Preliminaries of Pragmatics

Cuprins
CONTENTS
Cuvânt introductiv şi bibliografie 5

Introduction and bibliography
Chapter I – Conventions, Conditions, Commitments 7
1.1 Repere teoretice – 7

1.1.1 Definitions of the field 7
1.1.2 The communicative situation 9
1.1.3 Deictics, presuppositions, implicatures 12
1.2 Aplicaţii 17
1.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare 21
1.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen 25
Chapter II – Principle-Controlled Interaction 27
2.1 Repere teoretice – 27

2.1.1 The conversational mechanism 27
2.1.2 Interactional patterns 30
2.1.3 Pragmatic politeness 31
2.2 Aplicaţii 38
2.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare 42
2.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen 45
Concluzii
Conclusions 48
Răspunsuri la teste
Answers to Tests 49
Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 3

Introduction and Bibliography
_____________________________________________________________
MOTO - Multe au rămas neclarificate: noi să facem o scurtă recapitulare şi

apoi să mergem mai departe (J. L. Austin)
Cuvânt introductiv şi bibliografie
Cursul practic de limba/literatura engleză pe care îl prefaţăm aici durează un

semestru şi îşi propune următoarele obiective:
 cunoaşterea teoriei fundamentale din ramura filologică numită
pragmatică; apropierea de un domeniu de cercetare specific care se
înrudeşte îndeaproape cu filozofia limbajului
 cultivarea limbii văzute nu ca sistem de semne, ci ca interacţiune
 utilizarea legăturilor interdisciplinare ale pragmaticii cu teoria
comunicării, sociolingvistică, psiholingvistică şi analiză discursivă
Fiecare capitol este structurat pe patru segmente, în următoarea succesiune:

(1) elemente de teorie pentru sarcini de lucru retorico-discursiv; (2) aplicaţii
relevante; (3) teste de autoevaluare; (4) teme pentru verificare/ examen.
In esenţă, primul capitol se referă la analiza de text de factură pragmatică,

pentru a dezvolta la cursanţi ştiinţa de a descoperi în orice enunţare mărcile
activităţii de codificare şi anticiparea strategică a activităţilor de decodificare.
Cel de-al doilea capitol întreprinde o succintă prezentare a teoriei actelor de
limbaj (Austin-Searle) care au dat startul extinderii şi dezvoltării ulterioare
remarcabile, în diverse direcţii, a cercetării pragmatice ca negociere
conversaţională. Oferim, spre investigare, o suită de texte pentru comentarii
personale asupra lor, cu următorul orizont al aşteptărilor: să se treacă dincolo
de latura de construcţii semantico-sintactice decodabile într-un singur sens
spre diversitatea unor situaţii de vorbire cu multiple sensuri care sunt de fapt
ipoteze de lucru. Iar, dacă se poate broda critic pe marginea lor, să se facă
apel nu atât la teorii, principii şi maxime, cât la intuiţii ale analistului avizat.
Pentru un studiu mai amplu al tematicii, facem următoarele recomandări

bibliografice minimale:
Austin, J. L. (2003) Cum să faci lucruri cu vorbe, trad. S. Corneanu,

Bucureşti: Ed. Paralela 45.
Beaugrande, R. de & W. Dressler (1981/1992) Introduction to Text
Linguistics, London and New York: Longman.
Bidu-Vrânceanu, A. et al. (2005) Dicţionar de ştiinţe ale limbii. Bucureşti:
Nemira.
Brown, G. and G. Yule (1989) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University
Press.
Cârâc, I. (2003) Teoria şi practica semnului. Iaşi: Institutul European.
Cornilescu, A. & D. Chiţoran (1994) The Theory of Speech Acts. Iaşi: Editura
Fundaţiei „Chemarea”.
Deac, I. (2002) Introducere în teoria negocierii. Bucureşti: Paideia.
Drăgan, G. (2005) Modele culturale comparate. Iaşi: Institutul European.
Fârte, Gh.-I. (2004) Comunicarea. O abordare praxiologică. Iaşi: Casa
Editorială Demiurg.
5
Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work
Introduction and Bibliography
_____________________________________________________________
Genette, G. (1994) Introducere în arhitext. Ficţiune şi dicţiune, trad. I. Pop,
Bucureşti: Editura Univers.
Hofmann, Th. R. (1993) Realms of Meaning, London & New York: Longman.
Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu, L. (1999) Conversaţia. Structuri şi strategii, Bucureşti:
Editura ALL EDUCATIONAL.
Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu, L. (2003) Limbaj şi comunicare, Bucureşti: Editura ALL
EDUCATIONAL.
Jost, W. & W. Olmsted (eds.) (2006) A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical
Criticism. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Leech, G. (1991) Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman.
Levinson, S. (1991) Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Maingueneau, D. (2005) Pragmatique pour le discours littéraire (trad. în
limba română R.-N. Balatchi, Pragmatică pentru discursul literar,
2007), Iaşi: Institutul European.
Maingueneau, D. (2007) Discursul literar (trad. în limba română N.L.
Moroşan), Iaşi: Institutul European.
Maingueneau, D. (2007) Analiza textelor de comunicare (trad. în limba
română M. Şovea), Iaşi: Institutul European.
Milea, D. şi S. Antofi (eds.) (2007) Discursul intelectual la răspântiile istoriei.
Galaţi: Editura Europlus.
Mucchielli, A. (2002) Arta de a influenţa. Analiza tehnicilor de manipulare.
Iaşi: Polirom.
Mucchielli, A. (2005) Arta de a comunica. Metode, forme şi psihologia
situaţiilor de comunicare. Iaşi: Polirom.
Nash, W. (1989/1992) Rhetoric. The Wit of Persuasion. Cambridge:
Blackwell Publishers.
Oprea, I. (2007) Elemente de filozofia limbii, Iaşi: Institutul European.
Saeed, J. (1997) Semantics. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Sperber, D. & D. Wilson (1995) Relevance: Communication and cognition.
(second ed.) Oxford: Blackwell.
Stenstrom, A. (1994) An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. London:
Longman.
Sweetser, E. (1990/1995) From Etymology to Pragmatics, Cambridge:C.U.P.
Ţuchel, D. (1997) Pragmatic Readings. Brăila: Editura Evrika.
Ţuchel, D. (2004) Pragmatics Primer. Bucureşti: Editura Didactică şi
Pedagogică.
*** (2006) Semiotics beyond Limits. Proceedings of the First ROASS
Conference. Bacău: ALMA MATER Publishing House.
6
Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work
Chapter I – Conventions, Conditions, Commitments
1.1 Repere teoretice
1.1.1 Definitions of the field
Any pragmatic approach starts from meaning, the basic unit used in
linguistics as a datum and as a criterion of analysis.
By the time our students come to read pragmatics, they will normally
have learned how to deal with a poem, novel or play hardly wondering at the
nature of the event they are involved in. They are aware at least that, at
academic levels, a text with its form and function is a complex cultural
phenomenon, the handling of which presupposing knowledge of a theoretical
nature too. The keen sense of linguistic detail can help us go beyond narrow
confines of any philological branch and demonstrate a text’s potential for
creating a new mode of experience.
Oversimplifying the real nature of literary or non-literary discourse can
be avoided by combining traditional linguistic and literary methods with more
recent developments in text linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and
reception theory - “young twigs on an old tree”, as we may jocularly dub
them.
Therefore, the transmission of meaning at the level of utterance and
text is the theoretical perspective we adopt in the present approach, as
leading to a possible answer to the question of how to understand textuality
and its functioning in literary and real-life communication. Our ultimate goal in
the present enterprise can be stated as an endeavour to show pragmatically
how forms engender interpretations. Last but not least, a word in self-
defence: with all the scholarship generated by the issue, nobody seems to be
clear as yet about how the meanings of words and sentences add up when
they occur in a text so as to give out its message. The least we can do is to
try not to underestimate the contribution of contextual information when
pragmatic meaning comes forth in the process of reception.
We rely on our students’ training in reading fiction. For instance, they
are presumed to know that writers develop strategies before or while a book
gets written down. A strategy is always directed towards a goal. The goal is
affected by the situation, by what a speaker / writer wants to achieve. He
must adjust his strategy to the situation. He has to estimate what his receptor
already knows and how much information the receptor can process within a
given span of discourse. Paul Grice (1975) stipulates a communicator has to
give the right information both in quality and in quantity. Other researchers
added that the right concentration is to be achieved, putting in enough
redundancy and not diluting the text very much.
Students are generally trained to work out different strategic principles
of unity which can be combined in different ways, for instance: the unity of
hero, as often happens in narratives; the unity of place, when there is a
spatially-motivated linear patterning of the text; temporal unity, as in
chronicles or any narrative organized chronologically. Moreover, students are
trained to see strategies within sentences and clauses, for example thematic
information included in elements occurring later. Usually weighty elements
come late, and they are weighty precisely because they contain a lot of new
information. Existential “there” and the narrative formula “once / once upon a
time” are alternatives when there is no old / given / thematic information. The
strategy that can be labelled as “crucial information first” is very common in
impromptu dialogue which promotes new, therefore important information
first, whereas old information, if given at all, is added as an afterthought.
Students presupposedly know already that texts present themselves
as complex linguistic structures, the meaning of which must be
(re)constructed in the act of reading itself. Traditionally, such processes of
constructing meaning on the basis of a text have been studied by stylistics.
This discipline handles the idea of ‘style’ as a concrete manifestation of
textuality. Two classic definitions of the concept are as follows: (a) style as
related to a linguistic norm; (b) style as choice. Each of these definitions has
problems. A situation-bound definition may surmount these problems.
If style, as the classic commonsense definition goes, is one way of
saying something, objections can be raised by ‘monists’. They say that a
given meaning can only be expressed in one single way, because their belief
is that once you start tinkering with expressions you also start tinkering with
meanings. ‘Dualists’ claim that the same underlying meaning can be made to
assume different surface forms. Generative-transformational grammars insist
that transformations do not change meanings, they change surface forms.
A reader’s experience of style arises when he matches a text with past
experiences of other texts. In the assessment of similarities and differences,
a norm is of help (by ‘norm’ no value judgement is involved, but a sort of
linguistic competence and intuitive ease in matching texts). To feel the
characteristic Miltonian texture, for example, in a Milton passage is a result of
having experienced both Miltonian and non-Miltonian poems. In the case of
foreign texts in a foreign language, the reader matches them with the norms
transferred from his native language and culture.
Thus, one primordial task of linguistic stylistics is to provide explicit
linguistic procedures for the matching of text and norm. Style as choice, on
the one hand, is the problem of the speaker / writer with a vast repertoire of
linguistic devices at their disposal. The choice between “it’s late” and “it’s not
late” is not stylistic, it is a matter of truth. The choice between “My wife is a
children’s doctor” and “My wife is a paediatrician” does not affect the truth
value, since the two different utterances have the same truth condition: if one
is true, so is the other. The difference in this case is stylistic indeed.
In investigations of style, a great problem is the relation between
expression and meaning. In the dualistic view, where we define style as one
of several possible ways of expressing something, we must be capable of
deciding whether two different expressions mean the same or not. It is easy
to assume that those word-order presentations that do not change the basic
syntactic roles of constituents, and which do not change quantifier scope, are
cognitively equivalent. “John kicked Jim” and “Jim kicked John” are non-
equivalent because syntactic roles have been switched. “Everybody in this
room speaks three languages” and “Three languages are spoken by
everybody in this room” are non-equivalent at least because they differ in
quantifier scope.
If we are compelled to see style as governed by forces and style as
process, not as static structure residing in texts, we can follow the change of
one structure into another. What is more, processual stylistics rests on a
foundation of structural stylistics. We view forces determining style as
elements in a system. As the structuralists used to teach us, an element is
meaningful only if it contrasts with other elements; elements without contrast
are meaningless. Conversely, only by setting up a contrast between the
8 Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work
element which is actually there in a text, and other elements which might
have been but are not, can we grasp the meaning of that element. A quest for
contrasts gives us clues as to the character of stylistic choice, though we can
never tell precisely what actually went on in the mind of a text-producer.
We have insisted along the lines of stylistics because this is
undoubtedly one of the necessary contributors to the realisation of
pragmatic meaning and because it is more familiar with younger students of
linguistics. On the other hand, meaning being on the borderline between
linguistic branches, it is clearly the result of an interaction that occurs
between textual form and a reader’s pre-existing mental representations.
Maybe the most edifying act in this respect is for us to enumerate all the
definitions given to pragmatics by Levinson (1983) who sums up various
stands:
1. the study of language from a functional point of view (linguistic structures
by reference to non-linguistic pressures and causes);
2. the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in a semantic
theory (semantics and pragmatics working in tandem);
3. the study of those relations between language and context that are
grammaticalized or encoded in the structure of a language;
4. the study of the relations between language and context that are basic to
an account of language understanding (understanding involving a great deal
more than knowing the meaning of the words and the grammatical relations
between them in an utterance);
5. the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the
contexts in which they would be appropriate.
6. the study of deixis, implicatures, presuppositions, speech acts,
illocutionary forces and aspects of discourse structure.
To conclude with, we feel bound to remark the following:
- as pragmatics seems to have no longtime formal history behind, it can
be metaphorically looked upon as the rootless tree toppling over for lack of
roots and excessive burden placed on its multiple branches;
- again metaphorically, pragmatics plays the role of a wastepaper
basket, for it is too ready to accept and work upon all unsolved-yet puzzles in
grammar or language explanation of any sort;
- pragmatics is constantly interested in how humans put languages to
use and not, as traditional grammar does, how language works by itself. The
permanence of pursuits is given by the tandem <sign> versus <user of sign>;
- pragmatics makes use of the following, while never becoming one of
them: pure grammar, logic proper, rhetoric, or semiotics;
- pragmatics comes to the (destabilizing perhaps) conclusion that
nothing is being directly communicated, but it is adequate for language-users
to be ready to accept communication as a message transmission with
various degrees of indirectness.
1.1.2 The communicative situation
Various definitions of pragmatics point to a study of constraints on the

appropriateness of utterances. Let us deal, in turn, with each of these
fundamental notions for the pragmatic investigation.
↷ CONSTRAINT:

There are constraints that operate to govern the exchanges of all

communicators. These constraints limit Speaker [S] as to what s/he can say
and limit Hearer [H] as to what s/he can infer.
Paul Grice develops the principle of co-operativeness/cooperation
(‘the CP’ henceforth) between communicators. He expressed the principle in
the formulation we will reproduce below, and in four maxims (alternatively,
supermaxims) with submaxims for three of them.
CP: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the
stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the
talk exchange in which you are engaged.
The Maxim of Quantity: Submaxim 1 – Make your contribution as
informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange.
Submaxim 2 – Do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
The Maxim of Quality: Supermaxim – Try to make your contribution one that
is true.
Submaxim 1 – Do not say what you believe to be false.
Submaxim 2 – Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
The Maxim of Relation/Relevance: Be relevant.
The Maxim of Manner: Supermaxim – Be perspicuous.
Submaxim 1 – Avoid obscurity of expression.
Submaxim 2 – Avoid ambiguity.
Submaxim 3 – Be brief.
Submaxim 4 – Be orderly.
All of them operate towards a maximally efficient exchange. One must accept
that natural conversation or any form of communication, as motivated by a
variety of reasons, will not apply them fully and constantly.
↷ APPROPRIATENESS:
We refer to it when making those adjustments that presume we use
the right words, at the right time, in the right place, to the right listener etc. In
a word, it covers everything that a true pragmaticist analyzes.
There are propositional content pragmatic conditions which refer to
the fact that, in performing, any S adequately expresses a proposition
concerning a particular act, event or state. If S says, for example, I apologize
for …-ing, the ‘I’ here predicates a past action of him/herself. If S says, I
promise I will…, s/he predicates that a future act will be performed. But if S
says, I promise he will…, the predication is not explicit in connection with
what specifically S will do to determine ‘him’ – an absent party – to perform,
but an act of promising still happens.
Then, there are preparatory conditions - actually, pre-conditions
necessary for the uptake (intended meaning) of an illocution (implied
meaning) to fulfil the intention. For instance, a couple cannot get married at a
private party with the ritualistic act of marriage performed by one of their
friends. The person authorized – as one of the preparatory conditions of
participation – is the priest or the registrar.
The sincerity conditions cover the necessary feelings or beliefs of S
for the speech act. Lack of sincerity results in various kinds of insincerities:
‘lying’, for instance, if a statement is made even though its speaker knows it
to be untrue, ‘perjury’ occurs when the person making a deposition in court –
under oath – knows his words to be false, ‘abuse’ is the term for what a juror
does, knowing that a defendant is innocent but publicly finding him guilty.
Sincerity can be defined in a variety of ways, for instance: 1) a claim to
trustworthiness; 2) a correct match of outward form and interior state of the
speaker; 3) mapping of the spoken text onto the thoughts of the speaker; 4)
congruence between avowal and actual feeling.
The essential condition is that a person uttering a sentence is
committed to certain beliefs or intentions by the pragmatic force of his/her
utterance. For instance, if S promises, vows or pledges (that is, makes a
solemn promise) then the utterance is understood as containing the genuine
intention to do the promised thing. In the case of illocutions expressing a
psychological state, the essential and sincerity conditions are seen to be in
overlap.
There are also truth conditions, definable as those conditions under
which a sentence could be used to make a true statement. The truth content
can be pragmatically hedged (strengthened or weakened) by such adverbs
as allegedly, supposedly, certainly, hopefully, undoubtedly, surely,
presumably, and so on. One clear linguistic device that helps with the
representation of truth is modality, practically embedded in almost all
statements. Modality is known to be attitude, explicit or implicit in connection
with four ideas: truth, obligation, permission and desirability (you can check
against modal auxiliaries, modal adverbs and modal adjectives occurring in a
sentence).
When conditions do not apply, when appropriateness fails to happen,
the breakdown can be termed miscommunication and that will generate
costliness, time-consumption, strain, even conflict. This can be precluded
from happening by a careful knowledge and handling of barriers. A
communicator may begin with due listening activity: conscious effort and a
willing mind. Experience makes us recollect that there can be (a) barriers to
reception (e.g. environmental noise or long distance between
communicators), (b) barriers to understanding (e.g. semantic problems or
syntactic length), (c) barriers to acceptance (e.g. prejudices or interpersonal
antipathy) and the enumeration may continue.
↷ UTTERANCE:
This basic unit of analysis for pragmatics can be defined as a linguistic
action which is used to achieve the speaker’s goals. Utterances which are
used to claim and maintain the floor (that means a right to saying something
in public) are main-channel utterances; those used to yield or support the
floor (that refers to interjections, laughter, monosyllable words, etc.)
constitute the back-channel.
What pre-exists an utterance is the sender's intention to communicate
something. One can distinguish between the following:
» FACTS: information known to be true.
» FEELINGS: reactions on an emotional level, in a specific situation.
» VALUES: unchanging beliefs about one’s self, about social beings and their
culture.
» OPINIONS: attitudes concerning one’s own position in a given situation.
The process of transmitting information about the self is known under
the name of openness. Open communication refers also to the disclosure of
what S knows in connection with one particular experience. In order to make
good choices about the degree of self-disclosure introduced in
communication, S must be mindful of the status and power of H, while taking
into account the variety of categories of openness: non-verbal (facial
expressions, vocal tone, body movement), emotional (others being allowed

to know about your mood and about your feelings not changing or kept in
hiding), receptive (attention and interest in the other), negative
(disagreement) and possibly others.
The communicative situation is fully comprehended owing to a
handling of such concepts as frames, scenarios, schemata and scripts. In
“Discourse Analysis” (1989), Brown & Yule tackle Minsky’s frame-theory (in
The Psychology of Computer Vision), according to which knowledge is stored
in memory in the form of data structures (that is, frames) which represent
stereotyped situations. By analogy with frame, the notion of script has been
developed to deal with “event sequences” (Schank & Abelson 1977) and then
to describe that what we read or hear is “expectation-based”. Other
researchers (Sanford & Garrod 1981) adopt scenario as a term to point to
what lies behind a text as “domain of reference”, primarily knowledge of
settings and situations. Actually, text-processing may go on without an
immediately available scenario structure; on the other hand, a scenario
representation can be activated if a piece of text is a partial description of an
element belonging to a scenario. Scenarios are said to be situation-specific,
whereas schemata constitute representations of a much more general type
of knowledge. They are conventional or habitual (Van Dijk 1981), functioning
as “ideational scaffolding” (Anderson 1977). A text may have a scenario, but
it does not have a schema, it is readers who have schemata so as to
comprehend stories. In short, “different cultural backgrounds can result in
different schemata for the description of witnessed events” (Brown & Yule
1989).
1.1.3 Deictics, presuppositions, implicatures

The constant discussion of context in pragmatics is justified by the
fact that understanding an utterance involves much more than knowing the
meanings of words and the grammatical relations between them. What is a
possible definition of context? Here it is: a subpart of the universe of
discourse shared by speaker and hearer, including facts about the situation
of communication and also about the topic under discussion.
An opaque context will typically involve indefinite phrases ambiguous
between a specific and a non-specific type of referential reading. An opaque
context may also involve verbs such as want, believe, wonder about (opacity
creating verbs). Since referring expressions depend for their meaning on the
circumstances of use, a clear one-directional interpretation occurs in a
transparent context. For example, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here’s our Prime
Minister, Mr David Cameron.’ David Cameron: ‘What would you like to know
about the Prime Minister? [= about me / transparent context] What’s to say
about a Prime Minister, it’s all in the papers. [= about x, y, z as prime
ministers / opaque context]
The context of an utterance is to be made out necessarily by finding
the ways in which that utterance is tied to a particular time and place (time
deixis and place deixis). As for the deictic reference point of ‘I’ speaking ‘now’
(personal deixis), the rule is: my conversational contribution determines that
my past will be past in relation to the point of speaking. A new definition
imposes itself by necessity: deictics are the (sets of) words whose meanings
vary according to (1) who uses them, (2) where they are used, (3) when they
are used.

Deixis is an anchoring point, at the zero level being denoted by the

grouping I – here - now. Deixis as a systematic extraction of meaning from
the situation can be illustrated as follows:
(1) If Mary tells John I won’t have anything to do with you, I here refers to
Mary and you here refers to John. If John answers Mary I simply hate
you for this, I here refers to John and you here refers to Mary. First and
second persons are deictic, third person is non-deictic.
(2) If a local of Galatzi tells me, while we are both in Galatzi, This city stinks,
the words “this city” refer to Galatzi. The demonstratives are deictics
within space deixis.
(3) If, on 1st Jan. 2004, I say, Everything seemed to go wrong last year, “last
year” is a deictic expression referring to 2003. Comprehension in this
case is ensured by time deixis.
(4) If both addresser and addressee are away from their home, the utterance
I came over several times to visit you, but you were never there
(Levinson’s example, 1991: 84) encodes a motion towards a home-base,
which is called by Levinson “normative location” as different from the
participants’ actual location. Similar remarks can be made about ‘come’,
‘go’, ‘bring’ and ‘take’ as verbs with a deictic content.
Therefore, deixis “points” to meaning, as the Greek etymology shows.
The deictics, in all languages, are in fact clues to the identity of referents if
communication is to be kept up coherently.
Another concept that relates, like deictics, to the knowledge that S and
H will assume to share is presupposition. Presuppositions have been
defined in various ways:
» PRESUPPOSITION1: one in a set of ideas that form relationships with
an utterance so as to become conditions for the understanding of the
utterance.
» PRESUPPOSITION2: an assumption S makes about what H is likely to
accept without challenge.
» PRESUPPOSITION3: a basic assumption against which an action or
an expression makes sense or is rational.
Some are semantic relations, for example ‘husband’ presupposes the
existence of a wife, whereas ‘brother’ does not presuppose ‘sister’ only, as
long as one can be brother to another brother. Others are relations in syntax,
for instance, John complained that he hadn’t been invited presupposes,
among other things, that ‘John was not invited’; others are related to
speakers’ knowledge of the world, namely, in our case, (a) the presupposition
that an event took place or was going to take place and (b) the
presupposition that John had socialising rights to an invitation.
The presuppositional field is necessary in communication because it
would be awkward, even impossible for every speaker to define and explain
everything every time he speaks. Degrees of necessary
explicitness/implicitness ratios will vary from one situational context to
another. There is much dependence on the knowledge that S and H will
assume of each other.
Much of the presupposed material is built on the basis of what we
understand to be happening in ‘real’ life. Nonetheless, linguists have been
successful in pointing out what words or surface structure items generate
presuppositional phenomena. Karttunen, quoted by Levinson (1991: 169 ff),
has collected thirty-one such items called presupposition(al) triggers. We
display a number of them further down.

a) a definite description (the use of the definite article), e.g. I saw the man
stealing presupposes There was a man stealing.
b) factive verbs and predicates, e.g. to be sorry, to regret, to be proud, to be
indifferent that…, to realize, etc. She was glad that she was seen there
presupposes She was seen there.
c) change of state verbs, e.g. start, finish, carry on, cease, enter, come, go,
leave, arrive, etc. I stopped asking questions presupposes I asked
questions.
d) iteratives, e.g. again, another time, to restore, to repeat, for the third time,
etc. You can’t get fresh air anymore presupposes You enjoyed fresh air
before.
e) implicative verbs, e.g. intend, plan, happen, manage, etc. They forgot to
lock up presupposes They ought to have locked up.
f) temporal clauses, e.g. introduced by while, during, whenever, before,
after, as, etc. Since she left, the house seemed empty presupposes She
left.
g) counterfactual conditions, e.g. a type III if-clause. If the silk hadn’t draped
well, she wouldn’t have been such a success at the party presupposes
The silk draped well.
h) comparisons and contrasts (they may be marked by stress), e.g. The
tramp drew nearer to the fire presupposes The tramp was near the fire.
i) questions: (1) in wh- the presupposition replaces this word; (2) in yes/no
questions, the presupposition is the disjunction of the possible answer,
e.g. Who is the president of the company? presupposes Someone is the
president of the company. (2) Is the patron saint of the hospital Andrew or
Nicholas? presupposes Either the patron saint of the hospital is Andrew
or the patron saint of the same hospital is Nicholas.
j) non-restrictive relative clauses, e.g. Hathaway, which was Shakespeare’s
wife’s surname, can also occur as a boy’s given name presupposes
Shakespeare’s wife’s surname was Hathaway.
k) cleft sentences, e.g. It was your dog that pricked up its ears, not mine
presupposes A dog pricked up its ears.
l) pseudo-cleft sentences, e.g. What they did last week was to project the
building costs for the next three years presupposes Last week they
projected the building costs for the next three years.
m) implicit clefts (with stressed constituents), e.g. Dictatorship wasn’t
invented by Ceauşescu! presupposes Someone was the first dictator in
history.
n) implicative verbs (manage, plan, intend, forget, etc.), e.g. I happened to
find them in presupposes I didn’t arrange in advance that I should find
them.
o) verbs of judging (criticize, accuse), e.g. Tom accused his boss of
despotism presupposes Tom thinks despotism is bad.
Presuppositions have for a general characteristic the sensitivity of S and H to

a pool of background assumptions about the world. Sometimes this kind of
knowledge overrides the strict presuppositional mechanism. For example: in
a sentence including a before-clause, that clause is presupposed. Mary was
engaged three times before she got married presupposes Mary got married.
However, in the sentence Mary died before she got married presupposes
Mary never got married, because people do not do things after they die. So
background beliefs are stronger than automatic analysis of syntax and they
can actually cancel presuppositions that are valid in other contexts.
Another problem is that we start from the basic rule that an utterance
presupposes a proposition if that proposition is mutually known by
participants. Yet, we can find departures from from the rule. For example, I’m
so sorry I’m late, my car broke down presupposes The speaker has a car.
There may not be mutual knowledge that the presupposed proposition is true
(H does not know that S has got a car). Presumably because it is quite
normal for a man to own a car, H will easily accept the information with the
corresponding presupposition, but he might have rejected the normality of the
utterance if it had reported about a ‘fire engine’, because this kind of
ownership is not specific to our social life.
Implicature is another major concept to be defined here: it means the
extra meaning communicated by an utterance, when one of the Gricean
maxims for cooperation is exploited contextually to make that utterance give
more than its literal sense. There are two types:
» conventional implicature: an inference made possible by particular lexical
items (pragmaticists have begun the analysis of this type with the items ”too”
and ”therefore”.
» conversational implicature: the conventional content of the utterance plus
the conversational context; there are (a) generalized conversational
implicatures (they may accompany an utterance in any context) and (b)
particularized conversational implicatures (with the consequence that the
same text will implicate different propositions in different contexts).
An implicature can be considered a case of ‘giving to understand’. An
utterance may also let H understand things which the utterer himself was not
‘giving to understand’ – that is why pragmaticists say implicatures are
indeterminate.
Every implicature is generated by H’s attempt to reconcile what S has
told him with the assumption that S is obeying the CP and its maxims even
when or particularly when there is surface evidence that goes the CP. S can
go against it in at least four ways: (1) by opting out of a maxim (indicating
his unwillingness to cooperate – I cannot say more type of answer); (2) by
violating a maxim (done quietly and unostentatiously, in some cases
misleading H); (3) by flouting a maxim (blatantly failing to fulfil it); (4) by
exploiting a maxim (when the other possibilities are not visibly applied – S is
not opting out, not trying to mislead, not showing contempt for the CP).
In sum, the calculation of implicatures is pragmatically displayed as
follows (Cornilescu & Chiţoran, 1994: 105). The notation means: S =
speaker; H = hearer; p & q = propositions; CP = the Cooperative Principle;
MCB = mutual contextual belief.
Premises
1. S has said that p.
2. There is no reason to assume that S is disobeying the CP and the
maxims, and that p is irrelevant.
3. S intends to convey q [i.e. the supposition that S thinks that q is
required in order to make S’s saying that p consistent with the fact
that S is obeying the CP].
4. S knows that H can come up with q (and H knows that S knows it;
H will reason in the following way: S has done nothing to prevent
me (=H) from thinking that q, therefore he intends me to think that
q).
5. MCBs – relevant propositions describing the context of utterance,
etc. [these guide the search for an appropriate q].
Conclusion
S has implicated that q.
By way of illustrating the calculation of implicatures, Cornilescu & Chiţoran

comment on the celebrated example circulated by linguists about John
beating or not his wife Mary. Let us consider the exchange:
A: Why did John beat Mary? B: Why not?
That B’s question carries different implicatures in different contexts is beyond
doubt. Instead of following the customary patterning of an answer beginning
with “John beat Mary because…,” a new question to the initial question is
puzzling. B could have meant to say:
(a) Why should this be explained at all?
(b) What kind of explanation do you expect from me?
(c) I simply don’t know, that’s why I’m not giving a proper answer.
(d) The answer is so obvious – you already know how bad she was – that I
needn’t bother to repeat the information now.
(e) The rudeness is at its utmost if the implicature were: It’s none of your
business to ask. We must notice that this last variant of reading on the basis
of implicature is tenable if no content connection can be found between A’s
and B’s turns.
Levinson (1991: 100) points out the importance of such inferences,
since they are fundamental to a sense of coherence in discourse.
Implicatures are known to be good or correct in only one way, by
allowing the conversation to go on. Current practice shows that speakers do
not get along by a trial-and-error process. They just need more information
from the interlocutor, which they obtain by conversing.

1.2 Aplicaţii
I.
Speaker-orientation is important to consciously deal with, while processing
a message. Speaker orientation actually is speaker-comment about the
sentence or, in other words, the relationship speaker-proposition, by the latter
term meaning the idea discussed. In object-orientation, facts are described
from the point of view of the object, the most efficient way being the passive
transformation of an active-voice sentence which includes a subject-
oriented adverb, e.g.
(a) Reluctantly, the baby gave the rattler away;
(b) The rattler was reluctantly given away by the baby.
Yet for both subject- and object-orientation there can be ambiguity upon
decoding the meaning of the adverb, e.g.
(c) The medic unwillingly examined the late patient;
(d) The late patient was unwillingly examined by the medic.
Hofmann (1993:93) goes on to say that in (c) the doctor was unwilling,
whereas in (d) one or the other was unwilling and the context will be needed
to decide which.
One more distinction, the one between speaker-orientation in (e) and subject-
orientation in (f), comes out below:
(e) Luckily, Mary will be here tomorrow.
(f) Secretly, Mary arranged not to be here tomorrow.
II.
You have read (1.1.2) about what <openness> signifies to a pragmaticist. Let
us consider antonymy. Here is a brief explanation of terms derived from the
verb ‘close’: (1) closure in novels comes from the tying up of all strands of
the plot (the resolution of all enigmas); (2) anti-closure in postmodern
writings is another word for ‘openness’ and expresses the adoption of non-
finalization; (3) closings for analysts are ‘closing routines’ such as yours
sincerely for letters, …and they lived happily ever after in fairy-tales or Amen
in ending a prayer; (4) for literary theorists, a closed text is aimed at a
specific reader, has no great complexity of theme and proposes relationships
that are identifiable in an explicit way. Readers have always expected texts to
be signed. Besides, readers look up to authors as reliable judges of society
and assessors of human nature – hence, the authority of authors. To many,
the notion of this extrafictional voice who is ‘author’, far from vanishing, is
expanding. We only need now to see what is going on in pragmatics: when
solving a problem specific to their concerns, pragmaticists insist on textual
closeness. Despite the kind of openness that for theories of literary reception
multiplies the message which is released by a unique text and which allows
for plural readings, the analyst must do only with the stretch of text given to
him and multiply interpretations starting from other cultural codes than the
author’s: the analyst/recipient/ addressee/ communicate etc. will re-create or
just create the page under is eyes. Thus, the authority of authors comes out
weakened in the process.
III.
Making a straightforward choice between truth and falsehood is, beyond any
doubt, in many cases impossible, because telling the truth may be a matter of
degrees. If the CP is violated, an overstatement (or hyperbole) may be

issued, as well as an understatement (or litotes) if the speaker takes the

contrary direction towards truth distortion. According to Leech (1991: 145-6):
In a hyperbole, the speaker’s description is stronger than is warranted by
the state of affairs. In a litotes, the description is weaker this time than the
state of affairs described. A litotes is the converse of a hyperbole.
To cite Leech again, we will mention It made my blood boil as a case
of going against the Maxim of Quality, I was not born yesterday as a case of
Maxim of Quantity violation, uttered for some personal reason but not out of a
deceitful tendency in the speaker. Maybe s/he overstates or understates the
truth owing to a conversational impulse to retell things more interestingly.
Hence, a tentative formulation by Leech – what he calls the Interest Principle:
Say what is unpredictable, and hence interesting. Idiomatic expressions
will plentifully play a role: to raise hell; to look like a million dollars; to grit the
teeth [cases of hyperbole]; not to be a stranger to misfortune; to be after no
good; to be a little wanting/ a little light in the upper storey [cases of litotes]. A
message decoder will spot deceit if he can make sure that such utterances
are at variance with their context and no one reasonably believes them to be
‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.
One major justification for hyperbole and litotes may be politeness,
explainable in the following manner: polite speakers overstate polite beliefs
or understate impolite ones. Leech contrasts two utterances that understate
praise while one discusses S and the other one H: That wasn’t such a bad
meal that I cooked vs. That wasn’t such a bad meal that you cooked. The
former is diagnosed as an acceptable self-congratulation (or relatively so),
the latter is unacceptable because impolite to the cook; both build up the
implicature “a bad meal was to be anticipated”, but it sounds different when
you are the modest author from the case when you show that someone
cannot be trusted with good work.
If hyperbole sacrifices, so to say, the truth in the assertion (while being
naturally frequent in people’s talk – as far as it has been noticed) for the sake
of interesting report, litotes restores credibility for the sake of honesty in truth-
telling, while it can never be suspected of exaggerations.
Additional reasons for using departures from the line of truth
(additional to interestingness, politeness and honesty of statement) could be
found in the Pollyanna Principle – preferential attention to the bright side, not
to the gloomy side of things in life. Speakers can understate pessimistic
ideas with words having a downtoning effect: a bit …, a little too …, rather…,
not particularly…. The bad report – the pragmatically disfavoured idea – is
thus weakened because it is assumed to deny a positive expectation of both
S and H. This part of pragmatics takes more into account differences of use
arising in the personality of language users than other areas, for instance
automatic application of Cooperation or Politeness Maxims.
IV.
We can look at the simple, unceremonious way a young man asks a girl out,
saying Want to go out with me? to which the answer comes in the form I
must do my hands; they look like a scrubwoman’s. The girl’s criticism of the
hands apparently is irrelevant because of the unexpectedness in the topic
shift. If the girl is cooperative, the answer she gives has to be found relevant
and implying an indirect ‘no’. What is missing for us, external interpreters of
hidden intentions, is background knowledge with its capacity to colour the
answer as relevant for ‘no’ (the negotiation under way in the question ends in
failure in the answer because the girl has her own priorities of activities) or
relevant for a shy ‘yes’ (the girl negotiates only a delay for improving her
looks so as to make of herself a suitable date). It would be helpful in this case
to be informed about paralinguistic clues, a shake of head for example in the
first case and a sweet smile in the second case. Since we have been
discussing relevance, let us quote two possible definitions for this concept:
(1) A remark P is relevant to another remark Q if P and Q, together with
background knowledge, yield new information not derivable from either P or
Q, together with background knowledge, alone [apud Smith & Wilson, 1979].
(2) An utterance U is relevant to a speech situation if U can be interpreted as
contributing to the conversational goal(s) of S or H [apud Leech, 1991]. If we
analyse semantic relevance, we focus on the relation between propositions
and we raise an interest in such problems as coherence, information
structure, entailments, contradictions. If it comes to pragmatic relevance,
another relation gains weight, the one between speech acts and illocutions or
goals (which can be social and personal).
Let us shed some light on the questions posed by Dan Sperber and
Deirdre Wilson (1986, 1995) within their Relevance Theory.
In the study of intention recovery, interpretation is seen as doubly
dynamic, as long as the hearer also has freedom to create, besides his
activity of recovering what the speaker has meant. Sperber and Wilson’s
theory (henceforth referred to as SWR) is interested in human cognitive
processes and utterance interpretation.
Once with the assimilation of the notion of context, trainees in
linguistics will cultivate the awareness that language use is anchored to a
speech situation and is therefore embedded in surroundings where
adjacency is simply too narrow. The available local and linguistic context
needs to be understood by the side of more remote linguistic contexts, and
the immediate extra-linguistic context requires the contribution of more
remote extra-linguistic context(s).
Today one point is beyond dispute: CP can be violated with the result
of a breakdown in communication, but the Relevance Principle (it is
noteworthy that it has become a ‘principle’ from a ‘maxim’) “applies without
exception” (S&W, 1986). In the year 2000, Levinson picks up the Gricean
moot point “in case x, what is the maxim broken or followed?” and calls it an
extra worry, just because communicating parties will generate implicatures
from almost anything. The generalized implicature – the one that first comes
to mind – is presumption (belief on probable evidence). One year before
him, Michael Toolan presents the process of utterance interpretation as
speculative and reasons it out in the following way: “this speaker probably
would not be saying p in a cooperative spirit unless he thought q”. S&W
advocate the same probabilistic attitude, claiming that “the very term non-
demonstrative inference suggests constrained guessing rather than
certainty.” But let us focus on the wording itself of their relevance principle:
“every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its
own optimal relevance”. This text upsets through its redundant expression,
but, beyond that, one wonders about two terms excluding each other:
‘presumption’ (which implies probability) vs. ‘ostention’. A synonym in use for
‘ostention’ is manifestness (whatever is manifest / ostentious / sometimes
ostentatious comes both from the material/ physical environment and from
the mental store of every communicating partner); the implication is that of
‘certain and unmistakeable’ elements. To those linguists who are critical of
SWR, the answer given is that there is no such thing as communication in
which nothing goes wrong, in which intentions should not misfire. S&W
separate the informative intention from the parallel recognition of

communicative intention and they call ostensive communication “the
explicit intention to call somebody’s attention to the intention to communicate
some information”. S&W state about ostensive communication the fact that it
satisfies three requirements: (1) to attract the addressee’s attention; (2) to
direct this attention towards the addresser’s intentions; (3) to reveal the
addresser’s intentions. Ostensive stimuli make it possible that the informative
intention be manifest for both interlocutors and one can access the
information that is meant to be communicated.
Relevance Theory (SWR) analyses vagueness and approximation as
instances of loose talk, which involves less than literal interpretations of
thoughts. SWR has an explanatory role, it offers a kind of guarantee that
communication always works. It has enjoyed comments and criticism, in a
word it has interested linguists intensely and fruitfully, owing to the fact that
interlocutors have always wished to increase the amount of mutually
accepted ideas.
There are linguists (for instance, MacMahon, 1999, “Problems in the
integrational account of relevance theory”. Language and Literature. Vol.
8(1), pp. 49-57) who disclaim the fact that SWR might ever have intended for
itself the function of producing new and interesting readings of literary texts.
This is not exactly an encouraging statement for what we mean to do next.
We will venture discuss relevance excerpting a theatre-play and approaching
the passage as communication. This is also possible when language is
viewed as an open system that can be explained in an ex post facto way and
not with the idea of prediction on which SWR has been built; but the
dichotomy explanation/prediction can help any time when analysing
communication.
Billy and Liz in the excerpt below use language as a means of
negotiating and managing reality.
T1 Liz: I want to marry you, you know, Billy.
T2 Billy: I know, Liz – I know. We will – one day.
T3 Liz: Not one day. Now.
T4 Billy: Do you?
T5 Liz: Next week will do. Before you go to London. Or when you get there.
Whichever you prefer.
T6 Billy: I think I get engaged a bit too often.
T7 Liz: I don’t want to get engaged. I want to get married.
(Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, Billy Liar)
The helping hand to relevance, extended by unelaborated language in the
conversational exchange, is, in its turn, perhaps, ‘helped’ or supported by
what S&W specify as a set of mutually held propositions (in a word,
mutuality). Others (for instance, Carston 1988) claim that some information
has to be shared beforehand in order to reach maximal relevance. Thus,
one issue could be: how do speakers distinguish the information they merely
know from that they really share?
By relying on optimal relevance, Sperber says that humans are
naturally disposed to develop certain concepts which then spread across the
community. These concepts do not vary significantly across cultures, and
they are learned by means of combining ostention with innate schemata to
form hypotheses concerning meanings: a boy likes a girl well enough to wish
she’d become his wife, in which case a period known as ‘engagement’ can
separate the acquaintanceship from romance leading straight into marriage
after a convenient lapse of time.
Then, in a local interpretive effort, it seems that the search for the best
context or, at least, the choice of one context is the search for relevance as
proposed by S&W. Context formation undergoes changes and revisions
throughout the process of comprehension.
We shall exemplify with the sixth turn from the excerpt above, showing
how accessing a context requires effort which should be optimally small.
BILLY: I think I get engaged a bit too often. <T6>
(a) Previous context: the hearer (Liz in <T 1>) has indicated a clear wish to
marry Billy. Contextual effect: Liz gets confirmation of Billy’s intention to
remain at the status of engaged person, not having marriage in view. The
utterance above strengthens a previous assumption.
(b) Previous context: the hearer (Liz) still recollects to have heard Billy say
a minute before (in <T 2> ) “We will [marry] – one day”. Contextual effect:
The utterance above contradicts (and suppresses) a previous
assumption.
(c) Previous context: the hearer (Liz in <T 5>) has picked even the time for
their marriage – next week, she says, “before you go to London. Or when
you get there. Whichever you prefer.” Contextual effect: The utterance
is combined with previous assumptions to yield the implication that
it is necessary to plan details in order to precipitate marriage.
Now let us check what is selected by Liz as optimally relevant. She then says
(in <T7>) : I don’t want to get engaged. I want to get married. This means that
hypothesis (b) about the relevant previous information is selected by Liz, who
believes that she is faced with a social situation in which the other party has
an obligation to take into account. The odd arrangement, departing from the
conventions, is that the girl is the one to propose, not the young man. A
necessary background for processing facts in the light of relevance (by the
readers of this extract and not by the audience in the theatre-hall) is the
existence of two girls to whom Billy has become engaged – and Liz is the
third one. To defuse tensions, Billy the Liar (in real fact, a pathological
daydreamer) makes the weak move of understating his failure to be
committed. Actually Billy does nothing but lie to himself and his awkward
position before the determined girl can be best described as an ostensive
inferential communication about awareness plus embarrassment.
To sum up, we can uphold that there are three types of optimal ways
of relating context to effects, according to S&W: (a) reinforcing a previous
assumption; (b) contradicting a previous assumption; (c) combining
assumptions to yield contextual implications. S&W put it peremptorily that
assumptions which are too weak to produce any contextual effects, being
subsequently eliminated, are irrelevant.
1.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare
Identificaţi răspunsurile corecte.
1. What should you understand by the notion of <code>?

A. the language in which a message is delivered;
B. the rules which assign meanings to signs;
C. the recipe for decoding a message;
D. the descriptive frame set up by a literary writer

2. An interesting finding in pragmatics is that Grice’s CP and maxims (himself

pointed it out) have their analogues in transactions. What can you read
below?
<QUANTITY> You assist me to mend a car; if, at a particular moment, I need

three screws, I expect you to hand me three, and not two or four.
<QUALITY> I need sugar as an ingredient in the cake I’m making; you are not
expected to hand salt instead.
<RELATION> I expect you/my partner to have appropriate contributions,
related to what we are doing together; if my immediate need is to mix some
ingredients in the kitchen, I expect you to hand me a food processer and not
a good book.
<MANNER> I expect you to make it clear what contribution you’re making to
our job together and to execute it effectively.
A. a set of orders; B. a set of reproaching lines; C. a set of

misunderstandings; D. a set of illustrations from daily interactive
practice
3. We supply the anchorage to a speech situation and we ask you to

comment on the literal, ironical or understated relevance of the description
existing in the final utterances; we use the symbols L, I, U to label them.
Fred is looking forward to a great day at the beach with his girlfriend. He
picks her up, but then his car runs out of gas on an empty road on the way to
the beach. He then remembers and tells his girlfriend that his brother used
the car the day before and probably didn’t buy gas. Fred finally says,
( a ) This is absolutely wonderful.
( b ) ’Tis is a minor annoyance, though.
( c ) Ours is a bad situation, indeed.
A. L+U+U; B. I+U+L; C. I+L+L; D. I+L+U
4. The same requirements as for testing item (3). The situation is this:
Henry the cyclist was eagerly awaiting a new, very expensive, high tech
bicycle he had ordered from a new company. When it finally arrived, it turned
out to be really heavy and poorly constructed. When Henry saw that he had
been cheated by the bike company, he said,
( a ) This company is a tiny bit sneaky.
( b ) This company took my money for a bad thing.
( c ) This company is incredibly honest.
A. L+L+I; B. I+I+U; C. U+L+L; D. U+L+I
5. The same requirements as for testing item (3). The situation is this:
Jessica and her husband Jeff went grocery shopping for a big party they
were having. They wheeled a cart, packed with food, up to the checkout to
find that Jeff, who was supposed to pay, hadn’t brought any money. Jessica
said to him,
( a ) Well, this opens up a dilemma.
( b ) Well, this is a great thing to happen to us.
( c ) Well, we’re having a slight problem now.
A. U+I+L; B. U+U+L; C. L+I+U; D. I+I+U

6. Why do presuppositions come forcefully into play when a book of fiction

begins in medias res (‘in the middle of things’)?
A. because of inferred situations coming into play
B. because of enigmatic endings instead
C. because of a writer’s stereotypes
D. because of a love for situational clarity
7.What can be truly stated about the cooperation and politeness principles?
A. a speaker cannot be polite without being rude
B. a speaker can be both rude and cooperative
C. a speaker can be both polite and non-cooperative
D. a hearer can be rude while a speaker is being cooperative
8. Tidy up your room! Let us consider this is mother’s order addressed

virtually everyday to her ten-year-old daughter, Mary. The speech act with
this content gets a different wording, as shown below. Where is the
presuppositional line incorrect?
A. Don’t you think you should tidy up? Presuppositions: Mary already has
an opinion formed about tidying up. Mary’s opinion is favourable or
unfavourable to tidying up.
B. When have you planned tidying up? Presupposition: Mary has already
planned what to do about her room.
C. Would you mind doing something about your room, to make it look
tidy? Presupposition: Mary will take offence if she is not asked nicely
and formally.
D. Some kids can keep their room tidy. Presuppositions: Mary is a kid
herself. Mary has the same ability as the mentioned kids.
9. Consider the same command (and the same situation) as before. Pick out
what is presuppositionally correct about the replacement of the order by the
following promise: You can go out and play after you tidy up.
A. The mother must add a reward. B. Mary is known to want to go and play.
C. Mary was not allowed to play beforehand. D. The mother takes it for
granted that Mary will do what she is asked, due to the reward.
10. What is definitely not a presupposition for the following message?

I saw something strange in the garden this morning.
A. I have a garden.
B. It’s during the morning that day that the message was issued.
C. I was in the garden myself.
D. The strange being was visible to me.
11. What is the difference between a request and a promise?

A. Both refer to a situation that would not have occurred in the absence of the
speech act. B. Requests contain what H should do in future; promises
contain what S would do in future. C. Requests cause H to startle, promises
cause H to rejoice. D. Requests are carried out compusorily, promises are
carried out optionally.
12. What is the difference between a command and a request?

A. They both come from powerful people. B. They are disobeyed when there
is uncooperativeness. C. In commanding, S disposes of power over H to a

much higher intensity than in requesting. D. In requesting, S disposes of less

power over H than in commanding.
13. Why is message interpretation doubly dynamic?

A. We deal with non-professional versus professional interpretations.
B. We deal with speaker-meaning interpretation and hearer-meaning one.
C. We deal with feedback after each transmission of a message.
D. Semantics has dynamism of its own and pragmatics reinforces it.
14. Context formation depends on

A. one speaker completing another speaker’s utterance;
B. how the hearer manages to compute the real intentions of a liar;
C. spontaneous conversation accepting completions
D. the breakdown of communicative silence
15. The Maxim of Relevance is

A. the Theory of Relevance; B. maximum cooperation; C. component of the
Politeness Principle; D. an application of referential relations
16. A communicator has to give the right information in matters of

A. truth-telling; B. liabilities; C. presuppositions; D. mental strength
18. There are limits as to

A. what a speaker can tell; B. what a hearer can infer; C. what opinions are
shared; D. what words signify
19. What is “Money brings happiness”?

A. value; B. feeling; C. fact; D. overstatement
20. What can the utterance John’s a real genius! be made out to represent?
A. an ironical shaft; B. an overstatement; C. an understatement; D. banter
21. What is this text: Say what is unpredictable, and hence interesting.
A. part of the principle of cooperativeness; B. the maxim of implicatures; C.
violation of the maxim of quantity; D. the interest principle
22. Assertiveness is defined for pragmaticists as the impact one makes upon
others without encroaching on their personal space.What can be an example
of assertiveness below?
A. the wish to give an opinion at a meeting; B. a disagreement with the boss;
C. the admission of having made a mistake; D. jumping at the occasion of a
clearcut statement of personal position
23. When communicators are not assertive, how are they?

A. submissive; B. unwilling to express honest feelings; C. deferential in
addressing the partner; D. showing sensitiveness
24. A possible description of communication is that sometimes speakers

push, when
A. they act irritatingly; B. make indecent proposals; C. ignore partners; D.
criticize other people’s performance

25. A possible description of communication is that sometimes speakers pull,

when
A. do not check their understanding of messages; B. ask questions to obtain
information; C. refrain from asking questions for clarification; D. avoid making
suggestions of any kind
1.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen
► John Searle’s classification of illocutions can be displayed and illustrated

as given below. The square brackets state the illocutionary idea in
paraphrase. To each example (in bold italics at the end of the line), add two
other examples of your own.
 Assertives or S’s beliefs: [I state it to you that] Time flies.

 Commissives or S’s promises: [I pledge myself to do it] I’ll be there to
support you.
 Directives or S’s pressure on H’s future behaviour: [I get you to do it]
Better go home.
 Expressives or S’s psychological state: [I feel grateful towards you]
Much obliged!
 Declaratives or S’s authority to perform: [I make it happen by speaking]
You are fired!
► Explain the difference between the terms <closing>, closure>, and

<closeness>.
► Translate the following presentation of deictics into English:

Punctul deictic zero/origo (lat.) pentru Stockwell (2002: 43 ş.u.) este
un prilej de sinteză a cercetării raporturilor eu – aici – acum sau I – here –
now (engl.) sub două aspecte: (a) variaţia terminologică în literatura anglo-
americană de specialitate (şi anume ‘egocentric particulars’ la Bertrand
Russell, ‘indexicals’ la Charles Peirce, ‘occasional terms’ la Edmund Husserl,
‘shifters’ la Roman Jakobson); (b) posibilităţile de examinare a proiecţiei
deictice în literatură. Prin lectură, punctele de ‘ancorare’ oferite de scriitor
cititorului său construiesc o lume negociabilă din punct de vedere cognitiv
(Stockwell 2002: 46). Teoria mutaţiei deictice (deictic shift theory /DST/),
elaborată de Stockwell, adaugă un al şaselea tip de deixis, cel
compoziţional. Se iau astfel în calcul competenţele cititorului-interpret
privitoare la convenţii literare de tot felul, cititor care înţelege coexistenţa unor
zone deictice (deictic fields) – fiecare cu centrul sau punctul său zero şi cu
deschidere spre executarea unor salturi sau mutaţii coerente de la un centru
la altul. In teoria sa, Stockwell propune doi termeni, pushes şi pops, pentru a
desemna saltul sau mutaţia unor puncte de vedere, points of view, mai jos
sau mai sus faţă de zona iniţială. ‘Sus’ şi ‘jos’ trebuie corelate cu ‘stânga’ şi
‘dreapta’ dintr-o schemă pe care Stockwell (2002: 42) o face cu două trasee:
(a) autor real ↔ text ↔ voce externă ficţiunii ↔ autor perceput implicit ↔
narator în ficţiune ↔ personaj al ficţiunii; (b) cititor real ↔ text ↔ cititor
idealizat ↔ cititor perceput implicit ↔ ascultător al naraţiunii din ficţiune ↔
personaj al ficţiunii. /DST/ manevrează zone virtuale inteligibile prin deixis.
Iată exemple de push (mişcare spre dreapta în interiorul unuia dintre trasee):
un narator comută centrul său spaţial pe spaţiul unui personaj; autorul
(perceput implicit) se mişcă din centrul temporal al ficţiunii sale într-un
moment temporal anterior din viaţa naratorului; ‘eu’ ca cititor real se

deplasează spre percepţia de sine ca cititor al ficţiunii suprapus pe
receptorul/ascultătorul naraţiunii, etc. Şi câteva exemple de pop (mişcare
spre stânga în interiorul unuia dintre trasee): ‘eu’ ca cititor idealizat dau la o
parte cartea – ieşind din zona ei deictică – şi comut pe parametrii deictici ai
vieţii reale; în interiorul textului, un narator dintr-o zonă iniţială reapare la
sfârşitul cărţii să înnoade firele narative, respectiv elemente deictice din zona
personajelor se reconsideră ca deixis în zona naratorului, etc.
► In reported speech, deictics occurring in the original utterance are

transposed into other, possibly non-deictic terms in order to preserve the
referential meaning. Assume that Brian tells Margaret, Why wouldn’t you
come to college with me yesterday? It’s not that I want to upset your plans
but I badly needed your help. Now draft Margaret’s report of what Brian told
her from a vantage point, distant in time and space, of two days later. Explain
how you adjust expressions to set up correct relationships with the original
situation.

Chapter II – Principle-Controlled Interaction
CAPITOLUL II
2.1 Repere teoretice
2.1.1 The conversational mechanism

The string of words uttered by a current speaker (CS) is called a turn.
Technically, this is the unit of analysis for conversation, which is team work;
the next speaker (NS) waits for his turn,occurring when CS finishes his. NS is
either selected by CS to participate in the exchange or he may also self-
select. That means that he chooses when and how to join the conversation
which gets born out of turn-taking. Turn-taking has been described by
Levinson (1991) as follows: one participant A talks and stops; another one, B,
starts, talks, then stops; and so we obtain an A-B-A-B-A-B distribution of talk
across two participants.
Speakers will always adjust their language to suit the size and social
status of their audiences. The collective sense of the italicized term can be
rendered by the following plurals: readers, listeners, hearers, overhearers,
eavesdroppers, auditors, bystanders, communicatees, narratees, and
possibly other nouns. Their presence and their ‘applause’ (literally,
figuratively) are vital to performers who never overlook the interlocutors’
heterogeneity in respect of sex, age, creed, education, and so forth. Texts
themselves are determined by pressures during production and reception,
and have an effect on their audience. However, one must admit that there is
no total control over an audience.
A speech act must be seen as the activity in which, by saying
something, a user of language is doing something. A speech act has three
sides:
» LOCUTION: that which is said, identifiable as sentence type and
propositional content.
» ILLOCUTION: that which is meant through what is said, identifiable as
pragmatic force.
» PERLOCUTION: that which is accomplished through what has been said
and understood, identifiable as an effect or result.
A larger unit than the speech act is the speech event. It occurs in a
non-verbal context which is the speech situation. The basic components of a
speech event are considered to be setting, participants, purposes, topics and
message form. Even psychological setting can be taken into consideration,
for instance a serious or festive occasion ( think of the fact that people speak
in hushed tones in church), a formal or informal one (think of a head of
state’s address to the nation). There is research to analyse the key in which
an event is performed, and this refers to manner and spirit, the mock key or
the serious key, the perfunctory or the painstaking key. Other important
aspects of speech events must be mentioned:
- Several speech events can occur successively or simultaneously in the
same situation (like distinct conversations at a party).
- The relationship between speech events and speech acts is hierarchical;
an event will often comprise several speech acts.
- A speech event – necessarily known for understanding a certain social
role – is not co-terminous with the situation.

The matching of acts with sentence types is simple enough, yet very
significant for identifying indirect speech acts, when the horizontal alignment
below (for direct speech acts) is spoilt:
 declarative  typical act of asserting
 interrogative  typical act of asking
 imperative  typical act of ordering
Direct speech acts communicate meanings straightforwardly or bluntly.
Indirect ones communicate their meanings while other speech acts are
performed. Consider the following: a person in a shop, asking Is that
expensive? [interrogative as a sentence type and enquiry as an act =
directness] vs. a person in an argument, saying Do you take me for a fool?
[interrogative as a sentence type and assertion as an act = indirectness];
teacher to schoolchildren, I don’t want to hear noise over there [declarative
as a sentence type and ordering as an act = indirectness]; a person helping
an aged one climb down and saying Watch the step [imperative as a
sentence type and warning as an act = indirectness].
Interpersonally sensitive speech acts should be mentioned as face-
threatening and to be explained in various ways: imposition on man’s desire
to be autonomous; lack of tact or generosity; social hurt in being addressed
directives; too many costs and too meagre benefits in fulfilling requestives.
The perlocution of a SA causes a change to be brought about even
unintentionally; thus, a perlocutionary aspect bears a relatively unsystematic
relationship to any classification of sentence types. This is one of the reasons
that perlocution has not been much in the focus of linguistics yet, not to
mention the fact that perlocution can take the form of non-verbal behaviour.
For example, we can describe the perlocutionary effects of the utterance I
was sorry to hear about the death of your goldfish, addressed by Tom to his
seven-year-old neighbour Jane.
1. Jane gives a prepared reply (she has overheard bereaved grown-ups say
it): Thank you. It was a shock, but I must get used to it.
2. Jane waves her hand and explains: Dad promised me another pet.
3. Jane feels her already old sorrow has returned and she begins to weep.
An illocution is intended by S and is under his full control; a perlocution
is not always intended and, in most cases, it is not evident until after the
utterance is made. S can be said to be trying to carry out a perlocutionary
act; by contrast, S is not merely ‘trying’ an illocution. Thus, it is usual to say, I
tried to amuse / shock / annoy someone. But the speaker who says, I tried to
apologize / complain / offer something, certainly implies that s/he has been
prevented from uttering the apology, speaking in order to complain or making
the offer. In this way, an act is easy to classify into an illocutionary or
perlocutionary type.
There is research interest in following how a dispreferred message is
presented, after a reasonable search for the features displayed by the notion
of preference.
One approach is to go inside the structure of ordinary conversation,
most of it organized into adjacency pairs, where a preferred second is
unmarked and a dispreferred second is marked in the following ways:
delayed production, motivation, prefaces, mitigations. We insist to say that
the notion of preference here is not a psychological one, but one of structure
in close dependence on markedness of discourse, though it envisages the
existence of hearer expectations.

» PREFERENCE: a problem of organizing adjacency in conversation so as to

operate a ranking of alternative responses, with at least one preferred and
one dispreferred second part. The exception here is a greeting, after which
a return greeting is the only kind of second part.
» DISPREFERREDS: forms of disagreeing responses when speaker and
listener expectations work in opposing directions.
Here are a few typical conversational situations:
First Part Second Part
Assertion agreement
disagreement
self-deprecation disagreement
agreement
Question wanted info
non-informativeness
Order submission
disobedience
Offer acceptance
refusal
Blame denial
admission
Thanks acknowledgement
overlook
Apology absolution
unforgiving
Request compliance
non-compliance
Recommendation conforming
dissent
Since preferred seconds are unmarked, we shall insist on
dispreferreds:
1) delays: under this generalizing term, pragmaticists list down several
manifestations. (a) There can be a pause before delivery (“time out” for
psychological processing). (b) A preface can be used – a marker /
announcer of the form uh or well, maybe a token agreement before
disagreement (typically, yes, but), the use of apologies, of qualifiers like I
don’t know for sure, but…, the introduction of hesitation such as self-
editing in How shall I put it to you,…and the recourse to any relevant
appreciation, like I know your advice has always been good, but this
time ….
2) The appeal to accounts presupposes careful explanations about why
the dispreferred act is being performed.
3) The declination component (the refusal) is characteristically mitigated,
but the form it takes is suited to the nature of the first part in the pair.
4) Disclaimers prevents the interlocutor from arriving at an unfavourable
interpretation (possibly a face-threatening one), so they are forms of
mitigation. To disclaim is to deny interest in or connection with the
currently discussed idea. For instance, I understand what you’re
saying, but I’m trying to get you to realize that…and generally I
understand before a clarification question. Disclaimers can be used to
refer to an adjacent utterance both prospectively and retrospectively. For
instance, The answer is ‘yes’ if you really think that’s a good idea. I…I…
No, you can do that if that’s what you’d like to do, but before you do it,
just talk to me, will you? Or, I’m not saying it isn’t, ah… what, what do
you think about that in general? which is a disclaimer used to prevent a
negative interpretation retrospectively.
Every exchange has to be assessed in its own complexity. For instance, the
case of inserting repair work – a device for the correction of mishearings,
non-hearings and especially misunderstandings. This requires a three-turn
sequence because of the prompting to be done, e.g. A: Have you ever tried
crystal-therapy? B: What? A: Crystal-therapy. A contrast has to be signaled
between other-initiated repair (like above, that is after prompting) and self-
initiated (by the speaker, without prompting); in the latter case, the I mean to
say pattern (a self-editing even where no misperformance is discernible)
most frequently occurs. In repair there is a preference ranking as follows (cf.
Levinson, 1991):
- preference 1 – self-initiated + self-repair in one’s own turn;
- preference 2 – self-initiated + self-repair after a transition space;
- preference 3 – other-initiated (next turn) + self-repair (in the turn after
that);
- preference 4 – other-initiated + other-repair in next turn.
2.1.2 Interactional patterns

Depending on the nature and context of interactions, another possible
description of communication covers the possibilities of handling information:
communicators can push (that is, they give information, make proposals,
ignore other contributions, criticize, act irritatingly) or they can pull (ask
questions to obtain information, ask for clarification or suggestions, check
understanding). Then, in one possible apprehension of the concept of
strength, we can act hard (we want to win at all costs, we will not concede or
retract, will not accept offers) – we aim high; or we can act soft (we concede,
we waver, we find it difficult to say no, we accommodate) – we aim low. We
may act hard on some issues and soft on others and this gives a clear
indication of where priorities lie.
In the field of micro-sociolinguistics, the basic interest of research is
constituted by linguistic forms plus social values, between which the
construction of a message occurs. Therefore, interaction is defined by these
parametres. To develop communicative skills, users of a language must have
knowledge of what is socially accepted as correct behaviour and be
consistent, even when risking an overestimation of stereotypical formulae.
Patterns are always potentially present in language; language users
have options whether or not and what kind of patterns to circulate. Some of
their motivated choices can be pattern-reforming and some others pattern-
reinforcing. In the former case, speakers play more directly and overtly with
language and they and their listeners are prompted to more evaluative
viewpoints; in the latter case, communicators develop a more pregnant
affective convergence. Research has found that rules for existing patterns
will be conformed to rather than departed from.
In the interaction called conversation, the global knowledge of the
world concerns interactional macro-structures called turn (already defined)
and floor (to be defined as an abstraction referring to the conversational
space available to speakers in a speech event). Since the technical
distinction between them is not always clear, we can be helped by the
indication that the former is ‘on-record speaking’ and the latter is ‘what is

going on in psychological time and space’. Floor management normally

depends largely on how turn-taking is conducted.
When studying interaction in the light of the development of social
roles, one may take into consideration the following aspects:
 Learning to communicate is adaptation to a set of circumstances in which
people learn about other people. This viewpoint offers a reasonable balance
between collectivity and individuals.
 Once a person assumes a position within an institution or within a
personal relationship, s/he tends to uphold this position in a consistent
behavioural pattern.
 Each person is expected to behave not only consistently, but also in an
appropriate manner, according to the social role incumbent upon him/her in a
given social context.
 The role a person enacts is not conducive to any verdict of artificiality or
two-facedness, as long as the requirements of the role become fundamental
components of the self.
 Social roles are always nuanced by an existing symmetry-asymmetry
between social partners, made obvious while referring to the context of the
interaction.
 Whereas a symmetric interaction is characterized by equality and
minimization of the difference between roles, a complementary interaction,
still described as cooperative, will be based on the maximization of this
difference.
2.1.4 Pragmatic politeness

In pragmatic literature, there are a few memorable standpoints on politeness:
(a) Politeness is communication that is acquired as appropriate by
developing social competence and awareness in years, hence clichés
and conventions – devices seeking phatic communion (Malinowski) /
ritual equilibrium (Stubbs).
(b) Politeness is a “conversational contract” (Fraser & Nolan) which is an
understanding from both parties of an initial set of rights and obligations
preliminary to any virtual recognition of speaker intentions.
(c) Politeness is a strategic anticipation of hearer needs so as to preclude
any subsequent embarrassing situation that can be labelled “conflict”
(Brown & Levinson).
(d) Politeness is communication via implicatures (Leech).
We favour O’Driscoll’s version (1996) adjusting it to our needs: uttering what
ego supposes (either intentionally or normatively) to be polite and is
understood as such by alter (O’Driscoll).
Phatic communion is the rapport-inspiring speech behaviour
signalling social bonds between people who may be strangers to each other.
The discussion can then start from asking: is it strategy or social
norm more important in the enactment of politeness?
Communicators establish a rapport/relationship in consequence of a
combined influence: inherited genes, to which social and physical
environment / experience is added. All of these will shape a consistent
behaviour, at a level of psychological maturity which generally is spelt out in
the following way: one’s personality does not change much and its
components are integrated. We have already shown that the perpetually
varying combination of inherited and environmental factors interacting with
each other in complex ways results in patterns of behaviour which are
unique to people as individuals. People vary in intelligence, education,

religious beliefs, social background and experience, and this affects the way
they communicate.
The interpreter of a certain communicative situation/event will be
based on the following control-generating elements: (1) perceptions
(sensory information); (2) judgement, supported by (a) likelihood (what
people normally do in a given circumstance) and (b) consistency (typical,
resumptive set of responses); (3) knowledge of the self.
G. Leech (1991) is the linguist who expanded upon the pragmatic
concept of politeness, which refers to a relationship between two
participants that he called self and other. “In conversation, self will normally
be identified with S, and other will typically be identified with H” (1991:131).
The Politeness Principle (PP) is stated as follows: “Minimize (other things
being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs” and “Maximize (other things
being equal) the expression of polite beliefs” (1991:81). The appended
maxims also have a positive and a negative version. We shall adopt a small
m for “minimize” and a capital M for “maximize” in the following tabulation of
maxims:
I. TACT - (a) m cost to other; (b) M. benefit to other.
II. GENEROSITY - (a) m. benefit to self; (b) M. cost to self.
III. APPROBATION - (a) m. dispraise of other; (b) M. praise of other.
IV. MODESTY - (a) m. praise of self; (b) M. dispraise of self.
V. AGREEMENT - (a) m. disagreement between self and other.
(b) M. agreement between self and other.
VI. SYMPATHY - (a) m. antipathy between self and other.
(b) M. sympathy between self and other.
A general remark is that politeness resulting from (a) activities above is much
more significant in terms of social contact or the transaction involved than (b)
activities. A second general remark is that PP is necessary to account for the
asymmetries existing between participants and embedded in external
context.
Let us take, one by one, forms of interaction that illustrate Leech’s
maxims, when the expression is constrained by social factors.
 The Tact Maxim (in directives and commissives)
a) Minimize cost to other.
Since you are going to ask about yours, ask about my exam results too.
In this case, the cost may be time or effort or any other kind of trouble. The
speaker knows that there is a loss for the other person and, at the same time,
shows consideration towards him/her by explicitly indicating why the request
can become easier for the addressee to accept.
b) Maximize benefit to other.
I'll give you the book; maybe you can use it again some other time.
The speaker shows consideration to the other person's needs by
acknowledging these needs and by pointing out how the hearer can benefit
from his/her gesture, s/he makes explicit the fact that s/he does not what to
impose on the hearer's right to take or leave the book.
A tactless way of making his/her offer would have been to emphasize
the losses / inconvenience associated with the act of giving the book: “I don't
usually lend books, but, here, I'll give you the book.” The flout is
‘maximization of costs’.
 The Generosity Maxim (in directives and commissives)
a) Minimize benefit to self.
I'll give you the book, I won’t need it very soon.

The book needed is the speaker’s benefit and negation shows s/he does not
have much reserve about complying with the hearer's similar need. Here we
need to emphasize the fact that members of one culture are more generous
(in their linguistic expression, at least) than members of another culture. To
Jenny Thomas (1995: 162) it sounds more logical or perhaps less odd to
formulate the Generosity Maxim as (a) “Minimize the expression of cost to
other” and (b) “Maximize the expression of benefit to other”.
b) Maximize cost to self.
You'll have the book; as for me, I can read it later.
Paradoxically, maximizing his/her own costs (by implying “I’d rather read the
book now, but I'll read it later”), the speaker shows greater generosity but
s/he is less polite: the utterance makes it harder for the hearer to accept the
offer.
 The Approbation Maxim (in expressives and representatives)
a) Minimize dispraise of other.
This book is not so interesting.
The speaker above makes his/her statement about the book and not about
his/her way of thinking. At the same time, s/he accepts, up to a point, that the
book is interesting, which is a minimization of dispraise. As a general rule,
speakers prefer to praise others, and if they cannot do so, they may sidestep
the issue or give minimal responses, if not adopting the extreme situation of
remaining silent.
b) Maximize praise of other.
You've understood it perfectly well.
The word perfectly can be omitted without altering the meaning of the
message. It shows the speaker's approbation and also an appreciation of the
hearer in two conflated directions: s/he did/performed well and his/her
understanding was perfect.
 The Modesty Maxim (in expressives and representatives): “Inevitably,
there are individuals within any culture who are genuinely modest or
immodest” (J. Thomas, 1995: 164).
a) Minimize praise of self.
I'm afraid my coffee is not so fresh.

Literally taken, the message has nothing to do with politeness; on the
contrary, saying that the coffee is not fresh and still serving it would be not
only impolite, but indolent in spite of the explicit apology contained in “I'm
afraid”. The words not so fresh are not to be judged with reference to the
coffee as much as an expression of moderate estimation of the self.
b) Maximize dispraise of self.
Oh, how foolish of me!

The bolded word emphasizes the foolishness on the part of S and meets the
demands for modesty. The Modesty Maxim in the submaxims (a) or (b) can
often be the form for Europeans to easily accept or reject a compliment
‘graciously’.
 The Agreement Maxim (in representatives)
a) Minimize disagreement between self and other.
Are you sure I'm not wanted there?

The speaker avoids the fight/argument by trying to understand the hearer's

position: s/he asks for details. Minimizing often occurs when S begins a
counter-argumentation with Yes, but…It is also worth noting that people do
not always avoid disagreeing; nevertheless, they are much more direct in
expressing agreement, not disagreement.
b) Maximize agreement between self and other.
It is awfully nice to find out that we see eye to eye.

Emphasizing agreement with the other is letting the other person know that
s/he is an “insider”. The message shows solidarity (“we”) and is initiated by a
comment with antonymy between the modifier and the head of the bolded
phrase.
 The Sympathy Maxim (in representatives)
a) Minimize antipathy between self and other.
I'm somehow against getting intimate with them.

The adverb somehow tones down the force of what could have been
interpreted as a very categorical statement which might be encouraging for H
to ask about the nature of S's reserves.
b) Maximize sympathy between self and other.
He is definitely to my liking.
Definitely adds force to the statement and lets the interlocutor know that a
third party is valued and appreciated.
A number of scales are useful in analysing politeness:

 The COST-BENEFIT pragmatic scale estimates the cost or benefit of the
proposed action to S or H.
 The OPTIONALITY pragmatic scale sees that illocutions are ordered
according to the amount of choice which S allows to H.
 The INDIRECTNESS scale, from S’s point of view, contains illocutions
ordered with respect to the length of the path (in terms of means-ends
analysis) connecting the illocutionary act to its illocutionary goal.
On a cost-benefit scale, the propositional content of a commissive
(promising things) or a directive (ordering one about) can be placed in view of
evaluating a major kind of politeness called tact. Tact is useful particularly in
a European context, when discussing an action to be performed by S (in
commissives)or by H (in directives) with their resulting costs/benefits to S or
H. Let us explain the directions in which tact manifests itself:
(a) Different propositional contents can be ordered so as to minimize the
expression of cost to other and maximize benefit to other. The utterances
below, for example, are ordered in the way already explained, so they display
increased politeness while going down the list: 1. Fetch a newspaper.
2. Sit down.
3. Look at that.
4. Enjoy your holiday.
(b) The propositional content is kept the same and the indirectness of
address gets increased, obtaining an ever politer list as it unfolds:
1. Answer the phone.
2. I want you to answer the phone.
3. Will you answer the phone?
4. Would you mind answering the phone?

Three remarks impose themselves: (1) illocutions tend to be more polite

when they increase the degree of optionality (the degree to which H is
allowed the option of not performing the action); (2) hedges – introductory
devices of mitigation – try to reduce the riskiness of the message in
utterances 2-3-4 above; (3) the more indirect an illocution is, the more
diminished its force is.
To revert to sociable talk with little meaningful content: this kind of talk
is to be found in many languages and, due to its role, Leech even suggested
a phatic maxim in conversation, whose text might be “Avoid silence” or
“Keep talking”. Greetings, for instance, are typically used with a phatic
function, and we may add that in literature phatic exchanges are avoided,
precisely because they lack informative value. There is a pragmatic concern
for the so-called ‘service encounters’ because people working together need
to make their messages more friendly and personalized in order to find
common ground. In this respect, there are two frequently used speech acts,
compliments and invitations. They have two separable functions: the
former can be ice-breaking and the latter intimacy-sustaining. The former are
preferably longer, elaborated sequences, while the latter could be short and
unelaborated. Joking and teasing can also become phatic, although they
are infrequent responses in general; sociolinguists have found them more
frequent among strangers.
Attribution of personality traits affects interactional behaviour in two
ways: on the one hand, people constantly label other people and tend to take
them for granted according to expectations and, on the other hand, they
make claims of others. Such claims have been discussed under the notion of
face, an open category whose constituents vary cross-culturally. Face
dualism, which is pointed out further down, may be open to objections
concerning its universal application, but our culture embraced it totally.
Face, to put it simplistically, is public image one claims for oneself. In
positive face, face is kept up, saved or improved, for the sake of a desire to
be approved of, liked or better appreciated in the social group. Negative face
is defence of one’s rights to territories, freedom of action, freedom from
imposition. There are opinions (Hill et al. 1986, Ide 1989, etc.) promoting
discernment (defined as S’s use of polite expressions according to social
conventions rather than interactional strategy) as a form of contrast to
volitional politeness aiming at specific purposes or goals. Thus, public/group
face gets opposed to private/individual face (Nwoye, 1992) or ‘ideal social
identity’ to ‘ideal individual autonomy’ (Mao, 1994). O’Driscoll accounts for
face with the observation that “a large part of our feeling of being neither
outcast nor slave depends on other people recognising that we are neither
outcast nor slave”.
The system of politeness in pragmatic presentation has to do with face
work, face wants, face-threatening acts (FTAs) and face-saving acts (FSAs).
Threat is a hybrid between a directive and a commissive. It is the utterance
expressing S’s commitment to the performance of a costly action against H.
Here are a few more necessary clues:
»face work: the reconciliation of face wants and FTAs
»face wants: mainly autonomy for oneself and approval from others
»FTAs: orders, requests, criticism, disagreement
»FSAs: (a) orientation to positive face: acts showing solidarity and shared
goals; (b) orientation to negative face: expressions of deference and
apologetic attitude.

The Irony Principle (IP) is applied in cases of overpoliteness, enabling

a speaker to be impolite while seemingly polite. Banter is underpoliteness or,
to put it differently, a means of being friendly while apparently offensive.
Therefore, irony and banter go along opposite lines but are reunited by a
common feature: they are clearly recognized as unserious - in pragmatic
terminology, insincere - yet no obligatory formal characteristic shows it.
Stylisticians generally notice a switch in register (irony is suddenly pompous,
banter is suddenly informal); pragmaticians investigate external
circumstances of the ironic or befriending utterance and say that irony is
mock politeness, whereas banter is mock impoliteness. The blatant
infringement of the Maxims of Quality and Quantity is also diagnosed.
Overpoliteness may have the effect of signifying superiority, whereas
underpoliteness (e.g. banter) has the opposite effect of establishing a bond of
familiarity, especially among youngsters in casual conversation.
Irony is currently defined by dictionaries as the use of words to express
something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning. Irony
research has pointed to the fact that people normally can react to both levels
of meanings: to what is said and to what is implicated, and thereby shape the
meaning of the emergent message. The double responses (to the dictum and
the implicatum), suggest that both levels of expression are recognized. This
indicates again that irony is a special case of communicating a gap between
the two levels of dictum and implicatum. This gap has to do with an
evaluative contrast.
Levinson (1991) writes down the following general form for IP (Irony
Principle): If you must cause offence, at least do so in a way which
doesn’t overtly conflict with the PP, but allows the hearer to arrive at
the offensive point of your remark indirectly, by way of implicature. He
goes on to explain that irony typically takes the form of a statement that is too
polite for the occasion. The speaker breaks a maxim of the CP (Quality or
Quantity) in order to uphold the PP. He exploits the PP in order to implicate
something critical and gives birth to IP effects. Thus, the speaker, in being
ironic, exploits the PP in order to uphold – at a remoter level – the CP.
Consider the following:
A: John has just borrowed your car. B: Well, I like THAT.
Leech comments on the case in the following manner: “What B says is
polite to John and is clearly not true. Therefore what B really means is
impolite to John and true.”
It is assumed that there is a participant-triad: the ironist/speaker, the
victim/hearer and the evaluator/audience. The participants are connected by
differing degrees of acquaintance, by sympathies and/or by solidarity. A
successful ironist requires knowledge of the immediate and cultural context
as well as of the participants. The ironist assumes that the intended audience
shares his/her presuppositions, because they form much of our taken-for-
granted beliefs about the structure of the world. A participant (audience
and/or victim) will have the greatest difficulty detecting irony that mocks at his
own beliefs or characteristics.
We underline the fact that the quality of the audience is ever important.
As Fowler says, “irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double
audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not
understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is
aware both of that more & of the outsiders’ incomprehension” (H. W. Fowler,
Modern English Usage, 1994, p. 295).

As everywhere else in discourse, irony can be turned explicit or overt

through marking, e.g. (1) It is ironic to me that you should mistrust me (the
implicatum is trust me). (2) It would be a bitter irony to say your brother was
your rival (the implicatum is your brother is your ally). (3) In a rather ironic
twist of fate, he died precisely at the moment of the much wished-for
nomination to an Oscar. As for this third exemplification, with irony invoked
explicitly, an additional semantic feature, ‘coincidences’, may appear.
Coincidence has not been traditionally included in the definition of irony, and
is understood here in the dictionary sense as “the accidental and remarkable
occurrence of events or ideas at the same time” (Webster).
Interaction analysts are interested in responses to irony, in what is done
in the conversational sequence which records the perlocution to the irony. Let
us check, for instance, responses/repartees to irony during a dinner table
conversation.
The host A is handing out glasses to guests and gives B a kitschy glass
with a horrible pink stem. A says to B: Here, you get the most beautiful glass.
Among B’s possible responses, we can devise the following:
1. B: You are always so nice to me. <response to the said>
2. B: Is that ever ugly! <response to the meant>
3. B: Quite charming…Isn’t that ugly! <mixed response>
4. B: Thanks. <ambiguous response>
5.B: Hahahaha … [laughter]
Response (1) refers to what is positively said in the ironic act, and is
received as such. One can easily imagine further comments continuing the
irony, e.g. We both have the same excellent taste. Obviously, reactions to
what is said in irony have the potential to lead the playful discourse further in
what is known as teasing. The response to the said shows that the discourse
frame is not changed: on the contrary, the irony is reframed. Response (2)
refers to what is meant by the ironic act. In this standard reaction, the frame
switches back to ordinary discourse. Response (3) contains both types of
reaction. In response (4) it is not clear whether and how the irony was
perceived, as the reaction is ambiguous. It could simply refer to the act of
passing the glass, but it could also express an ironic stance to what was said.
Response (5) responds only to the humour inherent in the ironic act.
The Pollyanna Principle is in connection with speaker preference for
pleasant topics and a subsequent understatement of the degree to which
things are bad. The minimizing attitude when choosing the bright side of life
rather than the gloomy one describes the frame of mind of Eleanor Porter’s
protagonist in the novel “Pollyanna” (1913). The first to use the name were
the psychologists who developed the so-called Pollyanna Hypothesis.
Positive thinking as explained above is associated with good psychological
and physical health. The well-adjusted American heroine was taking credit for
her successes and discounting her failures, all within a quite favourable self-
image. Drawing on the power of positive thinking, she was never depressed
and could outlive any stressful situation. Finally, she enjoyed good physical
health and a long life. Nonetheless, psychologists have established that the
benefits of positive thinking are short-lived while the absence of negative
thoughts seems to have more enduring consequences. The Pollyanna
Principle in pragmatics is at the origin of both optimistic overstatement and
euphemistic understatement.
In being analytical about the polite effects of indirectness, we need to
start not from the common perception that being polite presupposes that one
makes H feel good or one makes H not feel bad; the intention to be polite is
not signalled, but implicated by deviations from the bald-on-record use of

language while getting on with the communicative task at hand. However,
politeness effects do not always arise from indirectness, so indirectness
should no longer be considered as the main mechanism of politeness.
Moreover, politeness is a feature that one expects to exist in every
conversation; participants note not that someone is being polite – this is the
norm – but rather that the speaker is violating the Conversational Contract or
the Cooperation Principle.
We can exemplify with options available for an indirect performance
such as directing (practised by Searle on Pass the salt), labelled a ‘rogative’
by Leech. Direct communication: Examine the witness tomorrow. Possible
realizations: (1) Can you examine…? [option concerning H’s ability]; (2) Are
you going to examine…? [option concerning H’s future action]; (3) I would
like the witness examined tomorrow [option concerning S’s want or wish];
(4) Would you mind examining…? [option concerning H’s willingness]; (5) I
don’t think we have enough evidence as yet [option concerning reasons for
action]; (6) Can I ask you to examine …? [a sentence embedding either one
of the above or an explicit performative].
By way of conclusion, one finds out that indirectness in pragmatic
politeness can be seen in the following way:
a) In positive politeness manifestations, S indicates that he wants H’s wants.
While S shows that he considers H to be the same as he is, with rights
and duties or expectations of reciprocity, S may implicate that he likes H.
b) In negative politeness manifestations, one finds self-effacement, formality,
restraint, use of indirect speech acts, hedges, apologies for interfering;
there is much standardized indirectness in it. We read in Cornilescu &
Chiţoran (1994:202) about the natural tension existing between two
factors in negative politeness: one is the desire to go on record to
secure clarity; the other is the desire to go off record to avoid
imposing.
2.2 Aplicaţii
I.
The universe of discourse is the particular world, real or imaginary (or
part real, part imaginary) that S assumes (s)he is talking about at a certain
point in time. We check the following conversation and try to explain the
universe of discourse (UD) when two people argue at cross-purposes:
A: Did Mary’s daughter turn up this morning? [T1]

B: I didn’t know Mary had a daughter. [T2]
A: Then who’s that freckled long-legged girl I saw here yesterday? [T3]
B: I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Mary hasn’t got any kids. [T4]
A: I’m positive Mary’s daughter was here yesterday. [T5]
For proper mutual understanding (pragmatic cooperation), A & B should be

working with the same UD. Instead, we find out that there is UD1
(hypothesizing on a daughter in T 1, seeming to identify a daughter in T 3,
asserting a daughter in T5) and UD2 (excluding both a daughter in T2 and any
other offspring in T4). Speaker B uses clues of uncertainty that are also
indications of a polite attitude while contradicting: in T 2 the past tense
negative form of know, in T4 the present tense negative form of the same
verb. Assuming different universes of discourse is the reason here for a

breakdown in communication. What actually exists (the shared reality of UD 1

and UD2) is the girl with the given description; this is fact. The identity of this
girl is fiction in one of the universes discussed.
II.
When one party in the conversation fails to apply Grice’s formulations,
the other party uses the framework of the CP in order to reach an explanation
of reasons and pursued effects. This deliberate act of non-observance within
goal-directed behaviour receives different labels: exploitation, violation, flout,
infringement, abuse. Let us exemplify.
From the point of view of the informative content quantity, utterances
can be found to be informative – carrying information in a sufficient amount
for the daily routine jobs – and uninformative – useful only to keep the social
wheels turning smoothly, so to say. Let us try to contextualize the utterance
Nice day differently: (a) Nice day, quite fit for an outing. The speaker is
informatively correct, the first half of his sentence acting as a presequence to
a speech act of invitation or as a persuasive argument for an urge to action.
The information is communicated straightforwardly. (b) Nice day, this wind is
killing me! The speaker meaning is apprehended, in an indirect kind of
communication, as an ironical description when using the epithet ‘nice’. The
contrary idea is the information inferred by the hearer after processing the
second half with its hyperbole – ‘to kill’ cannot literally happen. The whole
informative package is in all probability necessary to the speaker to make the
hearer do something about it, maybe it is a request to continue the talk inside
a café. (c) Nice day, and spring hasn’t come yet! This uninformative piece is
motivated by a socializing need of someone spending some time by the side
of a stranger with whom he finds it is polite to carry on an exchange including
things that are obvious and undeniable to them both. This is a case of phatic
talk. Our last but one example violates the Quality Maxim, whereas the last
example above goes against Quantity. A tautology like War is war also
breaks Quantity. In many cases two maxims are broken simultaneously – for
example, (b) opts out of the Quantity and Quality Maxim as well. We
introduce further examples of violation: of Quality in irony (John’s a real
genius!) and banter (What a mean trick! referring to something very cleverly
planned); of Manner in cases of vagueness (Someone’s got to do that).
Authors may use inciting titles that are partially, maybe totally obscure
to outsiders or non-specialists; thus, they stimulate curiosity while
deliberately violating the Maxim of Manner, “Be perspicuous”. For example, a
research article whose title is Newspeak and the ‘Great PC’ from the start will
cause a feeling of exclusion in those who do not understand before reading.
On the one hand, only the educated will have access to the term ‘newspeak’
coined by George Orwell in the novel 1984, and applied ever since to a
(semi-)official style of writing when one thing used in the guise of its opposite
serves a political, ideological cause. On the other hand, PC will get its
information released by the article itself, spelling it out either as ‘politically
correct’ or as ‘political correctness’.
As for other current situations, one may recollect that obituaries
suspend the Maxim of Quality, telegrams suspend the Maxim of Quantity,
foreign speakers of a language with low proficiency in speaking it frequently
break several maxims at once, and the same happens in special cases such
as drunkenness or a mental illness; a priest or a psychiatrist may refuse to
release information because it was given to him in confidence; a
parliamentary speaker may violate the submaxim concerning brevity; a
witness will go against the Quality Maxim when certain information, once
provided, is likely to incriminate him or her.
III.
Many problems in communication have been caused to cultural
outsiders by the wrong contextualization of contrary-to-face-value
messages. For instance, East Asians and Anglo-Americans have been
confused by those very circumstances in which someone says yes for ‘no’
and no for ‘yes’. Let us go into some detail (see Ringo Ma (1996) “Saying
yes for no and no for yes: A Chinese rule”, Journal of Pragmatics, No. 25,
pp. 257- 266).
Decoding is precisely ‘reading between the lines’ in such cases. Both
the communicator’s internal motivation and external speech being
considered, the typology of these answers covers four patterns: (1) saying
yes for no and other-serving; (2) saying no for yes and other-serving; (3)
saying yes for no and self-serving; (4) saying no for yes and self-serving.
Each of them can be identified in Chinese culture in the following cases:
1. In order to avoid confrontation, a direct rejection of a proposal will be
discarded in favour of an ambiguous yes. This answer may only mean I
am listening to you or perhaps I understand your position. Distinguishing
an authentic yes from a fake one (which is the case here) is possible if
one takes into account the low level or even zero level of enthusiasm in
the interlocutor. For instance, the interlocutor may speak haltingly, or
instead of yes he may choose the nonverbal form of head-nodding.
(These responses can be misleading for outsiders, but Chinese partners
claim that they create few communication problems for them as insiders.)
2. Direct acceptance is avoided, while the position of the speaker implies
politeness, such as in the situation of a rainy day: someone offers a ride
to his partner without a car, but the latter says, No thanks, I don’t want to
be too much trouble. The decoder is unlikely to take the words literally.
3. The communicator is strategically conscious while deceptive. For instance
the male who asks a woman about her romantic relationship with others,
and she says she is dating another when she is not. She believes that a
yes for no will probably help her accomplish her goal – to make the man
believe she has no other dates. The man himself does not take the yes
response seriously; he should know the statement is made strategically to
make him believe the reverse is true.
4. This case can be called ‘uncomplicated lying’. For example, contrary to
the truth, a boy says, No, I didn’t steal any money! to avoid punishment.
This category can also cover business situations in which a partner
means to obtain something or gain compliance more easily by feigning
disinterestedness instead of showing enthusiasm.
Both the third and fourth types represent a strategy applied to fulfil a selfish
goal hidden from the listener. These categories are also distinct from the
others in that they are not motivated by interest in interpersonal harmony.
It has been suggested by studies that the context discussed in these
four types underplays all matters of the heart while being assertive and non-
argumentative; it releases little information and the non-confrontational
attitude is explicit (in fact, directness is known to display strong emotionality,
which is not the case here). The discussion of specialists was contextually
widened to cover thinking patterns for interlocutors. Thus, the Taoist pattern
has influenced the Chinese people for a long time: this pattern is circular in

nature, as opposed to the finite, linear one reflected in Aristotelian rhetoric.

The circular thinking pattern reflects the notion of infinity, the starting point is
the terminating point. There are paradoxical Chinese statements such as
“Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know” (Dao De
Jing) or relativistic statements such as “It is because every one under
Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty that the idea of ugliness exists” (idem).
People trained to see circularity in contexts do not generally believe in
dichotomies or direct causal relationships.
IV.
The phonic activity for natives of English has been subjected to
pragmatic analysis as a manifestation of politeness, as incredible as it may
appear to our Romanian background. The characteristic of most conversation
in English is the preference for shorter sentences, a preference interrelated
with conversational goals. But, if what the speakers are going to say cannot
be said in short sentences, certainly they will say it in longer sentences.
Manifestly, length is under the control of speakers. A fact has been admitted ,
namely that not all syntactic breaks imposed by length are obligatory. The
possibility of using weak breaks makes it possible for speakers to use longer
sentences with one intonation pattern, and also to use two clauses with one
intonation pattern, as well as to split a long sentence into several
constituents, and even to use a fast tempo. This depends on respiration
which imposes an upper limit on phonemic clause length. The duration of a
minimal sentence has been found not to exceed two seconds. There are
many other aspects of spoken language that involve a discussion of polite
conduct. We exemplify with two peculiarly English utterances, oh and please.
The exact value of OH, so surprisingly frequent in English speakers’
conversation, whether formal or informal, depends on the choice of intonation
and facial expression. The most difficult function to explain is the one at the
beginning of an utterance, sometimes followed by a brief pause. The
exclamatory force lacks, since it may be said with very little emphasis, often
quite rapidly. Related words to this introductory particle are “well”, “so”, “now”,
“y’know”. All of them are analysable with discourse function: (a) to correct
oneself (Oh, I’m wrong); (b) to correct others ( ‘Mary was there.’ ‘Oh, Jim was
there too.’); (c) request for clarification (‘Someone’s knocking.’ ‘...Oh you
mean outside?’); (d) request for elaboration (‘I don’t quite have hobbies.’ ‘Oh
what do you like to do?’); (e) something is suddenly remembered (‘Oh, listen,
I forgot to ask you...’); (f) knowledge reorientation (‘Yesterday the Mississippi
rose to its highest level since 1977.’‘Oh, is there any end in sight to floods
and very rainy weeks?’); (g) totally unanticipated news ( ‘Oh, I didn’t even
know that!); (h) display of recognition (‘That book is written well enough. You
can read it.’‘Oh, yeh, I’ve heard it’s good.’);(i) marking an intense reaction -
particularly when using clichés (‘You don’t need this kind of start in life.’‘Oh,
yes.’) or when someone introduces an ‘oh’ of belligerence. A generalization to
apply to all these contexts could be the signal of the speaker’s preparation to
take into account new information.He may receive it from the others or from
within himself. Anyway, people use oh to show awareness about their
knowledge being in a state of change. Oh also signals the nature of the
user’s participation in the dialogue. If oh is left out, the utterance can sound
abrupt.
PLEASE has a major social role in persuading others to cooperate.
The item is not easily assigned to any word class, yet the tendency of
grammarians is to call it an adverb, though it is like no other adverb. Firstly, it
cannot be modified by “very”. Secondly, it can alone form a sentence in its

own right. Thirdly, within a sentence, ordinary syntactic types accept the item
without constraints, for example questions (Can I get a second helping,
please?), statements (I’d like a day off, please), orders (Give me a good
reason, please), nominal sentences (Icecream, please). Fourthly, the
dictionary meaning is hard to pinpoint, since the word does something rather
than means something, and what it does is to persuade. If there are usage
constraints in connection with “please”, they certainly are of pragmatic
colouring. The item is associated with the benefit of the speaker and is
present in sentences interpretable as requests, with intonational variants.
Otherwise it is erroneously used. It is not acceptable in threats (*Do it again
and I’ll hit you, please), promises (*You can have your day off soon, I
promise, please), compliments (*I think you’re wonderful, please), narrative
texts (*... and they had to find a name for the dog, please).
As a general conclusion to all the guidelines provided for pragmatic

work, we may say the following. There are at least five perspectives opened
in using language towards the fulfilment of pragmatic goals, and these
perspectives build up on each other’s shoulders, so to say. Firstly, one
becomes acquainted with the perspective of sentence meaning, the meaning
directly associated with lexicalized grammatical forms. Secondly, the
perspective of contextualization for the meaning given under number one.
Thirdly, there is a perspective opened by speaker meaning. Fourthly, the
perspective of hearer meaning is equally important to take into account.
Fifthly, the perspective of discourse will bind together interactionally all the
acquired meanings from different utterances and perspectives mentioned
before.
2.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare
Identificaţi răspunsurile corecte.
1. Who is by convention included in the assembly called <audience>?

A. hearers; B. overhearers; C. eavesdroppers; D. readers
2. What do you focus on when you are the cooperative hearer interpreting a
message?
A. speaker’s preconditions; B. speaker’s mind; C.speaker’s body; D.
speaker’s emotions
3. Due to the contribution of contextualized understanding, interpreters of a

message are aware of aspects of utterance meaning, and not exclusively of
sentence meaning. Can you point to suitable utterance meanings if you hear
the sentence “There’s a dirty dish on the fridge”?
- A. the implicit request of a hurried wife to a momentarily free hubby to see
about washing up
- B. the son about whose meal mother and father have been talking earlier,
has had his lunch
- C. the presence of a number of buzzing flies in the room with an open
window
- D. in a restaurant, a chef addressing a scullery boy who has not gone
through all his obligations
4. Explain why the verb come has a deictic content. You may start from the
utterance Come back into the boat, while asking yourself the question
“Where is the speaker located?”
A. movement away from the hearer;B.movement away from the boat; C.
movement towards the speaker; D. the speaker is not in the boat
5. Explain why the verb bring has a deictic content. You may start from the
utterance Don’t bring food into the cottage, while asking yourself the question
“Where is the speaker located?”
A. movement towards the speaker; B. the speaker is not in the cottage; C.
the hearer is not in the cottage; D. movement towards the food
6. Pick the correct definition for the notion of discourse empowerment:

A. a speaker attacking the problem head-on; B. the use of speech acts in
contextual rootedness; C. conscious use of verbal strategies so as to win
control over the course of an interaction; D. intentional use of replies so as to
short-circuit the turn-taking mechanism
7. What is grumbling as an indirect speech act?

A. a perceived offence as a form of evaluation;
B. disapproval of direct complaints;
C. holding hearer responsible for a perceived offence
D. not holding hearer responsible for a perceived offence
8. Assess the politeness of Have another cup of tea (1) versus Would you
mind having another cup of tea (2), the cultural area being Europe.
A. (1) is impolite, (2) is polite; B. (1) is polite, (2) is impolite; C. (1) is polite,
(2) is equally polite; D. (1) is impolite, (2) is equally impolite
9. For the answer you have given above, find the explanation below:
A. the imperative of command is made to sound like a generous offer
B. when the offer is interrogative in pattern, it is a request for services
C. if accepted, the offer is the benefit of Speaker
D. if not accepted, the offer is the benefit of Speaker
10. What answer is good pragmatically if you, Speaker 2, are willing to end
the conversation?
Speaker 1: What’s the time?
Speaker 2:
A. What did you say? B. What do you mean? C. How should I know? D.
Why are you asking?
11. What answer is good pragmatically if you, Speaker 2, are willing to insult?
Speaker 1: Do you like pasta?
Speaker 2:
A. What a clever trick! B. Do horses like grass? C. How should I know?
D. Why are you asking?
12. What answer is more direct pragmatically if you, Speaker 1, are willing to
cook potatoes?
Speaker 1: Do you like cabbage or potatoes better?
Speaker 2:
A. Why do you want to know? B. Do you have cabbage? C. Where do
you keep them? D. Either will do, eh?
13. What answer is a dispreferred for Speaker 1 if you, Speaker 2, are in a

hurry to leave for home after a day’s work?
Speaker 1: You must be the new girl. Do you like it here?
Speaker 2:
A. Why?They pay you well... B. Do you have a better idea? C. Well, I
have to say good bye now... D. Nice people, why shouldn’t I...?
14. You say something while giving way (priority through the entrance door)
to someone of lower status than yourself. What can be a presumed
perlocution?
A. causing H to startle; B. causing H to feel accosted; C. causing H to extend
his hand; D. causing H to give priority in his turn to the next passer-by
15. You greet a group in which only one person is known to you. What is a
possible perlocution?
A. causing Hs to greet in reply; B. causing Hs to interrupt their talk; C.
causing Hs to turn their back on you; D. causing Hs to toast
16. You pause to give permission to your co-worker to take the floor. What is
a possible perlocution to your pragmatic activity?
A.a smile and wonder why you are being so polite; B. an amazed shake of
the head; C. thanks and extension of a friendly hand; D. no perlocution
17. Face work can be read as the carrying out of communicative acts that
influence face in the following manner: they maintain, repair, enhance or
damage face. Do the following utterances belong to face work? Which ones?
A. Just give me your pen for a sec! B. Did you see her pics on Facebook? C.
Try memorising the lines.D. Because they were crying!
18. “Social distance” is a concept defined as follows:

the measure of intimacy between interlocutors, determining constraints felt
and liberties taken in exchanges, eventually pointing to a degree of comfort
and a degree of deference in the encounter.
What are the categories of people to which social distance makes reference?
A. superiors, peers, subordinates
B. children, grand-children, nephews and nieces
C. parents, grand-parents, great grand-parents
D. strangers, friends, intimates
19. You are given a case of hinting, with what S1 says. S2 responds
cooperatively by helping S2 fulfill his goal in a shortened version of their
conversation.
S1: Would you like some coffee?
S2: Thanks.
Which are the skipped turns?
A. ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Have a cup.’
B. ‘Yes, I would.’ ‘In this case, here’s one cup for you.’
C. ‘Yes, I will.’ ‘Have one coffee, will you?’
D. ‘Yes, sure.’ ‘Get some for tomorrow.’
20. You are given a case of hinting, with what S1 says. S2 responds
cooperatively by helping S2 fulfill his goal in a shortened version of their
conversation.
S1: What have you done with my newspaper?
S2: It’s there in the kitchen.
Which are the skipped turns?
A. ‘Yes, I have done.’ ‘Where?’
B. ‘I have done nothing with it.’ ‘In this case, find it.’
C. ‘I have done nothing with it.’ ‘Then where is it?’
D. ‘I have done paperballs.’ ‘Get me the balls .’
21. What is to be noticed about the exchange below?

Male 1: Do you drink? Male 2: Of course, all humans drink.
A. Male 2 jokes. B. Male 2 is in low spirits. C. Male 1 fears his new friend
is an alcohol-addict. D. Male 1 is in search of a conversational topic.

Male: Would you like to dance?
Female: Sure. Do you know anyone else who’d like to?
A. The male is bored, the female is in a low mood.
B. The male invites her, the female declines the invitation.
C. The female prefers to put on a pretence of ingenuousness.
D. The male is not liked for asking.

Lecturer: You should have been here at nine. Student: Why? What
happened?
A. The student is unintentionally rude. B. The student is intentionally
rude. C. The lecturer is unfair to the student. D.The lecturer is
interested in the student’s schedule.
24. What second part is a refusal?

Turn 1: Could you play the piano for me?
TURN 2 (refusing):
A. It must be too late for it. B. It might be ok. C. I guess not. D. It may be
too late at night for that.
25. What do you see in this exchange?

‘Excuse me, do you know what time it is?’ ‘Yes.’
A. breach of politeness; B. sample of humour; C. joking; D.
misunderstanding
2.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen
► In no order whatever, you are given below the components of a theoretical

model for conversation. Impose your own order on them, adding explanations
and comments.
 Turn-taking is locally managed.
 What parties/partners say is not specified in advance.
 Turn size is not fixed; it varies.Turns can be as short as a single word.
 CS selects NS.
 Talk can be continuous or discontinuous.

 The distribution of turns is not specified in advance.
 Transfer from CS to NS occurs at transition places or competition places.
 Turn order is not fixed; it varies.
 The length of the conversational exchange is not specified in advance.
 The number of parties/partners can vary.
 Overlap is common, but brief.
 From one turn by one S to another turn by a different S, the transition
happens commonly without a gap and also without an overlap.
► Can someone be communicatively cooperative while socially non-

cooperative? Is one illustration the case of diplomatic negotiations with
irreconcilable positions of the parties involved?
► Consider the following mappings and work out cases when

communication is affected by the occurrence of incongruities inside these
arrangements. The three combinations can be taken to represent three levels
of communication between addresser and addressee.
a. mind  words  understanding
b. emotions  feelings  contact-making
c. body  actions  impact
► Look into the following simplified presentation of what people conversing

generally do and find illustrations of your own to add to what is below.
Roger Bell (Translation and Translating: Theory and Practice, 1991:137) says
that “communication resolves itself into an attractive, simple fourfold
taxonomy which can form the basis of a model”. Bell uses number one (1) to
denote, on the one hand, goods-and-services and, on the other hand,
giving, while number two (2) is for information and demanding; thus, he
obtains the following model of communicative exchanges:
(a) 1 + 1 = GIVING + GOODS-AND-SERVICES
(b) 1 + 2 = GIVING + INFORMATION
(c) 2 + 1 = DEMANDING + GOODS-AND-SERVICES
(d) 2 + 2 = DEMANDING + INFORMATION
Then Bell exemplifies with speech acts as follows (his question is “What
would we call what the speaker was doing in each case?”, so he also points
to indirectness of message):
(a) making an offer: Would you like a coffee?
(b) making a statement: I’ve made the coffee.
(c) issuing a command: Give me a coffee !
(d) asking a question: Have you made the coffee?
► Explain what special contexts will allow you the following:

1) promise someone something by a nod;
2) congratulate someone by uttering Well done!
3) encourage someone by a pat on the back;
4) sympathize with someone by a hug.
► What social roles have you already performed in the course of your life?
What interactional patterns have you been in need of?

► In the early forties, pronunciation was studied via the phonemic approach;
‘pitch phonemes’ was the name given to the minimal contrastive units of
pitch. Since the presence of the -eme suffix coloured linguistic thinking,
specialists got accustomed to referring to ‘morphemes’, ‘sememes’,
‘lexemes’, and those terms are quite familiar and useful even in our day for
specialist materials. Of rare utility are, in fact, extravagant creations in line
with the -eme fashion, such as ‘prosodemes’ (contrastive units in
suprasegmental phonology) or ‘tonemes’, the latter being unspecific to
English but specific to many Oriental and African idioms. The toneme is
perceptible when pitch can cause a word to alter its meaning completely, not
just giving it a new attitudinal nuance. The fancy of linguists has also coined
terms like ‘behavioureme’, with subdivisions such as ‘gusteme’ (the minimal
unit of taste) or ‘kineme’ (the minimal unit of facial expression or body
gesture). These have not travelled a long way, not being readily identifiable
and analysable, in contradistinction to some other concepts in the field that
have actually proved fruitful in engendering renewed comprehension of
meaning.
Practise a variety of ways for saying YES when someone proposes
something to you (specialists have concocted nine ways, labelled full fall, low
fall, mid fall, full rise, low rise, high rise, fall-rise, rise-fall, level tone).
►Alternatively, try to answer with NO in a variety of emissions. Try this time

the variation of speed/tempo in order to communicate a certain message. It
can be illustrated with a variety of NO’s, from one uttered in a clipped tone
(‘Nope’) to one said in a drawled tone (‘No-o-o’) implying a meditative frame
of mind.
► Read and explain, in as much detail as you can, a possible definition for
“interaction”: modifications of the impact communicators exert on one
another when they modify the social valence of the linguistic form they apply.

Conclusions
Conclusions on pragmatic work
To conclude with, we feel bound to underline the following:

 The picture of cooperation for parties in verbal interaction can be put
together with the specifically pragmatic invovement: they observe the basic
rules for turntaking; they listen ‘actively’ when they are not speaking; they
transmit their message in a way that does not generate misunderstanding;
they are prepared to make inferences from the context whenever that is
required.
 In spite of persistent efforts, stylisticians, semanticists, pragmaticists and
philosophers have failed to give us simple, valid and reliable rules for
deciding once and for all whether two utterances mean the same or not. A
phrase such as “more or less similar in meaning” introduces fuzziness into
the argument - the invariant core with variable boundaries.
 Interpretation of meanings / messages has to rely on a researcher’s
competence and on his intuitions. As linguists, we raise objections to
intuitions at our own peril. It has become a truism now that all descriptions of
a natural language, beyond the stage of physical descriptions of sounds or
letters, ultimately rest on the expert’s intuitions about his language.
 Formalism (in other words, traditional grammar) can be contrasted to
functionalism (or pragmatics) in the following respects: (1) one is rule-
governed and the other one is principle-controlled; (2) rules are conventional,
principles are not (when they are motivated in terms of conversational
goals); (3) grammatical-semantic correspondences are defined by mappings,
whereas pragmatic correspondences are defined by problem-solving; (4)
formal explanations are hinged on ideas and functional explanations are
hinged on texts plus interpersonal relations in communication; (5) the
categories in grammar are mostly known to be discrete and determinate,
while the categories used by pragmatics are describable in terms of
continuous and indeterminate values; (6) sense is conventionally assigned to
sentences, and pragmatics focuses on utterances placed in meaningful
context.
 It has become, we hope, clear by now that the focus is not on a sentence
– a string of words put together by grammar rules; the focus is on an
utterance – which could consist of a single word, a phrase, a clause, a
sequence of sentences.
 Pragmatic work moves between the Chomskian poles that are
competence and performance; pragmatics points out the need for
confirmation or refutation of empirical data – the input for communication at
large.
 This recent ‘science’, pragmatics, is not by far cut-and-dried, so to say, in
its final state. It has the force and resources to push on philological research.

Answers to Tests
Răspunsuri la teste pentru autoevaluare
Test I (cap. I):

1. A şi B; 2. D; 3. B; 4. D; 5. C; 6. A; 7. B, C şi D; 8. C, dacă e vorba de
ironizarea copilului; 9. B şi D; 10. C; 11. B; 12. C şi D; 13. B; 14. niciun
răspuns; 15. D; 16. A; 17. A şi B; 18. toate răspunsurile; 19. A şi C; 20. A şi B;
21. D; 22. toate răspunsurile; 23. A şi B; 24. A şi D; 25. B.
Test II (cap. II):

1. toate răspunsurile; 2. B, C şi D; 3. toate răspunsurile; 4. C; 5. A; 6. C; 7. D;
8. B; 9. A; 10. C; 11. C, posibil A; 12. D; 13. B şi C; 14. niciun răspuns; 15. A
şi B; 16. niciun răspuns; 17. A şi C; 18. A şi D; 19. B; 20. C; 21. A; 22. C; 23.
B; 24. A, C şi D; 25. C.

Preliminaries of Pragmatics

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Cuprins

Cuvânt introductiv şi bibliografie 5

Chapter I – Conventions, Conditions, Commitments 7

1.1 Repere teoretice – 7

1.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare 21

1.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen 25

Chapter II – Principle-Controlled Interaction 27

2.1 Repere teoretice – 27

2.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare 42

2.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen 45

Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 3

MOTO - Multe au rămas neclarificate: noi să facem o scurtă recapitulare şi

Cuvânt introductiv şi bibliografie

Cursul practic de limba/literatura engleză pe care îl prefaţăm aici durează un

Fiecare capitol este structurat pe patru segmente, în următoarea succesiune:

In esenţă, primul capitol se referă la analiza de text de factură pragmatică,

Pentru un studiu mai amplu al tematicii, facem următoarele recomandări

Austin, J. L. (2003) Cum să faci lucruri cu vorbe, trad. S. Corneanu,

Chapter I – Conventions, Conditions, Commitments

1.1 Repere teoretice

1.1.1 Definitions of the field

1.1.2 The communicative situation

Various definitions of pragmatics point to a study of constraints on the

Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 9

There are constraints that operate to govern the exchanges of all

expressions, vocal tone, body movement), emotional (others being allowed

1.1.3 Deictics, presuppositions, implicatures

12 Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work

Deixis is an anchoring point, at the zero level being denoted by the

Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 13

Presuppositions have for a general characteristic the sensitivity of S and H to

S has implicated that q.

By way of illustrating the calculation of implicatures, Cornilescu & Chiţoran

16 Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work

Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 17

issued, as well as an understatement (or litotes) if the speaker takes the

separate the informative intention from the parallel recognition of

1.3 Teste pentru autoevaluare

Identificaţi răspunsurile corecte.

1. What should you understand by the notion of <code>?

Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 21

2. An interesting finding in pragmatics is that Grice’s CP and maxims (himself

<QUANTITY> You assist me to mend a car; if, at a particular moment, I need

A. a set of orders; B. a set of reproaching lines; C. a set of

3. We supply the anchorage to a speech situation and we ask you to

22 Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work

6. Why do presuppositions come forcefully into play when a book of fiction

8. Tidy up your room! Let us consider this is mother’s order addressed

10. What is definitely not a presupposition for the following message?

11. What is the difference between a request and a promise?

12. What is the difference between a command and a request?

Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work 23

much higher intensity than in requesting. D. In requesting, S disposes of less

13. Why is message interpretation doubly dynamic?

14. Context formation depends on

15. The Maxim of Relevance is

16. A communicator has to give the right information in matters of

18. There are limits as to

19. What is “Money brings happiness”?

23. When communicators are not assertive, how are they?

24. A possible description of communication is that sometimes speakers

24 Preliminaries of Pragmatic Work

25. A possible description of communication is that sometimes speakers pull,

1.4 Teme pentru verificare/ examen