Summary Conventions of language – conventions of usage Pragmatics: signs, users, context Grice: Cooperative Principle Maxims: quality, quantity, relation, manner (violate covertly, flout overtly) Sentence - utterance

Summary Implicature: "the implied meaning generated intentionally by the speaker” and recovered by the hearer. Conventional implicature has the same implication no matter what the context is (frozen metaphors, SBUs) Conversational implicature is generated directly by the speaker depending on the context.

Which of these responses does not flout any maxim? - ARE YOU HUNGRY? - I could eat. - I have not had anything since the morning. - I think I am. - What do you have? - Have you been to the supermarket?

Comment on the following speech exchange with reference to Grice’s maxims The exchange occurred between two native English speakers: A: Can you pass the salt? B: I can, but I won’t.

Which of the three following requests is most polite, and why? a. Open the window. b. Could you open the window? c. I’d like you to open the window.

Your conventions are not our conventions When answering the telephone, it is customary for Italian speakers to pick up the receiver and say, “Pronto” (literally, “I’m ready”). What do you think might happen interactionally if an Italian – newly arrived in the United States and speaking fluent English – were to answer the phone in his/her hotel room and say, “I’m ready.”?

Define the function of “would” in the following utterances My brother would read that book every night before bed. (h) Would you prefer coffee or tea? (p) You would want to avoid the main highway this time of day. (s) She would take your Sunday shift. (o) Would you shut up! (c) Would you lend me a baking dish? (r)

Context Context refers to any factor — linguistic, epistemic, physical, social — that affects the actual interpretation of signs and expressions. “The set of premises used in interpreting an utterance … constitutes what is generally known as the context. A context is a psychological construct, a subset of the hearer's assumptions about the world.” (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 15)

Context principle Frege (1884): “..never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition.” Wittgenstein (1921): “An expression has meaning only in a proposition. Every variable can be conceived as a compositional variable.”

Compositionality Meanings of words or expressions can be determined prior to, and independently of, the meanings of the propositions in which they occur. Leibniz (1697):”..si nihil per se concipitur, nihil omnino concipietur” (“…if nothing can be understood by itself nothing at all can ever be understood”)

Externalist perspective The externalist perspective on context holds that context determines, modifies and/or specifies word meanings in one way or another. Context is seen as a selector of lexical features because it activates some of these features while leaving others in the background.

Selector - Sorry, I need glasses to see these small letters. - Welcome to the club.

Internalist perspective Lexical units are creators of context. Our experience is developed through a regularity of recurrent and similar situations that we tend to identify with given contexts (Gee 1999; Violi 2000, Kecskes 2008). “Let me tell you something.” “Do you want to talk about it?” “Ladies and gentlemen”

Utterances carry with them their own context Gumperz (1982) says that utterances somehow carry with them their own context or project a context. Referring to Gumperz’s work, Levinson (2003) claims that the message versus context opposition is misleading because the message can carry with it or forecast the context.

Example Allen and Sherry (of the sitcom Two and a Half Men) are sitting in a restaurant. Allan’s right eye is covered with a bandage so he does not see Sherry very well. Allen:-You know, Sherry, I would really like to see more of you. Sherry:- Maybe, we should wait and see how the night goes. Allen: - Oh, no. I mean I have only got one good eye. Can we change places? Sherry:- Sure.

The externalist and internalist views The problem with the externalist and internalist views is that they emphasize either the selective or the constitutive role of context. The dynamic nature of human communication requires emphasis on both. Key: world knowledge

World knowledge: prior context and actual situational context World knowledge is available to human beings in two forms: 1) as tied to lexical items and images based on prior encounters and experience, (why do words mean what they mean), and 2) as provided by the actual situational context framed by the given situation (Kecskes 2008; 2010).

Prior context and actual situational context Context represents two sides of world knowledge: prior context and actual situational context, which are intertwined and unseparable. Actual situational context is viewed through prior context. Meaning is, in this view, seen as the outcome of the interrelation and interaction of prior and current experience.

Why is it important to emphasize the two sides of context? In intracultural communication: actual situational context In intercultural communication: prior context

Intercultural Pragmatics multilingual, intercultural, socio- cognitive, and discourse-segment (rather than just utterance) perspective as well as the view that considers intercultural communication a normal “success-and-failure” process rather than a collision of cultures

Standard pragmatics Commonalities, conventions, common beliefs, shared knowledge, and the like all create a core common ground, a kind of collective salience on which intention and cooperation-based pragmatics is built.

How different is intercultural pragmatics? When core common ground appears to be missing or limited, as is the case in intercultural communication, interlocutors cannot take them for granted. Rather, they need to co-construct them, at least temporarily. So what seems to be happening here is a shift in emphasis from the communal to the individual. It is not that the individual becomes more important than the societal. Rather, since there is limited common ground, it should be created in the interactional context in which the interlocutors function as core common ground creators rather than just common ground seekers and activators, as is mostly the case in intracultural communication. So the nature of intersubjectivity seems to be undergoing change. More conscious approach to what is said, and how it is said.

Question How do people go about formulating utterances and interpreting them when they can’t count on, or have limited access to, those commonalities, conventions, standards and norms and in a sense, they are expected to create or co-construct them in the communicative process?

Multilingual perspective Universal and language- and culture-specific rules. Monolingual people and multilingual people do not differ in what they do with language, but in how they do what they do ( Gumperz & Gumperz 2005). Culture is a system of shared beliefs, norms, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another ( Bates & Plog 1980 :6). Culture is differentially distributed and changes both synchronically and diachronically.

Socio-cognitive perspective The “ individualistic ” intention-based cognitive- philosophical line and the “ societal,” context-based socio-cultural–interactional line. SCA: language production and comprehension involve both prior experience and knowledge, and emergent, actual situation experience and knowledge co-constructed by interlocutors. It claims that the meaning values of linguistic expressions, encapsulating prior contexts of experience, play as important a role in meaning construction and comprehension as actual situational context.

Creativity PAK: You said you live with your son. So your wife is not here. CH: Yes, I am alone, I am with my son. COL: Will your wife come to visit? CH: Yes, she came yesterday. PAK: Did she come from China? CH: Yes, she arrived from Nanjing.

Discourse-segment (Rather than Just Utterance) Perspective In intercultural communication speakers are creative on discourse level rather than on utterance level intercultural interactions may require not only a bottom-up, sequential utterance by utterance analysis but also a top-down, holistic discourse-segment analysis

Definition of Intercultural Pragmatics Intercultural Pragmatics is concerned with the way the language system is put to use in social encounters between human beings who have different first languages, communicate in a common language, and, usually, represent different cultures. Intercultures are situationally emergent and co- constructed phenomena that rely both on relatively definable cultural norms and models as well as situationally evolving features.

Example BRAZILIAN: And what do you do? POLE: I work at the university as a cleaner. B: As a janitor? P: No, not yet. Janitor is after the cleaner. B: You want to be a janitor? P: Of course.

What makes Intercultural Pragmatics different? (1) Limited role of target language cultural norms, conventions, and beliefs. More importance may be given to co-constructed and emergent elements. (2) Cooperation gains a new meaning in intercultural communication. Interlocutors cooperate not simply because this is what human beings are expected to do in communication. Rather, they do so consciously and eagerly, to create understanding, common ground, and community. (3) Growing role of individual factors since a somewhat new social frame has to be co-constructed in the course of interaction. Social frames do not affect interlocutors top-down as it happens in intracultural communication. Intercultural interactants will need to build up most of those frames bottom-up in the interaction.

Differences (4) Context-sensitivity works differently in intercultural communication than in intracultural communication. Sometimes there is more reliance on prior context than on actual situational context in interaction. (5) Role of preferred ways of saying things (formulaic language) and preferred ways of organizing thoughts in the target language is not as important and dominant as in intracultural communication. (6) More emphasis is put on certain communicative strategies such as explicit negotiation of meaning and development and use of trouble anticipating and avoidance strategies.

Pragmatic theories Linguistic-philosophical pragmatics seeks to investigate speaker meaning within an utterance-based framework focusing mainly on linguistic constraints on language use. Socio-cultural interactional pragmatics maintains that pragmatics should include research into social and cultural constraints on language use as well.

Speaker and hearer The speaker’s task is to construct a model of the hearer’s knowledge relevant to the actual situational context. The hearer is expected to construct a model of the speaker’s knowledge relevant to the actual situational context.

Cooperation and intention Explain how exactly the hearer makes these inferences, and determine what is considered the speaker’s meaning. One of the main differences between the linguistic-philosophical approach and the sociocultural interactional approach is that the former considers intention an a priori mental state of speakers that underpins communication, while the latter regards intention as a postfactum construct that is achieved jointly through the dynamic emergence of meaning in conversation. Since the two approaches represent two different perspectives, it would be difficult to reject either of them altogether.

Idealistic approach Focus is on the positive and social features of communication: cooperation, rapport, common ground, and politeness. The emphasis on the decisive role of context, socio-cultural factors and cooperation is overwhelming, while the role of the individual’s prior experience, existing knowledge, egocentrism, salience, and linguistic aggression is mostly ignored.

Issues Intention speaker meaning, cooperation versus egocentrism, and context-dependency. Both societal and individual. The explanatory movement in both directions: from the outside in (actual situational context → prior context encapsulated in utterances used) and from the inside out (prior context encapsulated in utterances used → actual situational context).