Language in Context

Pragmatics, Metaphor and Framing

 Meaning
Semantics –meaning derived from linguistic
knowledge ( from the words themselves)

Pragmatics – aspects of meaning that

cannot be predicted by linguistic
knowledge alone, relies on social and
contextual cues.
 What do we mean by context?
All features of a situation that are relevant to
how an utterance is produced an
understood.
 Context guides meaning
A: What’s your stepmother like?
B: she’s a woman and she’s married to
my father.
Pragmatic meaning
 Pragmatic meaning depends
on Inference
Entailments are directly retrievable from the
linguistic form of the utterance

Pre-suppositions are closely linked to the

words and grammatical structures + our
knowledge of the way language is
conventionally interpreted.
 Entailment
The race was won in
21.38 seconds
Hussein Bolt won the
race.

Thus H. Bolt can

run …….
 Pre-supposition

Anti-oxidants help to fight cancer.

Tea contains 10% anti-oxidants

Thus tea…
 Pre-supposition
Ayla managed to stop in time.
Also presupposes:
• Ayla tried to stop in time
• Ayla intended to stop in time
• Ayla had the ability to stop in time

Ian forgot to buy the pizza

Also presupposes
• Ian intended to buy pizza
• Ian ought to have bought pizza
• Ian had the ability (money) to buy pizza
 Form versus function

Can you take out the trash?

Yes I am capable of doing so?

Not a question but a request/ command

 ‘its cold in here’
Semantic meaning Pragmatic meanings
= =
The temperature is • Turn the heat up
below a • Get me a sweater
comfortable level • Shut the window
e.g. 75 degrees
 Children & meaning.

 There’s a breeze in my mouth (sucking a

mint)
 I can’t die this spider (stomping on
spider)
 Daddy (when seeing postman)
 Literalness
SLP:
so you like ice-cream what are your favorite
flavours?

Child: Hamburger…fish…and chips

 Literalness
A father is trying to get his 3 year old
daughter to stop lifting her dress up and
showing her new underwear to the guests

Father: we don’t DO that

Girl: I KNOW Daddy you don’t wear a dress.
 Literalness
A 3 year old comes in the front door

Mom: wipe your feet please

He removes his shoes and socks and
carefully wipes his feet on the doormat.
 Literal Truth w/o Context
The chemical dihydrogen monoxide
 Is a major component of acid rain
 Can cause burns in its gaseous state
 Is found in patients with terminal cancer
 Decreases the effect of automobile
brakes
 Contributes to soil erosion
 Language as social action
Pragmatics

“Study of understanding intentional human action”

(Green, 1989)

Intentions
Wishes
beliefs
 Dennet: Mindreading
• Take the intentional stance.
• Adopt a theory of mind.
• Concepts include:
• Knowledge, beliefs, desires, intentions.
 A Theory of Mind
• To have a theory of
mind is to use
mentalistic
constructs in order
to predict and
explain the
behavior of other
individuals.
• Allows us to “read
the minds of
others”
 Prediction and Explanation
• Prediction: Knowing someone’s desires
makes it easy to anticipate his/her
emotions.
• Explanation: Knowing someone’s
intentions is central to properly interpreting
his/her behavior.
 Speech Acts
Social actions accomplished through language

form functions

It’s cold in here statement

request
statement comment
 Speech acts
locution – actual form of the utterance or their
literal semantic meaning.

illocution (illocutionary force) speakers

intentions /what the speaker is actually doing
with their words e.g. requesting action

perlocution – the uptake or actual outcome e.g. is

the window opened therefore the perlocutionary
effect is defined by hearer reaction
 Speech Acts
How we do things with words (Searle, 1971
Austin, 1975)
 Social actions accomplished through use
of language.
 Language as appropriate behavior.
 Appropriateness dependent on context.
 Speech acts
Dependent upon ‘felicity’ conditions or those
factors that must be in place for a speech
act to be legitimate.
e.g.
Felicity conditions (appropriacy conditions)

I’ll buy you an ice-cream tomorrow (for this speech act to be a promise)

• The speaker has said they will carry out an action at some future
date.
• The speaker intends to do the action.
• The speaker believes he can do the action.
• The speaker would not have done the action in the normal course of
events.
• The speaker believes the hearer wants him to do the action.
• The speaker intends to be placed under an obligation to do an
action.
If these felicity conditions are not true then the speech act is not a
promise but a “lie”.
 Communication requires:
An intention to communicate some information/ or
emotion to another person.
An understanding that,
- the other person should be able to recognize
that intention.
- that while the other person may understand the
intention they may also have goals and beliefs
that are different to the speaker (theory of mind)
 Features of context.
Roles and status of participants.

Time and place of utterance

Environmental conditions
Social setting  formal / informal)
Subject matter  serious, casual
Purpose [goals]  interpersonal
instrumental
identity
 Dichotomy between
words & actions

Actions speak louder than words!

Sticks and stones may break your bones but

words will never hurt you
Easier said than done!
While we can study the meaning and
structure of language independently we
need to look at pragmatic meanings in
relation to their context and the speaker’s
intentions
J: I just love your new hair cut
M: ???{does she mean it}
 Meaning
Emergent feature of interaction and also
dependent on internal context i.e. what
happens in the conversation.
 Grice
Cooperation Principle =
All things being equal there is a basic
framework that conversations appear to
follow
We can describe this in terms of Grice’s
Maxims
 Conversational Implicature
Grice suggested that if you analyze
conversations there is an implicit formula
of participant cooperativity.
 Conversational implicature
Grice talks about conversational implicature

– an inference that unlike entailments and

presuppositions cannot be made from the
utterance alone, not linked to actual words
 Conversational implicature
Conversational implicature is dependent on
both the context of the utterance and the
shared knowledge between speaker and
hearer.
 Grice’s Maxims
RELEVANCE [relation]
• Make sure that whatever you say is
relevant to the conversation at hand.
QUALITY
• Do not say what you believe to be false.
• Do not say something for which you do not
have adequate evidence.
 Grice’s Maxims
QUANTITY
• Make your contribution as informative as is
required for the current purposes of the
conversation.
• Do not make your contribution more informative
than necessary.
MANNER [CLARITY]
• Do not make your contribution obscure,
ambiguous or difficult to understand.
• Be brief, be orderly
Speakers regularly flout Grice’s maxims to
generate implicatures (implied meanings)

Speakers in our culture are typically less

than direct in their interactions

Why ?
 Violating maxims
Violating – not necessarily deliberate that the
speaker has not given enough information or
been ambiguous. e.g. intercultural
conversations

Flouting –openly flouting a maxim leads to a

deliberately generated conversational
implicature. e.g. To be sarcastic, diplomatic,
covering your back
 Recap- Pragmatics
Study of language use in its social & cultural context.

Types of inference
• Entailment – directly in the words
• Pre-supposition – linked to language
• Implicature –implied meaning

Speakers intentions
Listeners interpretations.
(interlocutor = participants in a conversation)