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Man is not well defined as “Homo sapiens” (“man with wisdom”). For what do we mean by wisdom? It has not been proved so far that animals do not possess it. Those of you who have pets can easily prove the contrary. Most recently anthropologists have started defining human beings as “man the toolmaker”. However, apes can also make primitive tools.
John Austin is the person who is usually credited with generating interest in what has since come to be known as pragmatics and speech act theory. His ideas of language were set out in a series of lectures which he gave at Oxford University. These lectures were later published under the title “How to do things with words”. His first step was to show that some utterances are not statements or questions but actions. He reached this conclusion through an analysis of what he termed ‘performative verbs’. Let us consider the following sentences:
I pronounce you man and wife
I declare war on France
I name this ship The Albatros
I bet you 5 dollars it will rain
I apologize
The peculiar thing about these sentences, according to J.Austin, is that they are not used to say or describe things, but rather actively to do things. After you have declared war on France or pronounced somebody husband and wife the situation has changed. That is why J.Austin termed them as performatives and contrasted them to statements (he called them constatives). Thus by pronouncing a performative utterance the speaker is performing an action. The performative utterance, however, can really change things only under certain circumstances. J.Austin specified the circumstances required for their success as felicity conditions. In order to declare war you must be someone who has the right to do it. Only a priest (or a person with corresponding power) can make a couple a husband ad wife. Besides, it must be done before witnesses and the couple getting married must sign the register.
Performatives may be explicit and implicit. Let us compare the sentences:
I promise I will come tomorrow – I will come tomorrow;
I swear I love you – I love you.
On any occasion the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts (a three-fold distinction):
It was John Searle, who studied under J.Austin at Oxford, who proposed
a detailed
classification of speech acts. His speech act classification has had
a great impact on linguistics. It includes five major classes of speech
acts: declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives:
|
Speech act type
Direction of fit
s – speaker, x -
|
Declarations words change the world S causes X
E.g. I pronounce you man and wife. You’re fired.
E.g. It was a warm sunny day. John is a liar.
E.g. I’m really sorry. Happy birthday! (statements of pleasure, joy, sorrow, etc.)
Directives make the world fit words S wants X
E.g. Don’t touch that (commands, orders, suggestions)
E.g. I’ll
be back (promises, threats, pledges
– what we intend to do)
J.Searle can also be merited for introducing a theory of indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts are cases in which one speech act is performed indirectly, by way of performing another: Can you pass me the salt? Though the sentence is interrogative, it is conventionally used to mark a request – we cannot just answer “yes” or “no”. According to modern point of view such utterances contain two illocutionary forces, with one of them dominating.
Another classification of speech acts was introduced by G.Potcheptsov. It is based on purely linguistic principles. The main criterion for pragmatic classification of utterances is the way of expressing communicative intention. This classification includes six basic speech acts:
constatives, promissives, menacives, performatives, directives and questions. More details can be found in the book by И.П.Иванова, В.В.Бурлакова, Г.Г.Почепцов “Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка”, С.267-281.
LECTURE 12: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Text as a unit of the highest level manifests itself as discourse in verbal communication. Therefore actual text in use may be defined as discourse. Discourses are formed by sequence of utterances. It is obvious that many utterances taken by themselves are ambiguous. They can become clear only within a discourse. Utterances interpretation, or discourse
analysis, involves a variety of processes, grammatical and pragmatic. By pragmatic processes we mean the processes used to bridge up the gap between the semantic representations of sentences and the interpretation of utterances in context. Quite often, the sentence may be ambiguous:
His soup is not hot enough
The hearer must not only recover the semantic representation of the sentence uttered, but decide who the referential expression he refers to, whether the ambiguous word hot means very warm or spicy, whether the vague expression his food refers to the food he cooked, the food he brought, the food he served, the food he is eating, etc.
Besides, utterances have not only propositional content but illocutionary force, and ambiguities may arise at this level:
You’re not leaving
The hearer must not only recover its explicit propositional content, but also decide whether it is a statement, a question or an order. Furthermore, utterances have not only explicit content but also implicit import:
A: Would you like some coffee?
B: Coffee would keep me awake.
The hearer (A) must recover the implication that B does not want any coffee (or, in some circumstances, that he does).
Understanding the meaning of a discourse requires knowing a lot of things. There are times when people say (or write) exactly what they mean, but generally they are not totally explicit. They manage to convey far more than their words mean, or even something quite different from the meaning of their words. It was Paul Grice who attempted to explain how, by means of shared rules or conventions, language users manage to understand one another. He introduced guidelines necessary for the efficient and effective conversation. He defined these guidelines as Cooperative Principle. Cooperative Principle presupposes that conversation is governed by four basic rules, Maxims of Conversation. There are four of them:
1. The Maxim of Quality
Do not say what you believe to be false
Do not say for what you lack adequate evidence
2. The Maxim of Quantity
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required
3. The Maxim of Relevance
4. The Maxim of Manner
Be clear
Communicative maxims make it possible to generate inferences which are defined as conversational implicatures and conventional implicatures. Conversational implicatures are such components of an utterance that are not expressed semantically but are understood by communicants in the process of communication: Was it you who broke the cup? This question presupposes: Someone has broken the cup. If you did not do that your normal reaction would be: What cup?, while the answer I didn’t do that shows that you know about the fact. Conversational implicatures are universal, they do not depend on the language used. The second type of implicatures, conventional implicatures, are derived from a definite lexical or grammatical structure of an utterance: I saw only John (conventional implicature – I didn’t see anyone else), Even Bill is smarter than you (Everybody is smarter than John, John is stupid).
Both kinds of implicatures are of great interest for discourse analysis. When there is a mismatch between the expressed meaning and the implied meaning we deal with indirectness. Indirectness is a universal phenomenon: it occurs in all natural languages. Let us see how conversational implicatures arise from Maxims of Conversation and thus create indirectness.
A). In the following example Polonius is talking to Hamlet:
Polonius: What do you read, My Lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
B). In the utterance You’re being too smart! the Maxim of Quality is flouted and the hearer is made to look for a covert sense. Similarly, the same maxim is flouted with metaphors. If I say: He is made of iron, I am either non-cooperative or I want to convey something different.
C). The Maxim of Relevance can also be responsible for producing a wide range of standard implicatures:
A: Can you tell me the time?
B: The bell has gone.
D). A number of different kinds of inference arise if we assume that the Maxim of Manner is being observed. The utterance The lone ranger rode into the sunset and jumped on his horse violates our expectation that events are recounted in the order in which they happen because the Maxim of Manner is flouted.
One more explanation of the fact why people are so often indirect in conveying what they mean was put forward by Geoffrey Leech in his book “Principles of Pragmatics”. He introduces the Politeness Principle which runs as follows: Minimize the expression of impolite beliefs; Maximize the expression of polite beliefs. According to G.Leech, the Politeness Principle is as valid as Cooperative Principle because it helps to explain why people do not always observe Maxims of Conversation. Quite often we are indirect in what we say because we want to minimize the expression of impoliteness:
A: Would you like to go to the theatre?
B: I have an exam tomorrow.
B is saying ‘no’, but indirectly, in order to be polite.
Theoretical Grammar
Kolomiytseva O.A.
LECTURE 13: THE USE OF ARTICLES IN ENGLISH
The article is a function word, which means it has no lexical meaning and is devoid of denotative function. Semantically the article can be viewed as a significator, i.e. a linguistic unit representing some conceptual content without naming it. If analyzed in its relation to the conceptual reality, the article proves to be an operator, i.e. a marker of some cognitive operation, like identification, classification, and the like.
It is not a secret that articles often turn into stumbling blocks for students of English, especially for those whose first language is synthetic. Different language types represent different mentalities. Therefore, one of the ways to learn to use articles correctly is developing the necessary communicative skills through countless repetition, which can only be achieved in a corresponding language environment. Another way is trying to develop a system of rules governing the use of articles in the language by understanding the basic principles of their functioning. This is what we are going to do, though of course, both methods complement one another. A language student needs both theory and practice.
As you know, there are two articles in English: the definite article “the” and the indefinite one “a”. It has become a tradition to also single out the so-called “zero” article, which is found in the contexts where neither the definite nor the indefinite article is used. It is better to speak of the zero article rather than of the absence of the article for the same reason that we ascribe the zero marker to the “unmarked” member of the opposition. We speak of zero units in situations where the grammatical meaning needs to be made explicit.
The answer to the question “what do we need articles for?” can’t be too simple. We might have to enumerate quite a few functions articles can be used in. Some of them are common for all the three articles, others are only characteristic of individual function words. This is what we are going to speak of.
1. The Use of Articles as Determiners
The invariant function of all the articles (i.e. the function all of them are used in) is that of determination. Any human language has a system of devices used to determine words as parts of speech. In analytical languages the article is the basic noun determiner. In synthetic languages, like Ukrainian and Russian the same function is performed by inflexions.
e.g. Read the poem and comment on determiners:
Twas brilling, and the slithy toves Варкалось, хливкие шорьки
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Пырялись по наве.
All mimsy were the borogoves, И хрюкотали зелюки,
And the mome raths outgrabe. Как мюмзики в мове.
2. The Use of Articles as the Theme-and-Rheme Markers
The second function the articles can be used in is that of the theme-and rheme markers. As you know, the theme is the information already known, and the rheme is the semantic focus of the utterance, the new idea that is being introduced. An utterance where there is only the rheme can’t be understood. For example, if I entered the room and said something like that to you, “What about a wedding dress for Jane?” you would not understand anything, for there are three rhematic pieces of information in this utterance:
Utterances that only contain the theme sound ridiculous. Can you imagine me saying something like that, «Let me share something important with you. This is a table.» You would probably think, something is wrong with me.
Traditionally the grammatical subject coincides with the theme, and the grammatical predicate is the rheme of the utterance. Still there are situations where there are disagreements between grammatical and communicative subjects and predicates.
In languages like Ukrainian or Russian the final position of the word in the sentence is rhematic, and the initial position is thematic. In English the same function is performed by the indefinite and the definite articles correspondingly. It is important to remember this principle when you translate something into English, for example:
До кімнати увійшов чоловік. A man entered the room.
Чоловік увійшов до кімнати. The man entered the room.
3.The Use of Articles as Generalizers
The object denoted by the word is called the “referent”. Referents can be concrete, if something is said about a concrete object or phenomenon, and general, if what we say is true for the whole class of objects.
e.g. I have a dog at home (a concrete dog).
The dog is man’s friend (any dog).
In the second sentence the definite article is used as a generalizer. The generalizing function can be performed by both the definite, the indefinite and the zero article. The zero article is used in the plural or with uncountable nouns, for example:
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
Iron is metal.
When concrete nouns are used in generic sense, they are usually preceded by the definite article. The indefinite article may be used when two classes of objects are compared, for example:
A dog is stronger than a cat.
If asked for an explanation, I would say that the general conclusion about the strength of cats and dogs is first made on the level of individuals, i.e. to determine who is stronger we would probably have to get a dog and a cat to fight. Then we would pick up another dog and another cat, until some general conclusion could be drawn. This is the reason the indefinite article appears in this sentence.