Lecture 22

1
Lecture 22

• Pragmatics and the Analysis of Literature

2
A Note on the Readings

• Essential reading for this lecture is
• Chapter 6 of Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Mary
  Louise Pratt's Linguistics for Students of
  Literature (New York Harcourt, 1980).

3
Supplementary readings

• Malcolm Coulthard, An Introduction to Discourse
  Analysis 2nd edition (London Longman, 1985)
  Geoffrey N. Leech, Principles of Pragmatics
  (London Longman, 1983) and Stephen C.
  Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge CUP, 1983).

4
Some Preliminary Observations

• Pragmatics, as you know from your discourse
  analysis or text and knowledge course last year,
  is quite often contrasted with semantics.
• The discipline in fact came into existence due to
  the realisation that formal semantics was not a
  sufficient instrument for the analysis of meaning
  in language.

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Semantics vs Pragmatics

• As some of you may know, semantics is
  conventionally taken to be the study of meaning
  in language per se, whereas one definition of
  pragmatics is is that it is the study of
  linguistic meaning in context
• However, the distinction between semantics and
  pragmatics based on meaning in language and
  linguistic meaning in context, is not always
  clearcut, and there are some borderline cases
  where one is not sure if a meaningful feature of
  language should be analysed in terms of semantics
  or pragmatics or both.

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Semantics and Pragmatics Divide Some Reservations

• There are also some linguists who believe that
  the distinction between semantics and pragmatics
  is an unnecessary one, as many of the issues in
  pragmatics can be dealt with within semantics,
  which to them, should be defined more widely.

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Semantics and Pragmatics Divide Hallidays
Reservations

• Halliday, in spite of his belief that meaning in
  language should be analysed in context, holds the
  view that a separate pragmatic component in
  linguistics is unnecessary, as many of the issues
  in pragmatics can actually be dealt with within
  the semantic or grammatical framework of his
  linguistic approach
• Eg. Halliday's treatment of speech acts in
  relation to grammatical metaphor, which we have
  seen in the previous lecture.

8
Pragmatics Further Reservations

• However, some other linguists hold the view that
  strictly speaking, pragmatics is not a linguistic
  discipline, and linguists, if they are interested
  in meaning in language, should thus not study it.
  
• To them, meaning, if it is to be approached
  linguistically, should be analysed within
  language, and not in relation either to
  extra-linguistic contexts -- as in some branches
  of pragmatics -- or to surface structural
  features -- as in ethnomethodology.

9
Pragmatics and Speech

• A major part of pragmatics has to do with speech
  events and speech in general.
• Although the pragmatics of written language does
  exist, it appears that speech is paradigmatic in
  pragmatics, and written language is less
  significant.

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Pragmatics and the Interpersonal Metafunction

• As a corollary to the importance of speech, the
  interpersonal meta-function of language appears
  to be more important than the other
  meta-functions.

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Pragmatics and the Other Metafunctions

• However, the other meta-functions also play a
  part for example,
• The ideational metafunction (when viewed in terms
  of the addresser's or addressee's intentions),
  although not linguistically or grammatically
  realised in the strict sense, does seem to be a
  factor in the analysis of both speech acts and
  Gricean implicatures
• the textual meta-function (in terms of adjacency
  or more holistic discoursal patterns) does play a
  part in the ethnomethodological approach to
  discourse, as this approach puts a high premium
  on the structure of discourse, at the expense of
  speakers' intentions.

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Pragmatics as the Study of Meaning in Context

• Context is something difficult to pin-point.
• The understanding of literary works may actually
  be dependent on cultural contexts which cannot
  actually be found in the text
• The contexts of meaning in literary works may, in
  effect, be more elusive than those of spontaneous
  speech.

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Further Difficulty in Literary Works

• Other features which may either be scant or
  absent in written literary texts, are the
  paralinguistic and kinesic elements or indicators
  which may help us to disambiguate or clarify the
  more exact meaning of some utterances.

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Intended Meaning

• One reason for trying to look at paralinguistic
  and extra-linguistic clues in order to put
  meaning in context, has to do with the attempt to
  get at the intended meaning of an utterance.
• This is a dominant consideration in some
  approaches in pragmatics, especially in the
  analysis of speech acts and implicatures.

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Intended Meaning Problems

• However, one may face serious philosophical and
  linguistic difficulties in trying to arrive at
  the intention of what has been uttered
• The intended meaning may not have been realised
• in the text,
• or -- perhaps more importantly -- it is not
  realised in the minds of the addressees
• or -- as in the case of literary works -- in the
  minds of the interpreters or readers of the text.

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Authorial Intention

• There may be a disjunction between intended and
  realised meanings.
• Some literary critics have labelled the attempt
  to arrive at the intention of the author the
  intentional fallacy.

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Authorial Intention The Intentional Fallacy

• Whether we agree or disagree with the intentional
  fallacy, it does appear that the attempt to do a
  pragmatic analysis of authorial intention is not
  usually a viable task.
• It is usually more practical to analyse a
  character's or, possibly, the narrator's
  intention(s) in the pragmatic analysis of a
  literary work.

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Intentions as Realised in the Text

• In relation to character's or narrator's
  intentions, one does not usually bother about
  completely invisible intentions, but one analyses
  those intentions which are at least apparent from
  the contexts available from or suggested by the
  text.

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Speech Acts

• The first significant work on linguistic
  pragmatics was done by the philosopher J. L.
  Austin.
• It is to Austin that we must attribute the first
  systematic attempt to formally and clearly
  pin-point the shortcomings of formal semantics in
  the analysis of meaning in language.

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Austins View

• According to Austin, there is quite often
  something which lies beyond the superficial
  contextless meaning of words, which will give us
  a more complete picture of meaning in language.
  He calls this the performative, which refers to
  some kind of action which is deemed to have been
  performed by saying something.
• The performative is contrasted to the constative,
  which refers to meaning which is viewed in
  truth-conditional terms, and which has been the
  traditional concern of philosophical semantics.

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Formal vs Functional

• What Austin initiated in the analysis of
  language, was the disjunction between the formal
  and functional (or preferably perhaps,
  performative) approaches to the analysis of
  meaning,

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Speech Acts Metaphor

• In Halliday's example, the statement 'I wouldn't
  do this if I was you', has the congruent force of
  an imperative 'Don't do it!'.
• From the perspective of speech act theory
  however, viewing the clause 'I wouldn't do this
  if I was you' as a declarative, is to view it in
  constative terms, whereas the performative
  approach will view the statement as having the
  force of a command, warning, etc., and not merely
  a statement of fact.

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Implicit Explicit Performatives

• One distinction Austin makes in relation to
  performatives, is that between
• implicit performatives and
• explicit performatives.
• Created by adding in what is called the
  performative verb before the clause. If the
  clause is not declarative, this will involve its
  grammatical conversion into a declarative clause
  (or a clause complex with declarative
  components) 'I warn you not to do it', 'I order
  you not to do it', 'I advise you not to do it'
  etc.

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Implicit Performatives

• As performatives are seldom uttered using the
  performative verb, it does seem to be the case
  that most of the performatives we encounter in
  the English language are implicit.
• Another and perhaps more frequently encountered
  term used for implicit performatives in speech
  act theory, is indirect speech acts.
• We may add here that the disjunction between
  intended and actual illocutionary force is more
  likely to occur with indirect speech acts.

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John Searle's classification

• directives,
• commissives,
• expressives,
• representatives, and
• declarations (or declaratives, which we will not
  use, as the term may be confused with
  declaratives in grammar, which are defined
  constatively, and not performatively).

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Stylistic Significance

• The discrepancy, and to a certain extent also,
  the consonance, between grammatical clause types
  and pragmatic utterance types, may be of
  significance in one's stylistic analysis.

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•        The room was dull and threadbare, and the
  snow outside seemed fairy-like by comparison, so
  white on the lawn and tufted on the bushes.
  Indoors, the heavy pictures hung obscurely on the
  walls, everything was dingy with gloom.

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•        Except in the fireglow, where they had
  laid the bath on the hearth. Mrs Massy, her black
  hair always smoothly coiled and queenly, kneeled
  by the bath, wearing a rubber apron, and holding
  the kicking child. Her husband stood holding the
  towels and the flannels to warm. Louisa, too
  cross to share in the joy of the baby's bath, was
  laying the table. The boy was hanging on the
  door-knob, wrestling with it to get out. His
  father looked round.

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Directive

•        'Come away from the door, Jack,' he said
  ineffectually. Jack tugged harder at the knob as
  if he did not hear. Mr Massy blinked at
  him.      'He must come away from the door,
  Mary,' he said. 'There will be a draught if it is
  opened.' 'Jack, come away from the door, dear,'
  said the mother, dexterously turning the shiny
  wet baby on to her towelled knee, then glancing
  round 'Go and tell Auntie Louisa about the
  train.'

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• Louisa, also afraid to open the door, was
  watching the scene on the hearth. Mr Massy stood
  holding the baby's flannel, as if assisting at
  some ceremonial. If everybody had not been
  subduedly angry, it would have been
  ridiculous.       'I want to see out of the
  window,' Jack said. His father turned
  hastily.       'Do you mind lifting him on to a
  chair, Louisa,' said Mary hastily. The father was
  too delicate.

Commissive
Directive
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•       When the baby was flannelled, Mr Massy
  went upstairs and returned with four pillows,
  which he set in the fender to warm. Then he stood
  watching the mother feed her child, obsessed by
  the idea of his infant.       Louisa went on
  with her preparations for the meal. She could not
  have told why she was so sullenly angry. Mrs
  Lindley, as usual, lay silently
  watching.      Mary carried her child upstairs,
  followed by her husband with the pillows. After a
  while he came down again.

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Commissive
Directive 2 senses?

•        'What is Mary doing? Why doesn't she come
  down to eat?' asked Mrs Lindley.       'She is
  staying with baby. The room is rather cold. I
  will ask the girl to put in a fire.' He was going
  absorbedly to the door.      'But Mary has had
  nothing to eat. It is she who will catch cold,'
  said the mother, exasperated.       Mr Massy
  seemed as if he did not hear. Yet he looked at
  his mother-in-law, and answered.       'I will
  take her something.'

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•        He went out. Mrs Lindley shifted on her
  couch with anger. Miss Louisa glowered. But no
  one said anything, because of the money that came
  to the vicarage from Mr Massy.       Louisa went
  upstairs. Her sister was sitting by the bed,
  reading a scrap of paper.       'Won't you come
  down and eat?' the younger asked.

Directive
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Commissive

•        'In a moment or two,' Mary replied in a
  quiet, reserved voice, that forbade anyone to
  approach her.
•        It was this that made Miss Louisa most
  furious. She went downstairs, and announced to
  her mother      'I am going out. I may not be
  home to tea.'

Commissive/Expressive