Doing Pragmatics

Peter Grundy

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138549470
• eBook ISBN: 9781000696400
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

Doing Pragmatics is a popular reader-friendly introduction to pragmatics. Embracing the comprehensive and engaging style which characterized the previous editions, this fourth edition has been fully revised. Doing Pragmatics extends beyond theory to promote an applied understanding of empirical data and provides students with the opportunity to 'do' pragmatics themselves.

A distinctive feature of this textbook is that virtually all the examples are taken from real world uses of language which reflect the emergent nature of communicative interaction. Peter Grundy consolidates the strengths of the original version, reinforcing its unique combination of theory and practice with new theory, exercises and up-to-date real data and examples.

This book provides the ideal foundation for all those studying pragmatics within English language, linguistics and ELT/ TESOL.

Chapter 1

Using and understanding language

We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

(Sam Johnson, in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 11 April 1776)

Keywords: context, deictic, face, index, indexicality, infer, inference, intention, metapragmatic, non-deictic, optimality, politeness, procedural, proposition, sentence meaning, speaker meaning, speech act, talk-in-interaction, turn

A definition: Pragmatics is the study of the use of language.

1.1 STUDYING LANGUAGE IN USE

One Saturday afternoon not long ago, I was with a group of friends enjoying an ice-cream outside a village shop after a long walk. For some weeks I’d been thinking about the opening paragraph of this book and how it would be good to find a simple example of real talk to illustrate the difference between pragmatics and other areas of language study. As we were eating our ice-creams, a bus passed, at which point this apparently inane exchange occurred between two of the people in our group:

(1)	ANNE: That’s the bus
	CLARE: It is the bus

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s easy enough to describe the grammatical form of each utterance using terms such as subject, (copular) verb and complement. And it’s easy enough to describe the phonetic forms the speakers use in terms of the place and manner of their articulation. And it’s easy enough to explain the meanings associated with each of the forms. But pragmatics isn’t about forms, it’s about the use of forms: although we know what the speakers’ words mean formally (their semantics), knowing what the speakers mean by using them (their pragmatics) isn’t so obvious. To help us to get on terms with pragmatics, I’m going to ask you to think about this example and the few more that follow. Towards the end of the chapter, we’ll come back to each of them and consider what they tell us about pragmatics and the use of language. So, before you read on, please try to answer this question:

Why do Anne and Clare say what they say?

Example 2

I’m washing my car in the street. A car draws up on the other side of the road, and this is what occurs:

(2)	CAR DRIVER: Excuse me, is this Buston Terrace
	<I walk across the road with the sponge in my hand and see that the driver and his wife are looking at their satnav with a puzzled expression>
	ME: Yes, it is. You need to get yourself a better car with a satnav that works

This is the question for you to think about:

What do you think about what I say and what do you think happens next?

Example 3

Most buses in Britain have an upper deck, typically with a staircase that comes down to the lower deck just behind the driver’s seat on the right-hand side of the bus. (In the UK, the driver sits on the right of a vehicle as people drive on the left.) I’m on just such a double-decker, and when it reaches the stop where I want to get off, a passenger from the upper deck arrives at the bottom of the staircase at the same time as I get there from the lower deck, and this exchange occurs:

(3)	HIM: After you
	ME: After you
	HIM: No, after you

What do we each do next? Does either of us speak, and, if so, what do you think we say?

Example 4

It’s breakfast time in a small hotel when this exchange takes place between a female guest sitting at the table next to me and the landlady:

(4)	GUEST: Is the bar open
	LANDLADY: No, it doesn’t open till later

The guest then speaks again and I add a comment.

What do you think we each say?

Example 5

I’m listening to a chatty radio programme hosted by two presenters, one male and one female, who are talking about what clothes tell you about the person who wears them. At one point, the male presenter says:

(5)	MALE PRESENTER: That’s one of the advantages of working on radio – you can wear anything you like or absolutely nothing at all and no one would ever know

He pauses briefly and then adds three more words which suggest that either he or the female presenter, or perhaps both, are wearing no clothes.

What words do you think he adds?

Example 6

At the supermarket checkout, the till operator gives me my change and hands me a coupon. This is what happens next:

(6)	ME <reading the coupon>: Oh, 25p off milk products
	TILL OPERATOR: You never know when you might want something

What do you think about her utterance and what do you think I say or do next?

Example 7

I’m second in a queue in the bus station waiting for the bus to come. When it comes, it’s obvious that the person in front of me doesn’t know that passengers have to push a knob to open the glass door to get to the bus. He’s standing slightly in front of the knob and so he can’t see it without looking over his shoulder.

What happens next? Who speaks first and what do they say?

Now you’ve done some work, I’ll do a little myself before we return to the examples and to your ideas about them.

Let’s begin with a scenario. Walking at a brisk pace along the footpath, I pass a mother with a small boy in a pushchair and a small girl trotting along beside them. As I pass, this exchange occurs:

(7)	SMALL BOY: Man
	ME: Is that your brother
	SMALL GIRL: Yes
	ME: It takes all sorts
	MOTHER: It certainly does

Unexceptional, you might think, but from a pragmaticist’s point of view, this exchange, like any other, is far from uninteresting. Let’s look at it, utterance by utterance.

SMALL BOY: Man
Although this utterance consists only of a single noun, the speaker uses it for a purpose – to demonstrate to himself or to his mother or to his sister or perhaps to all three of them his ability to recognize objects. Perhaps even to show off this ability. As pragmaticists, we see that the form of his utterance (its grammar) and its literal semantic meaning fail to determine its pragmatic function, which we have to work out for ourselves.

ME: Is that your brother
Although I’m not addressed by the small boy and have never met him before, it feels inappropriate to continue walking past without a response, and I find myself opting for a relatively neutral question to his sister. I suppose my use of ‘that’ rather than ‘he’ might encode my wish to get my own back on the small boy who’s drawn attention to me and caused us all just a little embarrassment. And because I choose the formula, ‘your brother’, rather than, say, ‘her brother’, I select the small girl as the person who must respond.

SMALL GIRL: Yes
The small girl’s minimal answer perhaps suggests that she doesn’t think the mild criticism implicit in ‘that’ is appropriate. Or perhaps that she thinks it’s unfair that I’ve picked her out to respond in a slightly awkward situation.

ME: It takes all sorts
Although I don’t identify the person referred to, my idiomatic suggestion that we’ve a character in our midst is readily taken to refer to the small boy. The utterance also functions as a kind of compliment because it implies that a small infant whose contribution to the exchange has been only a single word has a distinct character and that his small sister is clever enough to understand this pragmatic meaning.

MOTHER: It certainly does
Like ‘it takes all sorts’, the children’s mother’s utterance is also indirect, that’s to say, she confirms that her small son is a character although she doesn’t say this explicitly. Although her comment might in theory be taken to refer to me, in which case, it would certainly be an insult, it never occurs to us to take it this way. Thus, an exchange that had begun badly for all of us with a small boy making an audible comment about a stranger ends with everyone feeling good.

Here’s another scenario which also had an awkward element to it, but which ended happily. I’m standing at the bar of our local pub having a quiet drink. Two large men have just come in and are standing next to me. The barman’s serving them when the barmaid appears and says

(8)	BARMAID: Are you two both together – well you know what I mean
	ME: I was wondering too
	ONE OF THE MEN: That’s how rumours get started

Again, if we look at this exchange, utterance by utterance, we see that our ability as pragmatically skilled conversationalists to recognize meanings that are implicit rather than explicit is crucial to our understanding.

BARMAID: Are you two both together – well you know what I mean
It’s clear from the barmaid’s ‘you know what I mean’ that the optimal meaning of ‘are you two both together’ isn’t the meaning she intends. Those familiar with the British pub context know that Are you together functions as an offer made by someone working behind a bar to serve a person standing beside someone who’s already being served. On this occasion, the barmaid fails to produce this opt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Using and understanding language
• Chapter 2 Utterances and intentions
• Chapter 2¾
• Chapter 3 Inference and utterances
• Chapter 4 Inference and lexical items
• Chapter 5 Indexicality
• Chapter 6 Context and language
• Chapter 6¾
• Chapter 7 Being polite
• Afterword
• Checking understanding suggestions
• Glossary
• References
• Index