Voltaire

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 856.

The term “pragmatics” was first introduced by Charles Morris, a philosopher, in the 20-s of the 20^th century. He contrasts pragmatics with semantics and syntax. According to Ch. Morris, syntax is the study of the grammatical relations of linguistic units to one another and the grammatical structures of phrases and sentences that result from these grammatical relation, semantics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to the objects they denote, and pragmatics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to people who communicate.

Linguistics has been developing from syntax through semantics to pragmatics which, until recently, has been the neglected member of the traditional three-part division of the study of signs. It came into the foreground in the 70-s and in Russia – in the 80-s of the 20^th century.

So, pragmatics focuses on the functional side of the language, it is the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate.

Every day a person plays quite a lot of different roles – those of a student, a friend, a daughter, a son, a client, etc. And he/she chooses different words and expressions suitable and appropriate for the situation. One uses the language as an instrument for his/her purposes. For example, the following units:

(a) Would you like to join me for a meal? (b) Do you want to grab a bite to eat? (c) Yo, let's go get some grub! - have the same referential meaning but their pragmatic meaning is different, they are used in different contexts. The first utterance may be used in formal surroundings, the second one – in a more relaxed situation, while the last one can be resorted to while speaking to a close friend.

So, it can be said that each utterance combines a propositional base (objective part) with the pragmatic component (subjective part). It follows that an utterance with the same propositional content may have different pragmatic components. The utterance “it is hot in the room” may have the following pragmatic components: 1) just mentioning of the fact; 2) explanation; 3) excuse; 4) inducement to do something about it; 5) threat; 6) warning; 7) promise. So, all these meanings form different speech acts – actions performed while utterances (apology, complain, warning etc.)

A speech act is a basic minimal unit of pragmalinguistics. It is a concrete production of a sentence under certain conditions. The term ‘speech act' was found by the English logician John Austin who is the founder of the theory of speech acts. He distinguishes the following kinds of related speech acts which form the action of producing an utterance:

1) locutionary act – is an act of producing a meaningful linguistic expression, uttering a sentence. If you have difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance (because you are a foreigner or tongue-tied) then you might fail to produce a locutionary act: it often happens when we learn a foreign language. So, it is the very act of saying something.

2) illocutionary act – is an act performed in saying something. It realizes the intention of the speaker to ask or answer a question, to give some information, assure or warn somebody. We form an utterance with some kind of function on mind, with a definite communicative intention or illocutionary force. The notion of illocutionary force is basic for pragmatics.

3) perlocutionary act – is an act performed as a result of saying. It is the effect the utterance has on the hearer. I.e., by making a promise a speaker may reassure and create expectations in the hearer. Perlocutionary effect may be verbal or non-verbal. E.g. I've bought a car – Great! It's cold here – and you close the window.

In an utterance the speaker performs the three acts simultaneously, they are differentiated only for the sake of analysis.

J. Austen differentiates between two kinds of utterances: contrastives and performatives. Contrastives, or statements, intend to communicate a certain piece of information to the hearer which can be either true (The earth moves round the sun) or false (The sun moves around the earth). Performatives are performed in order not to say or describe things, but rather to do things. The issuing of the atterance is the performing of an action (I congratulate you – the speaker is not describing what he is doing, but he is performing the action of congratulating).

Performatives have certain characteristics (according to J. Austen):

1. The speaker must be sincere and serious (sincerity condition).

2. Performatives can't be either true or false, unlike contrastives.

3. Verbs denoting speech activity are usually used as performatives (state, ask, thank…). Sound descriptive verbs can't function as performatives (murmur, giggle, shout).

4. Performatives are generally expressed by verbs in the first person singular present indefinite of the indicative mood:

I name the ship the “Queen Mary”.

Exceptions: You are advised to take an aspirin. It's forbidden to smoke here.

5. Performatives are never used in continuous aspect.

6. Performatives cannot be negative.

7. Performatives cannot be accompanied by modal words.

8. Performatives allow the introduction of the word “hereby” (“by means of this utterance”):

I hereby declare you husband and wife.

9. They cannot be regarded as indirect speech.

John Searle, a student of J. Austen, worked out a speech act classification. His speech act classification has had a great impact on linguistics. It includes five major classes of speech acts: declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives:

1. Declarations. Those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance. The speaker should have some special institutional rule to perform a declaration as using a declaration the speaker changes the world via words. I pronounce you man and wife. You're fired.

2. Representatives state what the speaker believes to be true (conclusions, descriptions); the speaker makes words fit the world. It was a warm sunny day. John is a liar.

3. Expressives state what the speaker feels. The speaker makes words fit his feelings. I'm really sorry. Happy birthday! (statements of pleasure, joy, sorrow, etc.)

4. Directives are used to get someone to do something (commands, orders, suggestions). Don't touch that (commands, orders, suggestions)

5. Commisives are used to commit a speaker to some future action. Thus, they express what the speaker is going to do. I'll be back (promises, threats, pledges – what we intend to do).

J.Searle also introduced a theory of indirect speech acts.

In direct speech acts the speaker means directly what he says: I want a cup of tea.

Indirect speech acts are cases in which one speech act is performed indirectly, by way of performing another: Can you pass me the salt? Though the sentence is interrogative, it is conventionally used to mark a request – we cannot just answer “yes” or “no”.

An indirect communicative act is a combination of two acts – a primary act (a request in the above example) and a secondary act (a question). Indirect communicative acts tend to be more polite.