9882 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Deixis, Illocutionary Act, Presupposition
20 Jun 2018
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Week 7 lecture (pragmatics) – Linguistics for Educators
9882
Thursday, 29 March 2018
Intension: the intension 'sheep', will have the properties such as 'animal', 'mammal', 'has
hooves'.
Connotations: Connotations can differ according to a person's attitudes. For example, the
word mathematical might have quite different connotations depending on a speaker's
experience with the subject at school; that's a very mathematical way of looking at it could
express either a positive or a negative evaluation.
Metaphor is not seen as figurative use of language, but rather as a cognitive strategy allowing
people to understand one experiential domain
Utterance meaning: Same response/question/statement, but different content results in a
different understanding. For example;
The study of utterance meaning is called Pragmatics.
PRAGMATICS
The study of the choices you make when you use language
Why did this person chose to use that particular word?
"Good afternoon Mr. Jones" is very different to "G'day Jonesy!" … the choice of
words tells us a lot about the context, purpose of conversation, and relationship of
participants.
Homophones: same word, different meaning. I see the bank (the money bank, or the river
bank?)
Polysemy: same origin, several meanings.
Speech acts are the actions speakers perform in uttering sentences, including informing,
promising, requesting, questioning, commanding, warning, preaching, congratulating, laying
bets, swearing and exclaiming. The type of action performed by the speaker in making an
utterance is referred to as its illocutionary force.
Felicity conditions
For a speech act to achieve its intended purpose, its illocutionary force, certain
conditions must be satisfied; these are called felicity conditions. For instance, a
performative such as I pronounce you man and wfe will only succeed in marrying a
couple if the speaker is an authorized marriage celebrant, and only if it is uttered in a
particular place in the context of a marriage ceremony. Failing these conditions, the
speech act cannot achieve its intended ends, and it is infelicitous.
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