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In the first part of the dialogue, two things can be pointed out about the context: on one
hand, we are told that the physical context in which the dialogue occurs is a flight of stairs,
so we can identify why Sheldon mentions the stairs as a topic of conversation. But we
cannot make sense of the use of the definite article of “the sperm bank”; we don’t know
what bank they are referring to since we don’t have the knowledge of this exophoric
reference. The adverb “still” (“Are you still mad about…”) also refers to the previous
context (which does not appear in the current dialog). So we cannot know why Leonard
was mad.
Co-text:
As oppose to the physical context, the linguistic context refer to the words that surround a
specific word of phrase inside a text. Co-text is very helpful, for example, to distinguish
between homonyms:
In this case, it’s the word that precedes the noun “bank” the one that allows us to interpret
that word as “a place where human blood, sperm, etc. is stored until someone needs it” and
not a “land along the side of a river or lake”.
Schemata:
One particularly clear example of the need of schemata to understand every-day dialogues
appears towards the end of the dialogue. The term schema refers to “a conventional
knowledge structure that exists in memory” (Yule, año, p). In the following example, it is
clear that the participants need to be aware of the social media schemata to understand what
the word “friends” means and why it is possible to have 212 friends:
Leonard: Then that was wrong of us. We need to widen our circle .
Sheldon: I have a very wide circle. I have 212 friends on MySpace .
Deixis:
Deixis refer to those words that can only be interpreted taking into account the situation of
enunciation, that is, which person, place or time the speaker has in mind. This words might
be pronouns, like in:
In this example, the only way to know that the pronoun “you” refers to “Leonard” is to take
into account the participant of the conversation: in that moment Sheldon is “I” and Leonard
is “you”.
But there are other words that refer to the situation of enunciation: adverbs of place and
time, like in:
Leonard: Anyway, um.... We brought home Indian food? (holds food bag toward Penny's
face) And, um.... I know that moving can be stressful, and ... and I find that when I'm
undergoing stress, that good food and company can have a comforting effect. Also, curry is
a natural laxative and I don't have to tell you that, y'know, a clean colon is just … (smiling
broadly) one less thing to worry about.
Sheldon: Leonard, I'm no expert here but I believe in the context of a luncheon invitation
you might want to skip the reference to bowel movements.
Penny: Oh, you're inviting me over to eat?
But in the case of Leonard, the invitation is not successful. Penny only realizes Leonard’s
intention when Sheldon makes the matter explicit by saying “in the context of a luncheon
invitation”.
Lexical chains:
Leonard: Anyway, um.... We brought home Indian food? (holds food bag toward Penny's
face) And, um.... I know that moving can be stressful, and ... and I find that when I'm
undergoing stress, that good food and company can have a comforting effect. Also, curry is
a natural laxative and I don't have to tell you that, y'know, a clean colon is just … (smiling
broadly) one less thing to worry about.
Sheldon: Leonard, I'm no expert here but I believe in the context of a luncheon invitation
you might want to skip the reference to bowel movements.
In this part of the dialogue we can find a lexical chain related to food digestion: food,
laxative, colon, bowel movements. Not at all convenient if you are trying to ask a girl out!
Phonology/phonetics. Varieties of English:
Sheldon: (unlocking door to their apartment) No, we're going to start season two of
Battlestar Galactica.
The difference between American English and British English, two varieties of English,
includes variations in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. In this case, the use of the
word “apartment” signals a particular variation, the American one. A British person would
have probably said “flat”.
The question Sheldon asks is in fact an indirect speech act, that is, when the syntactic
structure used is not associated with the intended function of the utterance. In our example,
the structure is a question but Sheldon is not actually asking anything; he wants to start
telling what he considers an interesting fact. Proof of this is that he does not take into
consideration Leonard’s answer (he is not interested) and keeps on talking anyway. The
illocutionary act performed by Sheldon is not “asking”.
Penny: Hi.
Leonard: Hi
Sheldon: Hi
Penny: Hi.
Leonard: Hi. (nodding at floor) Well … uh … oh, welcome to the building.
Penny: Aw, thank you. Maybe we can have coffee sometime.
Leonard: Oh, great
Penny: Great
Sheldon: Great
Leonard: Great.... Well, uh bye.
Penny: Bye.
Sheldon: Bye.
Leonard: Bye.
This is the perfect example of a violation of the cooperative principle. Both the quantity and
relevance maxims are not respected in this part of the dialogue. Of course it was not
necessary to repeat “hi” 5 times, and “great” and “bye” 3 times each. They do it because
they are nervous to talk to a pretty girl (they are not used to do so). The situation ends up
being a little awkward.