what is NOT stated explicitly/

Schema(ta):

• Frames

• Scripts

Schema(ta)

a pre-existing knowledge structure in memory

that 'function like familiar patterns from previous

experience that we use to interpret new

experiences' (Yule 1996: 85)

• frame

• script

Frame

a fixed static schema (pattern) often serving as a protoype (Yule 1996: 86)

What constitutes a flat, a school, etc.

E.g. Flat for rent at €50.

Understood on the basis of:

a flat frame

an advert frame

Assume it has a kitchen etc.

Assume rent is per month

Script

a more dynamic schema involving event sequences

to interpret accounts of what happened

e. g. a restaurant script

a supermarket script

You do not need to mention every detail because you assume that the hearer/reader knows certain things

Cultural schemata

developed on the basis of our experiences in our culture

People from different cultures might have different scripts, which might lead to misinterpretaions, expectations

E.g. eating your food in a restaurant with your hands

Asking: 'How are you?' Answer: 'Fine, thanks.'

(Nota real question but a greeting.)

Cross-cultural pragmatics/

contrastive pragmatics

Wierzbicka, Anna (2003) Cross-cultural

Pragmatics. The semantics of human

interaction. (2nd edition) New York: Mouton

de Gruyter

Cross-cultural pragmatics/

contrastive pragmatics

'the study of differences in expectation based on cultural schemata'

(Yule 1996: 87)

E.g. in turn taking

in some cultures silence is more relevant

'The typical American English style of complimenting creates great embarassment for some Native American receivers (perceived as excessive)'

Contrast: Greeks and Germans telephone

conversations• Pavlidou (2000) examined telephone conversations in Greek

and German and found marked differences in the way Greeks and Germans manage each of the three sections of a telephone conversation, i.e., opening, main topic, closing:

• Greeks usually answer the phone with utterances like ne('yes'), while it is more typical in German telephone calls for the answerer to identify himself/herself with his/her lastname.

• Greeks seem to enter into quite a lengthy opening sequence, whereas Germans come to the point of their call much faster.

• Greeks use more phatic sequences in both social and transactional calls than Germans do.

• Greek closing sequences can be expected to be longer than German ones.

http://www.usq.edu.au/users/sonjb/sllt/4/Pohl04.html

Anna Wierzbicka, about her own

experience as a Pole living in Australia:

'I had to start learning new "cultural scripts"...and...

I became aware of the old "cultural scripts"....I also

became aware...of the reality of "cultural scripts"

and their importance to the way one lives one's life,

to the image one projects, and even to one's

personal identity'

Wierzbicka (2003:x)

'...when I was talking on the phone...to my mother

in Poland...with my voive loud and excited..., my

husband would signal me: "Don't shout!" For a long

time, this perplexed and confused me...'

Wierzbicka (2003:x)

Anna Wierzbicka, about her own

experience as a Pole living in

Australia:

Wierzbicka is very critical of the work on

politeness by Brown and Levison, and

especially their claim that concepts like 'face'

are not universal.

'as a number of recent studies have shown,

the basic conceptual tools introduced and

relied on by Brown and Levinson...have in

fact a strong anglocentric bias' (Wierzbicka

2003: 68)

Leech's (1983) maxims of 'modesty'

and 'approbation'

Approbation maxim:

(a) minimise dispraise of other;

(b) maximise praise of other

Modesty maxim

(a) minimise parie of self;

(b) maximise dispraise of self

another example

However:

According to Wierzbicka 2008, quoting Kochman

(1981), 'in Black American culture the norm of

'modesty' does not apply, and...self-praise is not

viewed negatively.'

Moreover, according to Mizutani & Mizutani

(1987), 'show that 'approbation' or 'praise of other'

is not encourage in Japanese culture' (Wirzbiecka

2003: 68)

Cultural variety

Not restricted to different nations but includes also

e.g. different ethnic groups in society, or different

social different classes

New directions in the study of language

• In different societies, and different communities,

people speak differently, in a profound and

systematic way,

and

• these differences reflect different cultural values.

(Wierzbicka 2003: 69)