Download pragmatics

Review Exercises
1) Do the COMPONENTIAL analysis (not the
compositional one) of the following words:
a) hen b) rooster
Componential analysis
2) Does ‘A’ entail ‘B’?
•
•
1) A: “I eat bananas every morning.”
B: “I eat fruit every morning.’
2) A: “Campbell's soup has 1/3 less salt.”
B: “Other brands have 1/3 more salt.”
Implicatures/Entailments
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Semantic Decomposition
• woman:
[+ human]
[+ female]
[+ adult]
• man:
[+ human]
[- female]
[+ adult]
• girl:
[+ human]
[+ female]
[- adult]
• boy:
[+ human]
[- female]
[- adult]
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Entailment and Implicatures
• Sentence A entails B if whenever A is true, B must be true a
well. (e.g. ‘Mary eats banana’ ENTAILS “Mary eats fruit”)
= Semantic implication
• A implicates B if
1- A does NOT entail B, AND
2- Speaker is warranted in assuming B is true based on both the
meaning of A & conversation rules (e.g “Not everyone will come”
IMPLICATES ‘someone will come’)
=Pragmatic implication
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Conflict With Language in Advertising
• Old question: how truthful advertisers ought to be?
 Are they responsible for what their claims entail only or also for what they
implicate?
e.g. “ABC filters remove bacteria from your drinking water”
– Are we to JUST understand what that sentenece literally conveys
–its entailment (it removes AT LEAST one tiny bacteria from
drinking water)?
OR,
– Are we to believe (as the advertiser may intend us to) that “if we
use ABC filters, our drinking water will be free of bacteria”,
which is not really entailed but IMPLICATED?
ANSWER to “OLD QUESTION”
• Because implicatures are crucial to language (seen in the
hard entailment-implicature distinction), it’s “only right
that advertisers be responsible for both entailments and
implicatures of their claims” (p. 236).
• HOWEVER, in reality this isn’t always true, since
advertisers are often responsible just for entailments.
• Consequence: advertising often formulates claims ‘that
implicate a lot but entail a little.’
– They often use many techniques for this purpose.
Pragmatics
The Study of the Contribution of Context to Meaning
Or
The Study of Language Use
Common Questions in Pragmatics
• How do people use language within a context?
• Why do they use language in particular ways?
• How do non-linguistic factors affect language use to
perform different functions?
– time
– place
– social relation between interactants
• SUMMARY: what is the intention of utterances within a
context ? (SPEECH ACTS)
SPEECH ACTS:
Human acts performed simply by using language
We use language, for example, for:
• asking or giving information,
• making requests,
• complimenting,
• describing elements,
• apologizing, etc.
This is a (not comprehensive) list of speech acts.
– (There are many other speech acts).
3 Common Speech Acts:
 Assertion (gives info),
 Question (asks for information), and
 Orders/Requests (has others do or be something).
These deserve special mention because (often) there are
specific syntactic structures for marking them.
• Assertion is (often) through declarative sentences,
• questions through interrogatives, and
• orders/requests through imperatives.
Main Categories of Speech Acts
• Direct: performed by a clear syntactic form
Example: an interrogative S simply for asking for info.
( a direct act can also be done performatively)
– Performative: the utterance itself is the very act
Example: “I pronounce you husband and wife”
(2 conditions: in 1st person & in present tense -‘hereby’ test)
• Indirect:
Indirect speech Acts rely on “Felicity Conditions” to be interpreted
Felicity Conditions
Why is it that “I promise I’ll tell Mom if you hit me” is
NOT a promise, but a threat?
(It appears to be a promise due to the performative verb ‘Promise’)
- It does not match the ‘Normal Expectations’ for the
promise Speech Act.
What are those “Normal Expectations”?
Felicity Conditions!!:
Conditions That Must Be Satisfied If a Speech Act Is to
Be Performed Appropriately, Correctly, and Happily.
Felicity Conditions for “promises’
(for example)
1) Speaker (S) offers to do an action (A) for hearer (H)
2) S believes A is beneficial to H
3) H wants A
4) S is able/entitled/willing to do A
5) A has not taken place
The previous sentence as a promise is ‘infelicitous’
because condition 3 (and probably 2) is missing.
As a threat, however, it is ‘felicitous’
(do you see why?)
Indirect Speech Acts
The actual intention or what the speaker really means
is different from what she ‘appears’ to be doing with
the sentence itself.
The actual intention or meaning does NOT match the
sentence form (interrogative, imperatives, etc.)
These do not match the normal, usual and more
logical/semantic ways to perform such acts.
For example, a person can perform a request (which
normally requires an imperative sentence) via a
question (with an interrogative sentence).
Identifying indirect speech acts
Ex. “How are you?”
1) Determine, by considering context and normal
conversation behavior, what the real intended meaning
is? Ask: “WHAT IS SHE REALLY DOING?”
2) Do you see any performative V? If so, it is direct.
3) If no, does the intended meaning match the typical
sentence form? If yes, then it is direct.
4) Are there any felicity conditions violated for the
speech act of the intended meaning? If no, direct.
5) Consider the final effect in the hearer/s, which can
corroborate or not what the real intended meaning is.