Download Utilization of Sentences Lec. 3

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Why people listen
Speech acts
Propositional and thematic content
The utilization process
Recording assertions
The function of assertions
The Given-New Contract
Active and Passive Sentences
Implicatures
Indirect utilization of utterances
Introduction
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People talk for a purpose
Listeners would be remiss if they did not
register this purpose and act accordingly
This is the goal of the utilization process
The line between the construction and
utilization processes is not a sharp one
This chapter focuses on the UP- the listeners’
mental processes in utilizing a sentence as
the speaker intended.
Why people listen
Speakers convey their purposes in three separable
parts of their utterances
1. The speech act
2. The propositional content
3. The thematic content
 Ex.
 Kathy: Does George own a car?
 Jeff: ?
 Jeff has to register these three bits of information,
search memory for the right information and
provide an answer
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Speech acts
owns a
car
Speech acts are limited in their variety.
 Ex.
1. George owns a car
2. Does George own a car?
3. I warn you that George owns a car
Each utterance is said to have a different kind
of illocutionary force
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There are five general categories of
speech acts (Searle, 1975)
1.
2.
Representatives: in uttering a representative
the speaker conveys his belief that some
proposition is true.(suggesting,
hypothesizing, swearing, stating ..etc).
Directives: the speaker attempts to get the
listener to do something (ordering,
commanding, requesting, begging,
pleading)
3. Commissives: the speaker is commiting
himself to some future course of
action.(promises, vows, pledges, contracts,
guarantees and other types of
commitments)>
4. Expressives: if the speaker wants to express
his psychological state about something, he
utters an expressive (a speaker may
apologize, thanks, welcome, congratulates,
deplores—express how good or bad he feels
about some event)
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5. Declarations: When a speaker utters a
declaration his words bring about a new state
of affairs.
Ex.
You’re fired
I resign
I hereby sentence you to 5 years in prison
Most declarations are specialized for use
within a particular cultural system, such as
employment, law, or government.
 Each
of these categories requires
something
different
of
the
listeners.
 Of the 5 categories the first 2 are
the most important.
Propositional and thematic content
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When the speaker makes an assertion, what
beliefs is he attempting to convey? And when
he utters a directive, what action does he
want carried out? The answers are found in
the propositional and thematic content of his
utterances.
Ex.
It was Julia who discovered the virus
Was it Julia who discovered the virus?
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Listeners must deal not only with the
propositions underlying Julia discovered the
virus but also with the thematic content
associated with them.
What listeners do with the content depends
on the speech act.
It was Julia who discovered the virus
(assertion)
Was it Julia who discovered the virus?
(question)
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For both speech acts they have to search
memory, compare one proposition with
another, and carry out other mental
operations. The fundamental question in the
UP is just how this is done.
The utilization process UP
How listeners utilize sentences:
1. On hearing an utterance, listeners identify
the speech act, propositional content and
thematic content.
2. They next search the memory for
information that matches the given
information.
3. Finally, depending on the speech act, they
deal with the new information:
A.
B.
C.
D.
If the utterance is an assertion, they add the new
information to memory.
If the utterance is a yes/no question, they compare the
new information with what is in memory and,
depending on the match, answer yes or no.
If the utterance is a WH-Q, they retrieve the wanted
information from memory and compose an answer
conveying that information.
If the utterance is a request, they carry out the action
necessary to make the new information true. (e.g.
feed the dog)
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Direct utilization
Indirect utilization
The utilization processes to be taken up rely
on three major principles. The first two are
the reality and the cooperative principles.
The third principle, the congruence principle,
governs the listeners’ search for information
in memory.
Recording assertions
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Listeners should record the assertion. How?
Listeners must register the fact that the
speaker’s utterance was an assertion,
determine its propositional and thematic
content, and add the new belief to memory.
To do this they must make assumptions
about the roles that the propositional and
thematic content play in assertions.
The function of assertions
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Imagine Ann trying to tell Ed she has just
seen John hit Bill. She could do so in many
different ways, for example:
John hit BILL
Bill was hit by JOHN
It was JOHN who hit Bill.
It was BILL John hit.
What John did was HIT BILL
The one used would depend on what she
assumed Ed already know.
The Given-New Contract
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The speaker agrees (a) to use given
information to refer to information she thinks
the listener can uniquely identify from what
he already knows and (b) to use new
information to refer to information she
believes to be true but is not already known
to the listener.
Active and Passive Sentences
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Ex.
a. The boy is petting the CAT
b. The cat is being petted by the BOY
Although both express the proposition the
boy pets the cat..a) seems to be about the
boy and (b) about the cat.
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Active and passive sentences are particularly
versatile.
a. The boy is petting the cat has one of
three given-new divisions:
Given information
a. X is happening
b. the boy is doing X
c. the boy is petting X
New information
X= the boy pets the cat
X= the boy pets
X= the boy
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b. The cat is being petted by the boy
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has one of three given-new divisions:
Given information
New information
a. X is happening
b. X is happening to the
cat
c. X is petting the cat
X= the boy pets the cat
X= the boy pets
X= the boy
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The passive is found to be less versatile than
the active.
The article the is a special device to mark
information in a noun phrase as given
information, as in:
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-I met the general
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The article a is not the same..
-I met a general
Indirect utilization of utterances
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Utterances do not always carry a clear
indication of their illocutionary force.
Ex.
Open the window (literally a request --direct )
Its hot in here—would you mind opening the
window
The cooperative principle
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the cooperative principle describes how
people interact with one another.
As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it,
it states, "Make your contribution such as it is
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged.
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The cooperative principle can be divided into
four maxims, called the Gricean maxims,
describing
specific
rational
principles
observed by people who obey the cooperative
principle; these principles enable effective
communication.
Grice's Maxims
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Maxim of Quality
Be Truthful
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Quantity
Quantity of Information
Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
purposes of the exchange).
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Maxim of Relation
Relevance
Be relevant.
Maxim of Manner
Be Clear
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief
Implicature
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It is possible to flout a maxim intentionally or
unconsciously and thereby convey a different
meaning than what is literally spoken. Many
times in conversation, this flouting is
manipulated by a speaker to produce a
negative pragmatic effect, as with sarcasm or
irony. One can flout the Maxim of Quality to
tell a clumsy friend who has just taken a bad
fall that her gracefulness is impressive and
obviously intend to mean the complete
opposite.
Indirect speech act
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Searle has introduced the notion of an 'indirect
speech act', which in his account is meant to be,
more particularly, an indirect 'illocutionary' act.
Applying a conception of such illocutionary acts
according to which they are acts of saying something
with the intention of communicating with an
audience, he describes indirect speech acts as
follows: "In indirect speech acts the speaker
communicates to the hearer more than he actually
says by way of relying on their mutually shared
background information, both linguistic and
nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of
rationality and inference on the part of the hearer
The use of felicity conditions
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An utterance is neither true nor false, but
can instead be deemed "felicitous" or
"infelicitous" according to a set of
conditions whose interpretation differs
depending on whether the utterance in
question is a declaration ("I sentence you to
death"), a request ("I ask that you stop
doing that") or a warning ("I warn you not to
jump off the roof").
Felicity conditions for requests
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Propositional content condition: the requested
act is a future act of the hearer
Preparatory precondition: 1) the speaker
believes the hearer can perform the requested
act; 2) it is not obvious that the hearer would
perform the requested act without being asked
Sincerity condition: the speaker genuinely
wants the hearer to perform the requested act
Reasons.