Pragmatics
When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;
When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;
When he says no, he is not a diplomat.
- Voltaire
Pragmatics
Pragmatics deals with utterances, by which we
will mean specific events, the intentional acts of
speakers at times and places, typically involving
language.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics deals with utterances, by which we
will mean specific events, the intentional acts of
speakers at times and places, typically involving
language.
Pragmatics
Logic and semantics traditionally deal with
properties of types of expressions, and not with
properties that differ from utterance to utterance,
and vary with the particular properties that
differentiate them.
Pragmatics
Logic and semantics traditionally deal with
properties of types of expressions, and not with
properties that differ from utterance to utterance,
and vary with the particular properties that
differentiate them.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is sometimes characterized as dealing
with the effects of context.
Different theorists have focused on different
properties of utterances.
The utterances philosophers usually take as
paradigmatic are assertive uses of declarative
sentences, where the speaker says something.
Pragmatics
A distinction:
‘near-side pragmatics’
vs.
‘far-side pragmatics’
Pragmatics
Near-side pragmatics deals with certain facts
that are relevant to determining what is said.
resolution of ambiguity and vagueness
reference of proper names
indexicals
demonstratives
anaphors
some issues involving presupposition
IFacts are needed about the utterance, beyond
the expressions used and their meanings.
Pragmatics
Facts Required
Indexicals (exophoric reference):
‘I,’ ‘now,’ ‘you,’ and ‘here’:
the agent, and when and where it occurred.
Reference of proper names:
speaker's intentions and the way the speaker is
connected to the wider world by causal/historical
‘chains of reference’
Pragmatics
Far-side pragmatics deals with what happens
beyond saying:
what speech acts are performed?
what implicatures are generated?
Pragmatics
This is the conception according to which
Voltaire's remarks belong to pragmatics.
Semantics tells us what someone literally says
Pragmatics explains the information one conveys,
the actions one performs, in or by saying
Pragmatics is usually thought to involve a different
sort of reasoning than semantics.
Pragmatics
Semantics: conventional rules of meaning for
expressions and their modes of combination.
Locke: communication = speaker encoding
thoughts into words & the listener decoding words
back into thoughts. (Saussure and other theorists)
Logicians and philosophers of language in the
tradition of logical analysis:
Language as a system of phonological, syntactic
and semantic rules.
Competent communicants have mastery.
Pragmatics
The sincere speaker produces an utterance with
the truth-conditions of a belief he wishes to
express;
he chooses his words so that his utterance has
those truth-conditions;
the interpreter perceives the utterance, recognize
the phonemes, morphemes, words and phrases;
then using knowledge of the meanings, the
interpreter deduces the truth-conditions of the
utterance and of the belief it expresses.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics: ‘ampliative’ inference — induction,
inference to the best explanation, Bayesian
reasoning, or general principles special to
communication (Grice)
Reasoning that goes beyond the application of
rules, and makes inferences beyond the basic
facts about expressions and their meanings.
Pragmatics
Objective facts of the utterance: who the speaker
is, when the utterance occurred, and where;
Speaker's intentions
Near side: what language is used,
what meaning is used,
whom names refer to,
pronouns demonstrative or anaphoric, etc.
Far side: what he intends to achieve by saying
what he does.
Pragmatics
Beliefs of the speaker and hearer and nature of
the conversation: what beliefs do they share;
what is the focus of the conversation, what are
they talking about, etc.
Relevant social institutions:
promising,
marriage ceremonies,
courtroom procedures, etc.
What a person accomplishes in or by saying
Pragmatics
British philosopher
John Langshaw Austin
(b. 1911–d. 1960)
How to do things
with words (1962)
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
We can use words to do different things:
assert or suggest
promise or indicate an intention
persuade or argue
Effect depends not only on literal meaning,
but also what one intends to do and
the institutional and social setting.
Intention and Situational Context
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
A speaker might intend to promise,and be
understood to have promised, by saying
“I'll be there to pick you up at six.”
Promising arguably depends on
social practice or conventions about:
a) what a promise is
b) what constitutes promising
Austin especially emphasized the importance of
social fact and conventions.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Austin began by distinguishing between
‘constatives’ and ‘performatives.’
A constative simply says something true or false.
A performative does something by speaking.
One can get married by saying “I do.”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Constatives are true or false, depending on
whether they correspond with the facts.
Performatives are actions, not true or false, but
‘felicitous’ or ‘infelicitous,’
depending on whether they
successfully perform the action in question.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Explicit performatives:
“I bet that there is a dangerous animal there.”
“I guarantee that there is a dangerous animal there.”
“I warn you that there is a dangerous animal there.”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Implicit performative:
“There is a dangerous animal there.”
felicity / infelicity
truth / falsity
both simultaneously present
Clear delimitation between performatives and
constatives proves difficult.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Austin (1962a) proposed a new trichotomy
a speech act
locutionary act
illocutionary act
perlocutionary act
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
A speech act is created when:
speaker/writer S
makes an utterance U
to hearer/reader H
in context C.
(Later definition, not Austin)
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Locutionary Act
is the act of saying something
(i) as a phonetic act: uttering certain noises;
(ii) as a phatic act: uttering words “belonging to a
certain vocabulary, conforming to a certain grammar”
(iii) as a rhetic act: uttering words “with a certain
more-or-less definite sense and reference”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
illocutionary act
an act with a certain force:
ordering
warning
assuring
promising
expressing an intention
etc.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Perlocutionary Act
the illocutionary force produces
“certain consequential effects upon the feelings,
thoughts or actions of the audience, or of the
speaker, or of other persons”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle,
and Speech Acts
Austin's student,
John R. Searle
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Austin's student, John R. Searle (1969)
developed “speech act theory” as a theory of the
constitutive rules for performing illocutionary acts
i.e. what constitutes successfully performing
an illocutionary act
(illocutionary force + propositional content)
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
(i) propositional content rules, which put
conditions on some illocutionary acts;
(ii) preparatory rules, which tell what is implied in
the performance of the illocutionary acts;
(iii) sincerity rules, that tell what psychological
state the speaker expresses
(iv) essential rules, which tell us what the action
consists in essentially
Pragmatics
Searle: Promising
The propositional content represents some future
action A by S;
H prefers S's doing A to her not doing it,
S believes that to be so,
it is not obvious both to S and H that S will do A
in the normal course of events;
S intends to do A;
Promising counts as the undertaking of an
obligation of S to do A.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
These conventional conditions must be met if
someone wants to make a (felicitous) promise.
The study of the these conventional conditions for
illocutionary acts, and
the study of their correct taxonomy constitutes the
core of speech act theory.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Searle (1975a) proposes a taxonomy of
illocutionary acts into five mutually exclusive and
jointly exhaustive classes:
Representative or assertive
Directive
Commissive
Expressive
Declarative
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Representative or Assertive
The speaker becomes committed to the truth of
the propositional content; for example, asserting:
“It's raining.”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Directive
The speaker tries to get the hearer to act in such
a way as to fulfill what is represented by the
propositional content; for example, commanding:
“Close the door!”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Commissive
The speaker becomes committed to act in the way
represented by the propositional content; for
example, promising: “I'll finish the paper by
tomorrow.”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Expressive
The speaker simply expresses the sincerity
condition of the illocutionary act: “I'm glad it's
raining!”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Declarative
The speaker performs an action just representing
herself as performing that action: “I name this ship
the Queen Elizabeth.”
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Searle's categories have been critiqued and
altered, specifically by Beck and Harnish (1976).
Generally this taxonomic idea remains the same.
Pragmatics
Austin, Searle, and Speech Acts
Speech act theory (Austin/Searle) supposedly adopts a
social or institutional view of linguistic meaning.
This is sometimes opposed to the intentionalist view.
The two views are not necessarily contradictory.
Pragmatics
Grice and Conversational Implicatures
Quantity
Quality
Relation
Manner
Pragmatics
Grice: Communicative Intentions
M-intentions
word and sentence meaning
ultimately based on speaker's meaning,
and this on speaker's intention
What does the hearer have to understand for the
communicative act to be judged successful?
Pragmatics
Communicative Intentions
They are always oriented towards the
addressee.
They are overt, intended to be recognized by
the addressee.
Their satisfaction consists precisely in being
recognized by the addressee.
Pragmatics
‘illocutionary uptake’
Communicative intentions are intentions to
produce some response, but what kind of
response should this be?
In the case of illocutionary acts we succeed in
doing what we are trying to do by getting our
audience to recognize what we are trying to do.
But the ‘effect’ on the hearer is not a belief or a
response, it consists simply in the hearer
understanding the utterance of the speaker.
(Searle 1969)
Pragmatics
‘illocutionary uptake’
Communicative intentions are intentions to
produce some response, but what kind of
response should this be?
In the case of illocutionary acts we succeed in
doing what we are trying to do by getting our
audience to recognize what we are trying to do.
But the ‘effect’ on the hearer is not a belief or a
response, it consists simply in the hearer
understanding the utterance of the speaker.
(Searle 1969)
Pragmatics
‘illocutionary uptake’
Communicative intentions are intentions to
produce some response, but what kind of
response should this be?
Searle excludes perlocutionary results, beyond
“understanding the utterance,”
from the content of communicative intentions.
Pragmatics
‘illocutionary uptake’
Communicative intentions must be wholly overt:
The understanding of the force of an utterance
in all cases involves recognizing an audiencedirected intention and recognizing it as wholly
overt, as intended to be recognized.
(Strawson 1964)
The exact formulation of this requirement has
been a subject of intense debate, with
conceptual, logical or psychological arguments.
Pragmatics
‘illocutionary uptake’
Communicative intentions must be wholly overt:
Every covert or even neutral aspect
of the speaker's intention must be left out of the
definition of communicative intentions.
Pragmatics
‘illocutionary uptake’
Short & Comprehensive:
The fulfillment of communicative intentions
consists precisely in being recognized by the
addressee.
Whatever “being recognized” means...
Pragmatics
Most current pragmatic theorists agree with
Grice, in general, regarding:
A) a fundamental distinction what is said and
what is implicated;
B) a set of rules or principles that guide, constrain
or govern human linguistic communication
C) a notion of communicative intention whose
fulfillment consists in being recognized by the
addressee.
Pragmatics
B) a set of rules or principles that guide, constrain
or govern human linguistic communication
general principles:
rationality?
cooperation?
cognition?
Pragmatics
Three different general tendencies:
Pragmatics as a philosophical project
Pragmatics as its interaction with grammar
Pragmatics as an empirical psychological theory
of utterance interpretation
Pragmatics
1) Is language mainly and centrally a matter of
coding and decoding according to the conventions
of meaning, with a little intention-recognition
around the edges to take care of ambiguity and
implicature?
Pragmatics
2) Is communication mainly a matter of acting in
ways that get one's intentions recognized, with the
conventions of language being just a helpful
resource for accomplishing this?
Pragmatics
Many neo-Griceans still adopt much of the first
picture (i.e. analytic philosophy):
The core of language is an autonomous realm
studied by semantics.
The meanings of parts determine the meanings of
wholes.
The fundamental concept of meaning is the
truth-conditions of sentences.
Pragmatics
Gricean considerations serve as a shock-absorber
Apparent data that are not explained by the
autonomous-semantics model are treated as
merely apparent (clear from the context)
Pragmatics
According to these theorists,
there is minimal intrusion of such considerations
on autonomous semantics.
According to relevance theory this is a mistake.
(SPerber and Wilson 1986)
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Understanding what someone means is a matter
of inferring the speaker's communicative intention:
the hearer uses all kinds of information available
to get at what the speaker intended to convey.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The semantic information obtained by decoding
the sentence uttered is only one example of such
information.
But much more information has to be used to infer
what the speaker meant by her utterance,
both what she said and what she implicated.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The need for supplementary information is too
pervasive and too important to be a matter of
something specifically linguistic.
The code model, with autonomous semantics at
its core, should largely be abandoned in favor of
the inferential model.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
One kind of pragmatic reasoning pervades
language use and
the areas in which the code model is applicable
are basically marginal.
(Sperber and Wilson)
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The theory aims at an empirical psychological
theory of human cognition and communication.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The phenomenon they call ‘relevance’ is a
psychological phenomenon
basic to the lives of humans and of all animals
with a cognitive repertoire sophisticated enough
to choose among different environmental cues.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Evolution shapes the phenomenon of relevance:
An animal's attention is drawn to environmental
cues that provide the most crucial information.
Sounds of an approaching cat grabs a bird's
attention away from a worm.
Parents are alert to the sounds of their baby's
crying.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The phenomenon is extended through learning:
The squeal of brakes grabs a driver's attention
away from a pretty sunset;
The dinner bell grabs the attention of the hungry
child.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The phenomenon of relevance in language is
another manifestation of this very general
phenomenon.
It is not the same as Grice's Maxim of Relevance
or ordinary meanings of the word.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Relevance theory emphasizes that the rules of
language leave all sorts of issues open.
Some words have too many meanings: ambiguity.
Others have too little meaning: ‘he,’ or ‘that.’
Decoding won't determine which meaning the
speaker is using, or which object he intends to
refer to with a pronoun.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Even before we get to “what is said,”
communication involves
intentions of the speaker
that go beyond what he “codes-up” into language,
and inferences of the hearer
that go beyond decoding.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The representational theory of mind
Relevance theory talks about processing
representations rather than using the ordinary
terminology of philosophical psychology.
The internal language of the mind is image-based
and more like a natural language than an artifical
language (formal logic or math).
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Pragmatic relevance: utterances are a particular
case of inputs to general cognitive processes:
An input is relevant to an individual when it
connects with available contextual assumptions to
yield POSITIVE COGNITIVE EFFECTS:
for example, true contextual implications, or
warranted strengthenings or revisions of existing
assumptions. (Sperber & Wilson 2005)
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
First (cognitive) principle of relevance:
Human cognition is geared towards the
maximization of relevance
(to the achievement of as many effects as
possible for as little processing effort as possible).
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
For a communicative act to be successful, the
speaker needs the addressee's attention;
since everyone is geared towards the
maximization of relevance,
the speaker should try to make her utterance
relevant enough to be worth the addressee's
attention.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Second (communicative) principle of relevance:
Every act of overt communication (e.g. an
utterance) communicates a presumption of its
own optimal relevance.
(The addressee starts the inferential process with
a presumption that it will bring benefits, that is,
with a presumption that the input is not only
relevant, but as relevant as it can be.)
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
When someone speaks with a communicative
purpose, she does it, according to relevance
theory, with the presumption of optimal relevance:
A) The utterance is relevant enough to be worth
processing.
B) It is the most relevant one compatible with
the communicator's abilities and preferences.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The ‘explicature,’ the relevant theoretic
replacement for ‘what is said,’ or ‘the proposition
expressed,’ must be maximally relevant.
The understanding process starts when an overt
stimulus is perceived and stops when the
expectations of relevance are satisfied, that is,
when one has the most relevant hypothesis about
the speaker's communicative intention.
Most relevant = the one with the most positive
cognitive effects at the least processing costs
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
After decoding the sentence uttered and getting at
the proposition expressed, the hearer builds a
‘context’ of ‘implicated premises'
or assumptions for getting the cognitive positive
effects that make the utterance relevant.
This context building will be highly constrained by
relevance, looking for the most positive effects
with the fewest inferential steps as possible.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
Consider the following exchange between A and B:
A: Have you seen The Da Vinci Code?
B: I don't like action movies.
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
B's response has the following implicatures:
Premise: That The Da Vinci Code is an action
movie.
Conclusion: That B has not seen it and, maybe,
does not intend to see it.
A retrieves the premise that together with the
content of B's response allows her to deduce a
conclusion that B intends her to make,
given that it seems the most relevant
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
B's response has the following implicatures:
Premise: That The Da Vinci Code is an action
movie.
Conclusion: That B has not seen it and, maybe,
does not intend to see it.
A retrieves the premise that together with the
content of B's response allows her to deduce a
conclusion that B intends her to make,
given that it seems the most relevant
Pragmatics
Relevance Theory
The phenomena Grice took as generalized
conversational implicatures are not part of what is
implicated by the speaker in making an utterance,
but part of the explicature of the hearer.
Pragmatics
Contemporary pragmatics is a large, active,
interdisciplinary field.
The work we have considered here merges into
important work in logic, computer science and
other areas we have not been able to discuss.
Philosophers, the founders of the discipline,
continue to play an important role in this field.
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