Link to glossary

 

 

 

English Structures

Pragmatics

Pages: 1, 2, 3 Moodle TESL 551: Crowley   Houts-Smith
 

 

 

 

 

Language Forms That Relate to Context
While meaning is negotiated between the persons involved, and while Grice’s Cooperative Principle captures the assumptions people have about what is meaningful and how to attach meaning to an utterance, language itself includes forms that build in negotiation and relevance in their meanings.
Deixis
Some words change their meaning with every utterance. They are deicticwords. That is, a deictic word actually changes its referent with every utterance. What it means at any one moment can be different from its meaning the next moment, depending on who says it, when, and where.
The simplest example is the simplest word: I.
Every person who says I picks a different referent from everybody else who says I:
  • When I say I, I mean Linda Houts-Smith.
  • When you say I you refer to yourself.
And so this word has as many referents as there are people who can speak English.

Other deictic words include:

  • This, that, these, those
  • Here, there
  • Now, then
  • Today, tomorrow, yesterday
Language Forms of Reference

Relevance to the context can include things said in the conversation as well as relevance to the conversants, the time and the place.

  • The language forms that display relevance to other utterances are described as reference terms.
  • Reference forms often help make utterances meet the quantity maxim: no more than necessary.

Reference forms include a variety of pro-forms:

  • Pronouns – replacements for noun phrases
  • Pro-verbs - replacements for verb phrases e.g., do
  • Pro-sentences - replacements for entire sentences or clauses, e.g. which

Pro-forms can be used anaphorically and cataphorically.
Anaphors are backward-referring proforms. They refer back to something said earlier in the conversation.
  • John was hit by a ball, and he cried.
  • The captain ordered the men to charge, and Wallace did so.
  • The actor blew his lines, which we all thought was funny.
Cataphors are forward-referring proforms. They refer forward to something that will be said.
  • When he looked up, John saw the truck coming straight for him.

Since English has old to new information flow, our discourse tends to have more anaphors than cataphors.

Another method of reference that reduces quantity is Gapping

  • Gapping – words or phrases are simply omitted rather than replaced with an anaphor.
    • Example – Alice washed the dishes, and Alex dried (them, the dishes).
Word Choice of Reference
Presupposition
Speakers and hearers bring certain expectations to a conversation, and these assumptions can be referred to.
  • Speakers can presuppose certain information to be true even if it has not been part of the conversation.
  • Certain word choices entail some of these presuppositions.
Example: Have you stopped beating your wife?
  • Presupposes that the interviewee has beaten his wife in the past.
      • If the interviewee wants to deny that any beating has ever taken place, he must respond in a totally different way than to the syntactic form of the question which elicits an answer of yes or no.
  • It doesn’t matter if the interviewee answers yes or no to the question; both answers will confirm that beating has taken place.
  • The yes/no answer will only deal with the current state of beating.

In this case, it doesn’t matter whether the issue has been discussed before or not (old v. new information) but whether the speaker presupposes that the hearer knows the information already or not. Presupposed information is always old.

If it is old, then it is also presupposed. This is what allows gapping to happen.

But even if it is not old, that is, never before brought up in the discourse, information can be presented as old if the speaker presupposes hearer knowledge of it.

Old v. New Information Flow

Speakers negotiate meaning by referring to old information and distinguishing it from new information.

  • The proforms usually refer to old information rather than new.
  • Gapping refers to old rather than new information.
  • Presuppositions assume some information is old.

The flow of information from sentence to sentence across a stretch of discourse tends to move in a set pattern for speakers of a language.

  • In Japanese, information flows from new to old.
  • In English, information flows from old to new.

For NNSs this not only affects the process of learning the language, but will result in odd sentence structure when writing. Even a proficient speaker of English may not order the words "correctly" when writing.
 
Continue to Part 3

 
American Sign Language The sign language used by the deaf community in the United States.
Test of English for International Communication. A standardized exam for Educational Testing Services that is intended to determine the general capability of an NNSE to use English to conduct business. It is used by some businesses, predominantly in Asia, in hiring.
Test of English as a Foreign Language. A standardized exam from Educational Testing Services that is intended to determine the general capability of an NNSE to use English as the language of insruction .It is used as an admissions requirement by most US universities and colleges for international students.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. A term that encompasses both TEFL and TESL. It is the name of the professional organization to which many teachers belong. TESOL the organization has many regional affiliates both in the US and abroad.
Teaching English as Second Language. Refers to the activity of teaching the English language as a tool necessary for some daily task like instruction, shopping, or interpersonal interactions.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Refers to the activity of teaching the English language as an intellectual, academic pursuit to non-native speakers of English.
Native Speaker of English. Refers to a person who acquired English in infancy and young childhood as a first language.
Native Speaker. Refers to a person whose relationship to a language is that it was encountered in infancy and young childhood as the dominant language of the environment.
Non-Native Speaker of English. Refers to a person who didn't acquire English as a first language, but came to it after another language was established.
Non-Native Speaker. Refers to a person whose relationship to a particular language is that he/she didn't encounter it while initially acquiring language, but came to it after another language was established.
Limited English Proficient. An adjectival phrase used to refer to the same students as ELL refers to. LEP is falling into disuse as it focuses attention on student deficiency rather than on the positive attribute of learning. Is being replaced by ELL.
Second Language. Refers to any language gained subsequent to the first or native language. It is acquired or learned secondarily to the native language. Doesn't refer to the ordinal numbering of languages, only to the relationship of a particular language to a persons native language.
First Language. Refers to the language that an individual encounters as an infant and young child; a persons native language.
English for Specific Purposes. Refers to the goal of learning English to use it for highly focused activity, such as for business or for aviation communication.
English as a Second Language Program. refers to a school program that is purposefully structured to provide instruction on the English language to NNSEs. An ESL program does not typically include instruction in any other subjects than English. An ESL program may be a component of a larger ELL program at a school.
English as a Second Language. Refers to the subject matter of the English language and the methodology for teaching the English language to non-native speakers. ESL makes no reference to the subjects other than English, but it is not methodology alone either, it refers to teaching the English language as content area. Typically, ESL refers to the study of English in a country where it is used for at least one daily task, such as instruction, interpersonal relations, or shopping.
English Langauge Learner Program. Refers to a school program that is purposly structured to provide instruction on the English language and instruction in other content areas to English Language Learners.
English Language Learner. Refers to students who are in the process of learning English, whether they are in ESL classes exclusively or a combination of ESL classes and other subject area classes.
English as a Foreign Langauge. Refers to the study of English as an intellectual, academic pursuit, not a a language whose use is necessary or desirable for daily life, although it may be used as a research tool. Typically, EFL is the study of English in a country where English is not a language of instruction or daily interactions, such as in Italy or in Saudi Arabia.
English for Academic Purposes. Refers to the goal of learning English to use it as the language of instruction for other subject areas.
Refers to a school program that is purposely structured so that students will use two languages on a daily basis.
Refers to the use of two languages in any capacity on a daily basis. A bilingual person uses two languages on a daily basis--for work and at home, perhaps, or for different subjects at school. Can also refer to the ability to use two languages, even if not used daily.