Pragmatics Lecture 3 PDF

Lecture 3 Components of Speaker meaning Two components of speaker meaning Speaker meaning Utterance meaning Force First case √ √ Second case √ × Third case × √ Fourth case × × 1. Und...

Lecture 3 Components of Speaker meaning Two components of speaker meaning Speaker meaning Utterance meaning Force First case √ √ Second case √ × Third case × √ Fourth case × × 1. Understanding both utterance meaning and force To understand both utterance meaning and force  is probably the most common state of affairs. This was illustrated in example 1. Although the sentence What's wrong with the cat?  was ambiguous, in practice the hearers had no problem whatever in understanding what the speaker meant. The cat in question was the cat-o nine-tails and the speaker's intention was to advocate the reintroduction of corporal  punishment as a legal sanction. 2.Understanding utterance meaning but not force Probably the second most common situation is  when we understand the meaning of a speaker's utterance, but not the force. This was illustrated well in an article about Barry  Manilow. The writer was discussing the singer's feelings of insecurity:  Refer to example 22 p. 19  H e suspects compliments. Bob Dylan stopped him at  a party, embraced him warmly, told him: 'Don't stop doing what you're doing, man. We're all  inspired by you.' He knew not what to make of the encounter. Nearly  two years later, it haunts him still. 'It seems so odd that Bob Dylan  would tell me this. I wasn't exactly sure what he meant. He may have been laughing out of the other side of his mouth while he said it, but it didn't seem like it. I mean, he looked me dead in the eye. It was not the meaning of the utterance  Don't stop doing what you're doing which caused Manilow problems, but what Dylan meant by those words. Was he being sarcastic, sincere, flattering Manilow? It is this level of communication which is  often so difficult to understand. 3. Understanding force but not utterance meaning To understand the force of what is said without  understanding the meaning of that utterance is rather more unusual, but it does happen.    Examples The first day I arrived in Australia , a man who had  taken me to the University restaurant said: Example 23  It's my shout.  The second I heard in the United States , and was  spoken by one teenager to her friend, who was getting into a panic Example 24  Don't have a cow!  I had never encountered either of these idioms, but in  each case the context and circumstances were such that the intended force was perfectly clear.  The first meant It's my treat or I'll pay and clearly  had the force of an offer; the second in British English would be something like Keep your hair on! and constituted a piece of advice. Don’t be upset= calm down  4. Understanding neither utterance meaning nor force A hearer who fails to establish the utterance meaning  correctly or at all may fail to understand the force the speaker intended. I was once at a conference in Greece and a group of British  and American linguists were discussing the work of another linguist, who was not present.  Example 25  Speaker A (British) said:  'Her work has become very popular.‘  I already knew what he thought of the book in  question, and correctly interpreted popular as meaning non-academic. The intended force of the utterance is criticism. The Americans agreed that it was indeed popular,  but they interpreted popular as meaning well- received/having a lot of success. They therefore incorrectly interpreted the intended  force of the utterance as praise  Interrelationship of utterance meaning and force There are two components of speaker meaning —  utterance meaning and force. It is frequently (but not invariably) the case that we  derive force from utterance meaning but we can, for example, 1. use paralinguistic features (such as intonation and  tone of voice) OR 2. non-linguistic features (such as gesture) in order to  work out the intended force. OR 3. we may (as in example 8) rely mainly or entirely on  context. On the other hand, if (as in example 25) we fail to  understand the utterance meaning, we may well fail to understand the force or if, we cannot agree on utterance meaning, we are unlikely to be able to agree as to the intended force. Thus, the two components of speaker meaning are  closely related, but not inseparable and it would be a mistake to conflate or confuse them. There are two aspects or levels o f speaker  meaning — utterance meaning and force.  It must be obvious that for the speaker ambiguities of  sense, reference or structure rarely, if ever, exist. For example, the person who wrote the out of order sign  which I found knew exactly what was meant. For him or her there was no ambiguity; the ambiguity only existed for me, the reader.  Pragmatics: meaning in interaction A definition of pragmatics as meaning in interaction.  This reflects the view that meaning is not something which is inherent in the words alone, nor is it produced by the speaker alone, nor by the hearer alone.  Making meaning is a dynamic process, involving the  negotiation of meaning between speaker and hearer, the context of utterance (physical, social and linguistic) and the meaning potential of an utterance. HANKYOU 