MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITYFACULTY OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMMUNICATIONBAEH 206: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Mangeya Hugh

Room 60

0774 435 259

mangeyau@msu.ac.zw/mangeyah@yahoo.comModule Synopsis

The module deals with a variety of topics in the field of discourse analysis. It starts with a general introduction of Discourse analysis. The introduction sets the background of the field of discourse analysis and the concepts to be studied. On the whole the module equips students with the tools and methodology with which to analyse discourse in general.

Aims and objectives

This component of the course aims to:

equip the students with the knowledge of the general issues in applied linguistics.

familiarise students with the key concepts in discourse analysis. develop students’ ability to apply discourse analysis concepts to real life

situations.

By the end of this course component students should be able to:

Discuss issues related to discourse analysis. critique relevant literature, texts and theories/hypotheses. contribute to research in discourse analysis in particular and discourse analysis

in general.

Assessment

Questions relating to this component will appear in the final examination, which will be taken by students. The questions will be based on the materials from lectures and readings as well

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as activities carried out during presentations. Students will answer three questions in the examination. The examination contributes 70% of the final grade.

One major assignment and a test/presentation question will be written during the semester. These will contribute 30% of the final grade.

Module outline

1. Introduction – general introduction and definition of terms2. Ethnography of speaking 3. Information structure4. Pragmatic categories5. Speech Act Theory6. Conversational implicature7. Conversational analysis

Suggested reading material

Blommaert J., (2005) Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coulthard M., (1985) An introduction to discourse analysis. London: Longman.

Crystal D. (1991) A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (3rd edition). Oxford:

Blackwell.

Grundy P., (2000) Doing pragmatics. London: Arnold.

Levinson S.C., (1983) Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCarthy M., Matthiessen C. and Slade D., (2002) Discourse analysis, In Schmidt N (ed)

Introduction to applied linguistics. London: Arnold

Paltridge B., (2006) Discourse analysis: an introduction, New York: Continuum.

Portner P., (2006) Meaning in Fassold R.W. and Connor-Linton J. (eds) An Introduction to

Language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Radford A., Atkinson M., Britain D., Clahsen H. and Spencer A., Linguistics: an

introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sacks H., Schegloff E.A., and Jefferson G., (1974) A simplest systematic for the organisation

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of turn-taking for conversation, in Language December 1974.

Schiffrin D., (2006) Discourse in Fassold R.W. and Connor-Linton J. (eds) An Introduction

to Language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas J. (1995) Meaning in interaction: an introduction to pragmatics, London:

Longman.

Woods N., (2006) Describing discourse: a practical guide to discourse analysis. London:

Arnold.

TOPIC ONE3 | P a g e

INTRODUCTIONThe study of discourse can be traced to Firth’s urging of linguists to study conversation ‘for there we shall find the key to a better understanding of what language is and how it works’, (1935). However in spite of this suggestion serious study of spoken discourse is still in its formative or budding stage. Coulthard (1985) observes that much of the work in the study of discourse is done not by linguists but by sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers – showing how language pervades human life and activity. For Firth, language was only meaningful in its context of situation. That is, the study of discourse can be regarded as the study of situated speech. Being a relatively new discipline of study in linguistics, there is still no universality regarding the definition of terms. Coulthard (1985) chooses to distinguish between spoken discourse and written text. He correctly observes that this distinction is however not universally accepted. He notes that some linguists use the term text to refer to speech as well, whilst Hoey (1983) use the term discourse to refer to writing. Importantly, Coulthard also notes that’

Pragmatics as defined by Leech (1983) and Levinson (1983) overlaps substantially

with discourse as I perceive it.

Consider the examples below:

Chosoja chinoda musoja (loosely trans – Being a soldier requires one to be a soldier).

Cricket analyst on Batsman Ervine – He is thinking of going upstairs

Ndiri kubva kuMambo (I am coming from Mambo).

A: Ndiye wamuri kupa mazai here uyu? (Is she the one you are giving eggs to?)

B: Ndimainini vangu (She is my wife’s young sister).

Written on the wall facing a men’s toilet urinal:

The future of your family is in your hands.

Sleep-O-Paedic pay-off line

You can sleep on it.

Defining discourse and discourse analysis

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There is a plethora of definitions in the literature for the two terms discourse and discourse analysis. Litosseliti (2006) makes the observation that,

the term discourse is used widely and in different ways across academic disciplines, and is often left undefined, vague and confusing.

Various scholars have defined the terms in a number of ways. Some of these definitions are given below.

a. Harris (1952), as quoted by Coulthard (1985), in his article Discourse analysis, sets out to produce a formal method ‘for the analysis of connected speech or writing’ which ‘does not depend on the analyst’s knowledge of the particular meaning of each morpheme’. Harris’s definition sets the tone for the definition and preoccupation of discourse analysis. What comes out from his definition is that discourse analysis is essentially concerned with structures that are above the sentence and, most importantly, meaning in discourse is not only a result of its total linguistic items. Meaning in discourse is arrived at by also considering knowledge that goes beyond the sentence boundary.

b. Crystal (1991) defines discourse as a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often consisting of a coherent unit such as a sermon, an argument, a joke etc. Whilst Crystal’s definition seems to be in line of the one given by Harris, questions can be raised on what Crystal means by ‘often’ in his definition. This raises the question of whether any stretch of sentences can in fact be regarded as discourse. Consider a structure such as – There goes Samson. My brother is married. Although the structure consists of more than one sentence problems arise if it can be regarded as constituting a piece of discourse.

c. Woods (2006) regards discourse as a construction or negotiation of meaning in which context is of vital importance. Woods goes on to point out that depending on context a statement such as ‘It’s getting late’ can have different meanings in different contexts such that one can respond differently to that statement depending on specific context. What this implies is that an utterance’s meaning can therefore be only fully appreciated/decoded in its proper context. The ability to communicate competently requires an understanding of the dynamic of shifting system of communication in context. The fact that the communication context is always shifting does not by any means imply that interlocutors find it difficult to decode meaning in discourse. Although such cases may obtain (as is often the case with misunderstandings) by and large interlocutors arrive at the same meaning through shared socially and culturally constructed communicative conventions. Woods observes how activities that may be taken to be both simple and routine, such as the buying of vegetables at a market or closing an exchange with an interlocutor involve much more than a simple exchange of farewells. Termination of exchanges, for example, has to follow societal conventions which cross-culturally, have to be done without giving offence to fellow interlocutors. As such one may employ one of many options available to them. What comes out therefore is that the use of language depends on the ability of speakers/writers to negotiate their way through a complex network of conventions,

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assumptions and expectations. Such ability is defined by Dell Hymes as communicative competence. Communicative competence includes what speakers of a language know about what is feasible, appropriate and attested in their language. In other words it can be considered as the tacit knowledge about how to use language in different speech situations. It is in this respect that Woods defines discourse as language in use. That is, real language that real people use in the real world (as opposed to contrived language). This therefore means that discourse analysts hold that language is more than just the sum of the linguistic elements that comprise. In order to decode (encode) meaning, interlocutors use much more than grammatical knowledge. Thus discourse is, at least, language plus context. Context in this case is taken to refer to what people bring with them in the negotiation/construction of meaning. Context includes people’s experiences, their assumptions and expectations (both social and cultural).

d. Litoselliti (2006) views language as social practice. According to this view, “context is important as it incorporates the social situation, linguistic co-text, genre and relations between speakers and hearers, and writers and readers. Fairclough (1992) argues that context also includes those discursive practices pertaining to a given text, and the relevant social practices.

e. Schiffrin (2006) defines discourse analysis as the branch of linguistics that focuses on language use above and beyond the sentence. The two terms above and beyond capture different features of the discourse endeavour. Above entails an analysis of units larger than the sentence. Beyond entails an analysis or examination of aspects of the world in which language is used. Crucially, Schiffrin distinguishes discourse from a random sequence of sentences in that discourse has coherence. That is, it conveys meaning that is greater than its parts due to the fact that the order of statements relate one another by sense (a common idea).

f. Radford et al (2009) define discourse analysis as the study or analysis of structures larger than the sentence and the use of sentences in interaction. Such large structures include conversation, stories, NN texts, discourses etc. Discourse analysts posit that the notion of ‘grammar’ can be applied to such linguistic units. Analysis of discourse involves a wide range of factors which extend beyond just linguistic knowledge (knowledge of language). In analysing discourse the starting point of analysis is that conversation (exchanges/interaction) is well-formed and underlain by a complex set of assumptions. (Both) speakers in an exchange use pragmatic knowledge. Fassold and Connor-Linton (2006) define pragmatics as the field of linguistics which studies meaning in particular context of use. Thomas (1995) defines pragmatics as meaning in context. According to Grundy (2000) this entails that analysts draw inferences or come up with conclusions as to what a fellow interlocutors intend to convey. Grice (1975) in accounting for the complex relationships that hold in exchanges argues that there is an underlying constraint on all conversationalists to ‘be relevant’. Interlocutors therefore use what Coulthard (1985) refers to inferring strategies. to evaluate utterances as meaningfulness of utterances in interaction. Consider the use of the called in an example taken from a broadcast by the BBC:- The campaign group called the Freedom Association. Listeners to the

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broadcast have to use their knowledge of the ideology and activities of the Freedom Association as well as the ideology of the BBC to draw inferences on the intended meaning of the statement. This implies that communication is not merely a matter of a speaker encoding a thought in language and sending it as spoken message through space, or written message on paper, to recipient who decodes it. This is clearly insufficient as the receiver has must not only decode what is received but also has to draw inference as to what is conveyed beyond what is stated. At times the inferences have to be quite dramatic. Consider a statement like:- I am a man in which the speaker says either what is obviously true (if uttered by a man) or obviously false (if uttered by a woman). The intention by the speaker in either case is to convey hidden meaning.

The definitions given above show that there are a variety of ways of defining the term discourse analysis. What seems to be running in common in all the definitions is the fact that:

In analysing discourse analysis there is use of much more than linguistic knowledge. That is, analysis of discourse entails bringing in of knowledge that lies outside the confines of grammaticality.

Another aspect that comes out in the definitions is the importance of context in discourse meaning. A single utterance can be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on the communicative context in which it has been produced. Consider the I am a man example given above.

It is also apparent from the definitions that not any string of sentences can be characterised as discourse. The string of sentences needs to be coherent to be classified as such.

Discourse analysis entails the analysis of structures above the sentence. That is supra-sentential structures.

Lastly, it comes out that the notion of convention is important in the interpretation of discourse. This means that each society or culture has its own construction and interpretation of discourse. what this implies is that no one person/individual can claim to possess their own discourse. Discourse is communally owned, with the society sharing rules/convention on how to construct and interpret it. This brings in the notion of speech communities and discourse communities. Swales (1990) defines a speech community as a social unit of speakers who have shared linguistic norms, shared regulative rules and shared cultural concepts. This therefore means that members of the same discourse community construct and interpret discourse within the same parameters. This can be used to account for the fact why discourse seems to unfold with little or no instances of communication breakdowns, misunderstandings etc. In his multiple criteria definition Hymes (1974) characterises a speech community as

a community of sharing of rules for the conduct and interpretation of

speech. Such sharing comprises knowledge of at least one form of speech,

and of knowledge also of its patterns of use. Both conditions are necessary.

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Discourse analysis vs text analysis distinction

There is general confusion in literature pertaining to the distinction between the two terms discourse analysis and text analysis. This confusion is as a result of confusion between the use of the terms discourse and text. This has been further exacerbated by the fact that the use of the two terms in literature has been inconsistent. Whilst some scholars have claimed the existence of a distinction between the two terms a closer analysis has revealed that such distinction is not necessary. Some of the distinctions are given below:

a. Widdowson (1973)

TEXT DISCOURSEIs made up of sentences Is use of such sentencesIs made up of sentences having the property of grammatical cohesion

Is made up of utterances having the property of coherence

Text analysis deals with cohesion Discourse analysis deals with coherence

It has to be noted that the distinction given by Widdowson above contradict the distinction between sentence and utterance.

b.

TEXT DISCOURSEA physical product A processMeaning is not found in the text. Derived the readers’ interaction with the text

– discourse.

It is apparent from the distinction in (b) above that it is not necessary to maintain a distinction between discourse analysis and text analysis only on the basis of investigating a process as opposed to investigating a product. One can also question how it is that being a physical product text cannot bring out any meaning.

c. Coulthard (1985)

TEXT DISCOURSEWritten SpokenText analysis investigates written form Discourse analysis investigates spoken form.

Notable problems that can be raised from distinction (c) above include the fact that such a distinction is inconsistent with many studies that have used models originally developed for studying spoken form to investigate written form (Tadros 1981) and vice versa (Hoey 1983).

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From the foregoing discussion one can therefore conclude that such a distinction is not necessary. One can take Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) approach of employing the term discourse in its broadest or ‘most open sense’. Their approach follows that of Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) who use the term discourse ‘to cover all forms of interaction, formal and informal, and written texts of all kinds. Used in this way the term discourse analysis entails the examination or analysis of these forms of discourse.

What comes out from the foregoing discussion is that:

Knowing the literal meaning of sentences is not enough to determine what they count as doing, what speech act is performed, when they are used (Grundy 2000).

Conclusion

There is no single agreed upon definition of both the terms discourse and discourse analysis. A case in point can be the question regarding what constitute a discourse unit. That is, can it be constituted by a single word or a number of related/coherent sentences. The distinction between the terms sentence and utterance is at the heart of this ‘confusion’. However, analysts seem to be in agreement with a number of issues on discourse:

the understanding or analysis of discourse involves the employment of knowledge that is beyond the sentence.

context is a vital feature in understanding any stretch of discourse. discourse, like any other linguistic unit, possesses structure. That is, it is organised

and systematic.

RAISING HAND AT:

CLASS MDC RALLY IN COURT ROOM CHURCH

SHAKING OF HANDS AT:

PARTY FUNERAL

FRASIER MISSING THE CONTEXT IN SMELLING CHICKEN EPISODE WHILE TALKING ABOUT HIS FEAR OF STATING HIS FANTASIES ABOUT A PARTICULAR WOMAN.

TOPIC TWO

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ETHNOGRAPHY OF SPEAKINGThe ethnography of speaking is a model or framework of describing discourse that was developed by the linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes. In his approach he proposes that social, cultural and linguistic factors are equally important in the construction of discourse. Some scholars refer to this framework by the alternative term of ethnography of communication so as to reflect the broadening in focus (from focusing strictly on the spoken medium) to other forms of medium. The approach arises out of the traditional anthropological concern with the interrelations among language, culture and society. It combines elements that are missing from grammars and elements that are missing from ethnographies taken separately (ethnography is a method that seeks to answer central anthropological questions concerning the ways of life of living human beings. That is, the link between culture and human behaviour). Grammars, on the one hand, deal essentially with structure of language as abstract and self-contained codes – suggesting that they are immune to external influences. Ethnographies on the other hand, deal with patterns and structures of socio-cultural life. The ethnography of speaking therefore bridges the gap between what is conventionally found in grammars on the one hand and ethnographies on the other; its subject matter being speaking, the use of language in the conduct of social life. The fundamental premise of the ethnography of speaking is an essentially relativistic one. That is, the understanding that speaking - like any other cultural behaviour such as kinship, politics, economics, religion, etc – is patterned within each society in culture-specific, cross-culturally variable ways. This topic therefore studies the different ways of speaking in a particular speech community.

Hymes comes up with a framework of parameters that define speech in any given socio-cultural setting. His framework is mnemonically coded by the acronym SPEAKING.

Setting or scene.

The setting refers to the time and place while scene describes the environment of the situation. All speech events occur of necessity in time and space. At times one or both of these parameters are the defining criteria in the occurrence of a specific speech event. Some speech event have to take place at a specific time or in a specific place or both.

Participants

This refers to who is involved in the speech including the speaker and the audience. Hymes argues that there are at least four participant roles. These are:

addressor. speaker addressee hearer/audience.

The particular speech event will define the configuration of the participant roles required. Any comprehensive description of a speech community must include data on who and/or

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what can fill the participant roles, and in what speech events and speech acts. Speech events vary in terms of participant role specification. In some speech events anyone can act as a participant whilst in others there is specification. Specification of participants may extend to cover such factors as:

age sex kinship relationship status profession, etc

Ends

Ends cover the purpose and goals of the speech along with any outcomes of the speech. All speech events have a purpose(s) – even if occasionally they may be phatic (just to establish and maintaining linguistic contact). Some speech events may share similar features and can only be distinguished by the ends or purposes which participants want to achieve.

Act sequence

Act sequence refers to the order of events that took place during the speech. Some speech acts or speech events require a particular sequencing of activities or language such that failure to adhere to the requisite sequence results in the ‘failure’ of the speech act or event in question. Greetings can be categorised as such. In most African cultures there is a particular sequence of events that has to be followed for one to be considered to have successfully greeted someone, especially elderly or respected members of society.

Key

Refers to the overall tone or manner of the speech. It covers the ‘tone, manner and spirit in which a speech act is performed. Acts that are otherwise identical in setting, participants, form and message may be distinguished on the grounds of, for example, mock & serious, perfunctory & painstaking. Key focuses on the seriousness, or lack therefore, of an utterance. Hymes emphasises the significance of key by observing that when it is in conflict with the overt content of an act, it often overrides it. A statement like

How marvellous

uttered in a sarcastic tone means exactly the opposite. Key may also be signalled extra-linguistically (non-verbally). For example:

wink smile gesture posture

Instrumentalities

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Some scholars like Coulthard (1985) refers to then as channels. Instrumentalities the form and style of the speech being given. It concerns itself with the choice and medium of language. That is, whether it is oral, written, telegraphic etc. Most genres are associated with only one channel. However, Coulthard (1985) makes the observation that the development of media like the radio or television has created a situation in which some speech events have enormous and unheard of audiences, which subtly affects the character of the event. What may appear to be a superficially round-table discussion or a cosy fireside chat can in fact be an opportunity to attempt, directly or indirectly, to sway a nation’s opinions.

Norms

Norms defines what is socially acceptable at the event. They cover social rules governing the event and the participants' actions and reaction. Norms might specify the degree to which participants may interrupt and collaborate in speech events. Some events can tolerate a high participation involvement amongst participants.

Genre

Genre concerns itself with the kind of speech act or event. Certain speech events require a specific form of language. The seriousness of the event itself also depends on its genre.

TOPIC THREEINFORMATION STRUCTURE

Introduction

Information structure refers to the various ways in which information is organised or packaged depending on the particular meaning a speaker/writer intends to convey. Packaging

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of information may involve the highlighting or suppression of information – which results in the emphasising or deemphasising of information. Information structure takes advantage of the flexibility of syntax – which allows speakers to move phrases around syntactic structures. Categories of information structure therefore present speakers of a language alternative ways of saying the same thing. An example of such a case is given in (1) below:

1. The student passed the assignment.

One may take advantage of transformations to communicate different aspects of the utterance in (1) above. Some of the ways are given in (2) – (5) below:

2. The assignment was passed by the students. (passive construction)3. Pass the assignment the students did. (left dislocation)4. It is passing the assignment that the students did. (cleft construction)5. It is the student that passed the assignment. (cleft construction)

Since are a number of ways to capture or highlight specific information there is therefore a number of categories of information structure. These categories are cross-linguistic. That is, they are found in almost every human language. However, how each language manipulates the same category differs – revealing the idiosyncratic nature of language.

Information structure categories

There are seven different categories of information structure. These are:

given/new topic/comment contrast definite/indefinite referential/non-referential generic/specific.

1. Given and new information

Given information is information currently in the forefront of the hearer’s mind. Finnegan (1999) characterises it as information that the hearer is thinking about. New information is information that is being introduced into the discourse. New information can also be that which is not present in the hearer’s mind, which is being introduced into the discourse. In English new information is stressed. Consider the example below:

Alice: Who ate the custard?

Tom: Mary ate the custard.

In Tom’s answer, Mary is new information because it is just being introduced into the discourse. It is being brought to Alice’s attention. In contrast, for Alice, the custard in Tom’s answer is given information because it is in the forefront of her mind. That is, it is presumed

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to be in Alice’s mind, who in the previous turn has just introduced the discourse. Because it is given information in Tom’s reply, the custard would normally be replaced simply by the pronoun it. Representing a noun phrase (NP) with a pronoun is referred to as pronominalisation. Thus Tom can alternatively say:

Mary ate it.

In extreme cases the given information can simply be left out or deleted. Deletion of information that is presumed to be given to the hearer/reader is called ellipsis. Thus Tom can alternatively respond to Alice’s enquiry by simply stating:

Mary.

It is important to note that information can be new even though it is something that the hearer already knows about, as long as they were not thinking about it at the time it was mentioned. Mary from Tom’s response above is new information even though both Alice and Tom apparently know who Mary is.

Given information does not need to be introduced into a discourse by a second speaker. It can also be introduced by a single speaker. consider the example below:

A man called while you were on your break. He said he’d call back later.

In the example above he is taken to represent given information. It is referring to the entity a man that has been already introduced into the discourse earlier.

When a noun phrase (NP) is introduced into a discourse all the subjects of the referent can be treated as given information. Consider the example below:

Kent returned my car last night after borrowing it for the day. One of the wheels was

about to fall off and the dashboard was missing.

In the above example the underlined NPs are taken as representing given information in that they are part of the referent of the NP my car.

NPs carrying new information are commonly expressed in a more elaborate fashion. They can be expressed as full NPs instead of as pronouns. For example:

The car is here.

It is here.

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NPs expressing new information can sometimes be expressed with a relative clause. For example:

When I entered the room, there was a tall man with an old-fashioned hat on, quite

elegantly dressed.

They can also be accompanied by adjectival modifiers.

In contrast, given information is commonly abbreviated or reduced. This can be achieved through one of a number of ways which include:

Ellipsis : Leaving out given information. Pronominalisation : Replacing given information with a pronoun. Reflexivisation : replacing given information with a reflexive pronoun.

2. Topic/Comment

Topic: What the conversation/text/discourse situation is about. It is the centre of its attention.

That is, its point of departure.

Comment: What is said about the topic. That is, the element of the sentence/discourse that

says something about the topic.

Given information: it is often/usually the topic. That is, the sentence element about which we

say something.

Consider the example below:

A: What did Mary do?

B: Mary ate the custard.

From the above example, Mary is the topic and given information. Ate the custard becomes the comment and new information.

It is however not always the case that given information is the topic. Consider:

Mary ate the custard. As for her little sister, she drank the cod liver oil.

The NP her little sister is both new information and the topic.

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Given information can also be a comment. For example:

Harold didn’t believe anything the doctor said. As for Hilda, she believed everything

he said.

In the first sentence the topic is Harold, which is explicitly shifted to Hilda in the second sentence. The comment in the first sentence is the same as the comment in the second, so it is given information in the second.

The topic does not necessarily have to be overtly expressed in the sentence or discourse. Consider an utterance such as:

Oh, look!

uttered to draw attention at something. The utterance has an unexpressed topic – that which is being drawn attention to. Thus, the topic is not necessarily a property of the sentence; it may be a property of the discourse context.

3. Contrast

This is when one piece of information is represented as being in contrast or opposition to another. Contrast can be shown/marked in a variety of ways. A noun phrase may be contrastive if it occurs in opposition to another NP in the discourse. For example:

A: Did Matthew see the ghost?

B: No, Hilda saw the ghost.

C: Yes, Matthew saw the ghost.

The NP Hilda in B’s response is contrasted with the NP Mathew. In C’s answer no contrast is made.

Contrast is also marked in sentences that express the narrowing down of a choice from several candidates to one. In such sentences, the NP that refers to the candidate chosen is marked contrastively. Thus contrast may be marked with ONLY.

Of everyone present, only Hilda knew what was going on.

In the example above, Hilda is being contrasted with everyone else who was present.

An NP is contrastive if it is followed by rather than. For example:

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A: Did Matthew see the ghost?

B: No, Hilda rather than Matthew, saw the ghost.

A sentence may show more than one contrast. For example:

A: Did Matthew see a ghost?

B: Yes, Matthew saw a ghost, but Hilda saw an entire cast of spirits.

Hilda contrasts Matthew and entire cast of spirits with a ghost.

Contrast may be marked with stress. For example:

You may be smart, but he’s good-looking.

The contrastive NP is most commonly pronounced with long stress.

Contrast can also be made from the knowledge of the context. The contrast is understood sometimes from the discourse context and sometimes from the non-linguistic context. Consider the response given by a manager when asked for permission to leave early by a subordinate.

Employee: Can I leave early today?

Manager: I don’t mind.

The manager’s response implies “It’s fine with me, but I don’t know about the other managers”.

4. Definiteness/Indefiniteness

An NP can be marked as definite when speakers assume that the listener can identify the referent of NP. Otherwise the NP is marked as indefinite. For example:

A: Who’s at the door?

B: it’s the neighbour.

B’s answer can only be appropriate if both A and B have only one neighbour or have reason to expect a particular neighbour. Thus the definite NP the neighbour in B’s response pre-supposes that A can determine which neighbour B is referring to. However with several

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neighbours, non of whom is known well, B cannot assume A will be able to identify which neighbour is at the door. In the case that A does not know the neighbour at the door B’s response must be indefinite:

B: It’s a neighbour.

Pronouns and proper nouns are generally definite. For example, the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘we’ refer to particular individuals (usually) – only identifiable in the context of the discourse. In the case of proper nouns such as Mary and John the speaker assumes the listener will be able to determine the referents of these names.

There are however exceptions. Consider the example below:

There is a Mary who hasn’t paid her fees yet since last semester (in a

university context).

In this context it does not matter whether both the speaker and the listener know which particular individual goes by the name of Mary.

Definiteness in English and other languages is marked by the choice of articles. That is, definite the against indefinite a. Demonstratives such as this and that can also be used to mark definiteness. Examples:

The boy is here. Look at that boy.

A boy is here. Look at this boy.

5. Definiteness and giveness.

Definiteness must be distinguished from giveness because a NP can be definite and given, indefinite and given, definite and new or indefinite and new. The first and last combinations are popular. An example of an NP that is indefinite and new is given below:

Once upon a time, there was a young woman (indefinite & new) who lived on a remote

farm in the country. The young woman (definite & given) was named Mary.

An NP that refers to new information can also be definite. For example:

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The kitchen tape is leaking, we have to call the plumber (definite & new).

The plumber in the example above is definite. It is acceptable whether or not the speaker has introduced a particular identifiable plumber into the previous discourse.

An NP can both be indefinite and given. Consider the example:

I ate a hamburger (indefinite & given) for breakfast. I must add that was one the worst

I’ve eaten.

The examples above clearly show definiteness and giveness are distinct categories of information structure.

6. Referential/Non-referential

A NP is referential when it is interpreted as referring to a particular entity. For example:

Mary wants to marry an Italian with dark eyes (non- referential) but she hasn’t found one

yet.

The NP ‘an Italian with dark eyes’ doesn’t refer to anyone in particular. As such it’s non-referential. This can be contrasted with a sentence like the one below:

Mary wants to Mary an Italian with dark eyes (referential); his name is Mario (referential).

The same NP does have a referent and is therefore referential.

There is also need to differentiate between referential and definite. This is because an NP can be referential and definite, referential and indefinite, non-referential and definite.

Referential and definite

I’m looking for the dog (referential and definite).

In the example above one may be referring to a family dog.

Referential and indefinite

I’m looking for a dog, but I haven’t found it yet (referential and indefinite).

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Non-referential and definite

I’m looking for the most intelligent dog. I’m looking for the biggest/ugliest dog in Gweru but I haven’t found one yet.

The non-referentiality of one stems from the fact that it does refer to a particular dog that anyone can point at on the ground. The first sentence is definite because it is unique so the hearer can identify it mentally or the concept of ‘the most intelligent dog’ can be identified by the hearer.

‘It’ means it is definite

‘One’ means it can’t be definite.

Non-referential and indefinite

I’m looking for a dog, but I haven’t found one yet.

Pronouns and proper nouns are usually referential – There are cases however cases whereby pronouns like you, it, they and one are often non-referential. for example

If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

It is widely suspected that linguistics is fun to study.

They have just changed the tax laws.

One just doesn’t know what to do in these circumstances.

7. Generic/specific

An NP can be generic or specific depending on whether they refer to a category or a particular member of a category. For example:

The giraffe has a long neck.

The above sentence is generic because it refers to the set of all giraffes. This can be contrasted with the one below:

The giraffe has a sore neck.

It is specific as it refers to a particular or specific giraffe.

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TOPIC FOURPRAGMATIC CATEGORIES

Introduction

For Information structure to capture discourse syntactic transformations must take place. Transformations involve the change of linear ordering of words in a structure. This reordering of words is motivated by the need of speakers of language to achieve certain communicative purposes/ends. Every language can express a given ‘idea’ in a variety of ways. Due to the fact that there are a variety of communicative ends that speakers need to achieve there are also many transformations which achieve different functions. The

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difference between these various ways of expressing the same thing is a pragmatic one. There is therefore need to categorise transformations according to the types/kinds of information they capture. It has to be pointed out that these transformations are language-specific. Different language use different strategies to encode pragmatic information. Some of these strategies include:

fronting left dislocation clefting and pseudo-clefting passivisation

Fronting

Fronting is a movement transformation that operates in many languages. It involves movement of a word or phrase from the right end of the sentence to the front. Its main function is to mark giveness. The fronted entity represents given information. AAs a result it is a promotion movement. That is, the fronted NP becomes the more salient element of the sentence. For example:

The student passed the assignment.

The assignment the student passed.

Mary went to town.

To town Mary went.

Fronting is done to promote given information to the front of the sentence. One cannot front new information. This implies that fronted entity is also topic and definite. That is, what is already known.

Fronting can also be used to show implicit contrast. Consider the following examples:

A: What’s your favourite drink?

B: Fanta I find interesting.

In the example above the NP that has been fronted has as its referent part of a set that has been mentioned previously in the discourse. Fanta is a homonym of drinks mentioned in the question that precedes the sentence with the fronted NP; hence its pragmatically acceptable.

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Left dislocation

It is a process similar to fronting in which an entity or a phrase is moved from the right of the sentence to the left. However, there is usually a pause after the left-dislocated entity. The pause is marked or indicated by a comma. The comma has the effect of setting apart the left-dislocated phrase from the rest of the sentence. The left-dislocated entity leaves a trace in the form of a pronoun (antecedent). For example:

The student passed the assignment.

The assignmenti, the student passed iti.

Apart from performing the same function as fronting, left dislocation also introduces given information that had not been talked about for quite some time. For example:

I’ve kept in touch with many people from my school days. I still see Hugh who was

best friend in high school. There was Walter who was my roommate and Landa and

who were my seniors. I really like Walter, Landa and Itai. Hughj, I can’t stand himj

now.

The speaker list a number of people and comments on them. Hugh, though being given information, has last been talked about for quite some time (Nothing is said about Hugh in the previous two sentences). He is then reintroduced in the last sentence as a left-dislocated NP. It is important to also note that, like fronting, left-dislocation is contrastive. In the example above Hugh is clearly contrasting with Walter, Landa and Itai.

The differences between fronting and left-dislocation include:

A fronted NP does not have a pronoun in the sentence, whereas a left-dislocated NP does.

Unlike fronted NPs, a left-dislocated NP is also set off from the rest of the sentence by a very short pause (represented in writing by a comma)

Left dislocation is used to introduce given information that has not been talked about for a while.

Clefting and pseudo-clefting.

These are ways of highlighting information. Each of the two types of transformations has its own syntactic formula.

Clefting –

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It Be X(clefted entity) that Y (rest of the sentence).

Consider the example below:

The student passed the assignment.

It is the assignmentX that the student passedY.

Pseudo-clefting

Wh-word Y (rest of the clause) BE X (clefted entity).

The student passed the assignment.

What the student passed (rest of the clause) is the assignment (clefted entity).

TOPIC FIVESPEECH ACT THEORY

Introduction

The Speech Act Theory was initially developed as the Illocutionary Hypothesis – which was later referred to as the Performative Hypothesis by John Austin in the 1940s and 50s. He belonged to a group of philosophers known in linguistic circles as ordinary language philosophers – which included prominent scholars like Grice, Sperber and Wilson. His ideas became the foundations of the study of pragmatics as it has come to be known today (he is actually referred to as the father of pragmatics). Austin presents a new picture of analysing meaning – meaning is described in a relation among linguistic conventions correlated with words/sentences, the situation where the speaker actually says something to the hearer, and associated intentions of` the speaker. This is especially so in light of the fact that Austin’s ideas came at a time when linguistic was frustrated by truth-conditional semantics, A look at

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the central ideas of the truth-conditional semantics will lead to a better appreciation of Austin’s ideas in his ordinary language philosophy.

Logical positivism and truth-conditional semantics.

Logical positivists belonged to a group of philosophers who held the belief that language analysis was traditionally concerned with truth and falsehood of utterances. This belief was founded on the belief that humans are ‘rational’ beings who could explain the meaning of language by mathematical logic, (Masaki). Philosophers like Russell subscribed to the view that everyday language is:

somehow deficient and defective, a rather debased vehicle full of ambiguities, imprecision and contradictions

Their aim was therefore to refine language, removing its perceived imperfections and illogicalities with the aim of creating an ideal language.

As a philosophical system, logical positivism maintains that the only meaningful statements are those that are analytic – that is, those that can be tested empirically. Logical positivist philosophers of language were principally concerned with the properties of sentences which can be analysed or evaluated in terms of truth or falsity. This approach was adopted within linguistics in an area known as truth conditional semantics. An utterance like:

Midlands State University is in Gweru

can be empirically proven and judged in terms of truthfulness. In this case the utterance is true.

A much more important tenet of TCS is that unless a sentence can, at least in principle, be verified it is strictly speaking meaningless. Consider examples below:

An invisible car came out of nowhere, hit my car and vanished.

Everyone hates Man U because it’s so popular.

I sleep all the time doctor.

All the three sentences will be seen as anomalous for a variety of reasons. For the first example:

Cars are not invisible cannot come out of nowhere

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do not vanish.

The second example manifests an internal contradiction in that:

it is not possible to be both popular and hated by everyone.

As for the third example:

the speaker was clearly awake while talking to the doctor.

A major problem that is raised by examples such as the ones above is that these sentences are recognised by speakers of language as the sort of language people encounter daily in casual conversation. The major concern then becomes whether speakers of a language judge them in terms of ‘false’ or ‘meaningless’ or do they just try to make sense of them – in spite of the fact that they are apparently illogical.

Ordinary language philosophy

Austin’s response was to make the observation that ordinary people manage to communicate extremely effectively and relatively unproblematically with language just the way it is. Consider the following example:

Commentator on 2011 Wimbledon quarter-finalist Tamira Paszek

She qualified for the quarter-finals from absolutely nowhere.

Commentator after England had taken their 6th wicket for 57 vs SL (1st ODI)

Its all England now.

Character from Pulling (BBC E)

...sitting there looking at me with her eyes.

His belief was that there is a lot more to a language than the meaning of its words and phrases. He was convinced that people do not just use language to say things (to make statements) but to do things (to perform actions). In uttering a sentence the speaker uses linguistic conventions – with an associated intention – to perform a linguistic act to the hearer. Thus, instead of striving to rid language of its supposed imperfections we should try to understand how it is that people manage with it as well as they do. That is, how people manage to encode and decode meaning that is beyond the surface meaning of utterances. Instead of the true-false dichotomy, Austin introduces ‘the doctrine of infelicities’ which is defined as ‘the doctrine of the things that can be and go wrong on the occasion of such utterances’.

The performative hypothesis

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Although it was later to be abandoned, the performative hypothesis is still an important starting point of pragmatics as an approach to the analysis of sentential or utterance meaning. His ideas in the performative hypothesis demonstrate neatly the distinction between a truth conditional approach to meaning and his view of ‘words as actions’. That is, it illustrates clearly how and why pragmatics came into being.

Austin’s first step was to show that some utterances, as indeed he saw most utterances, have no truth conditions. He claimed that such utterances are not statements or questions but actions. He reached this conclusion through the analysis of ‘performative verbs’. Consider the four verbs in the examples below for an appreciation of performatives:

(i) I drive a white car(ii) I apologise(iii) I name this ship The Albatross(iv) I bet you $5b it will rain.

All the four statements above are syntactically similar in that:

they are all in the first person they are declarative in the indicative mood in the active in the simple present tense

However, pragmatically the first sentence is very different from the other three. It is a statement – what Austin calls a constative. It is a simple matter to establish empirically whether or not it is true. It is odd to respond to sentences (ii) – (iv) by statements like ‘That is true’. This is due to the fact that the verbs in (ii) – (iv) do not make statements which can be judged as true or false. Rather, they belong to a class of utterances called ‘performatives’ – which cannot be judged true or false. They are best understood as performing an action. For example, by saying ‘I apologise’ one is not merely making a statement. They are in fact performing the act of apologising. One useful (but not infallible) test for a performative verb is to see whether you can meaningfully insert the adverb hereby between the subject and the verb. For example:

I hereby apologise

I hereby name this ship The Albatross

I hereby bet you $5 that it will rain

but one cannot say:

*I hereby drive a white car

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One observation to be made, however, is that though (ii) – (iv) are all performatives they are not quite the same. Sentence (ii) is not very problematic in that in uttering the words ‘I apologise’ no one can challenge or deny that one has not apologise (even though the sincerity of the apology may be questioned). (iii) presents a problem in that one may question what if just anyone sneaks up on the cruise ship The Queen Elizabeth II at the dead of the night as it lies in dry dock, smash a bottle of Guinness against the hull and re-name it The Albatross. Would that ship be henceforward be known by everyone as The Albatross? Austin notes that there are different types performatives.

Metalinguistic performatives

These are the most straightforward examples of performatives. Like all performatives they are self-referential (the verb refers to what the speaker of the utterance is doing). They are:

self-verifying. They contain their own truth-conditions) non-falsifiable (they can never be untrue).

Examples of metalinguistic performatives include:

I sing I declare

I protest I plead

I apologise I vote

I promise I move

I agree

Compare the sets of sentences below:

I say John is a liar

John is a liar

I plead not guilty

I am innocent.

Ritual performatives

Ritual performatives contain verbs that are used to perform rituals, order, baptise, sentence, name etc. They have no automatic guarantee in terms of successfulness.

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Collaborative performatives

These are performatives that do not only require particular persons and circumstances but also particular uptake of another person or collaboration for their success. Levinson (1983) states that such kinds of perfomatives require ‘interactional ratification typically found in conversation’. Examples of such verbs include bet, challenge, bequeath.

Felicity conditions

Due to their ‘unfalsifiability’ Austin came up with felicity conditions. Felicity conditions are parameters used to judge the success of utterances. If an utterance is judged to be successful it is said to be felicitous. This also means that an unsuccessful one is said to be unfelicitous.

Felicity conditions are subdivided into three categories:

(a)(i) There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect.

(ii) The circumstances and persons must be appropriate.

(b) The procedure must be executed: (i) correctly and

(ii) completely

(c) Often (i) The person must have requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions.

(ii) if consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant parties must do it.

Below is a summary of the infelicities that are likely to occur in language:

Act purported but void Act professed but hollow

Act disallowed Act vitiated

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Infelicities

Misfires Abuses

Misinvocations Misexecutions Insincerities

It has to be appreciated that each society has its own ways of performing certain speech acts. This therefore means that there are cross-cultural differences in judging the ‘felicitness’ of performative, for example ritual performatives. Some examples include:

A culture with no baptism will not say “I baptise you’ Some cultures, such as the British, do not have particular words like ‘I divorce you’.

Instead they have ‘To divorce’. In Talag culture uttering ‘I divorce you’ three consecutive times amounts to divorce.

Thomas notes a case involving a Talag actor who uttered these words in an advert and was considered/judged to have legally divorced his wife. In this culture words cannot be withdrawn, especially in marriage and divorce.

Collapse of the Performative Hypothesis

There are three main reasons that led to the collapse of the hypothesis:

1. there is no formal/grammatical way of distinguishing performative verbs from other types of verbs (That is, such as along the ways one distinguishes or determines transitivity).

Performatives are not always in the first person. An example is “The court finds you not guilty’.

Utterances are not always in the active form. For example, ‘Your employment is hereby terminated’.

Austin merely focused on the spoken or aural medium. There are acts which have to be written mot just said. An example is resignations and contracts.

2. Presence of a perfomative verb does not guarantee that the specified action is performed. For example, “I apologise”, “I promise to love you until I die”. “I promise to come over there and hit you” is actually not a promise but a threat.

3. There are ways of doing t4. hings with words which do not involve using performative verbs. This is actually a

major contributing factor to the collapse of the hypothesis. This includes the existence of idioms or proverbs in language. For example, letting the cat out of the bag. One also does not have to say ‘I insult you’.

On close analysis, all utterances can be considered as actions. That is, they are doing something with language. Utterance meaning can be distinguished on three levels. These are:

a. Locutionary – This refers to the act of producing utterances. That is, its literal meaning or the truth value of the sentence/utterance. Austin refers to this level the unambiguous meaning of a sentence. An utterance such as “Its me again” literally

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Misapplications Flaws Hitches

conveys the meaning that the speaker has returned to a place he/she was in a previous occasion.

b. Illocutionary – when the sentence is used as an utterance, it usually has a certain force. The example in (a) above counts as an apology. In this regard it cannot be judge in terms of true or false. The speaker is just seen as having offered an apology.

c. Perlocution – refers to the effects or consequences, some of which may not entirely be foreseeable. In the example the speaker may wish to mollify the addressee but this might have the effect of upsetting them.

Conclusion

Austin’s analysis of meaning is unique in the sense that it is not explained through some forms of reduction. According to Oishi:

In reductive theories of meaning, complexities of meaning expressed by a sentence are reduced by a single criterion to something else, and this is claimed to be the process of explaining the meaning of the sentence.

This approach is different from Russell’s logical/mathematical model in his truth-conditional semantics which reduces the meaning of the sentence to a fact to which a sentence corresponds. Austin’s approach therefore tried to describe the total speech act in the total speech situation. He avoids oversimplifying the complexities of meaning by reducing it (meaning) to descriptive meaning. By the concept of speech acts and felicity conditions for performing them, Austin showed that:

to utter a performative sentence is to be evaluated in terms of, what we might call, conventionality. actuality and intentionality of uttering the sentence, (Oishi).

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TOPIC SIXCONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE

Introduction

Conversational implicature is one of the single most important ideas in pragmatics. Its importance is due to a number of sources:

a. implicature stands as a paradigmatic example of the nature and power of pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena.

b. It provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean (in some general sense) more than what is actually “said”. That is, literal semantic meaning against truth-conditional meaning which may be more or less than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the utterance.

According to Portner (2009):

Semantics views meaning from the compositional perspective: the meaning of a sentence is built up from the meanings of its parts. The smallest parts get their meaning from the lexicon, and these meanings get put together according to rules which pay attention to grammatical structure of the sentence. However, not all aspects of meaning can be explained by this compositional ‘bottoms-up’ approach, and a complementary ‘top-down’ view of meaning has focused on the intentions of language users, (p159).

This marks the movement from an analysis of what is explicitly stated in a sentence to what the speaker intends/wishes to convey in uttering the sentence. The gap between what is literally said and what is conveyed is so substantial that it is impossible for a semantic theory to provide an adequate account of how we communicate using language. Analysis of implicature focuses on making the distinction between what is stated/said and what is actually meant. It bridges the gap by giving some account of how large portions of information are effectively conveyed. It is also important to point out that ‘context is [still] very important in determining what someone means by what they say’ (Grundy 2000: 72). This topic explores how such kind of implicit/inferred meaning is recovered.

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Contextual meaning or utterance meaning marks a movement from abstract meaning(what the sentence could mean in theory) to what the speaker actually does mean by the words on this particular occasion. utterance meaning can therefore be defined as ‘a sentence-context pairing’, Thomas (1995). Although it is certainly the case that the majority of sentences, are, at least from the point of view of the hearer, potentially multiply ambiguous, in real life we rarely have difficulties in interpreting them correctly in context. Thomas cites the case of 19-year old Derek Bentley who was charged jointly with 16-year old Christopher Craig in which the former was sentenced to death after having been found guilty for inciting the latter to commit a capital offence (murdering a police officer) when he shouted the words:

Let him have it.

The jury did not consider the natural/conventional meaning of the utterance (recommending him to surrender). Instead the court focused on the pragmatic force/non-natural meaning of the utterance. Force of an utterance is taken as the speaker’s communicative intent. An utterance like

Is this your car

can have one of a variety of meanings, some of which include:

an expression of admiration expression of scorn move your car request for a lift

Conversational implicature

Thomas (1995) makes the observation that it is not unusual for speakers to mean more than what they are actually stating. Although there are times when people say (or write) what they mean, generally they are not totally explicit. Since on other occasions they manage to convey far more than their words mean, or something quite different from the meanings of their words there is therefore need to account for how we know, on a given occasion, what a speaker means (for we do, on the whole, communicate very successfully).

Grice attempted to explain how, by means of shared rules or conventions, competent language users manage to understand one another. Grice (1975) first outlined his theory of implicature in a paper entitled Logic and conversation. In his paper Grice develops Austin’s distinction of what is said and what is actually meant. Grice’s theory is an attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is actually meant. That is, from the level of abstract/expressed/natural meaning to the level of implied meaning.

Implicature

Grice distinguished between two different sorts of implicature – conventional implicature and conversational implicature. They both have in common the property that they both convey an additional level of meaning, beyond the semantic meaning of the words actually uttered. They differ in that in the case of conventional implicature the same implicature is

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always conveyed, regardless of context whereas in the case of conversational implicature, what is said varies according to the context of utterance. Consider the example given below:

Manchester united won.

Conventional implicature or ‘natural’ meaning can also be called an entailment. This kind of meaning is present on every occasion an expression occurs. When talking about football, you can never say a team ‘won’ without it entailing that they scored at least one goal more than their opponents.

Conversational implicature or ‘non-natural’ meaning is variable. In the case of Manchester united won, depending on the communicative context/situation, the speaker can mean

that it scored at least one goal more than its opponents it played modestly the speaker wants to cut off any further interaction with the hearer.

This non-natural meaning is only sometimes associated with the sentence from which it may be inferred and is therefore not part of the entailment.

The co-operative principle

A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another ids that we are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversation. In order to explain the mechanism by which people make sense of conversation, Grice introduced four conversational maxims (rules or conventions) and the co-operative principle (CP). The CP states that:

Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

This implies that in conversation people work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is in operation, unless they receive indications to the contrary. In conversation in any given community when people talk they operate according to a set of assumptions and, on the whole, they get by. These conversational norms may be suspended at times. An example is when people talking to a child or a foreigner. In the CP Grice noted that, on the whole, people observe certain regularities in interaction with the aim of explaining one set of regularities – those governing the generation and interpretation of conversational implicature. Consider the example given by Thomas (1995) below:

The speaker has accidentally locked herself out of the house. It is winter, the middle of the night and she is stark naked.

A: Do you want a coat.

B: No, I really want to stand out here in the freezing cold with no clothes on.

On the face of it, B’s reply is untrue and uncooperative, but upon closer analysis, it is the sort of sarcastic reply we encounter everyday and have no problems at all in interpreting them. From the above example Grice accounts for this by stating that:

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If A assumes that, in spite of appearances, B is observing the Cooperative Principle and has made an appropriate response to his question, he will look for an alternative interpretation.

Grice argues that without the assumption that the speaker is operating without the assumption that the speaker is operating according to the CP, there is no mechanism to prompt someone to seek for another level of interpretation. Thus A’s observation that B has said something that is manifestly untrue, combined with the assumption that the CP is in operation sets in motion the search for an implicature.

The four conversational maxims

In Logic and conversation Grice proposed four maxims (a maxim is defined by Kant as a subjective principle or rule that individuals use in conversation. They help in explaining/bridging the link between utterances and what is understood from them or conversational rules/principles that govern/underlie communication.):

Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)

Do not make your contribution more informative that is required.

Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false.

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

Relation: Be relevant

Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression

Avoid ambiguity

Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity – using many words to express little meaning)

Be orderly

Observing the maxims

This presents the least interesting case whereby speakers observe all the maxims. Consider the example below:

Husband : Where are the car keys?

Wife : They are on the table in the hall.

In her response the wife has observed all the maxims. She has:

answered clearly (manner) truthfully (quality) has given the right amount of information (quantity) has directly addressed her husband’s goal in asking the question.

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She has said precisely what she meant, no more no less, and has generated no implicature. That is, there is no distinction to be made between what she says and what she means. There is no additional level of meaning.

Non-observance of the maxims.

These are cases whereby people fail to observe a maxim. There are five ways of failing to observe a maxim:

flouting a maxim violating a maxim infringing a maxim opting out of a maxim suspending a maxim

As is observed by Coulthard (1985) all the instances of non-observance of maxims given above ‘provide a basis for the listener to infer what is being conversationally implicated’. That is, the inference is triggered by the non-observance of a particular maxim.

Flouting a maxim

These are situations in which a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wishes to prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different, or in addition to, the expressed meaning. This additional meaning is referred to conversational implicature and the process by which it is generated is called ‘flouting a maxim’. A flout occurs when a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim at the level of what is said, with the deliberate intention of generating an implicature. Thus, Grundy (2000: 76) observes,

whenever a maxim is flouted there must be an implicature to save the utterance from simply appearing to be a faulty contribution to a conversation.

The addressee will therefore have to work out what the speaker is intending to convey. Some instances where maxims are flouted are given below:

1. It’s Hugh being Hugh.2. Mukomana.3. I’m a man. 4. At the end of the day the Church can afford to pay the number of people it can

afford to pay (Tautology)

Violating a maxim

Violation of a maxim is the unostentious non-observance of a maxim. If a speaker violates a maxim s/he will be liable to mislead. A speaker says something which is ‘true’ (as far as it goes) in order to imply an untruth.

Infringing a maxim

This occurs when a speaker who, with no intention of generating an implicature and with no intention of deceiving, fails to observe a maxim. That is, the non-observance stems from imperfect linguistic performance rather than from any desire on the part of the speaker to generate a conversational implicature. This may be due to:

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an imperfect command of a language (a child or a second language speaker) the speakers performance is impaired in some way (nervousness, drunkenness,

excitement). a cognitive impairement. the speaker is constitutionally incapable of speaking correctly, to the point

Opting out of a maxim

A speaker opts out of observing a maxim by indicating unwillingness to cooperate in the way the maxim requires. Examples of opting out occur frequently in public, when the speaker cannot, perhaps for legal or ethical reasons, reply in the way normally expected. On the other hand, the speaker wishes to avoid a false implicature or appearing uncooperative. Another reason frequently given for ‘opting out’ is that giving the requested information might hurt a third party or put them in danger. When speakers expressly opt out of observing a maxim in this way, they make explicit reference to the way in which speakers normally attend to the maxim, which in turn offers support for Grice’s contention that interactants have a strong expectation that, ceteris paribus and unless indication is given to the contrary, the CP and the maxims will be observed. For example:

The match analysts, in a West Indies vs England Cricket World Cup match-

A Tell me about Devon Thomas

B He is bating at number 5. That’s all I can say.

Suspending a maxim

These are occasions when there is no need to opt out of observing the maxims because there are certain events in which there is no expectation on the part of the any participant that there will be fulfilled (hence the n0n-fulfillment does not generate any implicatures). Keenan (1976) notes a case in the Malagasy Republic in which participants in talk exchanges

regularly provide less information than is required by their conversational partner, even though they have access to the necessary information.

This usually occurs in cases whereby interactants do not expect precise information about people’s relatives and friends in case they draw the attention of evil spirits to them. Thus, although the Malagasy speaker may appear to be underinformative at the level of what is said, the uninformativeness is nevertheless systematically motivated and generates no conversational implicature.

Conclusion

According to Grundy (2000: 78),

There are guiding principles which govern cooperative talk. Knowing these principles (maxims) enables an addressee to draw inferences as to the implied meanings (implicatures) of utterances. Every utterance, whether it abides by or flouts a maxim, has both ‘natural’ (entailment) and ‘non-natural’ meaning (implicature). Flouting a maxim is a particulary salient way of getting an addressee to draw an inference and hence recover an implicature. Thus there is a trade-off between abiding by maxims

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(the prototypical way of conducting a conversation) and flouting maxims (the most salient way of conveying implicit meaning).

TOPIC SEVENCONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS

Introduction

Conversational analysis studies the social organisation of conversation or ‘talk-in-interaction. According to Heritage and Atkinson (1984: 1)

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The central goal of conversation analytic research is the description and explication of the competences that ordinary speakers use and rely on in participating in intelligibly socially organised interaction.

The idea is that conversation is orderly, not only for the observing analysts, but for the participating members. This orderliness is seen as the product of the systematic deployment of specifiable interactional methods. Also of particular interest to conversation analysts is the system underlying turn-taking and the occurrence adjacency pairs in interaction.

Conversation

Conversation can be defined as interaction or talk involving two or more participants freely alternating in speaking, which generally occurs outside institutional settings like religious services, law courts classrooms, etc. a look at conversation as a phenomenon provides its pragmatic nature. Various aspects of pragmatic organisation can be shown to be centrally organised around usage in conversation. An example is the use of deixis which shows that unmarked usages of grammatical encodings of temporal, spartial and social and discourse parameters are organised around an assumption of co-present conversational participants.

Conversational analysis as discipline was pioneered by a group of sociologists known as ethnomethodologists. This sociological background is relevant to pragmatics especially in relation to the methodological preferences it derives from. The movement argued that the proper object of sociological study is the set of techniques that the members of a society themselves utilise to interpret and act within their own social worlds. Hence ethnomothodology is the study of ‘ethnic’ (participants’ own) methods of production and interpretation of social interaction.

Turn-taking

Coulthard makes the observation that one of the most basic facts of conversation is that the roles of speaker and listener change and that this change occurs with remarkably little overlap. This means that conversation is characterised by turn-taking. Turn-taking is a case whereby one participant, A, talks, stops; another B, starts, talks, stops. The result is that we obtain an A-B-A-B-A-B distribution of talk across two participants. This distribution captures the American English conversation underlying rule which state that “at least and not more than one party talks at a time”. A closer analysis of conversation reveals that such distribution is anything but obvious.

One feature to be noticed about conversation is the fact that less than 5% of the speech stream is delivered in overlap (a case whereby there are more than one speaker talking simultaneously). This becomes even more surprising when taking into consideration that gaps between one person speaking and the other starting are so short that they are frequently measurable in just a few micro-seconds. As Coulthard observes;

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A...feature of conversation is that speaker change recurs, and this presents problems for the participants – how can they achieve change of speaker while maintaining a situation in which at least, but not more than, one speaker speaks all the time? Whose line

is it anyway?

There is therefore need to account for,

how this orderly transition from one speaker to another is achieved with such precision in timing and with so little overlap.

how the mechanism above is capable of operating in quite different circumstances. for example,

the number of parties may vary from 2 to 20 persons may enter and exit the pool of participants turns at speaking may vary from minimal utterances to many minutes

of continuous talk if there are more than 2 parties then provision is made for all parties to

speak without there being any specified order or ‘queue’ of speakers the same system seems to operate equally well both in the absence of

face-to-face interaction and in the absence of visual monitoring, as in the telephone.

Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974, 1978) suggest that the mechanism that governs turn-taking, and accounts for the properties noted above, is a set of rules with ordered options which operate on a turn-by-turn basis and can be termed a local management system. One can look at these rules as a sharing device, an ‘economy’ operating over a scarce resource – namely the control of the ‘floor’ or the turn. Such an allocational system will require minimal units (or ‘shares’) over which it will operate, such units being the units from which turns are constructed. The units are, in this model, determined by various features of linguistic surface structure. They are syntactic units identified as turn units in part prosodic, and especially intonational, means.

A speaker will be assigned initially just one of these turn-constructional unit, although the extent of the unit is largely within the speaker’s control due to the flexibility of natural language syntax (there is no such thing as the longest sentence in natural language). The end of such a unit constitutes a point at which speakers may change – it is a transition relevance place (TRP). At a TRP the rules that govern the transition of speakers then come into play which does not necessarily mean that speakers will change at the point but simply that they may do so. Analysis of turn-taking must allow for the projectibility or predictability of each unit’s end- for it is this alone that can account for the recurrent marvels of split-second speaker transition.

Another feature of turn-taking is the possibility of specifically indicating within such units that at its end some particular other party is invited to speak next. Techniques for selecting next speakers in this way can be quite elaborate, but include straightforward devices such as:

a question (or offer or request) plus an address term a tagged question plus an address feature

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varioushearing and understanding checks which select prior speakers as next.

In trying to account for how conversation is efficiently kept going by participants, Coulthard, quoting Sacks, suggests that a speaker can exercise three degrees of control over the next turn:

a. he can select which participant will speak next, either by naming him or by alluding to him with a descriptive phrase, like ‘the Commander in chief...’. If the current speaker selects the next speaker, he usually also selects the type of next utterance by producing the first part of an adjacency pair (see the next section below), for example, a question or a greeting which constrains the next speaker to produce an appropriate answer or return greeting.

Doctor: Hello Mrs Jones

Patient: Hello Doctor

Doctor: Hello Catherine

Child: Hello

b. current speaker can simply constrain the next utterance, but not select the next speaker.

c. to select neither and leave it to one of the other participants to continue the conversation by selecting himself.

Sacks emphasises that these options are in an ordered relationship – the first over-rides the second and the second over-rides the third. If the current speaker selects the next speaker he alone should talk next. He notes that when an unselected speaker takes a turn already assigned or allocated to a selected one, the right speaker to speak next is usually preserved:

A (to C): Tell us about yourself so we can find something bad about you.

B : Yeah hurry up.

Operating on the turn-units are the following rules, where C is the current speaker and N is the Next speaker, and TRP is the recognisable end of a turn-constructional unit:

Rule 1 – applies initially at the first TRP of any turn

a. If C selects N in the current turn, then C must stop speaking, and N must speak next, transition occurring at the first TRP after N-selection

b. If C does not select N, then any (other) party may self-select, first speaker gaining rights to the next turn.

c. If C has not selected N, and no other party self-selects under option (b) then C may (but need not) continue (that is claims rights to further turn-constructional unit).

Rule 2 – applies at all subsequent TRPs

When rule 1(c) has been applied by C, then at the next TRP Rules 1(a)-(c) apply, and recursively at the next TRP, until speaker change is effect.

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Questions may be asked whether Rule 1(c) is not a special case of Rule 1(b), with suggestions of redundancy. There is however evidence that the self-selecting parties in Rule (b) should not properly include current speaker (C); for example, the delays between two turns by different speakers are statistically shorter than between two turn-constructional units produced by a single speaker, suggesting that opportunity for others to speak is specifically provided by Rule 1 (b).

The two rules above allow for the making of two generalisations:

On the one hand, they predict the following specific details:

only one speaker will generally be speaking at any one time in a single conversation (although up to or more speakers may often conduct more than one conversation simultaneously). Where overlaps occur, they can be predicted to be, at least in the majority of cases, precisely placed;

o overlaps will either occur as competing first starts as allowed by Rule 1 (b) above and illustrated in example (1) below

o or they will occur where TRPs have been misprojected for systematic reasons. For example, where a tag or address term has been appended in which case the overlap will be predictably brief.

The rles thus provide a basis for the discrimination between inadvertent overlap as in (1) and (2) and violative interruption as in (3).

1. J: Twelve pounds I think wasn’t it=

D: =//Can you believe it?

L: Twelve pounds on the Weight Watchers’ scale.

2. A: Uh you been down before // havenche.

B: Yeah.

3. C: We:ll I wrote what I thought was a-a-a

rea:s’n//ble explanatio:n

F: I: think it was a very rude le :tter

It is also predicted that when silence (the absence of vocalisation) occurs, it will be definitely assigned on the basis of the rules as either:

a gap before subsequent application of Rules 1 (b) or (c) or a lapse on the non-application of Rules 1 (a) – (c) or

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a selected next speaker’s significant ( or attributable) silence after the application of Rule 1 (a).

Thus in (4) we have first a gap by delay of Rule 1(b) option for just one second, then a lapse of sixteen seconds:

4. C: Well no I’II drive (I don’t mi//nd)

J: hhh

(1.0)

J: I meant to offer

(16.0)

J: Those shoes are nice...

While in (5) there is attributable silence, by virtue of the fact that A’s utterance select B as the next speaker, and by Rule 1(a) B should then speak:

5. A: Is there something bothering you or not?

(1.0)

A: Yes or no.

(1.5)

A: Eh?

B: No.

While making the above specific predictions, the rules also allow for the observable variations in conversation:

lapse may or may not occur there is strict limit to turn size given the extendable nature of syntactic turn-

constructional units and the constructions allowed for by Rule 1(c) there is no exclusion of parties the number of parties to a conversation can change.

These diverse variations are allowed for basically because the system is locally managed. That is, it operates on a turn-by-turn basis, organising just the transition from current speaker to next, and is therefore indifferent to, for example, the pool of potential next speakers (although this feature influences for example, the details of techniques for next speaker selection). Coulthard (p61) observes that:

...selection techniques operate only utterance by utterance: there is no mechanism in conversation by which current speaker can select the next-but-one speaker – choice of the next speaker is always the prerogative of the current speaker if he chooses to exercise it.

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An important consequence of the system is that it provides; independently of content or politeness considerations, an intrinsic motivation for participants to both listen and process what is said for transition rules require prior location of next speaker selection should it occur, and the projection of upcoming TRPs. Where despite the rules overlapping talk occurs, there is a resolution system that is integrated into the main turn-taking system.

Firstly, if overlap occurs one speaker generally drops out as rapidly, as in (6):

D: ...he’s got to talk to someone (very sor) supportive way towards you (.)

A: //Greg’s (got wha-)*

G: Think you sh* - think you should have one to: hold him.

Secondly, as soon as one speaker thus emerges into ‘the clear’, he typically recycles precisely the part of the turn obscured by the overlap as in G’s turn in (6) above.

Finally, if one speaker does not immediately drop out, there is available a competition which works roughly on a syllable-by-syllable basis whereby the speaker who ‘upgrades’ most wins the floor, upgrading consisting of increased amplitude, slowing tempo, lengthened vowels and other features – as illustrated below:

J: But dis// person thet DID IT* IS GOT TO BE::

V: If I see the person

J: hh taken care of

There is, then, quite an elaborate back-up machinery for resolving overlap is, despite the rules it should occur.

It has to be appreciated that although the phenomenon of turn-taking is obvious, the suggested mechanism is not. For example, in Burundi turn-taking is pre-allocated by the rank of the participants. So if A is of higher social status than b, and B is of higher social status than C, then the order in which the parties will talk is A-B-C. In English cultures special non-conversational turn-taking systems are operative in institutionalised settings such as:

classrooms courtrooms chaired meetings

where turns are pre-allocated rather than determined on a turn-by-turn basis. The two instances above (the Burundi and English institutionalised examples) emphasise that the rules that constitute the local management systems are not the only possible or rational solution to the organisation of the ‘economy’ of turns at talk.

Adjacency pairs

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Adjacency pairs are other examples of the local management organisation in conversation. Thomas (1995: 138) defines adjacent pairs as “consecutive, contingently related utterances produced by two different speakers”. They are the kind of paired utterances of which include the following as prototypical instances:

question-answer greeting-greeting offer-acceptance(/decline) apology-minimisation

From the above example it emerges that they can be reciprocal (as in greeting/greeting) or non-reciprocal (as in question/answer). What runs common in both types is the fact that the first part of the adjacency pair predicts/conditions the second part. Adjacency pairs are deeply inter-related with the turn-taking system as techniques for selecting the next speaker (especially where an address term is included or the content of the first utterance of the pair clearly isolates a relevant next speaker).

In spite of their obvious nature apparent obvious nature, there is need for precise specification of the underlying expectations upon which the regularities are based:

Adjacency pairs are sequences of two utterances that are:

adjacent produced by two different speakers ordered as a first part and a second part typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second (or

range of second parts). For example: offers require acceptances or

rejections greetings require greetings

The rule governing the use of adjacency pairs state that:

Having produced a first part of some pair, a current speaker must stop speaking, and next speaker must produce at that point a second part of the same pair.

Adjacency pairs seem to be a fundamental unit of conversational organisation – they have in fact been suggested by Goffman (1976) and Coulthard (1978) as the fundamental unit in conversation.

Levinson notes that strict adjacency is actually too strong a requirement. There frequently occur insertion sequences between adjacency pairs. In example is a case in which one question-answer pair is embedded within another where Q1 labels the first question, A1 its answer and so on.

A: May I have a pint of Castle lager ((Q1))

B: Are you twenty-one? ((Q2))

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A: No ((A1))

B: No ((A2))

Another example is found in the following example where a notification of temporary interactional exit and its acceptance are embedded within a question-answer pair.

B: U:hm (.) whats the price now eh with V.A.T

do you know eh ((Q1))

A: Er I’ll just work that out for you= ((HOLD)) temp exit

B: =Thanks ((ACCEPT)) acceptance

(10.0)

A: Three pounds nineteen a tube sir. ((A1))

There are numerous levels of embedding – with the consequence that, for example, a question and its answer may be many utterances apart; nevertheless, just like in the example above, the relevance of the answer is merely held in abeyance while preliminaries are sorted out, and the insertion sequences are thus restricted in content to the sorting out of such preliminaries.

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