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Meaning: Pragmatics – Pragmatiek

Pragmatics is concerned with how people understand and produce sentences in an actual speech situation. We saw in the chapter about semantics that an utterance has two different meanings. Sentence meaning is part of the utterance meaning, but sentence meaning is limited to conveying information. Utterances also carry ‘communicative intent’, or >speaker meaning, which is context dependent. Where sentence meaning can be found by decoding, utterance meaning is more a matter of >inference.

Pragmaticians study different aspects of language use. One aspect is called >deixis and it includes the indexicals we talked about earlier. Deixis (which means ‘pointing’) is concerned with the use of words like ‘there’ & ‘here’, ‘now’ & ‘then’, ‘you’ & ‘I’ & ‘him’ & ‘her’ etc. Pragmaticians also recognise the fact that when you say a sentence you also perform some sort of action; you can ask a question, or make a statement, or give information. These ‘language actions’ are called >performatives. We have already seen that sometimes when you say one thing, you can mean something else. This ‘hidden’ or ‘implicit’ meaning is called an >implicature. Pragmaticians are also interested in how it is possible that people can understand each other at all (are there rules we are all subconsciously aware of?) and how second language learners cope with pragmatic issues in their non-native language.

In this final chapter of the course we will look into some of the aspects of pragmatics in more detail.

Deixis and indexicals

If the meaning of an utterance is subject to the non-linguistic context of that utterance, we talk about deixis. Non-linguistic contexts include:

time and place of utterance
who is speaking and who is spoken to
pointing and other gestures by the speaker
etc.

>Deictic expressions, also called indexicals, include the *pronouns (I, you, he etc.), here/there, now/then, this/that and also tense affixes. There are different types of deixis. In >discourse deixis there is a reference to a portion of the discourse (‘conversation’) relative to the speaker’s current location in the discourse:

Ik zal je dit vertellen: … I will tell you this: …
Dit is een hoge stem. This is a high voice.

If the last sentence is actually said with a high voice, than this refers to the actual high voice and that is also called discourse deixis.

In >person deixis reference is made to who has which role in the conversation. The three possible participants are: the speaker, the addressee and people who are neither speaker nor addressee (compare 1st, 2nd and 3rd person ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’).

>Place deixis is reference to a location relative to the location of the people involved in the discourse (usually the speaker). Examples are ‘here/there’ but also ‘this’ and ‘that’:

Ik heb dit boek gelezen. I have read this book.
Maar dat boek nog niet. But I haven’t read that book yet.

Note the difference in meaning here: ‘this’ is nearby whereas ‘that’ is further away.

>Time deixis is reference to time relative to the time of utterance. Examples are ‘now/then’ but also ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’ etc. Note that the meaning of today depends on when the word is uttered (i.e. July 2nd 2004, or February 8th 1658). Of course, tense affixes are also part of time deixis.

Finally, >social deixis is especially important when you’re learning Dutch. Social deixis is reference to the social distinctions between participants in a conversation. In Dutch there is a difference between the polite 2nd person *pronoun ‘u’ and the informal ‘jij’. Generally speaking, you say ‘je’ or ‘jij’ to your friends or peers, but ‘u’ to your superiors or people who are older than you. Many European languages make this distinction, but English doesn’t, so if your first language is English and you’re learning Dutch this is something you should pay special attention to.

The acquisition of deixis is an interesting field of study. The learner cannot solely pay attention to linguistic context (main clause or sub clause? right inflection?) but also has to take non-linguistic and social events into account. This is not only an interesting fact about second language acquisition, but also about first language acquisition. Children have to acquire deixis. For example, very young children often refer to themselves by using their name, rather than the pronoun ‘I’. When they do learn to use pronouns, often they get it wrong in the beginning, referring to themselves with the word ‘you’, rather than ‘I’, because that’s how other people refer to them as well (‘do you want a cookie?’).

There is cross-linguistic variation in the acquisition of deixis. Dutch children use the *demonstratives‘die/dat/dit’ (‘that/that/this’) before they use the anaphoric pronouns ‘hij/zij/het’ (‘he/she/it’). The latter are used in discourse bound situations, whereas the demonstratives are used in deictic (‘real world’) situations. English children, however, also use ‘he/she/it’ in deictic situations right from the start. Some linguists relate this to the fact that Dutch is V2, but this matter is to complicated to consider here.

Performatives and speech acts

When you say something, you don’t just make a sound. You also do something, you’re performing an action. As mentioned above you can make a statement, ask a question, give information. Other actions include apologising, blaming or marrying people. Sometimes a distinction is made between >constative and >performative utterances. Constatives just describe a situation (‘this is a car’) whereas performatives include some action (‘I buy this car’). In some situations the utterance is the action itself. This is the case in >explicit performatives:

Ik doop deze brug ‘Erasmus’ I name this bridge ‘Erasmus’
Ik verklaar u hierbij man en vrouw I now declare you husband and wife

The line between constatives and performatives is not clear-cut, and there is an ongoing debate between linguists who believe all utterances are performatives and linguists who do not believe in performatives at all (and of course a lot of people that are somewhere in between). The important thing is to realise that language cannot only be used to describe things but also to perform (some sort of) action and to change things and convey meaning in a complicated way.

Utterance meaning, for example, can change radically as a result of minor changes in the actual utterance. This becomes clear when we look at the following set of sentences:

Hij komt niet - He won’t come.
Hij komt gelukkig niet - Thankfully, he won’t come.
Hij komt helaas niet - Unfortunately, he won’t come.
Hij komt echt niet - He really won’t come.
Hij komt alweer niet - He won’t come, again.
Hij komt toch niet - He won’t come anyway.

The utterances are only different in one word, yet the meaning they convey are very different:

1. Neutral statement of fact

I’m glad he won’t come
I’m sad he won’t come
I assure you he won’t come
I’m annoyed by the fact he won’t come
I thought he would, but he won’t.

The speaker oriented adverbs make a big contribution to the meaning of the utterance. Rather than just stating that ‘he won’t come’ they help convey the speaker’s attitude to the situation.

Now we know that utterances can be used to perform actions it is interesting to see what kind of actions can be performed. A distinction is made between 3 kinds of action: >locutionary act, >illocutionary act and >perlocutionary act.

An locutionary act is the act of actually saying something, uttering the sentence, generating the sounds. We were mostly talking about illocutionary acts above. For example, in the utterance ‘I will visit you tomorrow’ the speaker performs the illocutionary act of making a promise. A perlocutionary act, finally, is the act of having an effect on the listener. By reading the last sentence out loud to someone you perform the perlocutionary act of informing them about perlocutionary acts.

Understanding each other

Language can be used to exchange information between people, be it fiction or facts. We are used to speaking to other people and reading and writing texts, but in fact it is extraordinary that we are able to understand each other. Considering the fact that we can say one thing and mean another and that we can use language for so many purposes it’s amazing that we are able to deduce meaning from utterances and understand someone’s thoughts from their words.

It is important to realise that language is not the same as communication. When you’re shivering you communicate that you’re cold without using language. Language is related to an intention to communicate meaning. To understand each other we have to do more than decode the information, we have to find out the intention behind the utterance. This intention can be blurred for linguistic reasons (ambiguity for example) or for social reasons (some things are not polite to say). Somehow we all have to be aware of a set of rules that guides the use of language so that we have a chance to understand others and others have a change to understand us. You won’t be surprised that linguists have long struggled with this problem.

The philosopher Paul Grice suggested that communication is a cooperative activity. This may seem to be a trivial remark, but it was the first step in making a list of rules that describe linguistic communication called >The Cooperative Principle. The basic insight is that it is in the best interest of both speaker and listener to cooperate so that they can achieve their mutual aim. The speaker is assumed to be cooperative and in deducing the meaning the hearer assumes that the speaker is indeed cooperating. Grice suggested a number of Maxims that apply to linguistic communication:

Maxim of quantity
speaker is as informative as is required for the current purposes, no more and no less

Maxim of quality
don’t say something you know is false or that you don’t have evidence for

Maxim of relation
be relevant

Maxim of manner
be clear, avoid obscurity, ambiguity and be brief and orderly

Because both speaker and listener are aware of these rules, the following exchange can be successful, even though at first sight it looks like speaker B is taking part in a different conversation:

A: Zal ik het raam dichtdoen? Should I close the window?
B: Het is hier best koud. It’s pretty cold here.

A will assume that B is being relevant and informative and his utterance is therefore an answer to the question. A is therefore able to deduce that B would like the window to be closed.

Unfortunately (from a pragmatic point of view), the maxims are not a flawless guide to success. In some situations a speaker may wish to flout a maxim on purpose. Consider the following examples:

B: Hoe was de voetbalwedstrijd gisteren?
How was the football game yesterday?

A: Nederland speelde heel goed! (when they lost…)
The Netherlands played really well!

A: Wat vind je van mijn nieuwe schoenen?
How do you like my new shoes?

B: Ze hebben dezelfde kleur als mijn behang.
They’re the same colour as my wallpaper.

In the first example the answer seems to be relevant, but turns out to be very misleading, because the team actually lost the game. Speaker A chose to exploit the maxim of relation and quantity, possibly to be polite or not to hurt speaker B’s feelings. In the second example speaker B probably doesn’t want to say something bad about the shoes so he opts for something neutral causing him to neglect the maxim of relation. It is clear that speakers can deliberately flout the maxims for several reasons (politeness, humour…). Hearers can be aware of this so communication, although more complicated, is still successful.

Conclusion

Once again we were able to find structure in a seemingly random collection of facts about meaning and its use in language. You may have the feeling that in these last two chapters the solutions to the problems we presented are more open to debate. However, it is probably fairer to say that in the chapters about syntax and phonology this openness to debate is obscured. It is important to realise that in forming a theory about any part of language it is necessary to draw lines where there may be no lines in the real language. In other words, where a theory divides things in black and white the actual object (language) may be grey. This is true for all aspects of linguistics we talked about in this course. Now that you have some basic knowledge of linguistic theory you are in a better position to judge different theories. We would like to encourage you to think about the issues we presented in this course for yourself. The internet and library are full of useful information, and solving a problem you have found can be extremely satisfying.

In this course we have presented the main ideas in each field by concentrating on a limited number of problems in Dutch. We have taken a closer look at Dutch language data which we analysed with the help of a number of basic concepts. We have demonstrated how to look for structure in each of the sub-fields within linguistics.

Our aim in this course was to equip you with the necessary basic knowledge of linguistics so you can take a critical look at further Dutch language data, new analyses and different theoretical proposals. There are a thousand questions you can ask yourself now - and that is the way to take your knowledge of linguistics further.

To help you on your way in answering them we have provided >suggestions for further reading.



Dutch Linguistics Home Welcome Outline of course Terminology Syntax Sound structure Meaning Semantics Pragmatics Glossary References Further reading Feedback form Copyright Close Studypack	Meaning: Pragmatics – Pragmatiek Pragmatics is concerned with how people understand and produce sentences in an actual speech situation. We saw in the chapter about semantics that an utterance has two different meanings. Sentence meaning is part of the utterance meaning, but sentence meaning is limited to conveying information. Utterances also carry ‘communicative intent’, or >speaker meaning, which is context dependent. Where sentence meaning can be found by decoding, utterance meaning is more a matter of >inference. Pragmaticians study different aspects of language use. One aspect is called >deixis and it includes the indexicals we talked about earlier. Deixis (which means ‘pointing’) is concerned with the use of words like ‘there’ & ‘here’, ‘now’ & ‘then’, ‘you’ & ‘I’ & ‘him’ & ‘her’ etc. Pragmaticians also recognise the fact that when you say a sentence you also perform some sort of action; you can ask a question, or make a statement, or give information. These ‘language actions’ are called >performatives. We have already seen that sometimes when you say one thing, you can mean something else. This ‘hidden’ or ‘implicit’ meaning is called an >implicature. Pragmaticians are also interested in how it is possible that people can understand each other at all (are there rules we are all subconsciously aware of?) and how second language learners cope with pragmatic issues in their non-native language. In this final chapter of the course we will look into some of the aspects of pragmatics in more detail. Deixis and indexicals If the meaning of an utterance is subject to the non-linguistic context of that utterance, we talk about deixis. Non-linguistic contexts include: time and place of utterance who is speaking and who is spoken to pointing and other gestures by the speaker etc. >Deictic expressions, also called indexicals, include the pronouns (I, you, he etc.), here/there, now/then, this/that and also tense affixes. There are different types of deixis. In >discourse deixis* there is a reference to a portion of the discourse (‘conversation’) relative to the speaker’s current location in the discourse: Ik zal je dit vertellen: … I will tell you this: … Dit is een hoge stem. This is a high voice. If the last sentence is actually said with a high voice, than this refers to the actual high voice and that is also called discourse deixis. In >person deixis reference is made to who has which role in the conversation. The three possible participants are: the speaker, the addressee and people who are neither speaker nor addressee (compare 1st, 2nd and 3rd person ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’). >Place deixis is reference to a location relative to the location of the people involved in the discourse (usually the speaker). Examples are ‘here/there’ but also ‘this’ and ‘that’: Ik heb dit boek gelezen. I have read this book. Maar dat boek nog niet. But I haven’t read that book yet. Note the difference in meaning here: ‘this’ is nearby whereas ‘that’ is further away. >Time deixis is reference to time relative to the time of utterance. Examples are ‘now/then’ but also ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’ etc. Note that the meaning of today depends on when the word is uttered (i.e. July 2nd 2004, or February 8th 1658). Of course, tense affixes are also part of time deixis. Finally, >social deixis is especially important when you’re learning Dutch. Social deixis is reference to the social distinctions between participants in a conversation. In Dutch there is a difference between the polite 2nd person pronoun ‘u’ and the informal ‘jij’. Generally speaking, you say ‘je’ or ‘jij’ to your friends or peers, but ‘u’ to your superiors or people who are older than you. Many European languages make this distinction, but English doesn’t, so if your first language is English and you’re learning Dutch this is something you should pay special attention to. The acquisition of deixis is an interesting field of study. The learner cannot solely pay attention to linguistic context (main clause or sub clause? right inflection?) but also has to take non-linguistic and social events into account. This is not only an interesting fact about second language acquisition, but also about first language acquisition. Children have to acquire deixis. For example, very young children often refer to themselves by using their name, rather than the pronoun ‘I’. When they do learn to use pronouns, often they get it wrong in the beginning, referring to themselves with the word ‘you’, rather than ‘I’, because that’s how other people refer to them as well (‘do you* want a cookie?’). There is cross-linguistic variation in the acquisition of deixis. Dutch children use the demonstratives‘die/dat/dit’ (‘that/that/this’) before they use the anaphoric pronouns ‘hij/zij/het’ (‘he/she/it’). The latter are used in discourse bound situations, whereas the demonstratives are used in deictic (‘real world’) situations. English children, however, also use ‘he/she/it’ in deictic situations right from the start. Some linguists relate this to the fact that Dutch is V2, but this matter is to complicated to consider here. Performatives and speech acts* When you say something, you don’t just make a sound. You also do something, you’re performing an action. As mentioned above you can make a statement, ask a question, give information. Other actions include apologising, blaming or marrying people. Sometimes a distinction is made between >constative and >performative utterances. Constatives just describe a situation (‘this is a car’) whereas performatives include some action (‘I buy this car’). In some situations the utterance is the action itself. This is the case in >explicit performatives: Ik doop deze brug ‘Erasmus’ I name this bridge ‘Erasmus’ Ik verklaar u hierbij man en vrouw I now declare you husband and wife The line between constatives and performatives is not clear-cut, and there is an ongoing debate between linguists who believe all utterances are performatives and linguists who do not believe in performatives at all (and of course a lot of people that are somewhere in between). The important thing is to realise that language cannot only be used to describe things but also to perform (some sort of) action and to change things and convey meaning in a complicated way. Utterance meaning, for example, can change radically as a result of minor changes in the actual utterance. This becomes clear when we look at the following set of sentences: Hij komt niet - He won’t come. Hij komt gelukkig niet - Thankfully, he won’t come. Hij komt helaas niet - Unfortunately, he won’t come. Hij komt echt niet - He really won’t come. Hij komt alweer niet - He won’t come, again. Hij komt toch niet - He won’t come anyway. The utterances are only different in one word, yet the meaning they convey are very different: 1. Neutral statement of fact I’m glad he won’t come I’m sad he won’t come I assure you he won’t come I’m annoyed by the fact he won’t come I thought he would, but he won’t. The speaker oriented adverbs make a big contribution to the meaning of the utterance. Rather than just stating that ‘he won’t come’ they help convey the speaker’s attitude to the situation. Now we know that utterances can be used to perform actions it is interesting to see what kind of actions can be performed. A distinction is made between 3 kinds of action: >locutionary act, >illocutionary act and >perlocutionary act. An locutionary act is the act of actually saying something, uttering the sentence, generating the sounds. We were mostly talking about illocutionary acts above. For example, in the utterance ‘I will visit you tomorrow’ the speaker performs the illocutionary act of making a promise. A perlocutionary act, finally, is the act of having an effect on the listener. By reading the last sentence out loud to someone you perform the perlocutionary act of informing them about perlocutionary acts. Understanding each other Language can be used to exchange information between people, be it fiction or facts. We are used to speaking to other people and reading and writing texts, but in fact it is extraordinary that we are able to understand each other. Considering the fact that we can say one thing and mean another and that we can use language for so many purposes it’s amazing that we are able to deduce meaning from utterances and understand someone’s thoughts from their words. It is important to realise that language is not the same as communication. When you’re shivering you communicate that you’re cold without using language. Language is related to an intention to communicate meaning. To understand each other we have to do more than decode the information, we have to find out the intention behind the utterance. This intention can be blurred for linguistic reasons (ambiguity for example) or for social reasons (some things are not polite to say). Somehow we all have to be aware of a set of rules that guides the use of language so that we have a chance to understand others and others have a change to understand us. You won’t be surprised that linguists have long struggled with this problem. The philosopher Paul Grice suggested that communication is a cooperative activity. This may seem to be a trivial remark, but it was the first step in making a list of rules that describe linguistic communication called >The Cooperative Principle. The basic insight is that it is in the best interest of both speaker and listener to cooperate so that they can achieve their mutual aim. The speaker is assumed to be cooperative and in deducing the meaning the hearer assumes that the speaker is indeed cooperating. Grice suggested a number of Maxims that apply to linguistic communication: Maxim of quantity speaker is as informative as is required for the current purposes, no more and no less Maxim of quality don’t say something you know is false or that you don’t have evidence for Maxim of relation be relevant Maxim of manner be clear, avoid obscurity, ambiguity and be brief and orderly Because both speaker and listener are aware of these rules, the following exchange can be successful, even though at first sight it looks like speaker B is taking part in a different conversation: A: Zal ik het raam dichtdoen? Should I close the window? B: Het is hier best koud. It’s pretty cold here. A will assume that B is being relevant and informative and his utterance is therefore an answer to the question. A is therefore able to deduce that B would like the window to be closed. Unfortunately (from a pragmatic point of view), the maxims are not a flawless guide to success. In some situations a speaker may wish to flout a maxim on purpose. Consider the following examples: B: Hoe was de voetbalwedstrijd gisteren? How was the football game yesterday? A: Nederland speelde heel goed! (when they lost…) The Netherlands played really well! A: Wat vind je van mijn nieuwe schoenen? How do you like my new shoes? B: Ze hebben dezelfde kleur als mijn behang. They’re the same colour as my wallpaper. In the first example the answer seems to be relevant, but turns out to be very misleading, because the team actually lost the game. Speaker A chose to exploit the maxim of relation and quantity, possibly to be polite or not to hurt speaker B’s feelings. In the second example speaker B probably doesn’t want to say something bad about the shoes so he opts for something neutral causing him to neglect the maxim of relation. It is clear that speakers can deliberately flout the maxims for several reasons (politeness, humour…). Hearers can be aware of this so communication, although more complicated, is still successful. Conclusion Once again we were able to find structure in a seemingly random collection of facts about meaning and its use in language. You may have the feeling that in these last two chapters the solutions to the problems we presented are more open to debate. However, it is probably fairer to say that in the chapters about syntax and phonology this openness to debate is obscured. It is important to realise that in forming a theory about any part of language it is necessary to draw lines where there may be no lines in the real language. In other words, where a theory divides things in black and white the actual object (language) may be grey. This is true for all aspects of linguistics we talked about in this course. Now that you have some basic knowledge of linguistic theory you are in a better position to judge different theories. We would like to encourage you to think about the issues we presented in this course for yourself. The internet and library are full of useful information, and solving a problem you have found can be extremely satisfying. In this course we have presented the main ideas in each field by concentrating on a limited number of problems in Dutch. We have taken a closer look at Dutch language data which we analysed with the help of a number of basic concepts. We have demonstrated how to look for structure in each of the sub-fields within linguistics. Our aim in this course was to equip you with the necessary basic knowledge of linguistics so you can take a critical look at further Dutch language data, new analyses and different theoretical proposals. There are a thousand questions you can ask yourself now - and that is the way to take your knowledge of linguistics further. To help you on your way in answering them we have provided >suggestions for further reading.