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
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 Iād 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: Thatās the bus |
| | CLARE: It is the bus |
Iām sure youāll agree that itās easy enough to describe the grammatical form of each utterance using terms such as subject, (copular) verb and complement. And itās easy enough to describe the phonetic forms the speakers use in terms of the place and manner of their articulation. And itās easy enough to explain the meanings associated with each of the forms. But pragmatics isnāt about forms, itās about the use of forms: although we know what the speakersā words mean formally (their semantics), knowing what the speakers mean by using them (their pragmatics) isnāt so obvious. To help us to get on terms with pragmatics, Iām going to ask you to think about this example and the few more that follow. Towards the end of the chapter, weāll 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
Iām 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 driverās 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.) Iām 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
Itās 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 doesnāt open till later |
The guest then speaks again and I add a comment.
What do you think we each say?
Example 5
Iām 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: Thatās one of the advantages of working on radio ā 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
Iām second in a queue in the bus station waiting for the bus to come. When it comes, itās obvious that the person in front of me doesnāt know that passengers have to push a knob to open the glass door to get to the bus. Heās standing slightly in front of the knob and so he canāt see it without looking over his shoulder.
What happens next? Who speaks first and what do they say?
Now youāve done some work, Iāll do a little myself before we return to the examples and to your ideas about them.
Letās 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 pragmaticistās point of view, this exchange, like any other, is far from uninteresting. Letās 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 ā 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 Iām 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 āthatā rather than āheā might encode my wish to get my own back on the small boy whoās drawn attention to me and caused us all just a little embarrassment. And because I choose the formula, āyour brotherā, rather than, say, āher brotherā, I select the small girl as the person who must respond.
SMALL GIRL: Yes
The small girlās minimal answer perhaps suggests that she doesnāt think the mild criticism implicit in āthatā is appropriate. Or perhaps that she thinks itās unfair that Iāve picked her out to respond in a slightly awkward situation.
ME: It takes all sorts
Although I donāt identify the person referred to, my idiomatic suggestion that weāve 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 āit takes all sortsā, the childrenās motherās utterance is also indirect, thatās to say, she confirms that her small son is a character although she doesnāt 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.
Hereās another scenario which also had an awkward element to it, but which ended happily. Iām 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 barmanās serving them when the barmaid appears and says
(8) | BARMAID: Are you two both together ā well you know what I mean |
| | ME: I was wondering too |
| | ONE OF THE MEN: Thatās 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 ā well you know what I mean
Itās clear from the barmaidās āyou know what I meanā that the optimal meaning of āare you two both togetherā isnāt 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 whoās already being served. On this occasion, the barmaid fails to produce this opt...
