Chapter 1:

Pragmatics: George Yule

Definition of pragmatic: It is the study of speaker meaning in a particular context and how the
context influences what is said (contextual meaning). In order to arrive at an interpretation of the
speaker`s intended meaning, we need the listener to explore the study of how more gets
communicated than is said due to the invisible meaning. This choice between the said and the
unsaid has to do with the notion of distance. That's to say, whether it is physical, social, or
conceptual, implies shared experiences. On the assumption of how close or distant the listener is,
speakers determine how much needs to be said.

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics:

Syntax is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in
sequence, and which sequences are well-formed.
Semantics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the worlds, that is
to say, how words literally connect to things.
Pragmatics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms. In
this three-part distinction, only pragmatics allows humans into the analysis. (Advantage: One can
talk about people´s intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of
actions (for example: requests) that they are performing when they speak//The big disadvantage is
that all these very human concepts are extremely difficult to analyze in a consistent and objective
way).

Regularity:
What 2 features create regularity in communication? Routine response and shared knowledge.
Humans behave in fairly regular ways when it comes to using the language. Those regularity
derives from the fact that people are members of social groups and follow general patterns of
behaviour expected within the group. Within a familiar social group, we normally find it easy to be
polite and say appropriate things. In a new, unfamiliar social setting, we are often unsure about what
to say and worry that might say the wrong thing. (Routine responses are what created regularity).

Chapter 2: Deixis and distance

Deixis means ‘pointing’ through language. Any linguistic form used to accomplish this ‘pointing’ is
called deictic expression(also called indexicals). They can be used to indicate people via person
deixis(‘me,’you’), or location via spatial deixis(‘here’,’there’), or time via temporal
deixis(‘now’,’then’).These expressions depend on the speaker and hearer sharing the same
context.
Deixis is a form of referring that is tied to the speaker’s context with a distinction between the ‘near
speaker’,or proximal terms, (‘this’,’here’,’now’) and the ‘away from speaker', or distal
terms,(‘that’,’there’).

Person deixis
In a conversation a person shifts from being the speaker(T) to being the addressee(you)
constantly.It operates in a three-part division exemplified by the first person(T), second person(you),
and third person (‘He’,’She’,or ‘It’). In many languages these deictic categories are elaborated with
markers of relative social status. The expressions which indicate higher status are described as
honorifics. The discussion of the choice of one of these forms is described as social deixis.
An example of social contrast is the distinction between forms used for a familiar(tu) vs non-familiar
addressee(usted).The choice of one form will communicate something about the speaker’s view of
his/her relationship with the addressee where individuals mark distinctions between social status,
age, powerful can be seen.Using a third person form where a second person form would be
possible is one way of communicating distance(and non-familiarity).Also, can be used for an
ironic,humorous or accusation purpose.
The speaker can state general rules using the first person plural(‘we’) but there is an
ambiguity(Exclusive ‘we’= speaker + others,excluding the addressee, or inclusive ‘we’ = speaker
+ addressee included).

Temporal deixis
The proximal form ‘now’ indicates the time coinciding with the speaker’s utterance and the speaker’s
voice being heard. In contrast, the distal expression ‘then’ applies to past and future.We also use
elaborate systems of non-deictic temporal reference such as calendar time and clock time which are
learned after the deictic expressions like yesterday, tomorrow,today,etc that for their interpretation is
needed knowing the relevant utterance time.
One type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice of verb tense. The present tense is the
proximal form and the past tense is the distal form.Also, past tense is used in -clauses(for ex,
conditional II) that mark events presented by the speaker as not being close to present reality.
In temporal deixis, the distal form can be used to communicate not only the distance from current
time, but also distance between current reality and facts.

Spatial deixis
The location of people and things but that location from the speaker’s perspective can be fixed
mentally as well as physically as if they were still in that location or project themselves into other
locations,(known as deictic projection).Technology allows us to manipulate location as well as
dramatic projection when I use direct speech to represent the person,location, and feelings of
someone or something else. The pragmatic basis of spatial deixis is psychological distance.
Physically close objects will tend to be treated by the speaker as psychologically close or something
that is physically distant will be treated as psychologically distant(e.g that man over there).
For the basic distinction are used ‘here’ and ‘there’ but there are more deictic expressions. Some of
them are used to mark movement toward the speaker.
The proximal deictic forms of a direct speech(here) reporting communicate a sense of being in the
same context as the utterance while the distal deictic forms of indirect speech(there) reporting make
the original speech event seem more remote.
The interpretation of deictic expressions depends on the context, the speaker’s intention, and
express relative distance.

Chapter 3:
References and inferences:
Reference is an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or reader,
to identify something. Those linguistic forms are referring expressions which can be proper nouns,
noun phrases (definite or indefinite) and pronouns. The choice of one type of referring expressions
rather than another seems to be based, to a large extent, on what the speaker assumes the listener
already knows. For successful reference to occur, we must also recognize the role of inference
because the listener´s task is to infer correctly which entity the speaker intends to identify by using a
particular referring expression.

Referential and attributive uses:

Not all referring expressions have identifiable physical referents. Indefinite noun phrases can be
used to identify a physically present entity, but they can also be used to describe entities that are
assumed to exist, but are unknown, or entities that, as far as we know, do not exist.
This is sometimes called an attribute use, meaning “whoever/whatever fits the description”. It would
be distinct from a referential use whereby I actually have a person in mind and, instead of using her
name or some other description, I will be focusing on what that person may/may not have. That's
why, speakers often invite us to assume, via attribute uses, that we can identify what they are talking
about, even when the entity or individual described may not exist.

Names and referents:

There is a basic “intention-to-identity” and a “recognition-of-intention” collaboration at work. This
process needs not only work between one speaker and one listener, but also between all members
of a community who share a common language and culture. That is, there is a convention that
certain referring expressions will be used to identify certain entities on a regular basis. It is our daily
experience of the successful operation of this convention that may cause us to assume that referring
expressions can only designate very specific entities. This appears to be a pragmatic connection
between proper names and objects that will be conventionally associated, within a socioculturally
defined community, with those names. Using a proper name referentially to identify any such object
invites the listener to make the expected inference. (For example: from name of writer to book by
writer) and thereby show himself or herself to be a member of the same community as the speaker.

The role of co-text:

Our ability to identify intended referents has actually depended on more than our understanding of
the referring expression. For example: “Brazil” was a referring expression and “wins World Cup” was
part of the co-text. The co-text clearly limits the range of possible interpretations we might have for a
word like “Brazil”. That's why, the co-text is just a linguistic part of the environment in which a
referring expression is used. The physical environment, or context, is perhaps more easily
recognized as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions are to be interpreted.

Anaphoric references:
In English, the initial reference, or introductory mention, is often indefinite (a man, a woman, a cat).
In the definite noun phrases (the man, the woman) and the pronouns (it, her) are examples of
subsequent reference to already introduced referents, known as anaphoric reference or anaphora.
In technical terms, the second or subsequent expression is the anaphor and the initial expression is
the antecedent. Zero anaphora or ellipsis is used as a means of maintaining reference, clearly
creating an expectation that the listener will be able to infer who or what the speaker intends to
identify.

Chapter 6- Speech acts

We produce actions through words. We use the term “speech acts” to describe actions. It's the
action produced by a speaker with an utterance.
The action performed by producing an utterance will consist of 3 related acts:
*Locutionary act: related to the message. Producing a meaningful linguistic expression.
*Illocutionary act: related to the speaker. The speaker puts an intention on the message by giving it
a force.We don´t produce well-formed utterances with no purpose, we form an utterance with some
kind of function in mind. It´s performed via the communicative force of an utterance.
*Perlocutionary: related to the receiver. It's the reaction of the receiver. We also create an utterance
to have an effect, we utter on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended.
The intended illocutionary force will be recognized by the hearer by:
*whether the performative verb is produced or not. It´s the verb that explicitly names the illocutionary
act being performed. However, speakers do not always perform their speech acts so explicitly, they
use intonation-stress or word order to indicate the illocutionary force.
*Felicity conditions: the necessary conditions that must be met for a speech act to be successful.
The success in the achievement of the value of the speech act.
The speech act exists in a speech event. the speech act will get a definitive value in the speech
event.
The speech event is conversation. It cannot exist without language. It's the nature of the speech
event that determines the interpretation of an utterance as performing a particular speech act.
The speech event exists in a speech situation that contains rules of society. The speech situation
may contain language or not. A speech situation is any situation in which people are together but
may speak or not.
Speech act classification- 5 types of general functions performed by speech acts.
Declaratives: are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance.
Representatives: speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not.
Expressives: states what the speaker feels.
Directives: used to get someone else to do something. They express what the speaker wants.
Commissives: used to commit themselves to some future action (what you´ll do yourself)
Direct and indirect speech acts.
Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech
act.
When there is an indirect relationship between structure and function we have an indirect speech
act.
Eg: Could you pass me the salt? You´re not asking about ability, it means “pass me the salt”.
We´re intending more than what we are actually saying because we're showing a degree of
politeness.

Pragmatics - Chapter 8: CONVERSATION AND PREFERENCE STRUCTURE

Conversation is a meeting point in which you exchange or negotiate meaning. It is a speech event
because it cannot occur without speech. It is a form of social interaction, but there are others such
as quarrels, jokes, interviews, lessons, lectures, public-speeches.

Conversation has got a universal structure with basic patterns and components. The only
unpredictable thing about conversation is the topic.
The components of the structure of conversation are universal. They are:
-Floor: the right to speak
-Turn: having control of the floor
-Turn-taking: mechanism by which a speaker takes the floor
-Local management system: a set of conventions for getting turns, keeping them or giving them
away.
-Transition Relevance Place (TRP): point in conversation when the turn can change. For example,
eye contact. You look at sb waiting for an answer.

Other components are: pauses, overlaps, backchannel.

We can say that conversation can be related to a DANCE (when the turn naturally flows from
speaker A to speaker B, smoothly) or to a TRAFFIC JAM (when 2 speakers get to the floor, fight
over it as when 2 cars practically crash at crossroads).

-Pauses: They can be natural or they can become “attributable silence” (a silence that becomes
significant because it is longer than expected).
-Overlaps: It is the talking of more than 1 speaker at a time. It can be caused by 2 reasons (speaker
A does not select the next speaker, so he leaves the turn open, or speaker b and others self select,
so they overlap).
You are expected to wait until the other speaker reaches a TRP.
Overlapping can be the result of 2 factors: COMPETITION (speaker A and B compete over the floor)
or SOLIDARITY (speaker A supplies the word that speaker B cannot find, and they say it at the
same time).
-Back channels: a way of indicating that the listener is actually listening. Phrases such as “uh-uh”,
“yeah” or “mmm”. They provide feedback to the current speaker that the message is being received.
The absence of backchannels is typically interpreted as significant: the listener is not listening.

Conversational style: it could be fast or slow, with interruptions or with no interruptions, with almost
no pauses or with long pauses. It depends on personality. A slow speaker may think a fast speaker
who speaks almost no pauses and who interrupts is selfish and noisy.

Adjacency pairs
Adjacent means immediately after, close together.
It means that there is a first part immediately followed by a second part.
The first part conditions and creates expectations of the second part.
For example:
1st “What’s up?” 2nd “Nothing much”.
However, we may find the following case: The first part is not immediately followed by the 2nd part,
because in between there is another question-answer inserted and that is called an insertion
sequence.
For example:
1st part: Do you want an early flight?
1st part: What time does it arrive?
2nd part: Nine forty-five.
2nd part: Yeah, that’s great
There is one adjacent pair inside another adjacent pair.
This shows that the 2nd part has got 2 possibilities. In the case of the question it could have been
yes or no. However, there is always one preferred next act and one dispreferred next act. This is
what we call the preference structure.
After an invitation, there is a preferred next act (acceptance) and a dispreferred next act (refusal).
Hesitation or silence usually indicates that the 2nd part is possibly dispreferred. We tend to delay a
dispreferred 2nd part.

In conversation, the more language we resort to, the more indirect we are, the more distance is
established between participants and the less familiarity we establish with the interlocutor.
By interacting through conversation we are indicating the relative distance that there is among
participants. WE ARE COMMUNICATING PRAGMATIC MEANING, WE ARE EXPRESSING MORE
THAN WHAT WORDS ACTUALLY SAY.

Chapter 11:

Pragmatics: Communication clearly depends on not only recognizing the meaning of words in an
utterance, but recognizing what speakers mean by their utterances. The study of what speakers
mean, or ‘speaker meaning’, is called pragmatics.
Pragmatics is the study of ‘invisible’ meaning, or how we recognize what is meant even when it
isn’t actually said or written. In order for that to happen, speakers (or writers) must be able to
depend on a lot of shared assumptions and expectations when they try to communicate.

Invisible meaning: We must use the meanings of the words, the context in which they occur, and
some preexisting knowledge of what would be a likely message as we work toward a reasonable
interpretation of what the producer of the sign intended it to convey. Our interpretation of the
‘meaning’ of the sign is not based solely on the words, but on what we think the writer intended
to communicate.

Context: The influence of context. There are different kinds of context. One kind is described as
linguistic context, also known as co-text. . The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the
same phrase or sentence. The surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we think the word
probably means. (e.g.: bank as a homonym, a single form with more than one meaning.) More
generally, we know how to interpret words on the basis of physical context. Our understanding of
much of what we read and hear is tied to this processing of aspects of the physical context,
particularly the time and place, in which we encounter linguistic expressions.

Deixis: from the Greek word deixis (pronounced like ‘day-icksis’), which means ‘pointing’ via
language. There are some very common words in our language that can’t be interpreted at all if we
don’t know the context, especially the physical context of the speaker. These are words such as
here and there, this or that, now and then, yesterday, today or tomorrow, as well as pronouns such
as you, me, she, him, it, them. For example: You’ll have to bring it back tomorrow because she isn’t
here today.Out of context, this sentence is really vague. Expressions such as tomorrow and here
are obvious examples of bits of language that we can only understand in terms of the speaker’s
intended meaning (i.e.: deictic expressions). We use deixis to point to things (it, this, these boxes)
and people (him, them, those idiots), sometimes called person deixis. Words and phrases used to
point to a location (here, there, near that) are examples of spatial deixis, and those used to point to
a time (now, then, last week) are examples of temporal deixis.

Reference: an act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader) to
identify something. To perform an act of reference, we can use proper nouns (Chomsky, Jennifer,
Whiskas), other nouns in phrases (a writer, my friend, the cat) or pronouns (he, she, it). We
sometimes assume that these words identify someone or something uniquely, but it is more
accurate to say that, for each word or phrase, there is a ‘range of reference’. The words Jennifer or
friend or she can be used to refer to many entities in the world. As we observed earlier, an
expression such as the war doesn’t directly identify anything by itself, because its reference
depends on who is using it.

Inference: An inference is additional information used by the listener to create a connection

between what is said and what must be meant. For example, in a restaurant, one waiter can ask
another, Where’s the spinach salad sitting? and receive the reply, He’s sitting by the door. If you’re
studying linguistics, you might ask someone, Can I look at your Chomsky? and get the response,
Sure, it’s on the shelf over there. These examples make it clear that we can use names associated
with things (salad) to refer to people, and use names of people (Chomsky) to refer to things. The
key process here is called inference.

Anaphora: Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already introduced entity

(‘referring back’). The first mention is called the antecedent. So, in our example, a boy, a puppy
and a small bath are antecedents and The puppy, the boy, he, it and the bath are anaphoric
expressions.

Presupposition: What a speaker (or writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or reader) can
be described as a presupposition. We design our linguistic messages on the basis of large-scale
assumptions about what our listeners already know. Some of these assumptions may be mistaken,
of course, but mostly they’re appropriate.

Speech acts: We use the term speech act to describe actions such as ‘requesting’, ‘commanding’,
‘questioning’ or ‘informing’. We can define a speech act as the action performed by a speaker with
an utterance. If you say, I’ll be there at six, you are not just speaking, you seem to be performing the
speech act of ‘promising’.

Direct and indirect speech acts: When an interrogative structure such as Did you . . .?, Are they . .
.? or Can we . . .? is used with the function of a question, it is described as a direct speech act. For
example, when we don’t know something and we ask someone to provide the information, we
usually produce a direct speech act such as Can you ride a bicycle? Compare that utterance with
Can you pass the salt? In this second example, we are not really asking a question about
someone’s ability. In fact, we don’t normally use this structure as a question at all. We normally use
it to make a request. That is, we are using a syntactic structure associated with the function of a
question, but in this case with the function of a request. This is an example of an indirect speech
act. Failure to recognize indirect speech acts can lead to some bizarre interactions. The main
reason we use indirect speech acts seems to be that actions such as requests presented in an
indirect way (Could you open that door for me?) are generally considered to be more gentle or more
polite in our society than direct speech acts (Open that door for me!). Exactly why they are
considered to be more polite is based on some complex social assumptions.

Chapter 12:

Discourse analysis: The word ‘discourse’ is usually defined as ‘language beyond the sentence’
and the analysis of discourse is typically concerned with the study of language in text and
conversation. When we carry this investigation further and ask how we make sense of what we
read, how we can recognize well-constructed texts as opposed to those that are jumbled or
incoherent, how we understand speakers who communicate more than they say, and how we
successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking what is known
as discourse analysis.

Cohesion: (‘connectedness’) the ties and connections that exist within texts. Analysis of these
cohesive ties within a text gives us some insight into how writers structure what they want to say
and they may be crucial factors in our judgments on whether something is well written or not.

Coherence: (‘everything fitting together well’) is not something that exists in words or structures,
but something that exists in people. It is people who ‘make sense’ of what they read and hear.

Speech events: In exploring what it is we know about taking part in conversation, or any other
speech event (e.g. debate, interview, various types of discussions), we quickly realize that there is
enormous variation in what people say and do in different circumstances. . As language-users, in a
particular culture, we clearly have quite sophisticated knowledge of how conversation works.

Conversation analysis: In simple terms, English conversation can be described as an activity in

which, for the most part, two or more people take turns at speaking. Typically, only one person
speaks at a time and there tends to be an avoidance of silence between speaking turns. Participants
wait until one speaker indicates that he or she has finished, usually by signaling a completion
point.

Turn-taking: Some of these strategies seem to be the source of what is sometimes described by
participants as ‘rudeness’ (if one speaker cuts in on another speaker) or ‘shyness’ (if one speaker
keeps waiting for an opportunity to take a turn and none seems to occur). The participants
characterized as ‘rude’ or ‘shy’ in this way may simply be adhering to slightly different conventions of
turn-taking.

- filled pauses (with em, er, you know) AKA fillers to indicate you are still talking.
- to hold the floor: to speak to a group of people, often for a long time, without allowing anyone
else to speak.
These types of strategies, by themselves, should not be considered undesirable or domineering.
They are present in the conversational speech of most people and they are part of what makes
conversation work.