华丽版Pragmatics语用学 (Angela design)

• E.g. Can you ride a bicycle? (is used to ask a question about the ability to do something)
• A speech act in which the communicative intention is not reflected in the linguistic form of the utterance.
• Classical examples of performatives
• A performative verb is one that performs an action by speaking it. [1] Moreover, to be performative, the verb must describe an action which is under the control of the speaker. [2]
语用学vs语义学
The publication of Saussure’s work Course in General Linguistics in the early 20th century marked the beginning of modern linguistics and at the same time laid down the key note for modern linguistic studies.
• Context determines the speaker’s use of language and also hearer’s interpretation of what is said to him.
Look at the following sentences:
• (1) How did it go?
• Speech Act Theory 言语行为理论 • The Cooperative Principle (CP) • The Politeness Principle
• A very important theory in the pragmatic study
• British philosopher John Austin, in the 1950s
A: I have a fourteen year old son. B: Well that’s all right. A: I also have a dog. B: Oh I’m sorry
They study of ‘intended speaker meaning’ is called pragmatics.
• E.g. Can you pass the salt? You left the door open. (request rather than a statement. )
Visitor: Excuse me, do you know where the Ambassador Hotel is ?
• Context is essential to the pragmatic study of language.
• It is generally considered as constituted by the knowledge shared by both the speaker and the hearer.
• This assumption was doubted in that some of the statements were not used to describe or to state, but rather they were used by the speaker to do something.
Passer-by: Oh sure, I know where it is. (and walks away)
• A speaker might be performing three acts simultaneously when speaking: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. (1) locutionary act: the act of conveying the literal meaning （言内行为） (2) illocutionary act: the act of expressing the speaker’s intention （言外行为） (3) perlocutionary act: the change brought about by saying something （言后行为）
• Austin further distinguished between explicit performatives (those containing a performative verb, such as Watch out (= a warning), I promise not to be late (= a promise) and implicit performatives, which do not contain a performative verb, e.g. There is a vicious dog behind you. (= an implied warning)
• All utterance not only mean whatever they literally mean but also perform specific actions. Thus an action performed by the use of an utterance to communicate is called a speech act.
• Performatives （行事话语）are sentences that are not used to state a fact or describe a state, but to perform certain speech acts（言语行为）such as warning, nominating, claiming, promising, apologizing, etc. They can not be verified.
• When a direct relationship exists between the structure and communicative function of an utterance, the speech act is referred to as direct speech act.
• The locutionary act performed by the speaker is …
His utterance of all the words “you, have, door, open, etc”,
• The illocutionary act performed by the speakers is …
“My bag is heavy”
• Semantic analysis语义分析: BAG (BEING HEAVY)
• Pragmatic analysis语用分析: the meaning varies with the context in which it is uttered.
Overview of Chapter 6
• E.g. admit, declare, apologize, congratulate, promise
• Hence, the theory come to be known as the speech act theory, according to which we are performing actions when we are speaking.
• A philosophical explanation of the nature of linguistic communication
• In traditional semantics, a statement functions either as a description of something or as a statement of a fact. The description or statement is either true or false – the truth value of the sentences.
• Thus, he made a distinction between “con述st事a话ti语ves”Байду номын сангаасand “perfor行m事a话ti语ves”.
• Constatives （述事话语）are statements that either state or describe, and are thus verifiable.
• If we think of a sentence as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes an utterance.
• The meaning of a sentence is abstract, and decontextualized. While the meaning of an utterance is based on sentence meaning; it is the realization of the abstract meaning of a sentence in a real situation of communication, or simply in a context.
Language should be studied as a self-contained, intrinsic
system.
We should investigate the use of language and
extralinguistic factors to
study language.
Harvey Sacks (1992) invisible meaning
Pragmatics can be generally defined as the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication.
i.e. asking someone to close the door, or making complaints, etc.
• The perlocutionary act refers to …
i.e. the hearer gets the speaker’s message of telling him to close the door
• (2) It is cold in here.
• (3) It was a hot Christmas day so we went down to the beach in the afternoon and had a good time swimming and surfing.
• As has been mentioned before, a sentence is a grammatical concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication.