Introducing Pragmatics in Use

Anne O'Keeffe, Brian Clancy, Svenja Adolphs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000690965
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Introducing Pragmatics in Use is a lively and accessible introduction to pragmatics which both covers theory and applies it to real spoken and written data. This textbook systematically draws on a number of different language corpora and the corresponding software applications. Its primary focus is the application of a corpus methodology in order to examine core component areas such as deixis, politeness, speech acts, language variation and register. The main goal of the book is to contextualise pragmatics in the study of language through the analysis of different language contexts provided by spoken and written corpora.

Substantially revised and updated, this second edition covers a wider range of topics, corpora and software packages. It consistently demonstrates the benefits of innovative analytical synergies and extends this to how corpus pragmatics can be further blended with, for example, conversation analysis or variational pragmatics. The second edition also offers a new chapter specifically dedicated to corpus pragmatics which proposes a framework for both form-to-function and function-to-form approaches. The book also addresses the – sometimes thorny – area of the integration of the teaching of pragmatics into the language classroom. All chapters in the second edition include a number of cohesive, step-by-step tasks that can be done in small groups in class or can be used as self-study resources.

A wide range of illustrative language samples drawn from a number of English language corpora, coupled with instructive tasks and annotated further reading sections, make this an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate students of pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics within applied languages / linguistics or TESOL programmes.

Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 What is Pragmatics?

Pragmatics is seen as a relatively young sub-field of linguistics and this is underscored when we see that the Journal of Pragmatics and Pragmatics were established in 1977 and 1991, respectively, and the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), was founded in 1985. However, the lineage of pragmatic thought within linguistics and philosophy is much older. In order to define the span of what pragmatics has become, it is best to try to unravel the threads of its emergence. This route leads to different definitions but the process of arriving at an understanding of this definitional divergence is important in itself.

Early foundational work which is centrally associated with pragmatics came from philosophers of language rather than from linguists (e.g. Morris, Austin, Grice and Searle). Importantly, pragmatics evolved out of a desire to better understand how we make meaning when we use language and a refusal to accept that it can be explained adequately through form and meaning alone. Also central to pragmatics is the quest to understand language as performance rather than as an internal language competence of the native speaker-hearer. Although early work was solely introspective (involving reflection and thought) rather than empirical, it still focused on the conditions of use and performance.

A perusal of the history of pragmatics shows that two different approaches or schools of thought began to emerge early on, namely the Anglo-American tradition and the Continental European tradition (see Jucker (2012) for an overview). The former looks at language in more micro-detail, whereas the latter takes a more macro-view of language and its social contexts. The Anglo-American school of thought treats pragmatics as one of the core components within linguistics, along with semantics, syntax, morphology and phonology. Within this component view, pragmatics is concerned with the study of presuppositions, deixis, implicatures and speech acts. This focus is sometimes referred to as micropragmatics (Mey, 2001). This contrasts with the more macropragmatic position of Continental European pragmatics which takes a broader understanding of language in use, giving a different perspective on human communication (Mey, 2001). Continental European pragmatics is thus sometimes referred to as the perspective view and deals with a more extensive remit, including the social and cultural dimensions and conditions of language in use. The differing schools of thought and resultant perspectives, approaches and methods within pragmatics is not problematic. If anything, the vibrant scholarship from both a micro- and a macro-perspective on the nature, conditions and variables of language use adds to the breadth and depth of the field as a whole. Because this book involves looking at naturally occurring language use, especially through corpora, there is often crossover between micropragmatic items such as deixis or speech acts and how they manifest at a macro-level across social variables and conditions. While this book does not involve introspective approaches to research, it benefits greatly from the scholarship in this area in relation to core areas of pragmatics. Therefore, in defining pragmatics, we embrace the richness across both component and perspective positions. For us, the best definition of pragmatics remains a broad one which we cited in the first edition of this book, namely that of Fasold (1990: 119), who says that it is ‘the study of the use of context to make inferences about meaning’, where inferences refer to the deductions we make based on available evidence. In the following section we explore further the notion of context and how it can be studied.

1.2 Ways of Studying Pragmatics

Within a broad definition of pragmatics, we are looking at language in use and at meaning in the making. As discussed above, core to this endeavour is trying to account for the variables of ‘context’ in understanding language in use. Rühlemann (2019) offers some useful parameters for understanding the contextual variables of language. His non-exhaustive list is summarised in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 A range of contextual variables that aid understanding language in use (adapted from Rühlemann, 2019:6–7)

From Rühlemann’s (2019) list we can see that there is a broad matrix within which we interpret and make meaning, both as interlocutors (speaker and hearer) and as observers from the outside.

Task 1.1 Context and Language in Use

• 1) Consider the variables in Table 1.1 above. What new variables might be added to this list? Or, how might any of these be modified or subdivided?
• 2) In relation to two languages that you are familiar with, discuss how some of these variables might differ across these languages and related cultures (e.g. in relation to the activity context).

Language is shaped and reshaped by contextual variables. This is a key consideration when designing ways of researching pragmatics, especially in terms of either narrowing down or controlling some of these variables, or dealing with their complexity (e.g. power semantic, role, mode, etc.). We will return to this issue in greater detail in Chapters 2 and 3.

1.3 The Empirical Turn within Pragmatics

While it is noted that the empirical turn came late to pragmatics (Taavitsainen and Jucker, 2015), the field is not without a range of methodological models for gathering data (as we will discuss in detail in Chapter 2). In order to examine language empirically, a valid and reliable method of obtaining the data is needed. The main approaches in pragmatics are: to elicit samples of the pragmatic phenomenon; to observe language and note how it is used in a given context; to interview speakers about how they might use language or about their opinions on language use, or to examine samples of recorded language that is stored electronically in a corpus. Jucker et al. (2018) divide these across the following types of empirical methodological approaches:

• Experimental pragmatics: e.g. using discourse completion tasks (DCTs), roleplays or interviews;
• Observational pragmatics: e.g. using ethnographic approaches, involving observation, field notes and the analysis of recordings;
• Corpus pragmatics: e.g. either through building a small corpus of language or using a large existing corpus.

We will take a detailed practical look at these methodological approaches in Chapter 2. This section serves as a general overview.

Over the years, with the growth of studies using empirical data in pragmatics, it cannot but be noticed that a range of analytical frameworks can be used. We attempt to summarise these in Table 1.2 across six approaches: experimental, ethnographic, ethnomethodology/conversation analysis, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and corpus pragmatics.

In reality, approaches to pragmatics research are rarely siloed. By drawing upon synergies in approaches, the researcher can find the optimum means of gathering and analysing data. This can, for example, mean that an ethnographic approach will use corpus tools to

Table 1.2 A broad summary of the main approaches to gathering and analysing data in pragmatics research

enable large-scale annotation and analysis. A researcher who crowd-sources discourse completion test (DCT) responses using an online platform may find that corpus linguistics offers a useful tool for annotating the results and identifying formulaic use of language across a large sample. Within the same study, the researcher may find that conversation analysis best aids the interpretation of power asymmetry in the results from the DCT within a qualitative sample.

Throughout this book, we take the perspective that corpus linguistics offers much to better our analysis of data in pragmatics. We are now at a stage where we talk about corpus pragmatics and this approach is evolving in terms of its definition (see Adolphs, 2008; Romero-Trillo, 2008; O’Keeffe et al., 2011; Rühlemann and Aijmer, 2015; Clancy and O’Keeffe, 2015). The main corpus tools can tell us the most frequent words or phrases in a corpus as well as the keywords when compared with another corpus (see below). These can then be examined in much more contextual detail using concordance sea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Researching pragmatics
• Chapter 3 Corpus pragmatics
• Chapter 4 Reference
• Chapter 5 Politeness
• Chapter 6 Speech acts
• Chapter 7 Pragmatics and language variation
• Chapter 8 Pragmatics and variation at the level of register
• Chapter 9 Pragmatics and language teaching
• Appendix
• References
• Index