pragmatics slide

1. Explaning the
Impacts of social
factors on
pragmatics By: Abdul Alkhatib

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
01
Beyond Grice’s (1989)
theory
Relavance theory
Leech1983 Politeness
Principle
03
The ‘Face’ model
& Conversational patterns and
structures
Brown & Levinson(1987)
02
Definitions & examples
04
The Pragmalinguistic VS
The Sociopragmatic
perspective
The influence of the
Situational context
The role of context

3. Relavence theory: Social factors which
influence communication are best analysed
as part of the context.
Key word: assumptions
Wife :I can’t find the car keys.
Husband : Great job honey!

4. Could you tell us
your opinion about
professor “X”?
Leech (1983) argues that People
break the co-operative Principle for
“politeness reasons”
Too much or too little information
usually not addressing the main point
Modesty maxim
Agreement maxim

5. How would you request salt at a
dinning table?
Can you pass the salt please?
Direct request
NOW
!
Reach out
I like my food quite
salty.
Pass the salt, will you.
conventional
indirect
non-conventional
indirect
Mismatch??
Thomas (1983)
2

6. the linguistic
strategies used to
operationalize the
request
Conventional - nonconventional
Direct- indirect
The relationship
between the
participants
Close – Distant
Equal -Unequal
WHAT SETS THEM APART?

7. WHAT SETS THEM APART?
Pragmalinguistic
Perspective
focuses on the linguistic
strategies that are
used to convey a
given pragmatic
meaning
Sociopragmatic
Perspective
focuses on the socially-
based assessments,
beliefs and interactional
principles that underlie
people’s choice of
strategies.

8. ‘Face’:
03
‘the public self-image that every member
wants to
claim for himself ’ (1987: 61), Brown and
Levinson

9. Where are you going?
Positive face
reflects every person’s need
that his/her self-image is
appreciated and
approved of
Negative face
reflects every person’s
‘basic claim to
territories, personal
preserves, rights to
non-distraction
Joey & Chandler
Ross & Rachel

10. HOW DO WE DO IT?
Positive Politeness
Strategies
• juxtaposing criticism with compliments,
• establishing common ground,
• using jokes questions,
• special discourse markers (please),
• and in-group jargon and slang
Negative Politeness
Strategies
are intended to avoid giving offense by
highlighting friendliness.
to use ‘imposition acknowledgement’
strategies
• sustained courtesy
• keeping as safe distance from others

11. Variables to account when wording a face-threatening
utterance
Brown and Levinson (1987)
D = Distance
closeness
R = The degree of imposition
the content of the
utterance
P = the power
differential
amount of
equality/inequality

12. UK "negative politeness" (showing respect).
USA "positive politeness" (showing solidarity, claiming
common ground
Cultural differences between
USA and Great Britain

13. Conversational
patterns and
structure

14. Cognitive-psychological
Approach
Patterns from general principles of human cognition and
communication
Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995)
Conversation Analysis
Turn taking rules
adjacency pairs: ordered pairs of utterances proceeding through
conversation
/ insertion sequence

15. The Role of
Context

16. ● Physical environment: time , place objects…
In pragmatics, context can be defined as the
set of assumptions
contextual assumptions : those that the
communicator intends the addressee(s) to exploit
in the interpretation).
Psychological notion of Context
vs. a Concret one
Indirectly via
representations
Needs constant
updating

17. Semantic constraints on
implicatures
Are words like (well, anyway, however, but,
so, after all) which help the addressee to
contextualize what is said by the
utterance.
Help the
listener
Unfortunately, Ahmad is here.
Propositions
A technical utterance expresses a thought
that describes a state of affairs
Words like: obviously, unfortunately

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