Course 2: Pragmatics and Variation Theory

I. Pragmatics vs. other branches of linguisticsII. Participants and conversational strategiesIII. Social groupsIV. Variation TheoryV. Pragmatics vs. other branches of linguistics

revisited

I. Pragmatics vs. other branches of linguistics

Task 1: Do a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analysis of the following utterance:

Situation: Queen Victoria had been in a prolonged depression caused by the death of her husband, Albert. The following words were uttered by the Queen as a response to a joke made by her courtiers.

“We are not amused”.

SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS = relationships between linguistic forms.“We are not amused”.• We = the noun phrase subject, a first person

plural pronoun• Are = the main verb agreeing with “we”• Not = a negative marker• amused = an adjectival complement.

The analysis targets TEXT level.

SEMANTIC ANALYSIS = relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world.“We are not amused”.

We = indicates the person speakingAre = a state amused = a synonym of “entertained”

The analysis targets TEXT level.

PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS = relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms

(Yule, 1996).“We are not amused”.• Taking into account the situation, the analyst would infer

that the Queen’s intention was to prevent them from trying to make her laugh and lift her out of the depression.

• Her statement also implies that she is to be respected as Queen (pronoun WE).

So a pragmatic analysis studies text taking into account context in order to reveal function.• The analysis targets the levels of TEXT, CONTEXT and

FUNCTION.

Task 2: Syntax and semantics cannot always disambiguate meaning. Where is the ambiguity that syntax/semantics cannot solve? How can pragmatics disambiguate the following:• Pet mince (outside a butcher’s shop);• Angel parking (road sign beside the road that runs past the

sculpture “The Angel of the North”, Gateshead);• Child actor (a child who acts; which word is the head

word?);• Child psychiatrist the meaning cannot be determined by

analogy (family butcher/ pork butcher);• Bergkamp wants to end his career at Arsenal (stay there).• Bin Laden paid for Bali bombing. (“paid for” is active or

passive? money paid by Bin Laden)• I’ve just finished a book.

Task 3: Find appropriate contexts for the following utterances: • I’ve got a flat tyre.

1. If it’s in a garage, it may mean I need help;2. If addressed to a friend with a car, it may mean I

need a lift;3. as a response to a request for a lift from a friend

without a car, it may mean I can’t give them a lift.• Can you open the door?

Task 4: Consider the following examples. What is the (immediate) consequence in each case?1. You have such cute earrings! 2. I declare you husband and wife! (uttered by the registrar) 3. Fire! (the commander of the firing squad)4. You are sentenced to 20 years in prison! 5. Women must cook and take care of children. 6. Women and men are equal. 7. There’s a bull in the field. 8. You are going to have an exam at the end of this course.

• What is the difference between 1-4 and 5, 6 ??

1. You have such cute earrings! = a compliment that makes you feel good

2. I declare you husband and wife! (uttered by the registrar) = a new social status

3. Fire! (the commander of the firing squad) = death4. You are sentenced to 20 years in prison! = seclusion5. Women must cook and take care of children. = a sexist discourse6. Women and men are equal. = the feminist discourse7. There’s a bull in the field. = information/warning/expression of fear8. You are going to have an exam at the end of this course. =

information/ menace supposing someone misbehaves.

What is the difference between 1-4 and 5, 6 ??1-4 refer to individual cases; 5,6 are parts of discourses that are carriers of ideologies in the world, that attempt at making other people see the world in certain colours.

• Task 5: CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SITUATION: Margaret Walker, a successful manager, leaves her office and says goodbye to her business partner, her secretary and the caretaker, arrives home and greets her son, mother and husband. What do you think these greeting manners say about the relationships between people?

1. “her business partner says goodbye Margaret, (she replies goodbye

Mike) 2. her secretary says goodbye Ms Walker, (she replies goodbye Jill)

and 3. the caretaker says Bye Mrs Walker (to which she responds goodbye

Andy). 4. As she arrives home she is greeted by Hi mum by her son, Jamie, 5. hello dear, have a good day?, by her mother, 6. and simply you’re late again! by her husband.”

(Holmes, 1992:3).

• CONCLUSION: language reflects and shapes social order.

II. Participants and strategies

Conversational strategies differ according to

1. participants’ social status and

2. the speech style of the social group they belong to.

MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

(Douglas, 1970:60)

conformity

innovation

III. Social groups and conversational styleWhat is a group?

1. A speech community? (Gumperz, 1960s)= shared membership + = shared linguistic communication

vocabulary and grammar conventions, genres, speech styles, conversation norms.

• An individual participates in various speech communities

→

2. A community of practice? (Eckert, 2005)

= a community organized around a common purpose (craft, profession).

C of P may • develop naturally• be created with the goal of gaining knowledge.

No given social variables (class, gender, area, age)

• Social groups represent a study field for Variation Studies (Eckert, 2012).

• What is Variation Theory?• VS/Theory have proved that different groups (gender,

social status, ethnic or regional background and so on)tend to use different linguistic forms.

Eg: Case study: Men and women are said to belong to different groups, consequently they would use

different linguistic forms.

IV. Variation theory3 waves of variation studies:

1. Linguistic variables ↔ macro-sociological categories of socioeconomic class, sex class, ethnicity, age

2. Ethnography explores local configurations that constitute the broader categories

3. - Variation constructs social meaning, it represents a force in social change

- Variables only acquire meaning in the context of personae.

(Eckert, 2012)

• linguistic variables, that are equivalent in meaning, locate speakers in social space and enhance social class differences (Quantitative sociolinguistic studies)

Eg: There are phonological, morphological and lexical differences between men’s and women’s language in certain communities in the world. (Coates, 1996: 44).

• women - more prestige linguistic features• men – less prestige linguistic features

(Coates, 1996: 77).

LANGUAGE VARIANTS REFLECT REALITY:Membership of social groups (middle class or working class etc.) has been found related to the use of certain linguistic features (eg. prestige or low/vernacular variants). (Graddol & Swan, 1995)

LANGUAGE VARIANTS CREATE REALITY:Through language, social groups assert their distinctiveness: members of a group recognise each other as being linguistically similar to each other and different from people outside the group.

Patterns “arise because people deliberately choose to speak in certain ways to signal their membership of a particular community, their gender, and other aspects of their social identity” (Graddol & Swan, 1995: 65). Eg:Speakers who use standard norms are perceived as of greater status, seen as more ambitious, more intelligent and more self-confident.

Regionally accented speakers are, on the other hand, rated highly in terms of personal attractiveness, they are seen to be talkative, good-natured and full of sense of humour

(Coates,1996: 83).

• Nevertheless no generalization can be made since speakers are not wholly free to adopt the speech style they choose so as to become the particular person they want to become.

• There are constraints on individuals that arise

from social structure, from the socio-economic processes. So “the intentions and desires of individual speakers will be frustrated by external social processes” (Graddol & Swan, 1995: 141).

• Cross-group conversational interaction may give rise to distortion and even loss of meaning.

-• linguistic strategies are ambiguous and polysemous (case-

study).

Eg: Conversational features traditionally associated with power (interruptions and overlaps) may show solidarity and involvement. Features that have been thought to express solidarity (indirectness), may represent a display of power.

+• participants use politeness and face-saving strategies in

order to keep the conversation going.

V. Pragmatics vs. other branches of linguistics revisited1. PRAGMATICS AND PHONETICS:• The level of speech sounds: Eg. Most speakers of

languages with a significant degree of dialectal variation, who have grown up with a local dialect but who were socialized into the use of a standard variety through formal education, will find that the language they use sounds quite different depending on whether they are in their professional context or speaking to their parents or siblings.

2. PRAGMATICS AND MORPHOLOGY• The level of morphemes and words: there are

pragmatic restrictions on and implications of aspects of derivational morphology.

• Eg. Consider the derivational relationship between grateful and ungrateful or kind and unkind. The reason why this relationship is not reversed, with a basic lexeme meaning “ungrateful” from which a word meaning “grateful” would be derived by means of the negative prefix, has everything to do with a system of social norms which emphasizes the need for gratefulness and kindness.

3. PRAGMATICS AND SYNTAX

At the level of syntax: the same state of affairs can be described by means of very different syntactic structures:• John broke the vase• The vase was broken by John• The vase was broken• The vase got broken How are pragmatics and syntax related in the following example:• John was murdered.• John was murdered by a man known to the police.• John was murdered by Mary.

4. PRAGMATICS AND SEMANTICS• At the level of word meaning (lexical semantics),

more than what would be regarded as ‘dictionary meaning’ has to be taken into account as soon as a word gets used. Many words cannot be understood unless aspects of world knowledge are invoked.

• E.g. pet mince; topless district; Angel parking

CONCLUSION‘MEANING’ IN PRAGMATICSMeaning is a triadic relation“Speaker means Y by X”.Pragmatics = utterance meaning. • Utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the

sentence plus considerations of the intentions of the Speaker (the speaker may intend to refuse the invitation to go to the film), interpretation of the Hearer (the Hearer may interpret the utterance as a refusal, or not), determined by Context and background knowledge.

Pragmatics = meaning in contextMeaning is not seen as a stable. Rather, it is dynamically generated in the process of using language. Also, pragmatics (as the study of ‘meaning in context’) does not imply that one can automatically arrive at a pragmatic understanding of the phenomena involved just by knowing all the extra linguistic information, because ‘context’ is not a static element.

References (courses 1+2)• Bakhtin, M. (1978) Esthétique et théorie du roman. Paris:

Gallimard.• Coates, J. (1996) Women, Men and Language. A sociolinguistic

account of gender differences in language. London&New York: Longman.

• Coşeriu, E. (1996) Lingvistica integrală. Interviu cu Eugeniu Coşeriu realizat de Nicolae Saramandu. Bucureşti: Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române.

• Douglas, M. (1996) Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology. London New York: Routledge.

• Eckert, P. , Wenger, E. (2005): Communities of practice in sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics. Vol 9, Issue 4, 582-589.

• Eckert, P. (2012): Three Waves of Variation Study: The emergence of meaning in the study of variation study, Annual Review of Anthropology. 41-87:100.

• Graddol, D. & Swan, J. (1995) Gender Voices. Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell.

• Grice, H. P. (1975) “Logic and conversation”. In: Peter Cole, Jerry L.Morgan, Syntax and semantics, 3: Speech acts. pp. 41-58.

• Mey, J.L. (1993) Pragmatics. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

• Romaine, S. (2005) “Variation in language and gender”. In Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.) The Handbook of Language and Gender Malden Oxford Carlton: Blackwell.

• Sperber, D. (1995) “How do we communicate?”. In John Brockman & Katinka Matson (eds.) How things are: A science toolkit for the mind New York: Morrow pp. 191-199.

• Yourcenar, M. (2007) Poveste albastră. București: Humanitas.• Milroy, L. (1987) Language and Social Networks. Oxford New

York: Blackwell.