The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication
6. Formulaicity1
Levels of Communication Differences
By Mr. Sunan Fathet
Parts of formulaic language
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proverbsParts of
FormulaicLanguage
collocationsidioms
turns of phrase
preferred ways of saying thingsrhymes and songs
routines
set phrases
Formulaicity: By Mr. Sunan Fathet
(Wray, 2000, cited in Cardiff University, n.d.)
Noticing formulaic language in:
3Formulaicity: By Mr. Sunan Fathet
structured events such as weather forecasts
2. Strategythe materials in foreign language textbooks, especially for beginners, and in phrasebooks
the language of very young children
the speech of people with acquired language disabilities such as aphasia
the materials in foreign language textbooks, especially for beginners, and in phrasebooks
ritualized events (ceremony)
(Wray, 2000, cited in Cardiff University, n.d.)
(Wray, 2002, p.9)
A sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other meaning elements, which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar.
Formulaicity Definition
(Oxford dictionaries, 2012)
Formulaic (adj.): constituting or containing a verbal formula or set form of words: a formulaic greeting, formulaic expressions such as ‘Once upon a time’- produced in accordance with a slavishly followed rule or style; predictable: much romantic fiction is stylized, formulaic, and unrealistic
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The eleven criteria for identification of formulaic sequences
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Semantic opacity
Situation/ register specificity
Pragmatic function
Idiolect
Performance indication
Grammatical indication
Previous encounter
Derivation
Inappropriate application
Mismatch with maturation
Grammatical irregularity
(Wray and Namba, 2003, cited in Namba, n.d.)
1. Grammatical irregularity
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‘rain cats and dogs’The intransitive verb ‘rain’ doesn’t take any object NP and
the NP ‘cats and dogs’ is not employed as an adverb.
‘if I were you’contains the subjunctive form ‘were’ which many people no longer produce in novel constructions but only use in
this wordstring.
2. Semantic opacity
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‘kick the bucket’
The meaning of the whole wordstring, i.e. ‘to die’ cannot be derived from the sum of the meaning of its individual parts.
‘spill the beans’
It means ‘tell a secret’ and it is possible to map ‘spill’ onto ‘tell’ and ‘beans’ onto ‘secret’
‘like a fish out of water’
the speaker is not talking about a fish or water.
‘very funny’can express the opposite of its literal meaning,
when the situation indicates that the speaker is talking about something not funny at all.
2. Semantic opacity (cont.)
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‘kick the bucket’
‘spill the beans’
‘like a fish out of water’
‘very funny’
“opaque metaphor” (Moon, 1998, p.23, cited in Namba, n.d.) where the meaning is unintelligible without “general or etymological knowledge” (Wray, 2002, p.57, cited in Namba, n.d.)
It looks fairly non-compositional but the meaning is intelligible with general knowledge.
When a wordstring has a literal meaning, it can have “a secondary, layer of pragmatic meaning”. (Wray, 2002, p.58, cited in Namba, n.d.)
3. Situation/ register specificity
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‘Happy birthday!’
It is said on a specific day
sensei ‘teacher’In Japanese schools, when students address their teacher in class
they say sensei ‘teacher’ rather than each teacher’s name.
4. Pragmatic function
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‘kid’s stuff’
‘evaluative’ conveying speaker’s evaluation and attitude
‘you know what I mean’
‘modalizing’ conveying truth values, advice, requests
‘I’ll tell you what’ This wordstring functions as a turn claimer in
conversation to manage the flow of the discourse.
‘on the other hand’ Discourse markers are archetypal models which fit this
criterion.
5. Idiolect
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‘Happy birthday!’
‘many happy returns’
‘congratulations’
Even without evidence, one can assume that this wordstring is learned as a whole from other people, probably family members, and the speaker will always use this form or another with a similar formulaic status.
6. Performance indication
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Sensei ohayo-gozai-masu minasan oyaho-gozai-masu
‘good morning teacher, good morning everybody’
Repetition of what the speaker has just heard, prosodic patterns, i.e. intonation and rhythm.
Some socio-interactional routines are expressed with an action.
‘pick-you-own vegetables’ There are orthographical cues to formulaic sequences,
such as hyphenation.
7. Grammatical indication
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‘spin dry’ shows itsformulaicity in thepassive and pastforms
They don’t appear as *‘this shouldn’t be spun dry’ (which means it was spun in order to dry it, but not in a spin drier) and *‘I spun it dry’.
‘I spin dried it’.
‘this shouldn’t be spin dried’
8. Previous encounter
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Formulaic sequences in child language according to the way they are acquired. They heard from other
people’s speech.
“Look I did it all by yourself”
A boy has heard the wordstring ‘all by yourself’ in
his mother’s speech, i.e. “Good boy! You did it all by yourself!”. The fact that he keeps using ‘yourself’
instead of ‘myself’
9. Derivation
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‘kill two birds with one stone’
It is commonly observed that people change ‘two’ into
‘three’ or other numbers such as kill five birds with one stone.
Idiom
More Examples
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‘peeling banana into mouth’
‘piece of cake’ It’s easy.
‘come before the chicken’
To arrive very early in the morning
‘tree closes to the shore’
One foot in the grave
Thai Idioms
‘to teach a crocodile to swim’
‘Bring coals to Newcastle’ to perform a useless task
ReferencesCardiff University. (n.d.). What is formulaic language?.
Retrieved September 3, 2012, from http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/research/networks/flarn/ whatis/index.html
Namba, K. (n.d.). Formulaicity in Code-Switching: Theory. Retrieved September 3, 2012, from
http://www.senri.ed.jp/site/attachments/ 172_06KNamba12.pdfWray, A. (2002). Formulaic language and the lexicon. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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Formulaicity: By Mr. Sunan Fathet
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