哈师大语言学chapter 8 pragmatics.ppt

pragmatics 语用学 1 Definition of Pragmatics Some general observations: After grammatical and semantic analysis of a sentence, there is still something unsaid about it. Once a linguistic expression is used, some extra meaning is conveyed on top of and based on the literal meaning. When we hear or read pieces of language, we normally try to understand not only what the words mean, but also what the speaker or writer intended to convey. Contextual factors and the speaker’s intention have to be taken into consideration in order to catch the full meaning of the language in use. The realization of those facts gradually gave birth to a new field of study, which takes care of that extra part of meaning from language in use. A little boy comes in the front door. Mother: Wipe your feet, please. He removes his muddy shoes and socks and carefully wipes his clean feet on the doormat. A father is trying to get his 3-year-old daughter to stop lifting up her dress to display her new underwear to the assembled guests. Father: We don’t DO that. Daughter: I KNOW, Daddy. You don’t WEAR dresses. What’s the meaning of ... Mike: What happened to that bowl of cream? Ann: Cats drank cream. Paraphrase: Semantically: Domestic felines consume the liquid fat of milk. Cream is drunk by cats. The liquid fat of milk is consumed by domestic felines. Pragmatically: The bowl of cream was probably eaten by our cat. 1 Definition of Pragmatics A recall of semantics: Semantics deals with: What does X mean? (X stands for a linguistic expression) Here we are concerned with: What does the speaker mean by X in the context of Y? The latter line of thinking marks the new discipline, pragmatics, which is different from, though closely related to, semantics. Definitions of pragmatics Leech (1983): Pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study of how utterances have meanings in situations. Crystal (1987/1997): Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the e