Manual for Students

2.What types of speech act are the following sentences?

How many times do I have to tell you to clean your room?

A. Assertion B. Question C. Directive

Who is that man over there?

A. Assertion B. Question C. Directive

Could you lift 200 pounds?

A. Assertion B. Question C. Directive

3.Classify the sentences: sentence type, speech act, direct or indirect (only choose three answers).

The water is too cold in the swimming pool [Friend says to friend in a public swimming pool].

A. Declarative B. Interrogative C. Imperative D. Assertion E. Question

F. Directive G. Indirect H. Direct

It is too cold in this house [Husband says to wife].

A. Declarative B. Interrogative C. Imperative D. Assertion E. Question

F. Directive G. Indirect H. Direct

Jane says to her mother: “I wonder why Frank (her brother) didn’t come home today”.

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A.Declarative

B.Interrogative

C.Imperative

D.Assertion

E.Question

F.Directive

G.Indirect

H.Direct

Can you pass the salt?

A.Declarative

B.Interrogative

C.Imperative

D.Assertion

E.Question

F.Directive

G.Indirect

H.Direct

I noticed that the car hasn’t been washed yet [Father says to son].

A.Declarative

B.Interrogative

C.Imperative

D.Assertion

E.Question

F.Directive

G.Indirect

H.Direct

It sure is a beautiful day.

A.Declarative

B.Interrogative

C.Imperative

D.Assertion

E.Question

F.Directive

G.Indirect

H.Direct

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4. Which maxim is violated, thus resulting in an implicature?

Woman: Did you bring enough food for the party?

Man: I’d say that you made just the right amount – if a couple of hundred people show up.

A.Maxim of Quality

B.Grice’s Maxim of Relation

C.Grice’s Maxim of Quantity

Susan: Are you coming to the movies tonight?

Elizabeth: Do I look like I have any free time?

A.Maxim of Quality

B.Grice’s Maxim of Relation

C.Grice’s Maxim of Quantity

Corey: Do you think Mary is pretty?

Jeff: Let’s just say that I wouldn’t vote for her in the local beauty contest.

A.Maxim of Quality

B.Grice’s Maxim of Relation

C.Grice’s Maxim of Quantity

Laura: I don’t believe any men are coming to visit today, Mother. Amanda: What? Not one? You must be joking! Not one man? It can’t be true! There must be a flood! There must have been a tornado!

A. Maxim of Quality

B.Grice’s Maxim of Relation

C.Grice’s Maxim of Quantity

A: How are you today?

B: Well, my car is not working too good right now and to tell

you the truth, I don’t have very much money. In fact, I don’t know how I’m going to pay my bills this month.

A.Maxim of Quality

B.Grice’s Maxim of Relation

C.Grice’s Maxim of Quantity

James: Do I look fat?

Leslie: Have you thought about working out or joining a health spa?

A.Maxim of Quality

B.Grice’s Maxim of Relation

C.Grice’s Maxim of Quantity

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Ø For each sentence, label its intent and its grammatical form. Then use that information to decide if it is direct or indirect and if it is literal or nonliteral

Direct sentences: in form +							Intent:	Gra mm atica l	D irect	Literal or
d eclarative							to inform,	form :	o r	N onliteral
seek informatio n +							to seek	declarative,	Ind irect
in terro gative							information ,	interrogative,
change b ehavior + imperativ e							or	or
							to ch ange	imperativ e
							behavio r
1 .	Sp eed limit is 55. (h ighway
	sign)
2 .	D o not exceed 55.
3 .	D on’t	even	think			of
	speeding.
4 .	Y ou walk into you r friend’s
	apartmen t and it is dark. To
	g et your	frien d	to turn		o n
	some ligh ts, yo u		say,	“Are
	yo u raising mu shroo ms					in
	h ere?”
5 .	A prou d moth er says to h er
	friend , “D o you		kn ow		that
	m y so n	M arvin	won		the
	spelling bee at his grade
	sch ool?”
6 .	Jan et Jackson receives frequent unwanted p hone calls from Justi n Ti mberlake,
	w ho has a mad crush on h er. Janet, who wants Justin to stop bo thering her, says
	th e following to him:
	a) Go jump in the P acific,
	Justin.
	b ) I hate	being p estered b y
	a man I can never resp ect.
	c) D o you think I			enjo y
	b eing	harassed		every
	mo ment	of my	life	b y		a
	leech ?
	d ) M r. T, you r		calls	are		a
	sou rce of an noyance to me.
	e) Do not ever, ever call me
	again.

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7.Lynn Cheney wants to inform her husband Dick that he has ketchup stains on his tie and says the following:

a)You spilled something on your tie.

b)Are you aware there are ketchup

spots on your tie?

c)Take a look at what happened to your tie.

d)The new polka dots on your tie are ever so becoming.

8.Francine wants to find out from Jolene the name of Jolene’s date and says the following:

a)You haven’t told me your date's

name, Jolene.

b)Why, Jolene, who is this heavenly creature?

c)I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your escort.

d)By any chance, has lover boy here got a name?

e)What's your boyfriend’s name, Jolene?

Ø Think Critically About:

1. What is implicated by the sentence or discourse in italics? What maxims are involved? Are maxims being obeyed, violated or flouted?

(1)A: In a few years. I will be rich and famous!

B:Yes, and I will be the secretary-general of the United

Nations.

(2)A: Did Manchester United win from Roda JC, yesterday?

B:Is the pope catholic?

(3)Quiz master: The Louvre is located in which European capital?

Contestant: (silence)

Quiz master, after a while: It starts with a ‘P’.

(4)A: What would you like for your birthday?

B:Well, my camera is not working.

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(5)A: Who are those two people?

B:That’s my mother and her husband.

(6)A: Of the three friends you invited to your party, who turned up?

B:John did.

(7)A: Where can I buy a newspaper?

B:There’s a news agent around the corner.

(8)[in a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job] Dear Sir, Mr. X’s command of English is excellent and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours etc.

2. For each of the following tropes (figures of speech) determine: 1) what the implicature might be? 2) What maxims are flouted?

–Irony: X, with whom A has been on close terms until now, has betrayed a secret of A. A says: X is fine friend.

–Metaphor: You are the cream in my coffee.

–Irony + Metaphor: You are the cream in my coffee.

–Hyberbole (Exageration): These books weigh a ton.

–Meiosis (Understatement): Of a man known to have broken up all the furniture: He was a little intoxicated.

–Litotes (Denying the opposite): She was not unpleased by his efforts.

–Rhetorical question: After Cain killed his brother Abel. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know”, he replied. Am I my brother’s keeper?

–Tautology (in the non-logical sense): The child cried and wept.

–Pleonasm: white snow.

–Metonymy: He lost his tongue.

REFERENCES

1.Alston W. P. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning / William P. Alston. – Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2000. – P. 15.

2.Bach K. Linguistic Communication and SpeechActs / Kent Bach, Robert M. Harnish. – Cambridge, Mass : MIT Press, 1979. – P. 8.

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3.Gazdar G. Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition and Logical Form / Geerz Gazdar. – New York : Academic Press, 1979. – P. 21 – 56.

4.Grice H. P. Meaning / Paul H. Grice // Studies in the Way of Words / H. Paul Grice. – Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1989. – P. 213 – 223.

5.Grice H. P. Presupposition and Conversational Implicature / Paul H. Grice // Studies in the Way of Words / H. Paul Grice. – Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1989. – P. 269 – 282.

6.Handbook of Pragmatics / [Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, Jan Blommaert (eds.)]. – Amsterdam : Benjamins, 1995. – P. 11, 405.

7.Korta K. Pragmatics / Kepa Korta, John Perry // The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. – 2006. – P. 12 – 14.

8.Laurence R. H. The Handbook of Pragmatics / R. Horn Laurence, Gregory Ward. – Oxford : Blackwell, 2005. – P. 23.

9.Leech G. N. Principles of Pragmatics / Geoffrey N. Leech. – London : Longman, 1983. – P. 53.

10.Moore A. Pragmatics [Internet resource] / Andrew Moore. – http://www.shunsley.eril.net/armoore.

11.Peirce Ch. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce / Charles Sanders Peirce. – Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1960. – P. 97.

12.Searle J. R. SpeechActs:An Essay in the Philosophy of Language / John R. Searle. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1969. – P. 58, 76 – 84.

13.Thomas J. Meaning in Interaction:An Introduction to Pragmatics / Jenny Thomas. – London : Longman, 1995. – P. 85.

14.Watzlawick P. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes / Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick Beavin, Don D. Jackson. – New York : Norton, 1967. – P. 75 – 85.

15.Yule G. Pragmatics / George Yule. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1996. – P. 91.

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LANGUAGE CONTACTASAN OUTCOME OFLANGUAGE COMMUNICATION

Language contact takes place between speakers of different languages in contact situations. In order for communication to take place, speakers must arrive at a certain degree of comprehension of the other language and must acquire a degree of facility in producing utterences

that will be comprehensible (Ilse Lehiste).

Overview

The chapter represents major achievements in Contact Linguistics which is considered to be a closely related sub-branch of Communicative Linguistics. It lays theoretical groundwork to provide a starting point for the detailed discussion to follow. It also reviews some theoretical and empirical claims that have been made about the results of language contact, gives a framework of analysis that includes a variety of components, provides a broad overview of types of contact situation, their outcomes, and the social settings in which they emerge.

Topics covered include: Subject Matter of Contact Linguistics; History of Research on Language Contact; Types of Contact Situation; Borrowing; Structural Convergence; Code-Switching; Language Shift; Social Context of Language Contact; Speech Communities and Language Contact.

Key words: Contact Linguistics, Contact Situation, Borrowing, Structural Convergence, Code-Switching, Language Shift, Pidgin, Creole, Speech Community.

————————————————————————————

5.1 The Subject Matter of Contact Linguistics

In offering his account of Caló, the mixture of Spanish and Romani used as an in-group language by Roma (Gypsies) in Spain, Rosensweig referred to it, in the very title of his book, as Gutter Spanish. A flyer

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from a West Sussex bookseller advertising publications on “dialect and folk speech, pidgins and creoles”, describes these forms of language, in boldface capitals, as “vulgar and debased English” [5, p. 158]. Language mixture has always prompted strong emotional reaction, often in the form of ridicule, condemnation, or outright rejection. Language purists have proscribed it as an aberration of the “correct” language, and their attitude is reflected in a lay perception of mixed languages as deviant, corrupt, and even without status as true languages. Thus, Ambrose Gonzales, self-proclaimed student of the Gullah language, a “creole” language of mixed English and African ancestry spoken on islands off the South Carolina coast, explained its origins in this way: “Slovenly and careless of speech, these Gullahs seized upon the peasant English used by some of the early settlers and by the white servants of the wealthier colonists, wrapped their clumsy tongues about it as well as they could, and, enriched with certain expressive African words, it issued through their flat noses and thick lips as so workable a form of speech that it was gradually adopted by the other slaves and became in time the accepted Negro speech of the lower districts of South Carolina and Georgia” [25, p. 1].

A lot of people would probably accept the notion that languages like Gullah are the result of ineffective learning. The truth, however, is that these languages are testaments to the creativity of humans faced with the need to break down language barriers and create a common medium of communication. Far from being deviant, language mixture is a creative, rule-governed process that affects all languages in one way or another, though to varying degrees. The kinds of mixture that characterize languages like Caló and Gullah may be extreme, but they are by no means unusual, and have played a role in the development of just about every human language, including some that are regarded as models of correctness or purity. Whenever people speaking different languages come into contact, there is a natural tendency for them to seek ways of bypassing the communicative barriers facing them by seeking compromise between their forms of speech.

Such contact can have a wide variety of linguistic outcomes. In some cases, it may result in only slight borrowing of vocabulary, while other contact situations may lead to the creation of entirely new languages. Between these two extremes lies a wide range of possible outcomes

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involving varying degrees of influence by one language on the other. More accurately, it is the people speaking the respective languages who have contact with each other and who resort to varying forms of mixture of elements from the languages involved. The possible results of such contact differ according to two broad categories of factors – internal (linguistic) and external (social and psychological). Among the relevant linguistic factors is the nature of the relationship between the languages in contact, specifically the degree of typological similarity between them. There is also a variety of other linguistic constraints which operate in such situations, some of them specific to particular areas of linguistic structure (e.g., the lexicon, phonology, morphology, etc.), others of a more general, perhaps universal nature. Relevant social factors include the length and intensity of contact between the groups, their respective sizes, the power or prestige relationships and patterns of interaction between them, and the functions which are served by intergroup communication. Sociopolitical factors which operate at both individual and group level, such as attitudes toward the languages, motivations to use one or the other, and so on, are also important [25, p. 2].

Most, if not all, languages have been influenced at one time or another by contact with others. In some cases, externally induced changes do not even require speakers of the different languages to have actual social contact [9]. For instance, lexical borrowing can be accomplished through book learning by teachers, writers, lexicographers, and the like who pass on the new vocabulary to others via literature, religious texts, dictionaries, and so on. In other cases, prolonged social interaction between members of different speech communities may result in varying degrees of mixture and structural change in one or the other of the languages involved. In extreme cases, pervasive contact may result in new creations distinct from their original source languages. The following examples illustrate some of the contact-induced changes that have affected English in various contact settings, leading to very different outcomes in each case. We might well ask whether these varieties are indeed forms of English, and if so, in what sense we can say they belong to the family of English dialects.

Sample (1) is an example of the form of pidgin English used as a lingua franca among ethnic groups of different linguistic background (English, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese, among others)

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