1. H. Paul Grice (1975) has discussed four maxim of
conversation:
QUANTITY: Make
your contribution as informative as is required but not more, or
less, than is required.
QUALITY: Do not
say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack evidence.
RELATION: Be
relevant.
MANNER: Be
clear, brief, and orderly.
Of course, we can experience conversational exchanges in
which the cooperative principle does not seem to be in operation (speakers may lie,
be sarcastic, try to be different, or clever). However,
this general description of the normal expectations we have in
conversations helps to explain a number of regular features in the way
people say things. For instance the common expressions like "Well, to
make a long story short" or "I won't bore you with the details"
indicate an awareness of one of these maxims. Which one?
What about "As far as I know" or "Now,
correct me if I am wrong" or "I'm not absolutely sure but"?
2. "To bequeathe" and "to arrest"
are performative verbs (utterances that do not communicate information
but are equivalent to actions = when to say is to do). Can
you name two other such verbs?
3. Speech act theory is the study of what an
utterance does beyond just saying something.
Characteristics of indirect speech acts: When a
form such as "Did he...?," "Are they...?," or "Can
you...?" is used to ask a question, it is described as a direct speech
act. Ex.: when speakers do not know something and ask hearers to inform
them, they will typically produce a direct speech act of the
following type: "Can you ride a bicycle?"
Now compare this utterance with "Can you pass the
salt?" In this second example, you would not (unless you are Groucho
Marx) usually understand the utterance as a question about your ability to do
something. In fact, you would not treat this as a question at all. You
would treat it as a request and perform the action requested.
Yet, this request has been presented in the syntactic form usually associated
with a question.
Such an example is described as an indirect speech act.
The locution (or literal meaning) and the illocution (or intended
meaning) of that utterance are different: it is literally a yes/no
question, but it is in fact uttered as a request or polite directive
for action.
4. Indirect speech acts and shared knowledge: One
prerequisite for a successful indirect speech act is that both speakers share
sufficient background about the context of the interaction, about each other,
the society in which they live, and the world in general. If Wayne asks
Genevieve "Are you done with your Anthro 4 paper?" and she replies
"Is Rome
in Spain?", he will certainly recognize the
answer as an indirect speech act, but whether or not he can interpret it
will depend on his knowledge of geography.
5. What a speaker assumes is true or is known
by the hearer can be described as a presupposition. If you are asked
the following question,
When did
you stop doing drugs?
there are two presuppositions involved. What are
they? (Questions like this, with built‑in presuppositions were once very
useful devices for interrogators or trial lawyers, but are no longer allowed.)
6. What is the name for the study.of how we do things
with sentences?
7. Let us now look at background knowledge. When we
read a text, w,e make inferences derived from our conventional knowledge
(inferences are pieces of information not directly stated in the test). We can
talk about conventional knowledge structures or schemata [singular = schema]
which exist in memory and are activated, under various circumstances, in the
interpretation of what we experience. Consider the following text:
A prisoner
plans his escape (adapted from R.C. Anderson et al., 1977)
Rocco slowly got up from the mat, planning his escape. He
hesitated a moment and thought. Things were not going well. What bothered him
most was being held, especially since the charge against him had been weak. He
considered his present situation. The lock that held him was strong, but he
thought he could break it.
Now answer these questions:
(1)
Where is Rocco?
(2)
Is he alone?
(3)
What has happened to
him? *
8. The following cartoons by Bay Area artist Philip Le Vine
use well-known schemata of our culture: the format of magazine covers and a
shared knowledge about periods of th past.