Defnition and Current Interest in Pragmatics - Essay Example

Pragmatics Chapter The Scope of Pragmatics Historical Origin of the term 'pragmatics' The origin of the term pragmatics came from a philosopher named Charles Morris whom devised three different branches of the general shape of a science of signs or semiotics (Levinson, 1983:1). According to him, the branches are syntactic or "the study of formal relation of signs to one other," semantics or "the study of the relationship of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable," and pragmatics or "the study of the relation of signs to interpreters." In Morris' linguistic pragmatics, he has suggested that instances are governed by a pragmatic rule where various rhetorical and poetic devices such as Good morning and Oh! have arisen in definite situations of the users of language (Levinson, 1983:2). He developed the idea that pragmatics also deal with biotic aspects of semiotics, meaning "all the psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs." Thus the term pragmatics is often associated with the psychopathology of communication and the evolution of symbol systems. But there has been an inclination to use pragmatics as a division of linguistic semiotics instead of pertaining it generally as sign systems. Another philosopher and logician named Carnap have made his own narrowing version of Morris' three branches of semiotics. It is within the field of pragmatics when the speaker receives open reference in an investigation. It is within the field of semantics when we extract from the user of the language and examine the expressions and their meanings. Finally, it is within the field of syntax when we extract from their meanings and analyze only the relations between the expressions. This trichotomy version of Morris' was the most influential (Levinson, 1983:3). Pragmatics was thought to be "the study of aspects of language that required reference to the users of the language that led to a very natural, further restriction of the term in analytical philosophy (Levinson, 1983:4). The study of deictic or indexical words such as I and you is one aspect that requires that kind of reference. There is also a view that pragmatics is the study of languages, both natural and artificial that contained indexical and deictic terms. However, an implicit version of Carnap's definition in 1960s was embraced by the movement of the generative semantics which means the investigations requiring reference to the users of a language. The history of that movement expects a historian of ideas concerning pragmatics that involves the rebirth of interest in meaning. In this period, the range of pragmatics was completely restricted to investigations that contain at least potential linguistic inferences. Definitions of pragmatics Pragmatics is the "study of language usage" while syntax is the "study of the combinatorial properties of words and their parts" and semantics is the "study of meaning" (Levinson, 1983:5). But the term pragmatics covers both context-dependent aspects of language structure and principles of language usage and understanding. There are actually various definitions of pragmatics that has continuously been improved. The first definition states that "Pragmatics is the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a language" (Levinson, 1983:9). In other words, pragmatics is the study of the aspects of the relationship between language and context that are useful in writing grammar. But the problem with this definition is that it excludes the principles of language usage and the very significant implications called conversational implicatures (Levinson, 1983:10). This means that the related fields such as sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics are also excluded from pragmatics. However, the only main strength of this definition is that it restricted the field to entirely linguistic matters. It handled the feature of pragmatics concerned with language usage but not the part about the principles of language usage and interpretation. There is another definition that is more centralized on the aspects of meaning (Levinson, 1983:12). The definition states that "pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in a semantic theory" or cannot be accounted by direct reference to the truth conditions of the sentences that are said. The problem that lies in this definition is that the scope of pragmatics would vary according to the kind of semantic theory adopted. The author has explained that in any kind of semantic theory, the features of meaning could not be accommodated if the notion is to have an inner consistency. The nature of meaning entails that with two principles joined together, one can form a single vague and diverse theory of semantics. That is why the definition may have some kind of cogency in it though there is a need to know how the broad sense of meaning is to be restricted. Despite the definition's clear advantages, it fails to capture attention to the merging characteristics of pragmatic phenomena. The next definition aims to centralize on the context-dependent nature of the phenomena of pragmatics which stated that "pragmatics is the study of the relations between language and context that are basic to an account of language understanding" (Levinson, 1983:21). Language understanding involves the making of inferences that connects to what is said to what is jointly assumed or what has previously been said. This definition is different from the other definitions for it is basically related to inference of presuppositions, implicatures, illocutionary force, and other pragmatic implications. It does not consider the difference between pragmatics and semantics and it includes most features of the study of the principles of language usage. However, there are strong attacks on the notion of context and of language understanding. The definition really sums to "pragmatics is the study of the role context plays in speaker or utterance meaning" though a clear notion of context is not conveyed. Thus, one of the goals of the pragmatic theory is to find out the nature of context. Another definition that is most favoured in literature for it portrays appropriateness or felicity in pragmatics, states that "pragmatics is the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the contexts in which they would be appropriate" (Levinson, 1983:24). While the semantic theory is concerned with the recursive assignment of truth conditions, pragmatics is concerned with the recursive assignment of appropriateness-conditions to a similar set of sentences with their semantic interpretations. Pragmatic theory, in simpler words, should predict for each and every well-formed sentence of a language the set of contexts in which it is appropriate. However, the author argued that is highly impossible for one to be supremely appropriate and it is a huge mistake to limit pragmatics to the study of appropriateness alone. The truth is, a simpler yet extensional definition is most preferred and so it affirms that "pragmatics is the study of deixis (at least in part), implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and aspects of discourse structure" (Levinson, 1983:27). Basically, this idea raised the dividing lines between pragmatics and semantics and pragmatics and socio-lingustics. Because the idea that pragmatics is meaning minus semantics already existed, there is a need to look into the border line between pragmatics and socio-linguistics. Pragmatics does not include grammatically encoded aspects of context alone for it also includes the study of the contribution of context to language understanding and it thus needs access to socio-linguistic information (Levinson, 1983:29). But sociolo-linguists is not a part of grammar in the way that syntax, semantics, phonology, and pragmatics are. In recent years, the need for pragmatic theory taking place aside from syntax, semantics, and phonology within grammar theory is emphasized (Levinson, 1983:33). According to Chomsky, grammars are models of competence, the knowledge of a language idealized from irregularity and variation in which pragmatics is not a part but of context. But in recent view, grammatical descriptions require the meaning of every word in language through context usage. For example the words well, oh, and anyway in English are not context-dependent content but of pragmatic concepts such as relevance, implicature, or discourse structure. Grammars must note the pragmatic information for they cannot accept full lexical descriptions of language. If the lexicon is incomplete, the syntax is also incomplete and so is the semantics and phonology. Thus, referring to pragmatic concepts must be made. Moreover, "semantics is not autonomous with respect to pragmatics" for pragmatics offers the needed input to a semantic theory (Levinson, 1983:35). But if pragmatics is rationally precedent to semantics, pragmatics must be integrated in the general linguistic theory. Current interest in pragmatics All of the definitions of pragmatics have their set of difficulties as noted. But this multiplicity of definitions is a way to show the issues and concerns that pragmaticists usually deal with. There is an increase in the number of interest for pragmatics in the recent years as a reply to Chomsky's view of language as an "abstract device, or mental ability, dissociable from the uses, users and functions of language" (Levinson, 1983:35). That is why generative semanticists have planned to portray the importance of the uses of language to knowledge on its nature. Pragmatics may affect a radical simplification of semantics (Levinson, 1983:37). The pragmatics rules of language usage are shown analytically to read in to words more than they usually mean which is kind of hard to unravel from a sentence or from its literal meaning. Another powerful and general motivation to increase the interest in pragmatics is the idea that there is a considerable gap between current linguistic theories of language and accounts of linguistic communication (Levinson, 1983:38). There is a need to give the account of at least the fundamentals of how we communicate using language because a semantic theory alone can only give a piece or a small part of the information and this is not a general account of language understanding. Moreover, the major functional explanations for linguistic facts are another significant motivation for the new interest in pragmatics recently. Not only internal explanations, meaning some linguistic features are explained by reference to other aspects of the same theory, are used to explain general psychological principles but also other principles of linguistic theory (Levinson, 1983:41). Another motivation for pragmatics research is to establish the effects of the use of language on language structure. The problem with conducting this kind of research is having examples or explanations that are quite vague. Thus, it is important to have enough well-defined pragmatic principles and structures in order to make such explanations accurate and testable. However, direct empirical motivation is not always present and so language is used to convey more than the propositional content of what is said. An additional possible motivation is taking some large sample of the world's languages and finding out the basic pragmatic distinctions that are needed to describe their grammatical structures (Levinson, 1983:42). By examining this profusion of language-specific material, there is a possibility to build up some idea of the features of the context of utterance that are in general exerting functional pressures on language. By looking at the grammaticalized or encoded aspects of context in the world's languages, a discovery procedure for useful functions of language happens and a constraint on the vacuous theorizing often creates speculation on the functions of speech. But instead of looking at the grammatical or contextual parameters, conversation which is the single most dynamic context of language use must be considered. This face-to-face interaction is the extreme motivation of interest on the study of pragmatics through two ways: straightforward empirical analysis and analysis-by-synthesis that are governed by systems-constraints and ritual-constraints. There is also a need to explore the nature of conversational interaction and its effects on linguistic structure. Out of sequences of utterances, together with background assumptions about language usage, highly detailed inferences about the nature of the assumptions of participants, and purposes for which utterances are being used, one can be able to compute context (Levinson, 1983:53). In ordinary language usage, one must be able to make such calculations in production and interpretation in order to participate, regardless of idiosyncratic beliefs, feelings, and usages but dependent on regular and relatively abstract principles. This is where the definition of pragmatics come from for it operates both for particular languages and language in general. Chapter 2: Deixis Definition The evidence that shows a clear relationship between language and context that is reflected in the structures of language themselves is the phenomenon of deixis (Levinson, 1983:54). Deixis has ideal or main examples that use demonstratives, first and second person pronouns, tense, specific time and place adverbs and other grammatical features directly connected to the circumstances of utterance. The concern of deixis is focused on how languages encode or grammaticalize features of the context of utterance or speech event and how the interpretation of utterances depend on the analysis of that context of utterance as well. Thus, deixis acts as a reminder that "natural languages are primarily designed, so to speak, for use in face-to-face interaction, and thus there are limits to the extent to which they can be analysed without taking this into account." A sentence like, "Meet me here a week from now with a stick about this big" is so pervasive in natural language and very grammaticalized for it does not entail who to meet, when to meet him or her, or how big a stick to bring. It is difficult to assume that they are non-other than an important part of semantics. If semantics is taken to include all general features of meaning, then most deictic phenomena are considered semantic. This opposes the idea that deixis "directly concerns the relationship between the structure of languages and the contexts in which they are used" and thus proves their belonging to the pragmatics domain. However, this definition is theory-dependent and pragmatics involves features of meaning and language-structure that cannot be capture in a truth-conditional semantics alone. Therefore, the grammatical type of deixis will be found to include the semantics or pragmatics border. The main point is that deixis is concerned with the encoding of many different features of the circumstances that surrounds the utterance within the utterance itself and natural language utterances are completely anchored to aspects of the context. Approaches Philosophers view deixis as indexical expressions or indexicals (Levinson, 1983:55). It may be useful in considering this approach through truth-conditional semantics that deals with particular natural language expressions. An utterance may be proven as true or false depending on the facts of history, and certain details about the context in which it was uttered, as well. In every utterance, the context-dependency can be drawn from the specific deictic expressions or indexicals in which the truth values are dependent on the facts about the context of utterance, meaning the identity of speakers, addresses, indicated objects, places, and times) and most especially due to tense as well. A part of the philosophical interest in this idea is that whether all of these identical expressions can be reduced into a primary one or be translated into a context-free pragmatic language. Some terms such as I and this are formed which refer to a subjective experience and contains token-reflexivity which is self-referring expressions in natural language. However, the problem with the idea is the impossibility of deictic expressions being fully translated into independent terms without them losing their meaning (Levinson, 1983:57). Philosophers today have begun to wonder whether many types of referring expressions are not in fact covertly indexical in at least some usages (Levinson, 1983:60). Studies have shown that deictic reference is "ontogenetically prior to other kinds of reference, and provides the basis for their acquisition." The connection of reference to indexicals has shown concern for those philosophers with a speculation in logical semantics and made a distinction between two useful usages: speaker reference and semantic reference. Here, context of use is necessary to be able to understand them. Thus, the role of pragmatics is greatly increased because of the fixing of proposition that a sentence expresses. Categories of deixis In order to give justice to the complication and diversity of the deictic expressions, theorists have advanced on the descriptive approach (Levinson, 1983:61). There are actually five categories of deixis: person, place, time, discourse and social. Person deixis relates to the encoding of the participants' role in the incident of language in which the utterance is delivered (Levinson, 1983:62). This also has sub-categories that range from the first person, the speaker himself; second person, the persons and entities which are neither the speakers nor the addresses of the utterance in question. These are encoded in language in a form of pronouns and their associated predicated agreements. In the grammatical categories of persons, it is necessary to develop an independent pragmatic framework of possible "participant-roles" in order to see how and to what extent these roles are grammaticalized in different languages (Levinson, 1983:68). The first person would be the spokesman, the second person as the recipient and the third person as the hearers or bystanders in pronominal systems. Pronouns are also distinguished according to the sex of speaker, social status of referent and degree of intimacy with referent. Moreover, if the face-to-face interaction is lost, languages are often enforced as a distinct mode of self-introduction (Levinson, 1983:71). Also, the two basic participant roles-speaker and addressee are not the only ones who are involved in the grammatical distinctions. Overhears, ungratified and ratified participants or those non-addressed could also be participants of the distinction. Place deixis, on the other hand, is concerned with the "encoding of spatial locations relative to the location of the participants in the speech event (Levinson, 1983:62)." This can be either a distinction between proximal, meaning close to speaker or distal, meaning non-proximal which are encoded in demonstratives such as this and that and deictic adverbs of place. Place deixis is concerned with the arrangement of the locations in relation to anchorage points in the speech event (Levinson, 1983:79). The point of establishing a location is to be able to refer to the objects by depicting and situating them. For example, the adverb here is perceived symbolically as "the pragmatically given unit of space that includes the location of the peaker at coding time. The gestural usage of the here, on the other hand, is perceived as "the pragmatically given space, proximal to speaker's location at coding time, that includes the point or location gesturally indicated." In other words, deictic locations have to be specified in accordance to the location of the participant at coding time. The last is the time deixis which is concerned with the "encoding of temporal points and spans relative to the time at which an utterance was spoken" (Levinson, 1983:62). It is commonly encoded in deictic adverbs of time such as now, then, yesterday and this year, and also in tense. The additional categories: discourse and social deixis are concerned with the "encoding of reference to portions of the unfolding discourse in which the utterance is located" which is "relative to participant-roles, particularly aspects of the social relationship holding between speaker and addressee or speaker and some referent." It is important to have knowledge of the semantic organization of space and time in general (Levinson, 1983:73). The bases for systems of reckoning and measuring time in most languages is the calendrical and non-calendrical cycles of day and night, lunar months, seasons and years. This type of deixis also makes reference to participant-role where distinguishing the moment of reception or coding time from the moment of utterance or receiving time are involved. In the situation of utterance, there is an existing assumption that receiving time is identical to coding time. Difficulties happen when the use of tense, time adverbs and other time deictic morphemes are departing from this assumption. That is why the deictic centre has to be determined whether it will remain with the speaker and coding time or projected on the addressee and receiving time. Some conventions already specified the proper usage in situations where receiving time is not concurrent with coding time but this is not always the case. Ambiguity also arises with common noun units such as weeks, months, years and proper name units such as Monday, December, and afternoon and also calendrical names of days as well such as Thursday which can refer to either Thursday of the week that involves coding time or the Thursday that occurs after the coding time. Moreover, the semantic or theoretical category of tense, whether metalinguistic tense or M-tense or the language's tenses or L-tenses should also be considered (Levinson, 1983:77). In M-tense systems, it is easier to differentiate past, present and future events prior to coding time, distinguish points from spans, and make first approximations to complex tenses prior to coding time. As for L-tenses, they usually encode additional aspectual and modal features. Thus, a true deictic M-tense system appears to be an integral part of most L-tense systems, along with the aspectual and modal notions. Moreover, deictic systems in natural languages are not randomly organized into the different features of context in which language are used but it is organized into a egocentric way where deictic expressions or "linguistic units or morphemes that have a deictic usage as basic or central" are anchored to exact points in the communicative event (Levinson, 1983:64). But there is a need to distinguish the several kinds of usage of deictic expression: deictic or non-deictic usages. Two kinds of deictic usages are gestural usage and symbolic usage. The former requires interpretation through an audio-visual-tactile or a physical monitoring of the speech event. Symbolic usages, on the other hand, make use of contextual reference. There are also other kinds of discourse deixis within non-deictic usages that needs to be considered important: the anaphoric usages and non-anaphoric usages. The former is "where some term picks out as referent the same entity or class of objects that some prior term in the course picked out." It is also noted that it is possible for a deictic term to be both anaphorically and deictically and even for gestural usage to join with non-deictic anaphoric usage as well. Though this may be confusing to analysts, a way of viewing these non-deictic usages is "to think of the deictic terms as being relativized to the text instead of to the situation of utterance." Discourse deixis and anaphora has to be differentiated (Levinson, 1983:86). Anaphora is explained to be the "use of usually a pronoun that refers to the same referent as some prior term" and it is visible within and across sentences and across turns at speaking in a dialogue. It is then concluded that "anaphora ultimately rests on deictic notions." A proper theory of discourse deixis should also be provided. Social deixis, on the other hand, rests on the idea "that aspects of sentences which reflect or establish or are determined by certain realities of the social situation in which the speech act occurs" (Levinson, 1983:89). Social relationships and identities of participants such as "polite" pronouns and titles of address are grammiticalized in social deixis. The main point of this chapter is that "most aspects of discourse deixis, and perhaps all aspects of social deixis, lie beyond the scope of a truth-conditional semantics" (Levinson, 1983:96). Therefore, deixis is "not reducible in its entirety, and perhaps hardly at all, to matters of truth-conditional semantics." Reference: Levinson, Stephen. Pragmatics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Read More