Introduction to Pragmatics E-Book

Betty J. Birner

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 713

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Introduction to Pragmatics guides students through traditional and new approaches in the field, focusing particularly on phenomena at the elusive semantics/pragmatics boundary to explore the role of context in linguistic communication.

• Offers students an accessible introduction and an up-to-date survey of the field, encompassing both established and new approaches to pragmatics
• Addresses the traditional range of topics – such as implicature, reference, presupposition, and speech acts – as well as newer areas of research, including neo-Gricean theories, Relevance
• Theory, information structure, inference, and dynamic approaches to meaning
• Explores the relationship and boundaries between semantics and pragmatics
• Ideal for students coming to pragmatics for the first time

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

Organization of the Book

Acknowledgments

1 Defining Pragmatics

1.1 Pragmatics and Natural Language

1.2 The Boundary Between Semantics and Pragmatics

1.3 Summary

2 Gricean Implicature

2.1 The Cooperative Principle

2.2 Types of Implicature

2.3 Testing for Implicature

2.4 The Gricean Model of Meaning

2.5 Summary

3 Later Approaches to Implicature

3.1 Neo-Gricean Theory

3.2 Relevance Theory

3.3 Comparing Neo-Gricean Theory and Relevance Theory

3.4 Summary

4 Reference

4.1 Referring Expressions

4.2 Deixis

4.3 Definiteness and Indefiniteness

4.4 Anaphora

4.5 Referential and Attributive Uses of Definite Descriptions

4.6 Summary

5 Presupposition

5.1 Presupposition, Negation, and Entailment

5.2 Presupposition Triggers

5.3 The Projection Problem

5.4 Defeasibility

5.5 Presupposition as Common Ground

5.6 Accommodation

5.7 Summary

6 Speech Acts

6.1 Performative Utterances

6.2 Felicity Conditions

6.3 Locutionary Acts

6.4 Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

6.5 Face and Politeness

6.6 Joint Acts

6.7 Summary

7 Information Structure

7.1 Topic and Focus

7.2 Open Propositions

7.3 Discourse-Status and Hearer-Status

7.4 Information Structure and Constituent Order

7.5 Functional Compositionality

7.6 Summary

8 Inferential Relations

8.1 Inferential Relations at the Constituent Level

8.2 Inferential Relations at the Propositional Level

8.3 Summary

9 Dynamic Semantics and the Representation of Discourse

9.1 Theoretical Background

9.2 Static vs. Dynamic Approaches to Meaning

9.3 Discourse Representation Theory

9.4 The scope of DRT and the Domain of Pragmatics

9.5 Summary

10 Conclusion

10.1 The Semantics/Pragmatics Boundary Revisited

10.2 Pragmatics in the Real World

10.3 Pragmatics and the Future of Linguistic Theory

10.4 Summary

References

Sources for Examples

Index

Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics

The books included in this series provide comprehensive accounts of some of the most central and most rapidly developing areas of research in linguistics. Intended primarily for introductory and post-introductory students, they include exercises, discussion points, and suggestions for further reading.

1. Liliane Haegeman, Introduction to Government and Binding Theory (Second Edition)

2. Andrew Spencer, Morphological Theory

3. Helen Goodluck, Language Acquisition

4. Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Sixth Edition)

5. Martin Atkinson, Children’s Syntax

6. Diane Blakemore, Understanding Utterances

7. Michael Kenstowicz, Phonology in Generative Grammar

8. Deborah Schiffrin, Approaches to Discourse

9. John Clark, Colin Yallop, and Janet Fletcher, An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (Third Edition)

10. Natsuko Tsujimura, An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics (Second Edition)

11. Robert D. Borsley, Modern Phrase Structure Grammar

12. Nigel Fabb, Linguistics and Literature

13. Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer, Semantics in Generative Grammar

14. Liliane Haegeman and Jacqueline Guéron, English Grammar: A Generative Perspective

15. Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin, An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition

16. Joan Bresnan, Lexical-Functional Syntax

17. Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach

18. Henry Rogers, Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach

19. Benjamin W. Fortson IV, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (Second Edition)

20. Liliane Haegeman, Thinking Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis

21. Mark Hale, Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method

22. Henning Reetz and Allard Jongman, Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics and Perception

23. Bruce Hayes, Introductory Phonology

24. Betty J. Birner, Introduction to Pragmatics

This edition first published 2013

© 2013 Betty J. Birner

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Birner, Betty J.

 Introduction to pragmatics / Betty J. Birner.

pages cm

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-4051-7582-1 (cloth) – ISBN 978-1-4051-7583-8 (pbk.)

 1. Pragmatics.

 P99.4.P72B57 2013

 401'.45–dc23

2012005347

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Paul Klee, Rainy Day (detail), 1931 (no 150), oil and pen & brush and coloured ink on gessoed burlap. Private Collection/ Photo © Christie’s Images/ The Bridgeman Art Library.

Cover design by Nicki Averill Design.

For Andrew and Suzanne,

my two favorite people

Preface

Introduction to Pragmatics provides a thorough grounding in pragmatic theory for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. While ideally the reader will come to it with a basic understanding of the principles of linguistic analysis, the text assumes little or no prior study of linguistics, and hence should be appropriate for students at all levels of expertise. In length, depth, and scope, it is suitable for a semester- or quarter-long course in linguistic pragmatics.

Pragmatics is a field that is in many ways grounded in semantics. Many of its fundamental principles have been developed in reaction to semantic principles or problems of semantic analysis; for example, Grice developed his theory of implicature in order to address the semantic analysis of the natural-language equivalents of the logical operators (such as and and or). Since its inception as a field, pragmatics has been in conversation with, and defined in opposition to, the field of semantics. The question of how pragmatics relates to, and differs from, semantics constitutes a thread running throughout this textbook. Different schools of pragmatics differ with respect to how they draw the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, a question with important ramifications for the analysis of natural language. For this reason, this question constitutes a recurring theme in this book. The text begins, therefore, with a quick review of the semantic principles and logical notation that the student will encounter in later chapters, and a discussion of the issues surrounding the demarcation of the fields of semantics and pragmatics. The text goes on to present the time-honored basic concepts of pragmatics – such as implicature, speech acts, presupposition, and deixis – while also including more recent developments in areas such as neo-Gricean pragmatics, Relevance theory, information structure, and Discourse Representation Theory.

Organization of the Book

The text consists of 10 chapters, a references section, a sources for examples section, and an index. More fundamental concepts are presented earlier, with later chapters building on topics introduced earlier; for instance, the chapter detailing Grice’s theory of implicature is followed by a chapter in which more recent approaches to implicature are discussed in light of developments over the decades since Grice’s initial work on the topic. Interdisciplinary strands are woven throughout the text, as the interrelationships between pragmatics and philosophy, syntax, semantics, and even more applied fields such as law and artificial intelligence are explored. Each chapter ends with exercises and discussion questions. These are designed not only to reinforce the student’s learning of the material in the chapter, but also to extend these concepts in new directions, for example by asking students to consider new variations on the chapter’s theme, examine apparent counterexamples, or apply theoretical concepts to examples from their own life.

As noted above, the textbook is designed for either a quarter- or semester-long course in pragmatics at the graduate or upper-level undergraduate level. In a 9- or 10-week quarter, the instructor might choose to assign one chapter per week; in such a course, take-home exams or term papers can be assigned in order to reserve class time for discussion of the topics introduced in the text. In a semester-long course, the text can be taken at a more leisurely pace, with time available for in-class exams. For graduate courses, the text might be paired with seminal papers in each area, including primary readings from Grice, Austin, Searle, and others whose work is discussed herein; discussion of a given chapter in one class period could then be followed by a second class period in which the primary material is discussed. In this way the text would provide the necessary background for full comprehension of the primary works. Throughout, I would encourage instructors to illustrate the course material with real-life examples, both their own and those brought in by their students. Only through application to naturally occurring linguistic data can pragmatic theory be fully grasped and appreciated.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply and eternally grateful to my mentors in pragmatics – Gregory Ward, Ellen Prince, Larry Horn, and Barbara Abbott. They are my models for what a scholar should be. I am particularly grateful to Gregory Ward, who is the reason I entered the field of pragmatics and the reason I know anything at all about how to be a linguist. My debt to him is incalculable.

I wish Ellen Prince had lived to see the publication of this book, which owes so much to her outstanding work in pragmatics; her research provides the theoretical foundation that underlies all of my own. Her death has been a great loss to the field, and she is sorely missed.

For reading and commenting on early chapters of this book, I am profoundly grateful to Barbara Abbott, Larry Horn, Jeff Kaplan, Craige Roberts, Jerry Sadock, and Gregory Ward. This book has benefitted greatly from their detailed and insightful comments. I owe a special and enormous debt of gratitude to Barbara Abbott and Jeff Kaplan, who provided copious and extremely helpful comments on the entire manuscript.

I thank Andy Kehler for helpful suggestions in the early stages of this project, Larry Horn for getting me started on it in the first place, and Jeff Kaplan for making me put in the hours to finish it. I am grateful to Leah Kind for her many hours of work as a graduate assistant scouring early chapters for typos, to Nancy Hedberg for catching some embarrassing errors, and to Matt Duncan for help with the Japanese example in Chapter 7. For helpful comments and suggestions, I am grateful to many sharp-eyed students in my semantics and pragmatics classes, especially Nyssa Bulkes, Floyd Knight, Shelley Korth, Chelsea Maney, Natalie Santiago, Jessica Schlueter, and Jana Thompson. Any errors and omissions that remain are my own darned fault.

I am very, very grateful to my wonderful editor, Danielle Descoteaux, for her helpful suggestions, good humor, and preternatural patience; to Julia Kirk for keeping me organized and gently moving me along; and to Javier Kalhat for his excellent copy-editing.

I thank my colleagues and students in the English Department at Northern Illinois University for making it a pleasure to go to work every day. I am particularly grateful to five special friends and colleagues – Phil Eubanks, Kathleen Renk, Michael Day, Bonnie Anderson, and Angie Dybas – for improving my years as Graduate Director in innumerable ways and making it possible for me to juggle the tasks of book-writing, teaching, and grad-directing.

Finally, I thank my husband Andy and my daughter Suzanne for putting up with me, serving as sounding boards, providing native-speaker intuitions, and encouraging me in this project – and for many much-appreciated work breaks playing board games at the dining room table. They have kept me sane, and that is no mean feat.

1

Defining Pragmatics

What did they mean by that? It’s a relatively common question, and it’s precisely the subject of the field of pragmatics. In order to know what someone meant by what they said, it’s not enough to know the meanings of the words (semantics) and how they have been strung together into a sentence (syntax); we also need to know who uttered the sentence and in what context, and to be able to make inferences regarding why they said it and what they intended us to understand. There’s one piece of pizza left can be understood as an offer (“would you like it?”) or a warning (“it’s mine!”) or a scolding (“you didn’t finish your dinner”), depending on the situation, even if the follow-up comments in parentheses are never uttered. People commonly mean quite a lot more than they say explicitly, and it’s up to their addressees to figure out what additional meaning they might have intended. A psychiatrist asking a patient Can you express deep grief? would not be taken to be asking the patient to engage in such a display immediately, but a movie director speaking to an actor might well mean exactly that. The literal meaning is a question about an ability (“are you able to do so?”); the additional meaning is a request (“please do so”) that may be inferred in some contexts but not others. The literal meaning is the domain of semantics; the “additional meaning” is the domain of pragmatics.

This chapter will largely consider the difference between these two types of meaning – the literal meaning and the intended and/or inferred meaning of an utterance. We will begin with preliminary concepts and definitions, in order to develop a shared background and vocabulary for later discussions. A section on methodology will compare the corpus-based methodology favored by much current pragmatics research with the use of introspection, informants, and experimental methods. Then, since no discussion of pragmatics can proceed without a basic understanding of semantics and the proposed theoretical bases for distinguishing between the two fields, the remainder of the chapter will be devoted to sketching the domains of semantics and pragmatics. A discussion of truth tables and truth-conditional semantics will both introduce the logical notation that will be used throughout the text and provide a jumping-off point for later discussions of theories that challenge the truth-conditional approach to the semantics/pragmatics boundary. The discussion of the domain of semantics will be followed by a parallel discussion of the domain of pragmatics, including some of the basic tenets of pragmatic theory, such as discourse model construction and mutual beliefs. The chapter will close with a comparison of two competing models of the semantics/pragmatics boundary and an examination of some phenomena that challenge our understanding of this boundary.

1.1 Pragmatics and Natural Language

1.1.1 Introduction and Preliminary Definitions

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and the study of linguistics typically includes, among other things, the study of our knowledge of sound systems (phonology), word structure (morphology), and sentence structure (syntax). It is also commonly pointed out that there is an important distinction to be made between our competence and our performance. Our competence is our (in principle flawless) knowledge of the rules of our own idiolect – our own individual internalized system of language that has a great deal in common with the idiolects of other speakers in our community but almost certainly is not identical to any of them. (For example, it’s unlikely that any two speakers share the same set of lexical items.) Our performance, on the other hand, is what we actually do linguistically – including all of our hems and haws, false starts, interrupted sentences, and speech errors, as well as our frequently imperfect comprehension: Linguists commonly point to sentences like The horse raced past the barn fell as cases in which our competence allows us – eventually – to recognize the sentence as grammatical (having the same structure as The men injured on the battlefield died), even though our imperfect performance in this instance initially causes us to mis-parse the sentence. (Such sentences are known as garden-path sentences, since we are led “down the garden path” toward an incorrect interpretation and have to retrace our steps in order to get to the right one.)

Pragmatics may be roughly defined as the study of language use in context – as compared with semantics, which is the study of literal meaning independent of context (although these definitions will be revised below). If I’m having a hard day, I may tell you that my day has been a nightmare – but of course I don’t intend you to take that literally; that is, the day hasn’t in fact been something I’ve had a bad dream about. In this case the semantic meaning of “nightmare” (a bad dream) differs from its pragmatic meaning – that is, the meaning I intended in the context of my utterance. Given this difference, it might appear at first glance as though semantic meaning is a matter of competence, while pragmatic meaning is a matter of performance. However, our knowledge of pragmatics, like all of our linguistic knowledge, is rule-governed. The bulk of this book is devoted to describing some of the principles we follow in producing and interpreting language in light of the context, our intentions, and our beliefs about our interlocutors and their intentions. Because speakers within a language community share these pragmatic principles concerning language production and interpretation in context, they constitute part of our linguistic competence, not merely matters of performance. That is to say, pragmatic knowledge is part of our knowledge of how to use language appropriately. And as with other areas of linguistic competence, our pragmatic competence is generally – known at some level, but not usually available for explicit examination. For example, it would be difficult for most people to explain how they know that means that my day (like a nightmare) was very unpleasant, and not, for example, that I slept through it. Nightmares have both properties – the property of being very unpleasant and the property of being experienced by someone who is asleep – and yet only one of these properties is understood to have been intended by the speaker of the utterance . The study of pragmatics looks at such interpretive regularities and tries to make explicit the implicit knowledge that guides us in selecting interpretations.