First lesson handicap

- Pragmatic shift

- Linguistic turn

- Pragma – deed, act, behaviour, success” in Greek

- Felicitous behaviour – preferable, better than alternative

- even if the statement is absolutely correct, the outcome might now be the desirable one
and other less-correct statement might be more felicitous

- no rules just principles, maxims etc.

- Key aspects

- Interaction: verbal and non-verbal, in speech and writing

- Texts vs Discourses

- Text (as a finished product) is a meaning potential and might create many other
discourses with future readers (interpreting the text – basically discourse of author
and reader)

- speaker’s intention needn’t match the listener/reader’s

- Speaker intention – speaker meaning

- Not What does X mean? But What does S mean by X?

- Situation, contextual meaning in specific settings

- More gets communicated than explicitly said

- Literal meaning vs. Implicit and/or Implied meaning (Invisible meaning)

- Negotiation of meaning

- not explicit, it is a natural process of adjusting the conversation through many

factors (even tone, change of presupositions, …)

- Crucial concepts: speech acts, deixis, presupposition, pragmatic principles, conversation,

etc

- notes on paper
- ??

- Suprasegmentals

- Impprovised

- Backchanneling (Uhm.Huh.)

- ??

- Morph

- Contracted forms

- Function words

-?

- Synt

- Parataxis prevails over hypotaxis

- Lex??

- ??

- Tentativeness

- since it is improvised, the negotiation of meanings

- Discourse level

- Turn-taking

- Dis. Markers (you see)

- Contact particles (oh)

- Intimacy signals

- Dis/balanced share of floor

Hakulinen (moodle 1.3)

Types of Conversation: auditory, visual-…. , …

Deborah Tannen

- USA, linguist

- High considerateness style (turns do not overlap, no simultaneous performance, respect, M)

- High involvement style (overlap between participants, F)

Conversational analysis (CA)

- USA

- 1960s and on

- Ethnomethodologists (ethnic, folk own methos)

- Harvey Sacks, Gail Jefferson, Emanul Schegloff, Anita Pomerantz, Ervin Goffman, etc.

- Sociologists (not linguists!), recorded authentic spoken data only

- Introduced new terms in linguistics

- Local management: how participants manage their interaction; sense of normalcy

- Mundane, everyday routines (only later law courtroom, doctor’s office, helplines)

New terms introduced by Conversational analysis (CA)

- Turn, turn-taking

- Floor

- Adjacency pair (1st part, 2nd part)

- generally, conversations parts that require 1st part and 2nd part

- Repair (self-, other-)

- Attributable silence

- silence that causes some impression, the silence is telling and it is telling something about
the attributed person (maybe does not want to be rude, fails to understand)

- Preference organization (dis)preferred response

- preferred tends to be the positive ones (accept, to comply with request)

- because of structural reasons – dispreferred responses tend to involve attributable

silence, some explanation, compensation. Preferred response tends to go smoothly,
dispreferred is longer.
- (Pre-)Sequence

- Before you ask someone to come to your party, you might check whether they have time,
some preparation (presequence) for the sequence of invitation

- Insertion sequence

- Transition relevance place (TRP)

- the point at which someone knows they can take the turn, take the active role

How to do a dispreferred (without saying NO)

- Delay/hesitate, preface, express doubt, token YES, apology, mention an obligation, appeal for
understanding, make it non-personal, give an account, use mitigators (hedges), hedge the negative (it
is in the Moodle 2.1 with examples)

Example (Schegloff, 1971)

- A. Wanna come to a party?

- B. Can I bring a friend?

- A. Male or female?

- B. Female.

- A. Sure.

- B. O.K.

- turn, turn-taking, adjacency pair, 1+2nd parts + insertion sequence (2 actually)

Discourse analysis (DA, Birmingham school)

- UK. Linguists

- Since 1970s

- John Sinclair, Malcom Coulthard, Amy Tsui, Deborah Cameron, George Yule, Brazin, etc.

- Originally investigated classroom interaction, later expanded

- Develop Halliday’s systemic grammar

- Focus on discourse structure, prospective/retrospective analysis

- prospective – with the flow, linearity

- retrospective – backflow, analysing later?

- Lesson – transaction – exchange – move – act

- Three move exchange

- in the early investigations it was a striking difference between mundane and classroom
interactions

- because of the “Follow-up” by the teacher

- Initiation (I) – Response (R) - (Follow-up (F))

- Initiation – for example asking a question (for example Teacher asks)

- Respond (for example student answers)

- Follow-up (for example teacher confirms, repairs, adds info etc.?)

- anything counts, it might be non-verbal

- Any move may be non-verbal

- moves may be realised through multiple acts

- started in classrooms, it is designed for the classroom discourse analysis

Actual arrangements of moves (Exemplification)

- IRIR, IRFIRF, I(R+I)(R+I)R, IR(F+I)R(F+I)

- the brackets are added by me for clarity, in the presentation the letter were written
under each other with “R+I” being on one line

- I(R+I)R+I)RF(1)F(2)F(3)IR

- follow up after other one’s follow up

Act

- Rough equivalent of a sentence

- even nominations (just naming?)

- three types (inspired by head + post/premodifiers)

- Head act

- Pre-head act(s)

- Post-head act(s)

Example

- T: What does the next one mean? You don’t often see that one around here. Miri.

P: Danger, falling rocks

T: Danger, falling rocks. Can you tell me…

- Turn, turn-taking, exchange, move, act, head act, pre-/post- head acts

- 2 post-head acts (Sentence “You don’t..” and nomination? “Miri”)

- there is beginning of another initiation – you can initiate a move in a same act or whatever she
said?

- this is in the text Moodle 2.3

DA

- Initiating moves (they also have subtypes – on handout)

- Elicitations (seeks verbal response)

- Inform, confirm, agree, commit, repeat, clarify

- Inform: What tiem will you be finished?

- Confirm: Is that you, Henry?

- Agree: Lovely day, isn’t it?

- Commit: Can I talk to you? (Sure, come in…)

- repeat: Sorry?

- Clarify: What do you mean? (Similar to repeat, but this time you heard him, but
something is not clear

- Requestives (seeks non-verbal response)

- Request for action

- Request for permission

- Offer

- Invitation (

- Proposal (joint action + benefit): SO maybe we’ll have lunch tomorrow?

- Directives (seks non-verbal response)

 - similarities to Requestives. Directives are more suited for asymmetric relationships
(directive from position of power?)

- Mandative

- Instruction: Find out what’s going on.

- Threat: Pick up your coat or I’ll spank you.

- Advisive:

- Warning: This plastic bag is not a toy.

- Advice: Why don’t you write you write to him and ask for it.

-Informatives (seeks verbal response)

- Assessment:

a) Assessing (neither speaker nor addressee oriented): He’s terribly slow.

b) Compliment

c) Criticism

D) Self-denigration

- Self-commendation

- Report:

- Expressive: Sorry to trouble you.

- Follow-up moves

- Endorsement (enthusiastic; +): Great! Okay, thanks

- Concession (follows a negative response, minimization of face-damage; -): Yeah, I

understand. Alright, maybe next time.

- Acknowledgement (+/-): O. K.

-Responding moves

- Positive (preferred)

- Negative (dispreferred)

- Temporizations

Critical Discourse analysis (CDA); Critical linguist (CL)

- (Scoio)linguists, social critics, activists

- Since 1970s, esp. after1990s

- Neomarxist, …

- Something was underline, dunno what

- Language indexes/expresses power X can be used to subvert/challenge power

- Asymmetry, inequality, dominance, discrimination, control, ideology, etc., as manifested in

language

- Role of discourse “in the (re)production and challenge of dominance” (van Dijk)

- Esp. Critical: Critiquing to change society as such

- Aimed at enlightenment and emancipation from dominance…

- CDA intervenes on the side of the oppressed

- D. Geaney, Discourse Analysis

- Chapters 11, 12 (some teaching aspects)

- Instructional Language

- Language of Management and Control

- Focused on teaching

Recommmended reading

- Moodle 1.3, 2.1 CA, 2.2 CA, 2.3 DA, 2.4. CA vs DA

- Levinson Pramatcs chapter 6, Tsui English Conversation, Wooffitt CA and DA, Fairclough Language
and power

Third? Lesson

Presupposition

- General characteristic

- More get communicated (1. Economy);

- Inferencing impacts coherence

- Unchallenged

- we are likely to accept it, presupposition is not likely to get challenged

- Manipulation?

- ideology, journalism, …

- Types of inferencing

- Entailment: logical concept, what logically follows from what is asserted in a sentence;
based on truth; cannot stand negation
 - Presupposition: semantic/pragmatic concept (also categories of presupposition?)

- Semantic: based on formulations; can stand negation (negation test – what is that?
Just negating?)

- Pragmatic: based on utterances, often on speaker’s assumptions prior to the act of

speaking

- prior to interacting you have some assumptions regarding the reader’s

knowledge, the common ground, … which affect your utterance and the
conversation might prove that you were absolutely wrong

- you have assumptions no matter what, even if you do not know the person

- often both at the same time semantic + pragmatic

- Types of entailment

- Background vs. foreground (indicated by stress)

- Jane passed three exams

- Jane passed 3 exams // - sb passed 1-3/some exams

- Jane passed THREE exams // Jane passed some exams

- (Presupp. Jane didn’t pass three exams.)

- Types of presuppositions

- Semantic (narrower);

- propositions entailed by a sentence and its negation

- potential presuppositions which can become actual presuppositions in context with

speakers (Yule)

- Pragmatic (broader, incorporate the semantic ones);

- various approaches; related to S’s utterances, their beliefs/intentions

- provide a frame for further discourse; an agreement between speakers (common

ground or shared knowledge (Stalnaker)

- Yule: “st that S assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance”

- Semantic presuppositions

- stand the negation test (“they are not affected by negation”)

- Related to themes (FSP) (affinity, not full overlap?)

- Triggers: lexical or grammatical inducers of semantic presuppositions

- Levinson (1983)
- Yule (1996) – 6 groups

- Existential The dog ran away. -> dog exists

- e.g. proper names, definite descriptions, …

- Lexical I managed to pass it. -> I tried

- e.g. Stop, start, again

- Factive I regret cheating. -> I cheated

- e.g. Be od, be glad, be aware, know, realize, recall, notice

- Non-factive I pretended I was ill -> I was not ill

- e.g. Dream, imagine, believe, hypothesize

- Counterfactual If I weren’t old, I would -> I’m old

- e.g. Hypothetical conditions

- Structural When did he graduate? -> He graduated.

- e.g. WH-constructions, e.g. why, where, etc

- Projections problem

- Meaning of some presuppositions as parts does not survive to become the meaning
of more complex sentences

- If you combine 2 simple sentences …??

- Questions how to combine presuppositions into the more complex sentences as to

keep them???

- E.g. -Nobody realized John was ill (=> J was ill)

- I imagined John was ill (=> J wasn’t ill)

- I imagined that John was ill and nobody realized that John was ill (=>
presupp “J was ill” cannot hold)
Pragmatic presuppositions

- Incorporate semantic presuppositions, mapped on utterances

- Speaker’s presuppositions

- in an interaction we target somebody, so obviously indirectly even the hearer is

expected to conclude about the speaker’s presuppositions of the speaker’s utterance

- Dynamic concept

- Presupposition pool

- Constantly growing

- World knowledge (history, literature, …)

- Situational context

- Discourse co-text

- (See: Context)

- Cognitive approaches to pragm. Presuppositions I.

- Stalnaker (1970s) background beliefs of S, propositions that s/he takes for granted in
making the utterance – common ground

- Presumed to be shared (even if new for H) (S tells the auditor st by pretending that
the auditor already knows it) (hint at accommodation)

- Independent of ling. Forms

- completely separated from forms, you do not need the language forms?

- radical view

- Context essential

- Karttunen-Heim – ling. Forms essential even in pragm. Presuppositions

- Utterance has presupposition

- Contextual updating (later accommodation (Lews))

- If the presup. not satisfied by initial context, the context is repaired to

accommodate it

- local and global context

- global is prioritized

- Other findings:
 - P. must not be controversion for H (Soames)

- P. must not violate norms of discourse (Gauker)

- Van den Sandt: presuppositions are like anaphoras, only richer in content (linked to l. forms)

- Even if the context does not provide antecedents, the pres. can be accommodated
into global context

- Accommodation constrained by l. informativeness

- 2. Contextual consistency

- Old x New for listeners?

- it is likely the old one that will be taken for granted

- Tsui

- Pre-conditions: one of the preconditiosn for an offer is that there is a need for
action

Dir. And Requestives solicit non-verbal action

R: give the addressse the option of non-complying

D: expect compliance

INF: expect acknowledgement

- Definition adopted from Stalnaker (1977):

- Background belief of S, what the S takes for granted to be true in making an

utterance; Not fulfilling the illocutionary intent of S is to challenge the
pragmatic presupposition

- General: 1. H can hear what S says

2. H can understand the meaning conveyed

- Specific: tied to initiations (Selection follows)

- the initiator prior to opening the exchange has some expectations in

his mind

- What is this supposed to be? It is linked to the previous lesson but…?? (Specific??)

- Informatives

- S believes that the expressed proposition is true and that the

expressed proposition is indeed true

- It is not obvious that H knows about the even or state of affairs

- Requestives

- S sincerely wants the action to be carried out and believes that the
action needs to be carried out
 - H may be able and willing to carry out the action or have the actions
carried out

- It is not obvious that H will carry out the action of his/her own
accord

- Directives (shared pres.)

- H is able and willing to carry out the action

- It is not obvious that H will carry out the action of his/her own
accord

- Elicit: Inform

- S does not have the info and wants to

- S has the need and the right to ask for the info

- S has the reason to believe that H has the info

- S has reason to believe that H is willing to supply the info

Fourth lesson – basically the 4.1 text

Speech acts

- “acts” or “actions” performed by language”

- Act(ioons) performed via utterances

- Socially significant acts

- Can change the world

- there are some conditions which are need to be fulfilled to have the effect

-- Language (functions” (eg. Apologizing, condoling, requesting, thanking, praising,

congratulating, etc.)

- Milestones in history

- John Austin: How to do Things with Words (1962) – posthumously (GB)

- John Searly: Speech Acts (1969) (US)

- Constatives and performatives

- Austin:

- C: have truth values (describe reality, eg. This course is attended by 20 students)

- P: do not (eg. Praying, naming: actually perform the acts, eg. I hereby name the ship
Mary.)

- Types (dimensions) of acts

- Locutionary act (of saying)

 - Illocutionary act (in saying) – Intent (illocutionary force)

- Perlocutionary act (effect)

- Felicity conditions (eg. “promise”)

- General conditions

- eg. understand, not play-acting or absurd

- Propositional-content

- future oriented

- eg. for promise it needs to happen later

- Preparatory (circumstances)

- eg. act beneficial, will not happen by itself

- Sincerity

- eg. genuine, quality m.

- Essential

- eg. obligation for S to carry out X

- x MISFIRE

- SA Classifications

- Austin (splinter, up to 600 categories) – essentially established on lexical classification of

illocutionary verbs

- Searle (lumper, 5 major classes) – essentially huge general groups of acts

- Declarations /declaratives

- you have to have a specific social standings and power to perform

declaration

- I hereby proclaim you married… only a priest

- You directly change the world through words declared

- Representatives /assertives

- Commissives

- Directives

- Expressives

- SA and Direction of Fit (Searle)

 - Declarations – both directions (S causes X)

- e.g. baptising, naming, declaring war

- Representatives – word to world (S believes X)

- e.g. asserting, concluding, describing

- Directives – world to word (S causes X)

- e.g. commanding, ordering, requesting, suggesting

- Commissives – world to word (S wants X)

- e.g. promising, threatening, pledging, refusing

- Expressives - no (S feels X)

- e.g. congratulating, thanking, praising, condoling

Moodle. 4.1

- Directs vs Indirect

- literal reading vs. any further reading: often more polite

- Pass me the salt vs Could you pass me the salt?

- Explicit vs Implicit (primary) performatives

- with vs without a perlocutionary prefix or perloc. Clause (Allan)

- I hereby order you to say it again vs. Say it again!

- I hereby promise to bring the book back. Vs I will bring the book back

Explicit performatives

- HEREBY test (by means of this, by virtue of this)

- SA verb, if it exists

- Rare

- Often stilted, formal, more serious, emphatic. Unambiguous etc.

 - Present simple, usually pronoun I (X not always):

- Passengers are requested to fasten their belts.

Performative hypothesis

- For every utterance (U) there is an underlying clause with a perlocutionary prefix

- U => I (hereby) SA verb that (U)

- Example: I will come => I hereby promise that I will come

Fall of perfomative hypothesis

- I hereby advise you to come later. (advising)

- *I hereby blackmail you.

- I hereby say go away (ordering)

- Write it down! X I hereby order you to write it down (stronger)

=> no equivalence

- IFIDs

- Illocutionary force indicating devices

- Performative verb

- Intonation

- Stress

- Punctuation

- Verb mood

- Word order

- etc.

- Comments

- Every SA carries at least one illocutionary force

- Some carry more (eg. Indirect)

- “I’m afraid we are closing in 5 minutes.”

- Informing (D)

- Apologizing (D)
 - Requesting (I)

Form – function

- Clause (sent) type vs Discourse function

- Direct

- Declarative cl. Type – statement

- Interrogative cl. Type – question

- Imperative cl. Type – directive

- Exclamative cl.type - exclamation

- Indirect

- E.g. declarative question

- more refined distinctions: illocutionary forces:

- Imperative clause type – directive

- Have a sandwich (offer)

- Be careful! (warning)

- Make yourself at home (invitation)

- Let’s sing a song! (suggestions)

- Have a nice day. (good wish), etc.

- Interrogative cl. Type – question

- Can you switch off your phone? (request)

- Do you want another piece of cake? (offer)

- Directive discourse function – various realizations

- Get out of here!

- Let me be alone.

- Can you lave me alone?

- Could you wait outside, please?

- I think I need to be alone

- (Politeness)

- Role of context – speech event

- Context crucial (who is talking to whom where…)

- Can we open the door? (order X permission)

 - Can I help you? (offer) x Can you help me? (request, order)

- Additional notable classes

- Rogatives (Leech) (subtype of directives)

- Behabitives (Austin) (Expressives in Searle)

- Verdictives (Austin) (Declarations in Searle)

- Recommended sources

- Moodle: 4.1 (Yule, chapter 6)

- 4.2 (Sbisa)

- Other:

- Leech (chapters 8, 9)

- Levinson (Chapter 5)

- Huang (chapter 4)

- Birner (chapter 6)

________praxe__________

Fifth lesson

Cooperative principle

- British Philosopher Paul Grice, Logic and Conversation (1975)

- human interaction is no purely logical, we listen to hints, ?non-verbal signals? etc.

- Principle (X Rule) – Assumption that human interaction is rational, collaborative

- not a rule, not everyone has to obey it

- CP, 4maxim:

- Quality

- Try to make your contribution one that is true; specifically: Do not say what
you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
(do not lie)

- Quantity

- (of information provided) Make your contribution as informative as

required. Do not make your contribution more informative than required. (Do
 not bother others with details they are not interested in, but do not take
shortcuts when it comes to the important part?)

- ?I am a mother of 4, but I say “I have a child” – I failed to mention

the important details (and theoretically I lied – Quality)?

- Relation

- Be relevant. Speak to the point. Do not shift the attention to something

completely unrelated.

- (Maxim of relevance)

- Manner

- Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary

prolixity). Be orderly.

- Be clear.

- virtually just 2 supermaxims (paired maxims) – Quality-Quantity, Relation-Manner

- content (QQ) x form (RM)

- Maxims – Comments

- Maxims X imperative form

- Quality and Quantity related to content

- Relation and Manner related to form

- Linguistic vs. Non-linguistic Cooperation

- “Can you open the windows?” -> “Yes, I can.” But I keep sitting on.

- This is a linguistic cooperation (the minimal one), but it is not what was
expected

- Hedges (Yule)

- Basically a way of mitigating the possible failure to follow the principle? Something we
actually do without knowing the maxims, which proves that the maxims are at work on a
intuitive basis (the maxims exist in discourse)

- Quality: I may be mistaken, but…; As far as I know, she…

- Preparing the other person that what you say might not be true.

- Quantity: To cut the long story short…; As you probably know, they…;

- Relation: I don’t know if this is important…; This may sound like a dumb question, but…;

- You prepare the other person that you will say something that might not be
important
 - Manner: This may be a bit confused, but…; I am not sure if this makes sense, but…;

- Leech

- To reject CP on statistical grounds would be to mistake the maxim for statistical norms which they
are not

- Non-observance (when someone is not following the maxims)

- it is very common to not adhere to CP all the time, to deviate. Person that would adhere to all of the
cooperative principle would be extremely boring and probably very rude

- FLOUTING (self-evident, blatant non-observance, generates implicature)

- clear discrepancy between reality and what the person communicates

- there should be some reason for this

- typically that the person is trying to generate an extra implied meaning (implicat.)

- when flouting happens we expect that the second person is actually cooperative, he just
answers in less direct manner (“Boys will be boys”, sudden random information that makes
sense in context etc.)

- if the student answers incorrectly (handout example 4.) and does not provide the hedges
then he violates the Quality.

- VIOLATING (unostentatious non-observance, potentially misleading)

- potential deception

- Fake news, manipulative techniques of politicians, etc.

- CLASH (eg between maxims of CP, or between CP and PP)

- discrepancy between two or more maxims within the cooperative principle (CP)

- e.g. You may try to stick to the truth and in order to convey it accurately (Quality) you have
to be a bit confusing because the matter is very complicated (Manner)

- Sometimes there is even a clash between the CPs and Politeness principle (topic of the next
lesson). E.g. white-lie

- OPTING-OUT (of CP)

- Sometimes we deliberately do not want to cooperate (e.g.“No comment”)

- SUSPENDING (culture or institutional context, no implicature generated)

- e.g. taboo (you cannot tell them), in education the teacher might not share the information
because they wants the students to reach it themselves

- INFRINGING (unintentional non-observance, eg. Drugs, alcohol)

- yeeeeeeah, you know

- even emotions (affect)?

- Flouting

- QUALITY by irony, metaphor, hyperbole. Litotes, contradiction, lie, etc.

 - QUANTITY by redundancy, underinformativeness, tautology, etc.

- “Boys will be boys” – It tells us nothing important, but if you assume I am

being Cooperative, then I want something else to describe indirectly

- RELATION by allusion, cautiousness, etc.

- MANNER by ambiguity, obscurity, vagueness, ellipsis, paradox, etc.

- Inferencing

- Entailment (logical)

- (Was the test easy?) Three students copied it.

- (Two students copied the test. Some students copied the test. Three
students did something. One student…. Tady jsem nestíhal)

- nestíhal… asi další 4 věci

- Implicature

- Conventional – does not depend on social context, but linked to 1. Expressions

- e.g. Even Mary hit the ball: (contrary to expectation

- I wanted to go to Paris but he wanted to stay in Prague. (contrast)

- Conversational – depends on social context

- Generalized

A: Did you bring wine and chocolates to the party?

B: I brought some chocolates.

- if we assume the cooperation then we know that they want to say

that they did not bring the wine (logically we do not know, but we
assume)

- Scalar

A: Do you love me?

B: I quite like you.

- Particularized (implicatures in the narrow sense)

A: Have you heard about the boss? (S/he is nearby)

B: Lovely weather, isn’t it?

- they fit the specific context (you do not want to gossip about the boss if
they is nearby)

- Related frameworks I.

- Lawrence HORN (1984)

 - Q principle – say as much as you can, given R (maximize the information): reduces
H’s processing)

- R principle – Say no more than you must, given Q (minimize the form): Saves S’s
effort)

- Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson (1986)

- Communicative principle of Relation (Relevance theory) – utterance is worth

rocessing; relevant if many benefits with little effort

- one of the original maxims was promoted to the whole principle

- Stephen LEVINSON (2000)

- Neo-gricean Principles (“heuristics”, for both, S and H); Q->M->I

- Q-Principle (quantity): What isn’t said, is not (Do not say less than required)

-like x love

- I-Principle (informativeness): What is expressed simply is stereotypically true (Do

not say more than required

- If you pass the test, you’ll get credits (X If you don’t, you won’t)

- M-(Principle (manner, marking, modality): What is said in an abnormal way is not

normal (Do not use a marked expression without reason.)

Sixth lesson

Politeness principle. Politeness higher-order principles, other pragmatic principles

Overview

- Politeness defined

- Different treatments of politeness

- Politeness principle, maxims, scales

- Face

- Positive and negative politeness

- Framing politeness

-…

Polite(ness)

- “refined, elegant, scholarly, exhibiting good and restrained taste” (OED)

 - concept borrowed from French nobility

- Old English: THOU (sg) – YOU (pl)

- Since 13th cent YOU used even in sg (influence of French TU vs. Vous)

- Reducing friction (oil)

- meant in a social way, the tension etc.

- Social cohesion

- Originally upper classes, aristocracy

- Dynamically developing

- Norms of social conduct – etiquette, good manners

- Universal vs. Culture-specific

- politeness is universal, but has specific cultural realisations

- Non-verbal vs. Verbal

- Content vs. Form (hedged performatives – metalinguistic politeness)

- actually polite (content) or the form just seems so?

- Robin Lakoff (1973)

- be clear.

- be polite.

- (Politeness usually supersedes)

- Geoffrey Leech (1983)

- Influence of Grice

- POLITENESS PRINCIPLE: held to be universal (the first parts are more important; underlined)

- Tact (Minimise cost to O; maximise benefit)

- Generosity (Minimise benefit to S; maximise cost)

- Tact and Generosity are about minimising the effort (cost) to the other
person, and maximising it to self.
 - Approbation (Minimise dispraise of O; maximise praise)

- Modesty (Minimise praise of S; maximise dispraise)

- Agreement (Minimise disagreement between S and O; maximise agreement)

- usually with assertives (is not agreement in general?)

- Sympathy (Minimise antipathy between S and O; maximise sympathy)

- Categories

- SELF (S) – the speaker

- includes everything and everybody associated with that speaker

- e.g. If I am dog owner and the dog is doing a mess, then I am

responsible. But if there is a dog that someone else’s own I cannot be
as strict to it as I am expected to be to my dog

- OTHER (O)– recipient and whoever is associated with them

- Politeness is especially about the other

- Scales

- COST – BENEFIT scale (Open the door x Have a pie)

- INDIRECTNESS scale (Read it X Could you read it, (please)?; Would you mind
opening the door?)

- OPTIONALITY scale (Help! x Could you help me?)

- HELP! Does not provide the option to refuse. X Could you help me? Which
can be declined.

- SOCIAL DISTANCE scale (degree of intimacy: horizontal)

- when talking to peers for example

- AUTHORITY scale (power: vertical)

- Tension

- COOPERATIVE Principle (private area) x POLITENESS Principle (public area)

- Penelope Brown, Stephen Levinson (1987)

- FACE: public self-image of a person

- NEGATIVE face: the basic claim to territories, need to be independent, not to be

imposed on by others, freedom of action, freedom of imposition

- need to be independent
 - POSITIVE face: need to be accepted, liked, treated as member, to know that one’s
wants are shared by others, desire to be appreciated.

- need to be a part of the group, society, …

- Comments

- Face wants

- Face constantly at risk (must be protected)

- We only possess it if recognized by others

- this means “If I respect the face of the others, they will respect mine”

- Positive/negative politeness

- It is not just the cliches “would you mind” or adding “please”

- (Negative politeness strategies X absence of politeness)

- In some contexts, deference – inappropriate.

- Face threatening Acts (FTAs) // (My own recommendation: Brown & Levinson 1987)

- Some events are inherently face-threatening

- If I ask you for a favour, I inherently threaten your Negative face

- Aimed at S’s or H’s

- They may threaten positive or negative face

- Depending how serious FTAs are, they require more or less action to mitigate or
reduce the effect

- for example by politeness?

- Acts Threatening Positive face of S (apologies, confessions, etc.)

- Acts Threatening Negative face of S (…)

- ??

- ??

- Positive politeness strategies

- Notice, attend to H (their interests, wants, goods)

- Exaggerate

-…

- ..
- Negative politeness strategies

- Apologise

- Be conventionally indirect

- Question, hedge

- Be pessimistic

- “It didn’t work” instead of “You didn’t do it right”

- Strategies for performing FTAs (e.g. lending pen)

- Do the FTA bald on record (least polite) (Lend me.. a pen)

- Do the FTA on record, attend to positive face (Hey, buddy, how about letting me… a pen)

- Do the FTA on record, attend to negative face (I am sorry to bother you, but could you lend
a pen)

- Go off record with the FTA (e.g. Hint) (Oh, I forgot my pen… I wonder where I left my pen…)

- Do not do FTA (most polite) (searching for the pen)

- Terms of address

- (Honorific – marks the H as a honorary…)

- “Phatic principle?”

- Phatic Communion (B.Malinowski)

- Phatic Maxim?/Principle?

- Avoid silence. Keep talking.

- Non-controversial topics

Pragmatic Principles (Leech)

- First-order

- CP

- PP

- Interest

- Pollyana

- Higher-order

- irony

- banter
- Higher-order principles

- Irony and banter

- They are more demanding (communicatively)

- Involve greater indirectness

- Rely on implications of CP and PP?

- ??

- Irony

- Exploits PP: overtly too polite X blatantly breaches CP (QN+QL)

- If you must cause an offence, at least do so in a way which does not overtly conflict
with the PP, but allows the hearer to arrive at the offensive point of your remark
indirectly, by way of implicature. (Leech)

- Rudeness is worse than irony (even though irony is more demanding it is

preferred)

- She has just borrowed your car. -> Well, I like that!

- Polite form that conflicts the reality

- Second order principle

- Parasitic on CP and PP

- Often signalled by exaggeration …

- Banter

- third order principle

- Minor importance, esp. young people

- Clearly unserious

- To maintain a bond of familiarity

- An offensive way of being friendly

- Mock-impoliteness

- You are on purpose too offensive, but you know you can afford it because it
is towards friends?

- Mock-irony

- Pollyana Principle

- Eleanor Porter: Pollyana (1913)

- Positive, brighter side of life preferred

 - Pleasant rather than gloomy topics

- Optimistic overstatement( hyperbole)

- Euphemistic understatement (litotes)

- Understating the degree to which things are bad

- Interest principle

- Say what is unpredictable, and hence interesting.

- “conversation which si interesting, in the sense of having unpredictability or news value, is

preferred to conversation…???” (Leech

- ???

- Read on Deixis (7.3!, maybe 7.1 and 7.2?) – because of the next week guest lecturer

Seventh lesson (Professor … Sheria?)

Linguistic landscape

- “visibility and salience of languages in the public and commercial signs in a given territory or region”
– Landry and Bourhis: 1997: 250

- “The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial
shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a
given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (Landry and Bourhis 1997 p. 25)

- Gorter (2013) points out that only six classes of signs are included, and this may be regarded as
rather limited when considering the widespread variety of different signs in the public sphere.

- Recent technological developments have added many new types of signs: electronic flat-
panel displays

- LED Neon lights,

- Foam boards

- Electronic message centres

- Interactive touch screens

- Inflatable signage, and scrolling banners.

- “The linguistic items found in the public space” (Shohamy, 2006: 110)

- “Environmental print” (Huebner, 2006: 31)

- “The Words on the Walls” (Calvet, 1990)

- The Word on the Street (Foust and Fuggle, 2011)

- not just streets, also religious sights (prayers in 28 languages on the Prague infant?)
- “Why include Czech and not Italian?” (- “It’s symbolic”)

- Linguistic signs in the streets:

- Brussel (Tulp, 1978 and Wenzel 1998) – Dutch and French

- Montreal (Monnier, 1989) French and English

- Jerusalem (Spolsky and Cooper, 1991; (Ben-Rafael et al., 2004, 2006)) Arabic and Hebrew

- Brussels – Tulp’s study (1978)

- More French than Dutch, also many diplomats and French was Lingua Franca for them

- officially trilingual (Dutch, French and German)

- Large billboards

- French dominates the LL

- Two-thirds of the signs were monolingual French

- Remaining signs – monolingual Dutch

- Bilingual signs in both French and Dutch amount to less than 10 %.

- Tulp’s study shows that Brussels’ linguistic landscape is not bilingual but predominantly
French.

- She laments the fact that the predominance of French implies that Brussesl is a French-
speaking city, a perception that according to her will trigger the use of more French

- Wenzel’s study (1996)

- Languages on billboards and shop signs in Brussels

- Wenzel’s analysis includes:

- Order of languages on signs

- Combination of languages

- Correlation between language and service or product offered.

- On billboards and shop signs

- French 56,5 %

- Dutch 24,2 %

- English 9,7 %

- Without text 7,5 %

- Others 2,5 %

- The overall dominance of French advertisements in Brussels’ linguistic landscape reflects

and imbalance between the two language groups in this city

- The appearance of English gives the city an “international outward appearance”

- Quebec, Canada (Monnier’s study 1989)

- Montreal is dominated by native speakers of French, who are a linguistic minority in English-
dominated Canada

- Legal cornerstone of Quebec’s language policy is “Charter of the French Language”, known
as Bill 101 enacted in 1977, it enforces the use of French

- Charter demands that all signs – traffic signs, commercial advertisements and public signs
and posters must be in French only

- In 1993 the Charter was revised to allow for other languages in signs. However, French is
still obligatory and prescribed to be dominant

- In cases where other languages are permitted, French remains the dominant
language on a sign.

- Quantitative results showed that dominance of French over English

- Her findings differ widely with regard to the Type of Shop

- French was strongly represented in department stores (90 %)

- Monolingual French signs were rarest in hotels and restaurants (39 %)

- Israel (Spolsky and Cooper 1991)

- Signs of Power, Signs of Solidarity

- Jerusalem – 3 monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam

- State of Israel 1948, parts of Jerusalem were occupied by Trans Jordanian troops and the
city became divided into Israeli (West Jerusalem) and Jordanian (East Jerusalem) sectors.

- During the 6-day 1967 war the city of Jerusalem was proclaimed the capital of the state of
Israel – a point of international contention

- Traits of bilingual city

- Western parts dominated by Hebrew-speaking groups

- Eastern parts including the Old City, are inhabited by Arab populations

- Both Hebrew and Arabic are official languages in Israel

- English is important. It was official during the British mandate from the League of
Nations to administer Palestine until the new state’s independence in 1948

- LL research in eastern parts of Jerusalem

- Spolsky and Cooper (1991) collected 339 items and studied the motivations that account for
the language usage patterns on signs of Old City

- Total of 12 languages

- Hebrew, Arabic, English, Armenian, French, German, Aramaic, Greek, Italian, Coptic,
Swedish

- The preference model

 - Why do some languages and not others appear on the signs?

1. Sign writer’s skill condition – write in a language you know

2. Presumed reader condition – language used should be intelligible to those

for whom the message is intended

3. Symbolic value condition – prefer to write in your own language and in a

language with which you wish to be identified

- To a sample of 91 signs, Spolsky and Cooper observed that 60 % of the cases Condition 1
applied

- They mention that in most cases the first or only language chosen is at the same time that
of the assumed sign reader, so both Conditions 1 and 2 apply

- As regards Condition 3, the sample showed that the symbolic value condition applies but
not the assumed reader condition. E.g. building…. ???

- Officially monolingual: Czech Republic – Prague (Pipalova 2020)

- Renata Pipalova’s study was published in 2020: 2 streets in Prague 1 and Prague 6

- Prague 1 (historic centre)

- Prague 6 (airport area)

- 815 monolingual signs

- Czech – 70 %

- English – 23 %

- French – 2 %

- Italian – 2 %

- Others: Japanese, Finnish, Swedish, Greek, Slovak, Russian

- 173 Bilingual Signs

- Czech + English – 85 %

- Czech + French = 2,89 %

- Czech + Mandarin = 2,89 %

- English + French = 1,16 %

- English + Italian = 1,16 %

- English + Mandarin = 0,57 %

- Distinct Parameters for Bi-Multilingual signs

- Order: order of the languages featured (determined by linearity)

- Czech precedes English

 - Salience: higher visibility of one of the codes due to larger fonts and possibly other
graphic means

- Czech; salient language because of its larger fonts and decoration of the
labels suggesting bubbles

- Prominence: of the message encoded in one of the languages, suggested by the

relative number of words, but primarily determined by…. (+ informativity)

- The message conveyed in Czech is more complex

Seminář guest lecturer

- Linguistic landscapes contextualizes the public space within issues of identity and language policy of
nations, political and social conflicts

- Valletta’s Linguistic Landscape: a case of instrumental rationality?

-Malta in Mediterranean

- the origins of Maltese date back to the Arab period (870-1090) but have survived the rule of
so many other colonizers

- Malta’s more recent colonisers

- Normans (1090-1266)

- Angevins (1266-1283)

- Aragonese (1283-1410)

- Castilians (1412-1530)

- Order of St John (1530-1798)

- French (1798-1800)

- British (1800-1964)

- Independence – 1964: Malta was granted its Independence from Britain

- 1964 Constitution: Both Maltese and English became official languages

- Maltese is the national language and the language of the law courts and Parliament

- 8th May 2002 – Maltese becomes one of the official languages of the European Union

- Only 28,4 % were hopeful that Maltese would become official in EU (Sciriha and Vassallo)

- 71,4 % never expected it

- Maltese language act 2005

- in public domain it ensured the public signage

- Aims of the study

- quantitative and qualitative analysis of signs in Valletta

 - Analysis checked for differences in the number of languages featuring in these signs
and whether some languages were given more prominence

- Also considered was the combination of languages in bilingual and multilingual signs
as outlined by Scollon and Wong Scollon

- Research Questions

1. How many monolingual, bilingual and multilingual signs comprise the Valletta
corpus?

2. Which of the two official languages is given mor prominence in bilingual signs?

3. How many autonomous language sings…?

- Methodology

- Republic street, one of the main streets was chosen and a variety of data (street
names, house names, names of shops, parking, traffic signs etc.) was collected

- Coding frae for bilingual/multilingual signs

- Scollon and Wong Scollon state that

- “IN most cases studied so far, the preferred code is located above the
secondary or peripheral codes if they are aligned vertically; if they are aligned
horizontally the preferred code is located in the left position and the
peripheral code is located in the right position. A third possibility is that the
preferred code is located in the center and the peripheral code is placed
around the periphery.”

- a) Factor A: the physical position (vertical or horizontal alignment) of the two or

more languages on the sing

b) Factor B: the number of words used in each language

- The merging of these two factors on the one hand simplifies the analysis, and, on
the other, allows for a more holistic analysis

- The bi-factorial codes used to analyse bilingual/multilingual signs is clearly

identifiable in Table with full explanations presented in the respective box for each
code

- Autonomous signs

- English only = 333 (81 %)

- Maltese Only – 37 (9 %)

- Other languages – 40 (9,7 %)

- Monolingual 410 (87 %), Bilingual 56 (11 %), Multilingual (1 %)

- Conclusions

- Overwhelming presence of English reveals its unrivalled status as a world language

 - Maltese sign writer are proficient in English. T

- Dominance of Maltese in Maltese and English bilingual signs is also…

- ??

- 14 autonomous languages

- Weber – value orientation x instrumental value

Eighth lesson

Deixis

- Greek term: pointing via language

- Relationship between language and context

- Deictic centre, typically S (X Deictic projection)

- “Give it to your mother” – changes the deictic centre to the baby, for him to understand it

- Deixis organized mostly in an egocentric way

- Distal vs. Proximal

- depend on the relative position (distance) from the deictic centre

- Means: indexicals (esp. person, demonstrative pronouns, morphemes indicating tenses, etc)

- Types of deixis

- Person

- central person – tends to be the speaker

- “Give it to your mother” – changes the deictic centre to the baby, for him to
understand it

- role of participants in the speech event

- I, me, we, you, your, his, etc.

- Temporal

- temporal points and spans relative to the time of utterance

- now, then, on Monday, next year, I was etc.)

- central time – time of utterance

- Spatial

- location relative to the location of participants in speech event

- here, there, at home, come, go, that, this, in front, to the left, etc.
 - central place – location of utterance

- Discourse (in some frameworks)

- reference to portions of unfolding discourse relative to current position in discourse

- this, that, in this chapter, in the previous paragraph, oh!, hence, wow!, yes, no etc.

- yes and no – you respond to something that has been mentioned (so
probably that is the explanation for the oh and wow as well)

- discourse centre – current point in discourse

- Social (in some frameworks)

- social distinction relative to participant roles

- your majesty, hey bud, etc.

- social centre – speaker’s social status and rank

- Person deixis

- I – (speaker)

- We – inclusive (of the H[earer]), exclusive (of the H)

- You (addressee, H)

- He, she, they (-S, -H)

- Place deixis

- Location specified relative to the participants

- Examples

- Here

- There

- Go away

- Come here

- Empathetic deixis: this vs that

- Time deixis

- Relative, not absolute, i.e. calendrial (that is the absolute example)

- Coding time vs receiving time

- coding and decoding (receiving)

- the recorder example – “Hello, I am not home right now, leave a message” –
receiving time

- Tenses
 - Asymmetry: Good morning (greeting)

- Good night (parting)

- Discourse deixis

- Pointing to a proposition /portion of discourse relative to current place in discourse

- Deictic use – referring to a linguistic expression: Spell it for me. (mention)

- Anaphoric use – co-referential with it antecedent

- Not mutually exclusive

- I was born in Pilsen and I have lived there ever since (not here)

- Social deixis

- Vocatives

- Honorifics

- Thou vs You

- Levels of formality (?)

- Reported speech

- shift in indexicals to show that there is a change

- not completely linked to the topic of deictics but partly touchs

- “I enjoy the stay here very much.”

- She said that she enjoyed the stay there very much.

- Recommended sources

- Moodle

- 7.1 Yule

- 7.2 Bamford

- 7.3 Sidnel

- Levinson 2

- Huang 5

- Birner 4