1. Discourse and Pragmatics
Created by :
Intan Pandini
Viska Febrina

2. 1. What is Pragmatics ?
Pragmatics is the study of meaning in relation to the context in which a person is speaking or writting.
Pragmatics assumes that when people communicate with each other they normally follow some kind of co-operative principle.

3. 2. Language, Context and Discourse
An understanding of how language functions in context is central to an understanding of the relationship between what is said and what is understood in spoken and written discourse.
The relationship between context, language and discourse consists of : phsycal context, background knowledge context, linguistics context and situational context.

4. 3. Speech Acts and Discourse
Austin (1969) argued that there are three kinds of act which occur with everything we say. These are :
The Locutionary act
The Illocutionary act
The Perlucotionary act

5. 4. The Co-operative Principle and Discourse
Grice (1975) based his co-operative principle on four sub-principles (maxims). Consists of :
Maxims Quality
Maxims Quantity
Maxims Relation
Maxims Manner

6. 5. Flouting the Co-operative Principle
The Differences between flouting and violating maxims, Thomas (1995) and Cutting (2002) :
A speaker Flouting a maxim → if they don’t observe a maxim but has no intention of deceiving or misleading the other person.
A person is violating → if there is a likelihood that they are liable to mislead the other person.
Overlaps between Maxims → flouting the maxims of quality and quantity at the same time.

7. 6. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and Discourse
The ways in which people perform speech acts, and what they mean by what they say when they perform them, often varies across cultures. These are includes :
Communication Across
Cross-Cultural Pragmatics
Pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics
Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure

8. 7. Conversational Implicature and Discourse
Conversational implicature refers to the inference a hearer makes about a speaker’s intended meaning that arises from their use of the literal meaning of what the speakers said.
Conventional and Particularized conversational implicatures.
Scalar Implicatures

9. 8. Politeness, Face and Discourse
Politeness and face are important for understanding why people choose to say things in a particular way in spoken and written discourse. These are includes :
Involvement and independence in spoken and written discourse.
Choosing a Politeness Strategy

10. 9. Face and Politeness across cultures
It is important to point out that the spesific nature of face and politeness varies from society to society and from culture to culture.
Gift-giving is an example of a politeness strategy that varies across culture.
(Davies and Ikeno 2002) The gift-giving may still have the function of maintaining social relationships, but be much less an expression of intimacy and rapport.

11. 10. Politeness and Gender
Holmes (1995) showing differences in the use of politeness strategies between men and women.
Her work reveals that the relationship between sex, politeness and language is a complex one and that while research shows that, overall, women are more polite than men, it also depends on what we mean by ‘polite’ as well as which women and men are being compared and what setting or community of practice the interaction occurs in; that is, the particular local conditions in which the man or woman is speaking.

12. 11. Face-Threatening acts
Some acts ‘threaten’ a person’s face. These are called face-threatening acts. For example between the librarian and the student, the librarian shows no signs of closeness or rapport and the student’s face is ‘threatened’.

13. 12. Politeness and Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure
Politeness and strategies are not the same across languages and cultures and might mean different things in different linguistic and cultural contexts.
Different views of pragmatic appropriateness, then, can easily lead to misunderstandings and inhibit effective cross-cultural communication.
In cross-cultural settings, in particular, people need an awareness, as well as an expectation, of sociopragmatic differences, as much as they need an understanding of how these differences might be expressed linguistically.

14. Thanks for your attention