Discussion Question/Professional Development Activities

1. Can you spell out why ‘quarreling and letter writing’ do not fit comfortably with the conditions presented here?

2. What would you call the three features' listed here if you were to make them into maxims for cooperative transactions?

3. Grice emphasizes the word ‘reasonable’ as he describes his consideration of the cooperative principle and his maxims as a kind of contract. Would the cooperative principle, the maxims, and the three features listed here be treated as ‘reasonable’ in all societies and cultures?

***

From: J. L. MORGAN: "Two types of convention in indirect speech acts" in P. Cole (ed.): Syntax and Semantics Volume 9: Pragmatics. Academic Press1978. – P. 277-278.

Just above I presented cases involving particular expressions and the conventionalization of their use for certain implicatures, as in the case of If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, or the original example, Can you pass the salt? I said in the latter case that it had become a convention of usage to use this expression, with its literal meaning, to convey an implicature of request. The question now arises, can there be this kind of conventionalization of rules of conversation? I think there can. For example, it is more or less conventional to challenge the wisdom of suggested course of action by questioning the mental health of the suggestor, by ANY appropriate linguistic means, as in:

13. Are you crazy?

14. Have you lost your mind?

15. Are you out of your gourd?

and so on. Most Americans have two or three stock expressions usable as answers to obvious questions, as in:

16. Is the Pope Catholic?

17. Do bagels wear bikinis?

But for some speakers the convention does not specify a particular expression, and new ones are manufactured as they are needed. It seems that here a schema for implicature has been conventionalized: Answer an obvious yes/no question by replying with another question whose answer is very obvious and the same as the answer you intend to convey.

In a similar way, most speakers have a small number of expressions usable as replies to assertions, with the implicature that the assertion is transparently false-(42), for example:

18. Yes, and Fm Marie the Queen of Romania.

But again, for some speakers the convention specifies only a general strategy, rather than a particular expression: To convey that an assertion is transparently false, reply with another assertion even more transparently false.

Discussion Questions/Professional Development Activities

1. Do you know any other ‘stock expressions’ for these types of occasions (request, challenge, answer to obvious questions, reply to a false assertion)? How would you explain (to someone learning English as a foreign language for example) how to work out the communicated meaning from the literal meaning?

2. The author uses the term ‘convention’ in talking about the kinds of implicatures involved here. Do you think that the examples presented here can be analyzed in terms of conventional implicatures?

3. What do you think about the idea that an implicature may begin by being based on inference, but can become so conventionalized that no one has to make the inference any more? Is that the same process as we use in interpreting idioms?

VIII. Test yourself

The same or different?

1) conventional implicature – conversational implicature

2) natural meaning – non-natural meaning – meaning-nn

3) relevant – prolix – perspicuous – topical

False or true?

1. The maxim of Quality helps to make our contribution truly expressive and remarkable.

2. The maxim of Quantity helps us to limit our presentation of information so as our contribution might be informative, as is required for current purposes of the interaction.

3. The maxim of Manner makes us be brief.

4. Conversational implicatures are based on the co-operative principle.

IX. References

1. Brown G., Yule G. Discourse analysis. – Cambridge University Press, 1996. – 288 p.

2. Grice H. P. Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning// Foundations of Language. - 1968. – 4. – P. 1-18.

3. Grice H.P. Meaning (1957)//Semantics. An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology. Eds. Steinberg D., Jakobovits L. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. – P. 53-59

4. Grice H. P. Further notes on logic and conversation//Syntax and semantics 9: Pragmatics. Ed. Cole P., N.Y: Academic Press, 1978. – P. 113-128.

5. Grice H.P. Logic and conversation//Cole P., Morgan J. (eds) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 1975 – P. 41 - 58

6. Hybels S., Wearer R.L. Communicating Effectively. - N.Y: Random House, 1989. – 431p.

7. Levinson S. C. Pragmatics - Cambridge University Press, 1995. – 420 p.

X. Recommended Reading for Further Study

1. DIANE BLAKEMORE: Understanding Utterances. An Introduction to Pragmatics. Blackwell, 1992.

This is an introduction to pragmatics in which Relevance is taken to be the central concept, that is why it is important for communicative linguistics.

2. LAURENCE HORN: Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: ‘Q-based and R-based implicature’ in Deborah Schiffrin (ed.): Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Georgetown University Press, 1984.

This paper proposes an alternative approach to analyzing how implicatures arise, using two instead of four maxims.

3. PAUL GRICE: Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University Press, 1989

This volume includes the collected papers of the philosopher whose ideas are considered by many to be the foundation of contemporary pragmatics and communication theory.

4. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society 16, 1990.

There is a collection of sixteen papers, presented as a parasession within these published proceedings, on the legacy of Grice, covering a wide range of issues in the analysis of meaning.

5. DAN SPERBER and DEIDRE WILSON: Relevance. Blackwell 1986.

Presented as a study of human communication, this book takes the single maxim of Relevance as a key. Arguments and illustrations are presented to support the contention that ‘communicated information comes with a guarantee of relevance’.

UNIT 7: Written Language

I. Outline

1. Grammatical and lexical items.

2. Density as the criterion of difference between written and spoken language.

3. Comparing written and oral language.

4. Relative frequency.

5. Clause as an elastic body.

6. Clause complex and its role.

7. Nouns and nominality.

8. The structure of the nominal group.

9. The structure of the clause.

II. Objectives

After you have completed the unit you should be able to

- understand different kinds of complexity;

- internalize the significance of lexical density ratio;

- comprehend the importance of relative frequency of one lexical item to another;

- outline what a clause is and explain its significance in the structure of a language;

- expound on what a clause complex is;

- pick out your own fragments of written language proving the importance of lexical density in a clause;

- account of nouns and nominality;

- interpret written texts from the perspectives of density, relative frequency and nominality.

III. Key words: content/function word, lexical/grammatical item, closed/open system, preposition, conjunction, adverb, determiner, finite verb, proportion, density, sparse, complexity, intricacy, continuum, frequency, relative, clause, clause complex, nominality.

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