Pragmatics
The study of meaning in context
Implicature
Conversation implicature
One way of understanding what is not said - generally what is implied by the utterance (but not uttered)
Even if A is true, B might not be true.
Implicatures can be intended or accidental.
Cooperative principle
The assumption that our interlocutors (the people we talk to) are being cooperative, and follow certain conversational conventions.
Gricean Maxims
Describe conventions for being cooperative.
Maxim of manner
Present information in a straightforward and organized way
Maxim of quality
Expectation of being truthful
Maxim of quantity
Not giving too little or too much information
Maxim of relation
Stay on topic
When maxims are violated, speakers do not follow conventions, and when interlocutors are not being cooperative, it generates implicatures.
Implicatures are the result of the hearer's inference.
Speakers can try to generate implicatures by intentionally violating one of the Gricean maxims.
Unintentional violations can occur when hearers arrive at implicatures not intended by the speaker when speaker can violate maxims unintentionally or doesn’t follow the same conventions as the hearer.
Speech act theory
Illocutionary types:
- illocutions can be categorised into several broad types
- representative - describe some state of affairs
- directive - get the hearer to do something
- question - get hearer to provide some information
- commissive - commit speaker to something
- declaration - change status of some entity, bringing about some state of affairs
Felicity conditions
Validity of the speech act depends on whether it is performed in the appropriate context, by the appropriate participants.
Explicit speech acts
Utterance contains a verb that is used performatively.
Makes explicit the illocution.
To identify performative verbs:
- verb must describe voluntary act
- act can be performed simply with words
- can be used with hereby
Direct speech acts
Whether illocution is expressed by its matching/default locutionary type
| Illocutionary Type | Matching Locutionary Type |
|---|---|
| Directive | Imperative |
| Question | Interrogative |
| Representative | Declarative |
| Commissive | Declarative |
| Declaration | Declarative |
| Locutionary types: |
- declarative
- subject before a tensed/tenseable verb
- if verb tense can be changed, it is tenseable
- imperative
- does not contain a tensed/tenseable verb
- subject is always understood to be you
- interrogative
- yes/no questions
- content questions
With indirect speech acts, (where the expected locutionary type is different), it generally expresses something extra.
Expressed speech acts
Whether illocution has to be inferred by the hearer
Literal speech acts
Whether speaker means what he says