(2)   How speakers use and understand speech acts;

(3)   How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and the hearer.

       Pragmatics is sometimes contrasted with semantics, which deals with meaning without reference to the users and communicative functions of sentences.

8.1   Speech act theory

       8.1.1       Performatives and constatives

1.    Performative: In speech act theory an utterance which performs an act, such as Watch out (= a warning).

2.    Constative: An utterance which asserts something that is either true or force. E.g. Chicago is in the United States.

3.    Felicity conditions of performatives:

(1)   There must be a relevant conventional procedure, and the relevant participants and circumstances must be appropriate.

(2)   The procedure must be executed correctly and completely.

(3)   Very often, the relevant people must have the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, and must follow it up with actions as specified.

       8.1.2       A theory of the illocutionary act

                     1.    What is a speech act?

A speech act is an utterance as a functional unit in communication. In speech act theory, utterances have two kinds of meaning.

Propositional meaning (locutionary meaning): This is the basic literal meaning of the utterance which is conveyed by the particular words and structures which the utterance contains.

Illocutionary meaning (illocutionary force): This is the effect the utterance or written text has on the reader or listener. E.g. in I’m thirsty, the propositional meaning is what the utterance says about the speaker’s physical state. The illocutionary force is the effect the speaker wants the utterance to have on the listener. It may be intended as request for something to drink. A speech act is a sentence or utterance which has both propositional meaning and illocutionary force.

A speech act which is performed indirectly is sometimes known as an indirect speech act, such as the speech act of the requesting above. Indirect speech acts are often felt to be more polite ways of performing certain kinds of speech act, such as requests and refusals.

2.    Locutionary act: A distinction is made by Austin in the theory of speech acts between three different types of acts involved in or caused by the utterance of a sentence. A locutionary act is the saying of something which is meaningful and can be understood.

3.    Illocutionary act: An illocutionary act is using a sentence to perform a function.

4.    Perlocutionary act: A perlocutionary act is the results or effects that are produced by means of saying something.

8.2   The theory of conversational implicature

       8.2.1       The cooperative principle

                     1.    The cooperative principle (CP)

Cooperative principle refers to the “co-operation” between speakers in using the maxims during the conversation. There are four conversational maxims:

(1)   The maxim of quantity:

       a.     Make your contribution as informative as required.

       b.    Don’t make your contribution more informative than is required.

(2)   The maxim of quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true.

       a.     Don’t say what you believe to be false.

       b.    Don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

(3)   The maxim of relation: Say things that are relevant.

(4)   The maxim of manner: Be perspicuous.

       a.     Avoid obscurity of expression.

       b.    Avoid ambiguity.

       c.     Be brief.

       d.    Be orderly.

2.    Conversational implicature: The use of conversational maxims to imply meaning during conversation is called conversational implicature.

       8.2.2       Violation of the maxims

                     [In fact this is taken from one of my essays. Only for reference. ^_^ - icywarmtea]

                     1.    Conversational implicature

                         In our daily life, speakers and listeners involved in conversation are generally cooperating with each other. In other words, when people are talking with each other, they must try to converse smoothly and successfully. In accepting speakers’ presuppositions, listeners have to assume that a speaker is not trying to mislead them. This sense of cooperation is simply one in which people having a conversation are not normally assumed to be trying to confuse, trick, or withhold relevant information from one another.

However, in real communication, the intention of the speaker is often not the literal meaning of what he or she says. The real intention implied in the words is called conversational implicature. For example:

[1]   A: Can you tell me the time?

B: Well, the milkman has come.

                         In this little conversation, A is asking B about the time, but B is not answering directly. That indicates that B may also not no the accurate time, but through saying “the milkman has come”, he is in fact giving a rough time. The answer B gives is related to the literal meaning of the words, but is not merely that. That is often the case in communication. The theory of conversational implicature is for the purpose of explaining how listeners infer the speakers’ intention through the words.

                     2.    The CP

                         The study of conversational implicature starts from Grice (1967), the American philosopher. He thinks, in daily communication, people are observing a set of basic rules of cooperating with each other so as to communicate effectively through conversation. He calls this set of rules the cooperative principle (CP) elaborated in four sub-principles (maxims). That is the cooperative principle.

                         We assume that people are normally going to provide an appropriate amount of information, i.e. they are telling the relevant truth clearly. The cooperative principle given by Grice is an idealized case of communication.

                         However, there are more cases that speakers are not fully adhering to the principles. But the listener will assume that the speaker is observing the principles “in a deeper degree”. For example:

[2]   A: Where is Bill?

B: There is a yellow car outside Sue’s house.

                         In [2], the speaker B seems to be violating the maxims of quantity and relation, but we also assume that B is still observing the CP and think about the relationship between A’s question and the “yellow car” in B’s answer. If Bill has a yellow car, he may be in Sue’s house.

                         If a speaker violate CP by the principle itself, there is no conversation at all, so there cannot be implicature. Implicature can only be caused by violating one or more maxims.

                     3.    Violation of the CP

(1)   The people in conversation may violate one or more maxims secretly. In this way, he may mislead the listener.

                                For this case, in the conversation [2] above, we assume that B is observing the CP and Bill has a yellow car. But if B is intentionally trying to mislead A to think that Bill is in Sue’s house, we will be misled without knowing. In this case, if one “lies” in conversation, there is no implicature in the conversation, only the misleading.

(2)   He may declare that he is not observing the maxims or the CP.

In this kind of situation, the speaker directly declares he is not cooperating. He has made it clear that he does not want to go on with the conversation, so there is no implicature either.

(3)   He may fall into a dilemma.

For example, for the purpose observing the first principle of the maxim of quantity (make your contribution as informative as is required), he may be violating the second principle of the maxim of quality (do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence).

For this case, Grice gave an example:

[3]   A: Where does C live?

B: Somewhere in the south of France.

In [3], if B knows that A is going to visit C, his answer is violating the maxim of quantity, because he is not giving enough information about where C lives. But he has not declared that he will not observe the maxims. So we can know that B knows if he gives more information, he will violate the principle “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence”. In other words, he has fallen into a “dilemma”. So we can infer that his implicature is that he does not know the exact address of C. In this case, there is conversational implicature.

(4)   He may “flout” one or more maxims. In other words, he may be obviously not observing them.

The last situation is the typical case that can make conversational implicature. Once the participant in a conversation has made an implicature, he or she is making use one of the maxims. We can see that from the following examples:

[4]   A: Where are you going with the dog?

B: To the V-E-T.

In [4], the dog is known to be able to recognize the word “vet” and to hate being taken there. Therefore, A makes the word spelled out. Here he is “flouting” the maxim of manner, making the implicature that he does not want the dog to know the answer to the question just asked.

[5]   (In a formal get-together)

A: Mrs. X is an old bag.

B: The weather has been quite delightful this summer, hasn’t it?

B is intentionally violating the maxim of relation in [5], implicating that what A has said is too rude and he should change a topic.

       8.2.3       Characteristics of implicature

                     1.    Calculability

                     2.    Cancellability / defeasibility

                     3.    Non-detachability

                     4.    Non-conventionality

8.3   Post-Gricean developments

       8.3.1       Relevance theory

This theory was formally proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986. They argue that all Gricean maxims, including the CP itself, should be reduced to a single principle of relevance, which is defined as: Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.

       8.3.2       The Q- and R-principles

These principles were developed by L. Horn in 1984. The Q-principle is intended to invoke the first maxim of Grice’s Quantity, and the R-principle the relation maxim, but the new principles are more extensive than the Gricean maxims.

The definition of the Q-principle (hearer-based) is:

(1)   Make your contribution sufficient (cf. quantity);

(2)   Say as much as you can (given R).

The definition of the R-principle (speaker-based) is:

(1)   Make your contribution necessary (cf. Relation, Quantity-2, Manner);

(2)   Say no more than you must (given Q)

       8.3.3       The Q-, I- and M-principles

This tripartite model was suggested by S. Levinson mainly in his 1987 paper Pragmatics and the Grammar of Anaphor: A Partial Pragmatic Reduction of Binding and Control Phenomena. The contents of these principles are:

Q-principle:

Speaker’s maxim: Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows, unless providing a stronger statement would contravene the I-principle.

Recipient’s corollary: Take it that the speaker made the strongest statement consistent with what he knows, and therefore that:

(1) If the speaker asserted A (W), and <S, W> form a Horn scale, such that A (S) || (A (W)), then one can infer K ~ (A (S)), i.e. that the speaker knows that the stronger statement would be false.

(2)   If the speaker asserted A (W) and A (W) fails to entail an embedded sentence Q, which a stronger statement A (S) would entail, and {S, W} form a contrast set, then one can infer ~ K (Q), i.e. the speaker does not know whether Q obtains or not.

I-principle

Speaker’s maxim: the maxim of minimization

Say as little as necessary, i.e. produce the minimal linguistic information sufficient to achieve your communicational ends.

Recipient’s corollary: the enrichment rule

Amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance, by finding the most specific interpretation, up to what you judge to be the speaker’s m-intended point.

M-principle

Speaker’s maxim: Do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason.

Recipient’s corollary: If the speaker used a prolix or marked expression M, he did not mean the same as he would have, had he used the unmarked expression U – specifically he was trying to avoid the stereotypical associations and I-implicatures of U.