Науменко л п основи теорії мовної комунікації практикум 2005

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Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка

Інститут філології

Науменко Л.П.

ОСНОВИ ТЕОРІЇ мовної КОМУНІКАЦІЇ Практикум для студентів-філологів


Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка

Інститут філологи

Науменко Л.П.

ОСНОВИ ТЕОРІЇ м о в н о ї КОМУНІКАЦІЇ Практикум для студентів-філологів

Київ-2005


Науменко Л.П. Основи теорії мовної комунікації: Практикум для студентів-філологів. - К,: РВЦ "Національний університет", 2005. 72 с.

Практикум з курсу "Основи теорії мовної комунікації" містить завдання до семінарів із зразками для їх виконання, письмовий тест з ключем, матеріали для підготовки доповідей, питання, що виносяться на залік, глосарій лінгвістичних термінів, перелік рекомендованої літератури. Рецензент: Биркун Л.В., канд. педагогічних наук, доцент

Затверджено на засіданні Вченої ради Інституту філології Київського національного університету імені Тараса Шевченка "20" вересня 2004 р., протокол № 1 Редагування автора

Науково-методичний центр інформації та реклами ©Науменко Л.П. ©НМЦІР, 2005


Зміст

I. Завдання до семінарів та зразки їх виконання.................................... 4-11 II. Зразок письмового тесту.............. 12-14 ІІІ.Матеріали для доповідей............. 15-64 IV. Глосарій лінгвістичних термінів........................................ 65-68 V. Питання, що виносяться на залік.... 69 Рекомендована література................. 70-72


І. Завдання для семінарів із вказівками щодо їхнього виконання

Завдання 1: Проаналізуйте діалог у термінах мовної комунікації (учасники, засіб, канал, спілкування, комунікативна ситуація,

характер повідомлення). Guests in August - I’ve got a telegram from Margaret and Graig. - Are they coming to England again? - Yes. At the beginning of August. - Good. We can all get together again. - I am glad they are coming in August. We can take the dog and go for walks together. - Yes. And we can give a garden-party. And Margaret can play her guitar in the garden and sing Greek songs again. - Yes. August is a good time to come to England. 1. Наявність учасників спілкування: адресант, адресат. 2.Засіб спілкування: перша знакова система - природна мова. 3. Канал спілкування: аудіо-візуальний; перешкоди відсутні. 4.Комунікативна ситуація: спілкування неформальне; стосунки симетричні; соціальні ролі: чоловік і дружина. 5.Повідомлення: вербальне, побутове. Завдання 2. Наведіть приклади спілкування: а) з уявним адресатом; б) з незвичним адресатом; в) при повній довірі/недовірі; г) обмеженим набором засобів; д) спілкування при наявності перешкод; ж) різностатусне спілкування; з) спілкування при зміні соціальної залежності на ситуативну; і) фатичне спілкування. Спілкування з уявним адресатом: Dear Student! This book has been written to help you recognize and pronounce English sounds. To make it interesting and fun to learn, there are lots of different types of exercise. When you do them by yourself or in class, 4


you will realize that you are not only learning how to pronounce sounds: you are also practising the skills needed to communicate in real life. ...Вставай, хто живий, в кого думка повстала! Година для праці настала! (JI.Українка) Спілкування з незвичним адресатом: 1. Dear diary! I have so many things to tell you about. Today it was very wonderful... 2. Oh, Sun! I just wouldn’t be able to live without you. 3. Dear Santa Clause, for this Christmas I would like to have... 4. Прощавай, Клик! 5. - Connecting to Sabbo Night: 4370313 -OK -Password - ***ijp - Validating user. Password domain. Connected. Спілкування при повній довірі: - I can’t stand people who wear rings on their little fingers. - Nor can’t I. - I don’t like spinach. - Nor do I. - And you know, I haven’t got any idea why people think rattlesnakes are ugly. - Nor have I. - And I’m not scared of them, anyway. - Nor am I. - Although, when I was younger I didn’t like them. - Nor did I. - And I really, hate people who can’t agree with each other. - So do I, Спілкування при повній недовірі: Marry, why you are so sad, why you are so unhappy? You don’t love me, Bob! But Marry, I love you very much! It’s untrue. You love my. sister Sunny. You think she is lovely and I’m ugly. But Marry...! Oh, shut up, Bob! 5


But M any... Oh, shut up! Спілкування обмеженим набором засобів: Mummy, mummy! My tummy! What my sweetheart? Oh, mummy, (crying) Oh, our tummy! My baby! Did you eat too many goodies? Silly boy. Oh, my baby! Спілкування за наявних перешкод: (мовних) Good morning! Could I have room in this hotel? Well, do you mean you’d like to stay here? To stay? I need sleep here two nights. OK, OK. So you’d like to stay here. Would you like a single or a double-bed room? Excuse me? Would you like a small or a large bed? Large, please. OK. You can have you breakfast down in the cafe. Coffee? No, thanks. 1 don’t drink coffee at all. Oh, you don’t understand me. Are you a foreigner? What? Are you from another country? Yes, Japan. Різностатусне спілкування: (начальник- підлеглий) Yes, come in. Is it all right if I come in half an hour late tomorrow? In this case you’ll have to work long hours the day after tomorrow. And also 1 wanted to analyze your report on your recent auction. I think many details are missing. Do you see what I mean? Yes. But I am not sure I quite agree. Згідно з кодексом стосунків комунікантів підлеглий не може відповісти начальнику “I’ll be late tomorrow” або “I don’t agree with you”, і повинен вживати більш ввічливі форми під час спілкування з вищою за соціальною роллю особою. 6


Спілкування при зміні соціальної залежності на ситуативну: Ann: Did you want to see me, Mr Black? Boss: Yes. Ann, I need a favour from you. I am flying to Munich next Friday and I want you to give me some private lessons in German. Could you do that? Ann: Sure, I’ll be glad to. (In an hour) Ann: Say it once again: Ich heisse Alan Nickson. Boss: Ich... Alan Nickson. Ann: heisse Boss: Ich heisse... Ann: Good. Фатичне спілкування: Hello. Hello. How are you? Fine, and you? I’m Okay. Are you busy now? Yah. Okay, till tomorrow. Завдання 3. Наведіть приклади шести основних типів МА. репрезентатив: а) інформативний: Charles Dickens was bom at Landfort, Portsmouth. б) оціночний: They don’t want anything from us - not even our respect. директив: 1. Come to the blackboard! 2. Stop talking! 3. Open the door, please. комісив: When we get to a big city, I’ll send you a postcard, mom. експресив: Goodbye and good luck in your search for a job. декларатив: 1. I name this ship Queen Elizabeth. 2. Guilty. 3 . I hereby bequeath my house to my eldest son Jonathan. 7


метакомунікативний МА: 1. Speak up, please. 2 . I didn’t quite catch the point of your talk. 3. What do you mean by that? Завдання 4. Наведіть приклади непрямих МА. Власне непрямі МА: 1. Don’t you know that smoking is not allowed here? = Don’t smoke here! (квеситив у функції директива) 2. It’s very hot and stuffy here! = Open the window! (декларатив у функції директива) 3. How long will the government conceive us?! (квеситив у функції експресива) Конвенційні непрямі МА: 1. Could you pass the salt? 2. Will you sit down? 3. Would you answer the telephone? 4. You must come to my place some day.

Завдання S. Наведіть приклада: а) ускладнених МА; б) складних МА; в) макромовленнєвих актів Ускладнені МА: 1. Before hitting a ski slope, take some lessons from a ski instructor. 2. If you don’t come we’ll give this book to another person. 3. He was alone in the house as his parents had gone out to dinner. 4. You should avoid cooking meals using large amounts of fat because fat may be very harmful to you. Складні MA: 1. Hurrah! I did it! 1 - експресив (головний); 2 - декларатив [пояснення] (допоміжний) Макромовленнєві акти: 1 Ви зголодніли? Вам хочеться пити? Ви хотіли б попоїсти чогось смачненького? А чи відомо вам, що ресторан ‘Тарас” працює цілодобово? 8


2 Mouse Fit is the best and the shortest way to loose weight and to keep yourself fit. Only 5 minutes a day and in 3 weeks the results will be obvious. Buy it now and in two weeks you’ll be the most beautiful. 3 The Alarm Wallet It looks like a high-quality leather wallet made of soft leather. Inside there are special pocket for credit cards, loose change, tickets and stamps - as well as two full - length pockets for notes. It would be a shame to lose such an attractive, practical wallet - but you won’t, because under the gold-coloured plate on the front is a lightsensitive cell. When you put the wallet into your pocket, slide the plate to the left. If anyone removes the wallet from the darkness of your pocket or handbag (or if it just falls out) a loud electronic alarm will sound. With the alarm wallet, you’ll never lose your wallet again!

Завдання 6. Проаналізуйте порушення принципів та максим у конфронтативному діалозі. Cafe Owner: Let me tell you, I’m really annoyed about this supermarket idea, right in the middle of our town. What makes you think we want one? PR Manager: We’ve carried out an opinion survey. Most people think it’s an excellent idea. Cafe Owner: Yeah, and how much did you pay them! (1) PR Manager: How dare you! Cafe Owner: Look, I’m really upset about this, especially about fast-food take-away you’ll have in it. I’ll lose all my customers. PR Manager: Oh. I don’t know. It shouldn’t make too much difference to your trade. (2) Cafe Owner: That’s what you think. I warn you, I’ll do everything I can to stop you building that store. You Americans think you can come to our town and do exactly what you like. (3) Well, you’re wrong. PR Manager: Oh, come on, now. I’m sure we can understand each other. Cafe Owner: Don’t try that with me. I wasn’t bom yesterday. Listen to me now. You try to build that supermarket here and there’ll be trouble - you’ll see. PR Manager: Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as you think. 9


(1) - порушена максима тактовності (принцип ввічливості) (2) - п о р у шена максима якості інформації (принцип кооперації) (3) - порушена максима поваги (принцип ввічливості)

Завдання 7. Наведіть три англійські порівняння, приказки або прислів’я та їхні українські еквіваленти з відмінним пропозиційним змістом. As like as two peas. / Схожі як дві краплі води. Hungry as a hunter. / Голодний як вовк. It rains cats and dogs. / Ллє як із відра. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. / Краще синиця в руці, ніж журавель у небі. When two Sundays meet together. / На Миколи та й ніколи. A fly in the ointment. / Ложка дьогтю в діжці меду. Every dog has his day. / 1 в віконце засяє сонце. Bad bush is better than the open field. / Краще хоч поганий родич, ніж ніякого. Can the leopard change his spots? / Горбатого могила виправить. There is a black sheep in every flock. / У родині не без виродка. Завдання 8. Наведіть фрагмент діалогу або монологу, дайте характеристику мовного портрета комуніканта. LIZA: My aunt died of influenza: so they said. But it’s my belief they done the old woman in. Mrs HIGGINS: Done her in? LIZA: Y-e-e-e-e-s. Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She come through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it. she was. They all thought she was dead; but mv father he kept landing gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon. What call you would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in. Mi s EYNSFORD HILL: What does doing her in mean? HIGGINS: Oh, thats the new small talk. To do a person in means to kill them. 10


Mrs EYNSFORD HILL [to Eliza, horrified]'. You surely dont believe that your aunt was killed? LIZA: Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat. (From: B.Shaw. Pygmalion) Мовний портрет комуніканта, у даному випадку Елізи Дулітл головного персонажу п’єси Б.Шоу “Пігмаліон” - , характеризується такими рисами: 1) низьким рівнем мовної компетенції (вживання розмовних кліше, фразеологічних зворотів та лексики зі зниженою стилістичною конотацією, лексичних повторів, порушення порядку слів у реченні); 2) низьким рівнем мовленнєвої компетенції (надмірне вживання експресивів, риторичних запитань, відсутність виразів ввічливості - вибачень тощо); 3) низькою культурою мовлення (вживання ненормативної лексики, сленгу); 4) низьким рівнем комунікативної компетенції (неволодіння навичками спілкування у різних сферах, недотримання характеру спілкування - порушення етикету та правил хорошого тону, недотримання принципів ввічливості та кооперації (ігнорування максимами тактовності і якості інформації), неврахування характеру адресата; 5) неволодіння способом ведення діалогічної взаємодії (передачею мовленнєвого ходу); 6) коло тем спілкування обмежене побутовою тематикою, що свідчить про невисоку ерудицію та відсутність освіти у комуніканта.

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II. Зразок письмового тесту I. Дайте визначення таких понять: 1. комунікація 2. мова 3. мовлення 4. Назвіть види мовленнєвої діяльності II.Заповніть схему “Мова та мовлення”

мовлення, акти мовлення, інвентар+граматика, акти розуміння, тексти, мова III.Виберіть правильне визначення. Діалог - це: а) спілкування 2-х комунікантів; б) спілкування 2-х і більше комунікантів; в) спілкування кількох комунікантів. IV.Назвіть компоненти структури мовної комунікації. 1 . ______________(адресант, адресат) 2 .______________ (знакова система, що дозволяє кодувати смисли та обмінюватися ними) 3 .______________ (середовище, в якому передаються мовні знаки) 4 .______________ (елементи фізичної ситуації, у якій перебувають комуніканти) 5 ._________ __ (текст, що передається партнеру по комунікації) 12


V. Позначте відповідними термінами: 1. Галузь мовознавства, що вивчає функціонування мовних знаків у мовленні - __________ _ 2. Функція мовлення, що яскраво проявляється у спілуванні заради спілкування - ___________ 3. Вживання речення або його еквівалента з певною комунікативною або позакомунікативною метою - _________ 4. Вплив комунікативного змісту на адресата - ___________ 5. Частина речення, що лишається після його заперечення VІ. Визначте тип мовленнєвого акту. 1.Му financial situation is improving. (Мої фінансові справи покращуються.)_____________ 2.You mustn’t make noise going into the house. (He галасуй, коли заходиш до будинку.)_____________ 3.”І do” /”Так” (Я згоден взяти цю жінку за дружину.)_____________ 4.Ве careful! The tree is going to fall! (Обере.жно! Дерево ось-ось упаде!)_____________ 5.Thanks for your help. (Дякую вам за допомо.гу.)____________ VII. З якою комунікативною інтенцією вжито наступні мовленнєві акти? 1.Police sergeant: Don’t fire except in self-defence. (Сержант поліції: Зброю застосовувати тільки для самооборони.) 2. Could I speak to Mr. Pitt, please? (Можна мені поговорити з містером Піттом?)____________ 3. Let’s go to the cinema. (Ходімо в кіно.)_____________ 4.Mechanic: Don’t smoke near the petrol pump. (Механік: “Ha заправці не палити.”) ___________

Правильні відповіді 1 .1. Поєдную, роблю спільним, спілкуюсь. 2. Система знаків, одиниці якої формують впорядковану ієрархічну структуру. 13


3.Вид комунікативної діяльності, що має втілення у звуковій або графічній формі. 4. Аудіювання, говоріння, читання, письмо. II. Мова та мовлення

III. б) IV. 1.Наявність учасників комунікації 2.3асіб спілкування 3.Канал спілкування 4.Комунікативна ситуація 5 .Повідомлення V. 1.прагматика 2.фатичне 3.мовленнєвий акт 4.перлокуція 5.пресупозиція VI. 1.репрезентатив VІ. 1.наказ 2.директив 2.прохання 3.декларатив 3.запрошення 4-комісив 4.заборона 5.експресив

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III. Матеріали для доповідей

From Communicative Competence to Communicative Language Pedagogy Michael Canale Theoreticalframework The essential aspects pf the theoretical framework presented here concern the nature of communication, the distinction between communicative competence and actual communication, and the main components of communicative competence. 1.1 The nature of communication Following Breen and Candlin (1980), Morrow (1977) and Widdowson(1978), communication is understood here to have the following characteristics: it (a) is a form of social interaction, and is therefore normally acquired and used in social interaction; (b) involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity in form and message; (c) takes place in discourse and sociocultural contexts which provide constraints on appropriate language use and also clues as to correct interpretations of utterances; (d) is carried out under limiting psychological and other conditions such as memory constraints, fatigue and distractions; (e) always has а рифове (for example, to establish social relations, to persuade, or to promise); (f) involves authentic, as opposed to textbook-contrived language; and (g) is judged as successful or not on the basis of actual outcomes. (For example, communication could be judged successful in the case of a non-native English speaker who was trying to find the train station in Toronto, uttered “How to go train” to a passer-by, and was given directions to the train station.) In addition, communication is understood in the present chapter as the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, oral and written/visual modes, and production and comprehension processes. Information is assumed to consist of conceptual, sociocultural, affective and other content as discussed in Bateson and Ruesch (1951). Haley (1963), 15


Hymes (1972) and elsewhere. Furthermore, as pointed out by Haley (1963) and others, such information is never permanently worked out nor fixed but is constantly changing and qualified by such factors as further information, context of communication, choice of language forms, and non-verbal behaviour. In this sense communication involves the continuous evaluation and negotiation of meaning on the part of the participants, as described by Candlin (1980), Wells (1981) and others. Finally, it is assumed with Palmer ( 1978) that authentic communication involves a “reduction of uncertainty” on behalf of the participants: for example, a speaker asking a (non-rhetorical) question will be uncertain as to the answer but this uncertainty will be reduced when an answer is provided. Note that although such uncertainty can be reduced at a given level of information, it does not seem likely that uncertainty can be eliminated at all levels in any authentic communication. One may speculate that ease of communication increases to the extent that uncertainty is reduced at all levels of information. Of course this characterization of the nature of communication is not exhaustive: it reflects an interest in second language pedagogy and is intended as the minimal characterization adequate for the research programme at OISE on evaluating the communicative performance of (beginning) students in general second language programmes in Ontario. More comprehensive characterizations of communication may be found in Hinofotis (1981), Wallat (1981), Wiemann and Backlund (1980), 1.2 Communicative competence and actual communication The distinction between communicative competence and actual communication remains poorly understood and, somewhat surprisingly, or marginal interest in the second language field. Canale and Swain (1980) discuss this topic in detail. Here the рифове is to clarify these notions further. In Canale and Swain (1980) communicative competence was understood as the underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication (e.g. knowledge of vocabulary and skill in using the sociolinguistic conventions for a given language). Furthermore, a distinction was drawn between communicative competence and what is here labelled as actual communication - the realization of such knowledge and skill under limiting psychological and environmental conditions such as memory and perceptual constraints, fatigue, 16


nervousness, distraction and background noises. The term “actual communication” is preferred here since the earlier term “performance” (for “communicative performance”) used by Canale and Swain (1980)) and others has been a source of much confusion in applied linguistics since Chomsky (1965) introduced the strong and weak senses of the terms “competence” and “performance” into modern linguistics. Regardless of the terminological shift, the view in Canale and Swain (1980), rephrased here, is that communicative competence is an essential part of actual communication but is reflected only indirectly, and sometimes imperfectly (e.g. in random and inadvertent slips of the tongue, mixing of registers) due to general limiting conditions such as those mentioned above. It is important to stress again (see Canale and Swain 1980) that communicative competence refers to both knowledge and skill in using this knowledge when interacting in actual communication. Knowledge refers here to what one knows (consciously and unconsciously) about the language and about other aspects of communicative language use: skill refers to how well one can perform this knowledge in actual communication. 1.3 Components of communicative competence The theoretical framework for communicative competence proposed here minimally includes four areas of knowledge and skill: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. It is assumed that this theory of communicative competence interacts in as yet unspecified ways with other systems of knowledge and skill (e.g. world knowledge) as well as with a theory of human action (dealing with such factors as volition and personality). Furthermore, it is assumed that certain competencies described here are involved in uses of language other than communication (cf. Canale 1981). This proposed framework is based on the research reported in Canale and Swain (1980) and other current work in this area. The purpose of this section is to sketch briefly the contents and boundaries of each of these four areas of competence and to discuss this theory in the light of other recently proposed theories of communicative competence. Grammatical competence. This type of competence remains concerned with mastery of the language code (verbal or non-verbal) itself. Thus included here are features and rules of the language such as 17


vocabulary, word formation, sentence formation, pronunciation, spelling and linguistic semantics. Such competence focuses directly on the knowledge and skill required to understand and express accurately the literal meaning of utterances. Sociolinguistic competence. In Canale Swain (1980) this component included both sociocultural rules of use and rules of discourse: here only the former set of rules is referred to. Sociolinguistic competence thus addresses the extent to which utterances arc produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as status of participants, purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of interaction (on these factors see, for example, Hymes 1967). Appropriateness of utterances refers to both appropriateness of meaning and appropriateness of form. Appropriateness of meaning concerns the extent to which particular communicative functions (e.g. commanding, complaining and inviting), attitudes (including politeness and formality) and ideas are judged to be proper in a given situation. For example, it would generally be inappropriate for a waiter in a restaurant to command a customer to order a certain menu item regardless of how the utterance and communicative function (a command) were expressed grammatically. Appropriateness of form concerns the extent to which a given meaning (including communicative functions, attitudes and propositions/ideas) is represented in a verbal and/or non-verbal form that is proper in a given sociolinguistic context. For example, a waiter trying to take an order politely in a tasteful restaurant would be using inappropriate grammatical form (here register) if he were to ask. “OK. chump, what are you and this broad gonna eat?� This notion of appropriateness of form thus includes what Richards (1981) and others have called “interactional competence, which addresses appropriateness of kinesics and proxemics. It is clear that the notion of naturalness or probability of occurrence (cf. Rymes 1972) can also play an important role in determining the appropriateness of meaning and form; however, this notion may be of limited value given the unpredictable and creative aspect of communication. On this last point see Blum-Kulka (1980) and Canale and Swain (1980). There is a tendency in many second language programmes to treat sociolinguistic competence as less important than grammatical competence. This tendency seems odd for two reasons. First, it gives the 18


impression that grammatical correctness of utterances is more important than appropriateness of utterances in actual communication, an impression that is challenged by data from first language use (cf. Terrell 1980) and second language use (cf. Jones 1978). Second, this tendency ignores the fact that sociolinguistic competence is crucial in interpreting utterances for their “social meaning”, for example, communicative function and attitude - when this is not clear from the literal meaning of utterances or from non-verbal cues (e.g. sociocultural context and gestures). There are no doubt universal aspects of appropriate language use that need not be relearned to communicate appropriately in a second language (cf. Brown and Levinson 1978; Canale and Swain 1980; Goffman 1976; Schmidt and Richards 1980). But there are language and culture-specific aspects too. Valuable work on this last point has been carried out by Blum-Kulka (1980), Brown and Levinson (1978), Cazden (1972), Clyne (1975), Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz (1980), Richards (1981), Scollon and Scollon (1979) and Tannen (1980) among others. For example, Blum-Kulka (1980) distinguishes three types of rules that interact in determining how effectively a given communicative function is conveyed and interpreted: pragmatic rules, social-appropriateness rules and linguistitf-realization rules. Pragmatic rules refer to the situational preconditions that must be satisfied to carry out a given communicative function (e.g. to give a command one must have the right to do so). Social-appropriateness rules deal with whether or not a given function would normally be conveyed at all and, if so, with how much directness (e.g. asking a stranger how much he or she earns). Linguistic-realization rules involve a number of considerations, such as the frequency with which a given grammatical form is used to convey a given function, the number and structural range of forms associated with 44 each function, the generality of forms across functions and situations, and the means of modulating the attitudinal tone of a given function. Her preliminary findings are that universality of sociolinguistic appropriateness decreases as one goes from pragmatic rules to social-appropriateness rules to linguistic-realization rules. Clyne (1975) reports similar findings. BlumKulka’s own concluding statement expresses very well the importance of . sociolinguistic competence: “It is quite clear that as long as we do not know more about the ways in which communicative functions are being achieved in different languages, second language learners will often fail 19


to achieve their communicative ends in the target language, and neither they nor their teachers will really understand why.” Discourse competence. This type of competence concerns mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres. By genre is meant the type of text: for example, oral and written narrative, an argumentative essay, a scientific report, a business letter, and a set of instructions.each represent a different genre. Unity of a text is achieved through cohesion in form and coherence in meaning. Cohesion deals with how utterances are linked structurally and facilitates interpretation of a text. For example, the use of cohesion devices such as pronouns, synonyms, ellipsis, conjunctions and parallel structures serves to relate individual utterances and to indicate how a group of utterances is to be understood (e.g. logically or chronologically) as a text. Coherence refers to the relationships among the different meanings in a text, where these meanings may be literal meanings, communicative functions, and attitudes. For example, consider the following three utterances (from Widdowson 1978, p.29): SPEAKER A: That’s the telephone. SPEAKER B: I’m in the bath. SPEAKER A: OK. Although there is no overt signal of cohesion among these utterances, Widdowson points out that they do form coherent discourse to the extent that A’s first utterance functions as a request, that B’s reply functions as an excuse for not complying with A’s request, and that A’s final remark is an acceptance of B’s excuse. Very insightful discussion of coherence is provided by Charolles (1978), who distinguishes four types of “metarules” for achieving and judging coherence of a text. These are: repetition of meaning, to signal continuity; progression of meaning, to indicate development and direction; non-contradiction, to signal consistency; and relevance of meaning, to mark congruity. It is also clear from Charolles' work that the role of cohesion devices is to serve such metarules of coherence. The important work of Freedle, Fine and Fellbaum (1981) and Halliday and Hasan (1976) seeks to identify the* types of cohesion devices that serve different aspects of coherence, and thus contribute to the quality and unity of a text. 20


It is reasonably clear that this notion of discourse knowledge and skill can be distinguished from grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence. For example, consider the following conversation (Widdowson 1978, p.25): SPEAKER A: What did the rain do? SPEAKER B: The crops were destroyed by the rain. B’s reply is grammatically and sociolinguistically appropriate within our framework but does not tie in well with A’s question. The violation in this example seems to be at the level of discourse and to involve the normal organization of sentences (and texts) in English in which topic (shared information) precedes comment (new information), as Widdowson points out. Note that this principle of discourse restricts the grammatical form of utterances that can co-occur with A’s question, filtering out compatible forms from incompatible ones regardless of their grammaticality and sociolinguistic appropriateness. This interaction of grammatical, sociolinguistic and discourse rules is suggestive of the complexity of communicative competence and is consistent with the distinction that is proposed here among these three areas of competence. However, it is not clear that all discourse rules must be distinguished from grammatical rules (as concerns cohesion) and sociolinguistic rules (as concerns coherence); see Morgan (1981) and Williams (1977) for discussion of the formal distinction between rules of grammar and rules of discourse. Strategic competence. This component is composed of mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action for two main reasons: (a) to. compensate for breakdowns in communication due to limiting conditions in actual communication (e.g. momentary inability to recall an idea or grammatical form) or to insufficient competence in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence; and (b) to enhance the effectiveness of communication (e.g. deliberately slow and soft speech for rhetorical effect). For example, when one does not remember a given grammatical form, one compensatory strategy that can be used is paraphrase. Thus if a learner did not know the English term “train station”, he or she might try a paraphrase such as “the place where trains go” or “the place for trains”. Of course such strategies need not be limited to resolving grammatical problems: actual communication will also require learners to handle 21


problems of a sociolinguistic nature (e.g. how to address strangers when unsure of their social status) and of a discourse nature (e.g. how to achieve coherence in a text when unsure of cohesion devices). Interesting discussion and examples of communication strategies may be found in Bialystok. Frohlich and Howard (1979), Palmer (1977), Stern (197), Swain (1977), Tarone (1977,1980) and Тегтеїі (1977). Furthermore, Hinofotis (1981), Lepicq (1980), Wiemann and Backlund (1980) and Wong-Fillmore (1979) draw attention to the role of affective variables in contributing to effective communication. For instance, Lepicq (1980) reports that in the view of native-speaker judges, learners’ confidence in themselves and willingness to communicate can compensate for their difficulties in grammatical accuracy. Terrell (1977) argues strongly that communication strategies are crucial at the beginning stages of second language learning. Two possible objections to actually teaching such strategies in the second language classroom are that they are universal and are picked up in mastering the first language. However, in Swain and Canale (1979) it is pointed out that although a general strategy such as paraphrase is indeed universal and used in first language communication, learners must be shown how such a strategy can be implemented in the second language (e.g. what the equivalent forms are for “power vocabulary” items such as English “place, person, thing”). Furthermore, learners must be encouraged to use such strategies (rather than remain silent if they cannot produce grammatically accurate forms, for example) and must be given the opportunity to use them. The potential value of such strategies to the second language learner can perhaps be highlighted more if we think of the teacher of the second language as a learner of the first language. For example, consider a teacher of French as a second language who speaks only French to a group of anglophone learners. From the students’ point of view, the teacher (speaking only French) can be viewed as a learner (of English as a second language) who knows almost no English and yet is trying to communicate effectively. To the extent that the teacher is understood by relying on communication strategies, then these strategies are crucial for communication to take place at all. This particular example is not as bizarre as it may seem on the surface: for instance there is a striking resemblance between teachers speech to second language learners (cf. 22


Hatch 1979; also Terrell 1980) and the learners’ own second language output. The point is this: if teachers are trained in the use of techniques to make themselves understood in the second language by learners, then why should learners not also be instructed in such techniques? Two general comments should.be made about the status of the above components 9f communicative competence. First, the four areas of competence distinguished here serve only to illustrate what communicative competence (minimally) includes: they are levels of analysis that can (and in many view must) be distinguished as part of the theoretical framework. The question of how these components interact with one another (or with other factors involved in actual communication) has been largely ignored here: that is, this theoretical framework is not a model of communicative competence; where model implies some specification of the manner and order in which the components interact and in which the various competencies are normally acquired. The second comment concerns the nature of this theoretical framework. In contrast to the view of communicative competence as a single, global factor, the view expressed here is a modular, or compartmentalized one. That is, in the present framework communicative competence is analysed as composed of several separate factors (areas of competence) that interact. In adopting and maintaining such a view, I have tried to respond to two key questions: first, why adopt a modular view at all?; and second, why distinguish these particular areas of competence? In response to the first question, there is compelling empirical evidence for a modular view and against a global one. For example, Cummins (1980, 1981) reviews a variety of evidence that supports a distinction between the language proficiency required within school and that required outside it in both first and second languages. Bachman and Palmer (in press) and Palmer and Bachman (1981) report that confirmatory factor analysis of their $econd language, testing data . supports a divisible language competence model (a modular model) over a unitary language competence model (a global model). With respect to the second question, there is still relatively little empirical evidence for distinguishing the four areas of competence proposed here. Some tentative evidence comes from current work at 23


OISE on assessing knowledge and skills in these areas. An analysis of results on 37 French speaking tasks was carried out, where aech task was administered to 174 students of French as a second language in Grade 6 and Grade 10 in Ontario. The correlation among the scoring criteria information. Grammaticality, Pronunciation, (Sociolinguistic) Appropriateness, and Discourse were small, positive and non-significant (rÂŁ .20). These scoring criteria are discussed in Canale 1980,1981). Furthermore, students achieved better results on tasks dealing with grammar than on ones dealing with sociolinguistic points. Such results are consistent with the distinctions among competence areas and the above theoretical framework thus gains in plausibility. Additional screenings of assessment instruments based on this theoretical framework are now underway in Ontario. Bachman and Palmer (1981), Clifford (1980, 1981) and Hinofotis (1981) are also involved in empirical studies designed to address similar distinctions. Of particular interest are Bachman and Palmers (1981) findings that their second language testing data is best accounted for by a model of communicative competence that distinguishes grammatical competence (word formation and sentence formation), pragmatic competence (vocabulary and discourse rules), sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness, naturalness and cultural references), and a general factor (unidentified but most associated with the oral interview method used by Bachman and Palmer). In spite of the still small amount of evidence for the theoretical framework proposed here, there are reasons for assuming it as a working hypothesis. (Language and Communication. Ed. by J.C.Richards and R.W.Schmidt. London, NY; Longman, 1983. -pp-3 - 11.)

Communication is Non-Verbal as Weil as Verbal J. Revell, S. Norman Communication is more non-verbal than verbal. Research by psychologist Professor Albert Mehrabian shows that 55% of our message is communicateid bodily, 38% through our tone of voice, and only 7% through the words we use. When there is a discrepancy between what we say (with our words) and how we say it (with our body and voice tone), it is the latter which carries more weight. Can you tell whether someone is 24


in a good mood or bad mood before they utter a word? Have you ever heard someone say “Yes” when you know they really mean “No”? This mismatch between verbal and non-verbal is sometimes known as incongruency. Mehrabian’s research concentrated on the message conveyed in any communication by body language (posture, facial expression, etc) and tone of voice, which was in addition to any words spoken. It was originally conducted by asking American college students the question “How do you know if someone likes you?” Physical appearance was found to be of critical importance to this group. Mehrabian’s research has therefore sometimes been credited with overemphasizing the role of physical appearance, and suggesting that you’ll be OK as long as you look OK. Physical appearance and the way we dress do make an important first, impression which tends to stick. If the first impression is negative, you may have to work harder at changing it. However, a good first impression is only that. It obviously makes sense to sound good as well and have something to say too, or the first impression might also be the last!

25


Implications Be aware of the importance of your own non-verbal-communication and aim to be as congruent as you can - make sure your verbal and non­ verbal message is the same. Use all three channels (body, voice and words) as fully as possible in your teaching or training, making sure they are working in harmony to convey the same message Walk the talk. Learners of a foreign language need to notice and practise non-verbal as well as verbal'interaction and know that they can use all the resources they have (not just linguistic ones) to get their message across. Many learners find this very liberating. As teachers we are role models whether we like-it or not. Think carefully about your language, gestures, attitudes, appearance and the. messages you are giving. You have an impressionable audience. Communicate your enthusiasm for teaching and learning in everything you do, and say, and are! (In Your Hands. London: Saffire Press, 1997. - p. 91) Discourse Analysis G.Brown, GJule Frames One way of representing the background knowledge which is used in the production and understanding of discourse can be found in Minsky’s frame theory. Minsky proposes that our knowledge is stored in memory in the form of data structures, which he calls “frames”, and which represent stereotyped situations. They are used in the following way: When one encounters a new situation (or makes a substantial change in one’s view of the present problem) one selects from memory a structure called a frame. This is a remembered framework to be adapted to fit reality by changing details as necessary. (Minsky, 1975) It should be noted that Minsky’s discussion is not primarily an investigation of linguistic phenomena (much of it is concerned with visual perception and visual memory) but is directed towards a way of representing knowledge. Since one kind of knowledge is knowledge o f a language, then there are frames for linguistic “facts”. For example, Minsky draws an analogy between a frame for a room in a visual scene and a frame for a noun phrase in a discourse. Both frames have obligatory elements (wall / nominal or pronominal) and optional 26


elements (decorations on the walls / a numerical determiner). The basic structure of a frame contains labelled slots which can be filled with expressions, fillers (which may also be other frames). For example, in a frame representing a typical HOUSE, there will be slots labelled “kitchen”, “bathroom”, “address”, and so on. A particular house existing in the world, or mentioned in a text, can be treated as an instance of the house frame, and can be represented by filling the slots with the particular features of that individual house. Formulated in this way, a frame is characteristically a fixed representation of knowledge about the world. Some AJ researchers state, this point explicitly: “I take a frame to be a static data structure about one stereotyped topic” (Chamiak, 1975: 42). Others view the frame as a computational device which not only stores data, but is capable of implementing programs, that is, “for organizing the processes of retrieval and inference which manipulate the stored representations” (Hayes, 1979). At a very general level, the notion of a frame provides an attractive metaphor for thinking about discourse understanding as, at least partially, “a process of fitting what one is told into the framework established by what one already knows” (Chamiak, 1979). Thus, if you receive a postcard telling you where you should go to register your vote in a local government election, your “understanding” of this received information can be described in terms of a \otingframe, perhaps, which has a slot for “voting place”. The specific locational information (St Bernard’s Centre) on the card instantiates the stereotypic locationaL information slot in your knowledge frame. Similarly, when you look at the rest of the discourse on this postcard you see further evidence of information pertaining to your “voting frame”, as in (26). (26) When you go the polling station tell the clerk your name and address. (Lothian Regional Council Election Poll Card,.May 1982) THe definite noun phrases derive from the same “voting frame”, in that your stereotypic knowledge of voting provides for a place to, vote (the polling Station) and all official (the clerk) in that place. In other ! words you do not have to be informed that there is such a thing as a polling station and that a clerk will be there. The producer of this piece of discourse expects you to have this knowledge, and Minsky’s frame27


theory provides an account of how this expectation influences the discourse produced. There is, however, a problem with this rather neat account of how the piece of discourse in (26) is understood. If it is indeed the case that the producer of this discourse expected the reader to process it on the basis of a stereotypic voting frame, then one might ask why he produced the discourse at all. If you do not have to be informed of the existence of the polling station and the clerk, because you have stereotypic knowledge of these things, then why do you have to be informed of the actions you should perform? Surely your voting frame has stereotypic actions as well as stereotypic entities. If that is the case, then you need not be given the information in (26) at all. There are many situations in which discourse is produced where the intended audience can be expected, but not guaranteed, to have stereotypic knowledge of what is to be communicated. Discourse producers, like the writer of (26), make their discourse reflect this fact, and present the information in a form which serves as a reminder for those who already know and as an instruction for those who do not. A second, unresolved problem for what Wilks (1979) describes as “frame-using systems”, concerns the fact that, when an understander system uses a text cue to activate a frame, there may be several frames activated. Remember Minsky’s proposal that “when one encounters a new situation, one selects'from memory a structure called a frame”. Consider the following new situation which presented itself at the beginning of a newspaper article. (27) The Cathedral congregation had watched on television monitors as Pope and Archbishop met, in front of a British Caledonian helicopter, on the dewy grass of a Canterbury recreation ground. (The Sunday Times, 30 May 1982) The problem should be immediately obvious. Is a “Cathedral” frame selected? How about a “television watching” frame, a “meeting” frame, a “helicopter” frame, a ‘'recreation ground” frame? These questions are not trivial. After all, it probably is necessary to activate something like a “recreation ground” frame in order to account for the definite description the grass mentioned in the text. Yet a substantial part of such a frame, possibly incorporating a large number of sub-frames covering endless aspects of our stereotypic knowledge of “recreation”, would have no 28


function in our understanding of this piece of text. As Wilks (1979: 153) says, “many frames are called, but few can be chosen”. Despite these problems, and criticisms that frame-theory is “little more than a cumbersome convention for the listing of facts” (Dresher & Homstein, 1976: 357), the basic concept of frames as structured repositories for our conventional knowledge has provided a useful working model for analysts, not only in Al, but also in sociology (e.g. Goffman, 1974) and linguistics (e.g. Fillmore, 1975; Gensler, 1977). Scripts The notion of a script was developed by analogy with Minsky’s frame, but “specialised to deal with event sequences” (Schank & Abelson, 1977). The script concept was used by Abelson (1976) to investigate the relationship between attitudes and behaviour but, when applied to text understanding, it incorporates a particular analysis of language understanding proposed by Schank (1972) as conceptual dependency. Schank set out to represent the meanings of sentences in conceptual terms by providing, for any sentence, a conceptual dependency network called a C-diagram. A C-diagram contains concepts which enter into relations described as dependencies. There is a very elaborate, but manageable, system of semantic primitives for concepts, and labelled arrows for dependencies which we shall not describe here (see Schank 1972,1973, for detailed discussion). We shall simply consider one of Schank’s sentences and his non-diagrammatic version of the cbnceptualisation underlying that sentence. Examples (28) and (28a) are taken from Schank (1973). (28) John ate the ice cream with a spoon. (28a) John ingested the ice cream by transing the ice cream on a spoon to his mouth. (The term “transing” is used here to mean “physically transferring”.) One benefit of Schank’s approach should be immediately clear. In his “conceptual” version (28a) of the sentence (28), he has represented a part of our understanding of the sentence which is not explicit in the sentence-on-the-page, that the action described in (28) was made possible by “getting the ice cream and his mouth in contact” (1973: 201). In this way, Schank incorporates an aspect of our knowledge of the world in his conceptual version of our understanding of sentence (28) 29


which would not be possible if his analysis operated with only the syntactic and lexical elements in the sentence. In a development of the conceptual analysis of sentences, Riesbeck & Schank (1978) describe how our understanding of what we read or hear is very much “expectation based”. That is, when we read example (29), we have very strong expectations about what, conceptually, will be in the x-position. (29) John’s car crashed into a guard-rail. When the ambulance came, it took John to the де. Riesbeck & Schank (1978: 252) point out that our expectations are conceptual rather than lexical and that different lexical realizations in the jc-position (e.g. hospital, doctor, medical centre, etc.) will all fit our expectations. Evidence that people are “expectation-based parsers” of texts is provided by the fact that we can make mistakes in our predictions of what will come next. The example (9) from Chapter 2: John was on his way to school, which first suggested John was a schoolboy, then later, that he was a teacher, is a good illustration of this point. Riesbeck & Schank provide the following example: (30) a. We went on a hunting expedition, b. We shot two bucks. In our conceptualization of this “text”, we no doubt have rifles and bullets and dead animals. We would expect the text to continue in this vein. But when we come to the third sentence (30c), we find that our predictions were wrong and have to go back and re-fashion our conceptualization, c That was all the money we had. In analysing stories, Riesbeck & Schank supplement the conceptual analysis of sentences with a more general understanding device described as a script, which has a junction similar to a Minskyan frame. Whereas a frame is generally treated as an essentially stable set of facts about the world, a script is more programmatic in that it incorporates “a standard sequence of events that describes a situation” (1978: 254). One application of a script is in the “understanding” of newspaper stories about car accidents. Evidence of a computer’s “understanding” of such stories through the application of the script procedure is presented in the capacity to answer questions about a story. Given the story in (31), the computer can answer the questions which follow. Note that the answer to 30


question 1 requires the machine to decide that the passenger and David Hall are the same individual and that the answer to question 2 is the result of an inference that if a person is treated and released from hospital, then he is hurt or slightly injured. (31) Fiday evening a car swerved off Route 69. The vehicle struck a tree. The passenger, a New Jersey man, was killed. David Hall, 27, was pronounced dead at the scene by Dr Dana Blanchard, medical examiner. Frank Miller, 32, Of 593 Foxon Rd, the driver, was taken to Milford hospital by Flanagan Ambulance. He was treated and released... Ql: Was anyone killed? Al: YES, DAVID HALL DIED. Q2: Was anyone hurt? A2: YES, FRANK MILLER WAS SLIGHTLY INJURED. These answers may seem trivially successful to a human understander, yet they would not normally be a product of any analysis which operated on only the syntax and lexis of the sentences in the text. In veiy simple terms, it is not stated in the text that Frank Miller was hurt, so how does the computer (or any other processor) come to know this? It uses a limited subset of its knowledge of the world applied to the piece of text it encounters. Riesbeck & Schank suggest that we do the same, and that their expectation-based analysis presents “a viable theory of how humans process natural language” (1978: 290). Criticism of the claims of Schank and his co-authors could be made in similar terms to those against Minsky, noted earlier. That is, if scripts are stereotypic event-sequences, then would a stereotypic car crash be described at all, since we already have the information in our scripts? The problem of idiosyncratic scripts e.g. Schank’s daughter asking if he was going to get a new key chain to go with his new car (Schank & Abelson, 1977: 68).- is touched on, but not considered at length. It may be, of course, that we all have more idiosyncratic scripts than stereotypic ones. One very specific and serious criticism of Schank’seonceptualdependency theory has been made by Dresher & Horhstein, (1976). Schank states the following condition on the well-formedness of conceptualizations: A C-diagram that contains only the seritentially realized information "will not be well-formed conceptually. That is, a conceptualization is not 31


complete until all the conceptual cases required by the act have been explicated. (1972:569) Dresher & Homstein quite justifiably point out that such a condition is a recipe for endless conceptualizations. If we bring John’s mouth into the conceptualization of sentence (28), quoted earlier in this chapter, do we not also bring in John's hand, his fingers, his arm muscles, his thought processes, and so on, to arrive at a complete conceptualization? This is a serious criticism and raises a problem which exists for virtually every attempt to incorporate world-knowledge in the understanding of discourse. We can see how some extra-linguistic knowledge is involved in our understanding, or our conceptualization, of sentences and we can propose ways of incorporating that knowledge in our analysis. What we have difficulty with is restricting that knowledge to only the relevant details required in the understanding of particular sentences on particular occasions. The outstanding problem for Schank’s theory (and for Minsky, too, as we noted earlier) is to find a principled means of limiting the number of conceptualizations required for the understanding of a Sentence. In more general terms, we require a principled way of constraining the expansion of any analysis which incorporates extralinguistic knowledge in its account of the understanding of linguistic data. Despite this general criticism of the theoretical principles involved in using “scripts”, some empirical research has shown that treating scripts as “action stereotypes” (Bower et al., 1979) for people’s knowledge of routine activities can produce experimental results to support the views of Schank and his collaborators. Bower et al. (1979) found that when they asked subjects to recall texts involving routine activities (e.g. Going to a Restaurant, Grocery Shopping, Visiting a Doctor), their subjects tended to confuse in mempry actions that were stated in the text with actions implied by the “script”. They also found that, when presented with scrambled texts which caused script-actions to be out of predictable sequence, subjects recalled the texts with script-actions in their canonical order. There is, then, some evidence that the script-concept may have some psychological validity, over and above its function as an organizational device in computer data storage. Further evidence is 32


provided by Sanford & Garrod (1981) who base their notion of scenario very much on Schank’s script concept. Mental models A view of how we interpret discourse (and experience) which does not appeal to stereotypic knowledge of fixed storage systems has been put forward by Johnson-Laird in a series of papers. Johnson-Laird (1981a) argues against an approach to the meaning of sentences which depends oft a decomposition of word meaning having to take place. An example of a decomposition view is that of Katz & Fodor (1963) where the “meaning” of man decomposed into human, adult, male. The conceptual dependency type of analysis used by Schank (1972), discussed earlier, is another example. Johnson-Laird proposes that we are indeed capable decomposing word meaning, but that we do not typically do so our normal understanding of sentences. He suggests that a sentence like (36) receives an immediate interpretation which makes sense most people as praise for the book. (36) This book fills a much needed gap. Upon further analysis, however, we can work out that the sentence is actually saying that it is the gap, not the book, which is needed To account for this everyday non-analytic process of comprehension, Johnson-Laird proposes that we use words in a sentence as “cues to build a familiar mental model” (1981a: 122). A mental model is a representation in the form of an internal model of state of affairs characterized by the sentence. We should note that although such models are not described as stereotypic, the term “familiar” is rather smuggled into the description without any account of what “being familiar” is based on. There are, moreover, theoretical problems with the concept of an “internal” model, which Johnson-Laird (1981a: 117) acknowledges. However, he notes that the experimental evidence on instantiation (cf. Anderson & Ortony, 1975; Anderson et al., 1976; Gamham, 1979) supports a view of understanding via mental models, rather than via the decomposition of word meaning. When subjects were asked to recall a sentence like (37), Anderson et al., found that the word shark was a much better recall cue than the word fish. (37) The fish attacked the swimmer. Johnson-Laird accounts for this finding by suggesting that readers interpreted the sentence by constructing a mental model in which the 33


relevant event and entities were represented. We should note that this is, at least, a text-specific model, since it is very easy to imagine texts in which the term fish would not bring shark to mind at all. Johnson-Laird (1980, 1981b) specifically appeals to the ideas of model-theoretic semantics in support of his notion of mental models. In formal semantics, a model structure can be used to represent a possible state of affairs at a particular point in time and space which can correspond to the “meaning” of a sentence (cf. Thomason (ed.)3 1974; Partee (ed.), 1976). We shall not describe formal model- theory in any greater detail here, except to point out that it is not intended as a psychological account of meaning or understanding. As Johnson- Laird observes, mode 1-theory relates language to the world, but not by way of the human mind. What a psychologically interesting model-theory has to be concerned with is that “in so far as natural language relates to the world, it does so through the mind’s innate ability to construct models of reality” (Johnson-Laird, 1981b: 141). These models of reality are, of course, representations of the way the world is. They may differ from one individual to the next. This is unavoidably the case when such models are the result of a listener’s (or reader’s) comprehension of discourse. According to Johnson-Laird (1981b: 139): a major function of language is to enable one person to have another’s experience of the world by proxy: instead of a direct apprehension of a state of affairs, the listener constructs a model of them based on a speaker’s remarks. As a simple example, Johnson-Laird & Gamham (1979) point out that the interpretation of a definite description is not determined by uniqueness in the world, but uniqueness in the local model constructed for the particular discourse. If a speaker says: (38) The man who lives next door drives to work, the hearer may have a model of a particular state of affairs in which there is an individual (neighbour of speaker, has a car, has a job, etc.), but the hearer is unlikely to assume that the speaker has only one neighbour. The proposal that understanding takes place via the construction of mental models leads Johnson-Laird to a view of comprehension and inference which is quite different from those we have already investigated. In this view, there is a level of comprehension which is based on the construction of an initial mental model which, as we noted 34


with example (36), need not result from any elaborate consideration of the text encountered. There are, however, other levels of comprehension which result from the manipulation of the mental model constructed and which can lead to the abandonment of the initial model and the construction of another; In this process of manipulation, there are no rules of inference, there are only procedures for testing the constructed mental model to find out if it fits the state of affairs described by the text. As an illustration of this process, Johnson-Laird (1980) takes an example (39) of the type used in discussions of syllogistic inference. (39) AM of the singers are professors. All of the poets are professors. Given the pair of premises in (39), we can construct a model with, for instance, six individuals in a room and assign the roles of singer, poet and professor to those individuals in a way that fits the state of affairs described by the two sentences in (39). One model which immediately comes to mind is that, for all six individuals, the following representation (40) is true: (40) singer = professor = poet According to this model, the conclusion that all of tile singers are poets or all of the poets are singers is justified. Johnson-Laird & Steedman (1978) report that, for many people, this conclusion is the natural one. It is possible to test the model in (40) against the state of affairs described in (39) and find that it is not necessarily a correct representation. By manipulating the model, it is possible to arrive at a representation (41) in which a is true for three individuals and b is true for the other three. (41) a. singer = professor b. poet = professor On the basis of (41), one might conclude that none of the singers are poets. On further manipulation, one might arrive at a model (42) in which a ft true for four individuals, b is true for one, and c is true for the other one. (42) a. singer = professor = poet b. singer = professor c. poet = professor So, one eould conclude that some of the singers are poets. 35


It should be clear that the sentences in (39) can give rise to several different versions of a mental model involving the six individuals with different identities. The process of manipulation of the model which has just been described is characterized by Johnson-Laird (1980: 81) as “testing your mental model to destruction”. The discourse analyst may not be as interested as the logician incarrying out the ‘^testing” procedure to its extreme, but he must acknowledge that Johnson-Laird’s notion of understanding via the construction and manipulation of mental models provides a useful metaphor for the way a piece of text can be “understood” at different levels. It also accommodates that aspect of discourse understanding (which we have argued for already in section 6.2) which allows interpretations in different receivers’ minds to differ from the interpretation intended by the discourse producer. The individual hearer’s mental model of the discourse can differ from the speaker’s, and there is no suggestion that the text is, in any sense, the model. It should be apparent from the consideration of the sentences in (39) how Johnson-Laird intends us to understand his claim that, in the mental mpdel approach to understanding, there are no rules of inference. Whereas the formulae in (40), (41) and (42) are normally considered inferences from (39), in Johnson-Laird’s analysis they are different versions of a mental model for the text. That is, what we normally describe as a process of inferring one state of affairs on the basis of another is presented in this alternative view as building a model of one state of affairs, or building another model from another state of affairs. From a discourse analyst’s point of view, this distinction is of little practical significance. Johnson-Laird’s view of discourse understanding via mental models is never described in terms of the sets of stereotypical elements found in “frames” or the sets of characteristic events of a narrative “schema”. Possibly for this reason, the practical details o f mental models remain elusive. They seem to represent a way of thinking about how we understand discourse rather than a way of doing analysis of discourse. Yet the problem we have frequently noted with other methods of representing discourse processing and understanding - that of fixing the constraints on what knowledge we use - must also exist for mental models. When we construct a mental model for a piece of discourse, we 36


use some of our pre-existing knowledge and experience to get a “picture” of the state of affairs described by the discourse. How is it that we do not use all of our pre-existing knowledge? Putting this question in more specific terms, will a mental model theory predict that, in asking subjects to recall a sentence like Thefish attacked the swimmer, not only is shark a better cue than fish, but that blood отteeth or ocean or bite or splash are also better? At the moment, we have no answers to these questions: As it is presently described, the theory of mental models actually predicts massively detailed mental representations of any event encountered, whether in life or via text. Admittedly, one of the advantages of the concept of a mental model is that it allows for a richer, representation than the rather bare outlines of the stereotypic versions found \n scripts and scenarios. Th& scenario example, quoted earlier as (32), to demonstrate the “In court - the lawyer’ connection, seems to describe a strangely empty andnon-detailed court-scene which is at odds with the experience of most people. However, the unconstrained potential of the mental model concept takes us to the other extreme. It would lead to a pathological inability to process text at all. A welldocumented case history of an individual whose “mental models” were unconstrained is presented in Luria (1969). The incapacitating effects of this lack of constraints can be detected in the following account: Last year Iwas read an assignment having to do with a merchant who had sold so many meters of fabric . . . As soon as I heard the words merchant and sold, I saw both the shop and the storekeeper, who was standing behind the counter with only the upper part of his body visible to me. He was dealing with a factory representative. Standing at the door of the shop 1 could see the buyer, whose back was toward me. When he moved off a little to the left, I saw not only the factory but also some account books - details that had nothing to do with the assignment. So I couldn’t get the gist of the story. (Luria, 1969: 66) The outstanding problem for Luria’s patient, and also for the discourse analyst who wishes to represent the interaction between previous'knowledge I experience and the comprehension of the discourse at hand, is to reach a working compromise. lathis compromise representation, there should be enough richness of detail to capture the potential complexity of our pre-existing knowledge / experience, but 37


there should also be a constraint on how much of this richness of detail we actually use in our processing of the discourse we-encounter. (Brown G., Jule G. Discourse Analysis. —Cambridge: Camb. Univ. Press, 1996.- pp. 238-245, 250-256)

On the Distinctions Between Semantics and Pragmatics J. Allwood The trichotomy of syntax, semantics and pragmatics is one of the most popular ways of subdividing the study of human languages. It was originally suggested by Charles Morris in Morris (1938) and later again in a revised form in Morris (1946). The term pragmatics was proposed by Morris in 1938 as a tribute to G. S. Peirce’s philosophy of pragmatism* to designate the study of signs and their relationship to interpreters. In 1946 Morris changed this slightly to make pragmatics the study of the origin, use and effect of signs. One of the main differences between the two versions is that in the second version the term use also includes the production of signs. This term semantics in 1938 as used to designate the more abstract study of the relationship between signs and the objects they signify (leaving out the interpreter). In 1946 this was changed to the study of signification in all modes of signifying. The second version again widens the definition given in the 1938-version. Syntax (or syntactics (Morns (1938)) in both the 1938 and 1946 version was to designate the even more abstract study of the relationship between signs without taking either their signification, origin, use or effect into account. Rudolf Carnap (1942) made use of Morris’ trichotomy and thus contributed greatly to its becoming widely accepted. In doing this Carnap, however, introduced a distinction of his own, between a pure and a descriptive way of pursuing the three types of study. A pure study uses normative regimentation and stipulative definitions in order to clarify concepts which are thought to be fundamental to an area. In semantics, for example, such concepts are truth and reference. A descriptive study, on the other hand» tries to capture empirical data in their fullness, thereby describing also phenomena which can be given no clear explications or definitions. For Carnap a pure study was possible both with regard to syntax and semantics but hot to pragmatics which seemed to him only open to description. In fact, Carnap, at this stage, > 38


regarded all descriptive studies as pragmatical since they all in some sense involve interpretation, origin, use or effect of signs. Later, however, Carnap (1952) came to hold that the analysis of concepts like “belief’ and “intention” required the development of a pure pragmatics. With work such as Bar-Rillel (1954) and R. M. Martin (1959), formal or pure pragmatics came into existence, primarily, as the study of indexicals, i.e. expressions such as personal pronouns, time and place adverbials. This was then further developed in Lewis (1970), Montague (1968) and (1970). In the trichotomy proposed by Morris, syntax, semantics and pragmatics are seen as successively more abstract levels of enquiry. We can now ask what the abstraction is based on. As far as the distinction between syntax and semantics goes the prevailing view is that syntax disregards meaning in favor of the study of “purely formal phenomena”. When it comes to the distinction between semantics and pragmatics this seems mostly to be seen as an abstraction of meaning along the dimension of context and situation dependence. But it has also been argued that it concerns an abstraction of the cognitive aspects of meaning from those of emotion and attitude or as Carnap (1942) seems to have held a distinction between a normative and a descriptive study of meaning. My remarks in this paper will mainly be concerned with situation dependence and only to some extent deal with the latter two ways of establishing the distinction. The most common way of viewing the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is in terms of situation or context dependence of meaning. Semantics is supposed to be concerned with those aspects of meaning which are situation independent while pragmatics deals with those aspects of meaning which are dependent on situational factors. In pure semantics, situational independence has mostly been achieved through normative, stipulative definitions of such notions as truth, reference and logical form, while in descriptive semantics one has wanted to attain situational independence either by importing notions of pure semantics, claiming that there is no essential difference between a formal language and a natural language (Montague (1970)) or by claiming that meaning which is literal or conventional can be studied independently of context of use. Both of these alternate conceptions of situation independent meaning are supposed to differentiate so-called 39


inherent meaning of linguistic expressions from phenomena such as vagueness, ambiguity, metaphor, suggestion, implicature, emotional and attitudinal associations which all are seen as more fleeting and, accidental and dependent on situation and not characteristic of the “real” meaning of linguistic expressions. (W. Klein and W. Levelt. Crossing the Boundaries in Linguistics, pp. 177-189. Copyright 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.) The Domain of Pragmatics B. Fraser The essence of language is human activity - activity on the part of one individual to make himself understood by another, and activity on the part of that other to understand what was in the mind of the first. These two individuals, the producer and the recipient of language, or as we may more conveniently call them, the speaker and the hearer, and their relations to one another, should never be lost sight of if we want to understand the nature of language and of that part of language which is dealt with in grammar. Jesperson: The Philosophy of Grammar, p. 17 Introduction Consider the following facts about the use of English: “How are you?” counts as a greeting, not a farewell. “Can you pass the .salt?” is frequently used as a request, while “Are you able to pass the salt?” is not. “John is married to his work” involves a metaphor. “I will be there” is used as a promise, a warning, a threat or a prediction, but not as a criticism or a request. “Well” at the beginning of an utterance may signal a sense of contemplation, annoyance, or surprise. Each of these facts goes beyond what we would want to ascribe as knowledge a native speaker has about the grammar of English. Knowing a grammar, at least as the term is used in contemporary linguistics, is to know the rules for characterizing language form: Knowing facts of the sort presented above, however, involves knowing rules for language use as well. Although we communicate in many different modes, linguistic communication occurs only in those cases in which we intend using 40


language to convey certain attitudes to our hearer (for example, that we want our utterance to have the force of request) and the hearer recognizes what these attitudes are, based upon what we have said. Such communication is based on but certainly not exhausted by what we say when we speak. On the other hand, such communication does not extend to how we have affected the hearer because we have said something and have communicated our intended force (attitude). Any effects beyond the successful recognition of the speaker’s intentions, such as convincing, annoying, or confusing the hearer, are not part of communication but the result of communication, or perhaps the result of failure to communicate. Pragmatics is the theory of linguistic communication. My purpose in this paper is to present an overview of what is involved in linguistic communication: what can be communicated; how the speaker goes about accomplishing the intended communication; and why certain strategies are selected under particular circumstances to bring about the communication. Before embarking on this overview, I want to make several clarifying comments. First, when talking about linguistic communication, I am referring to the case in which the speaker is attempting to communicate to the hearer by relying at least in part on the semantic interpretation of the linguistic form uttered. For example, to shout, “The ice is thin”, may linguistically communicate a warning; to comment, “That Was certainly a dumb thing for me to do”, may be taken-as an apology, depending on the situation in which I spoke, and my manner of speaking. What does not fall within this notion of linguistic communication, however, would be my announcing to you that I have arrived home by beginning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag upon entering the house. I have successfully announced my arrival, but not linguistically. Second, linguistic communication succeeds only when the speaker has an attitude which he intends to convey to the hearer in using language, and the hearer recognizes this attitude. If, for example, I am terribly embarrassed by a past action and comment on my thoughtlessness, you might take me as issuing an apology. But only if I intend to apologize have I communicated an apology to you. You may have correctly understood my feelings, but not by way of linguistic communication. Similarly, if I say, “I will take you skiing for your 41


birthday”, intending it to be a promise, but you hear it as a threat since you abhor skiing, I will have failed to communicate either a threat or a promise: I did not intend the former, you did not recognize my intent of the latter. Finally, there is an area that is specifically excluded from the theory, namely, the theory of conversation. Schegloff (1972), among others, has studied the organization of conversations and suggested that normal conversation may include elements such as openings, closings, repairs, responses, discussions, explanations, clarifications, and a variety of other conversational acts. Consider the utterance, “Good morning. How are you?” This counts as a greeting just as the utterance of “Excuse me. Could I talk to you for a moment?” may count as an apology followed by a request. But the fact that either of these utterances can count as a conversational opening is not an aspect of linguistic communication, even if the hearer recognizes the speaker’s purpose in uttering them. At best, they communicate a proposal to engage in conversation. Utterances intended to count as conversational openings, for example, do not count as such simply in virtue of the speaker’s intending it and the hearer’s recognizing this intention, as do apologies or requests. A conversational opening comes about because the speaker says something which is (usually) indirectly interpreted as a proposal to open the conversation, and only after the proposal is accepted can the initial utterance count as the opening. Such acts are constructed within the theory of conversational interaction. (Language and Communication. Ed. by J.C.Richards and R. W.Schmidt. London, NY: Longman, 1983. - pp.29 -32.)

Speech Acts and Second-Language Learning R. W. Schmidt and J.C.Richards What is a speech act? Speech-act theory has to do with the functions and uses of language; so in the broadest sense we might say that speech acts are all the acts we perform through speaking, all the things we do when we speak. Such a definition is too broad for most purposes, however, because we use speech in most human activities. We use language to build bridges, to consolidate political regimes, to carry on arguments, to convey information from one person to another, to entertain -in short, to 42


communicate. We use speech in ceremonies, games, recipes, and lectures. On some occasions, for example, social gatherings, we use language successively to introduce one person to another, carry on conversation^, tell jokes, criticize and praise third parties both present and absent,'expound on favorite topics, and say farewell. We could extend such lists indefinitely, but as Halliday (1973) has pointed out, such lists do not by themselves tell us vety much, for the innumerable social purposes for which adults use language are not represented directly, one-to-one, in the language system. Hymes (1972) has proposed a useful distinction between speech situations, speech events, and speech acts. Within a community one finds many situations associated with speech, such as fights, hunts, meals, parties. But it is not profitable to convert such situations into part of a sociolinguistic description by simply relabelling them in terms of speech, for such situations are not in themselves governed by consistent rules throughout. The term speech event can be restricted to activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech, events such as two-party conversations (face-torface or on the telephone), lectures, introductions, religious rites, and the like. This notion of speech event is related to the traditional concept of genre, though Hymes argues that the two must be treated as analytically independent, and a great deal of empirical research is needed to clarify the relationship between the terms. Speech acts (in a narrow sense now) are the minimal terms of the set: speech situation/event/act. When we speak we perform acts, such as giving reports, making statements, asking questions, giving warnings, making promises, approving, regretting, and apologizing. Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), who have analyzed classroom transcripts, also propose a ‘4op-down� analysis, beginning with the social occasion (the lesson) as the outermost analytic frame and successively dividing and subdividing the sequence of discourse down to the smallest unit, the act, which they define as the most minimal unit of speaking that can be said to have a function. Acts are labeled according to discourse function, for example, elicitation, question. In this chapter we focus primarily on individual speech acts. However, it is necessary to look somewhat beyond the isolated act represented by the individual sentence, primarily the verb. Austin (1962)'pointed out 43


that there are many speech acts (illocutionary acts, in his terminology),. and in English there are many verbs that refer to them. Consider for example just the related set: ask, request, direct, require, order, command, suggest, beg, plead, implore, pray. Austin claimed that there are over a thousand such verbs in English. But although English verbs provide a useful initial taxonomy for speech acts, the acts are not in fact equivalent to the verbs that frequently name them. Searle (1976) points out that many verbs are not markers of illocutionary force but of some other feature of the speech act. Insist and suggest, for example, mark degree of intensity but do not mark separate speech-act functions or illocutionary points. Both may be used with directive function (“I suggest/insist that we go to the movies”) or with representative function (“I suggest/insist that the answer is found on page 16”), We need to recognize also that speech acts are not identifiable with the sentence or with any other level of grammatical description. Hymes’s (1972) position is that the level of speech acts mediates between the usual levels of grammar and the rest of a speech event in that it implicates both linguistic form and social norm. Whether or not a particular utterance has the status of a request, for example, may depend upon a conventional linguistic formula (“How about picking me up early this afternoon?”), but it may also depend upon the social relationship between speaker and hearer. It needs to be recognized too that speech acts occur within discourse, and that the interpretation and negotiation of speech-act force is often dependent on the discourse or transactional context. As a minimum, we need to consider the fact that talk is often organized into two-part exchanges. As Goffman (1976) points out, this organizing principle follows from very fundamental requirements of talk as a communication system. A speaker needs to know whether his message has been received and understood; a recipient needs to show that he has received and understood the message. We therefore must recognize such “adjacency pairs” as summons-answer (Schegloff, 1968), statement-reply (Goffman, 1976), question-answer, request-refusal of request, and the like. An investigation of speech acts therefore leads naturally into questions of aot sequencing (events) and contexts (speech settings or situations). Different participants have different amounts and different types of talking to do, as well as different topics to talk about. Within speech 44


events there are norms for opening and closing sequences, sequencing rules, and distribution frequencies and probabilities for particular speech acts. “Assigning the value command to any of a range of possible utterances (“hot dog”; “that one”; “please bring me X”; a deictic gesture) is a function of recognizing the social world of the restaurant with the rights, duties and social relationship between the participants; as well as that of being aware of the discoursal position of the “act of commanding” within the transactional process” (Candlin 1978). Both speech acts and speech events have been studied extensively in recent years and have constituted topical focuses for scholars from a great number of disciplines. Speech events have been investigated by anthropplogists and ethnographers (Albert 1964, Gumperz and Hymes 1972, Sanches and Blount 1975), folklorists (Abrahams 1962, Dundes, Leach, and Ozkok 1972), literary critics (M. Pratt 1977), and sociologists (Allen and Guy 1974). The most detailed and perhaps the most provocative analyses of speech events have been provided by those sociologists who work within the area of sociology termed ethnomethodology, the primary goal of which is to give rigorous sociological formulation to the interactional basis of the things people say and do in the settings of everyday life. Working primarily from transcripts of natural conversations, characterizations have been developed for a variety of conversational activities: turn taking (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974), story telling and identity negotiations (Sacks 1972), opening and closing conversations (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), telephone conversations (Schegloff 1968), and many other aspects of the establishment and management o f social relations through conversational roles (Garfinkel 1967, Gofftnan 1972 and 1976, Sudnow 1972, Schenkein 1978). Speech acts, on the other hand, have been studied primarily by philosophers of language (Austin 1962, Grice 1968 and 1975, Searle 1969 and 1976) and linguists (Ross 1970, Gordon and Lakoff 1971, Cole and Morgan 1975). Theoretical questions: units and categories For linguistic analysis, the units of concern are sentences. Contrasts between well-formed and ill-formed (ungrammatical) sentences are primary data. Although the grammatical paradigm has been followed by many linguists who have dealt with issues in speech-act theory (see most of the papers in Cole and Morgan 1975) and although basic semantic 45


differences are indeed likely to have syntactic consequences (Searle 1976), speech acts are in essence acts, not sentences. Speech acts cannot be equated with utterances either, for we often perform more than one act (e.g., inform and request) with a single utterance: for example, “I’m hungry.” Finally, speech acts cannot be equated with the notion of turn as an interactional unit, as it may. take several speaker turns to accomplish a single act, or, conversely, several acts may be performed within a single speaker turn. So far we have presented only a very vague description of what speech acts are. Perhaps the notion is best clarified by examples, with some effort to group together illocutionary acts into major types. Searle (1976) presents the clearest taxonomy. For Searle, the basis for classification is “illocutionary point” or purpose of the act, from the speaker's perspective. According to Searle, speech acts can be grouped into a small number of basic types based on speaker intentions: Representatives. One of the basic things we do with language is telling people how things are.We assert, claim, say, report, and the like. The point or рифове of this class of representatives is to commit the speaker in varying degrees (suggest, doubt, and deny are members of this class also) to the truth of something. One test of a representative is whether it can be characterized as true or false. Directives. When we use language, we do not just refer to the world and make statements about it. Among our most important uses for language is trying to get people to do things. The class of directives includes all speech acts whose primary point is that they count as attempts on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something. Suggestions, requests, and commands are all directives. They differ in the force of the attempt but are all attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. Commissives. Commissives are those illocutionary acts whose point is to commit the speaker to do something. Promises and threats both fall into this category, the difference between them being the speaker’s assumption about whether or not the promised action is desired by the hearer. Searle makes an interesting point that there is a difference in the direction of fit between the words of a speech act and the state of affairs in the world when comparing representatives with directives and 46


commissives. With representatives the direction of fit is words-to-world, that is, what is at issue is whether the words uttered (“The world is flat”) match the world. With both representatives and commissives the direction of fit is world-to-words. Future actions are to be done in accordance with words previously uttered. The basic distinction between requests and commissives is. that hearer actions are the point of requests and other directives, whereas speaker actions are the issue with promises and other commissives. Expressives. The point of this class is to express feelings and attitudes about states of affairs. We apologize for things we have done, deplore other people’s actions, regret, thank, welcome, and so on. With expressives there is no direction of fit, but the state of affairs specified in the following proposition is simply assumed to be true. Note also that although representatives, directives, and commissives are all associated with a consistent psychological dimension (belief, wish, and intent, respectively), the psychological states expressed by expressives are extremely varied. Declarations. Some speech acts bring about changes in the world simply through their successful execution. “You’re fired”, says the boss, and the employee must start the search for a new position. “I do”, says the bride and grpom, and after the presiding official’s (secular or clerical) speech the marriage has jtaken place. The defining characteristic of this class is that the performance brings about the correspondence between the words and the world. This class is closest to Austin’s (1962) original notion of &performative, an act of doing something in the world rather than an act of saying alone. ( The Context o f Language Teaching. Ed. by J.C.Richards. Cambridge:: CUP, 1991. -p p . 101-105.)

Performative Utterances J.L. Austin The notions of “a performative” has not yet received a more or less exact definition. The very idea of performating or canying out a verbal act in the process of interpersonal communication remains vague in its interpretation. Performative utterances are too specific to be classed under “aictional utterances” though predicates in such utterances are represented by 47


actional verbs. An insight into their peculiarities makes us aware of the fact that the verb's which can be used in explicitly performative utterances have two distinct properties. Firstly, they are used to denote an act which can be carried out by speaking only in the process of communication. Secondly, the action is not so much nominated and denoted by the verb in the statement as performed by the Speaker with the help of the statement. Thus, I promise to come soon is not a statement describing a promise but an act of promising itself carried but by the speaker. Pertormative utterances are non-statements in which the verb describes the action performed by the subject. The invariant pattern according to which performative utterances are formed is the regular N + Vfin construction. But there are certain restrictions as to the filling of the constituent positions and certain appropriacy conditions for the use of performative utterances. The subject in performative utterances is always / and the predicate is always in the present tense form which indicates the moment of uttering and the time of that verbal action which is performed with the help of the given utterance. The appropriacy conditions for the Vfin to function as a performative verb are extralingual conditions of situational character. Thus, the utterance I order a cup of tea will be a performative utterance if it is uttered under conditions appropriate for performing an act of "ordering”. Similarly, there should be, for instance, appropriate conditions for the functioning of the performative utterance I announce the meeting open. In a word, the predicate (Vfin) can be identified as the performative verb (Vperf) only in case it represents a mental and verbal act undertaken’ by the speaker under quite appropriate situational conditions. Functional ambiguity is frequent with English verbs which can occur as performative and non-performative predicates. Sometimes the functional ambiguity of a verb can be obliterated by the use of Continuous instead of Present Tense. When used in Continuous sOme verbs lose their performativeness and behave like assertive verbs proper. Compare: I announce the Meeting open. (Оголошую з'борй йіДкритіїмй.) I warn that you willfall. (Попереджаю, що ти впадеш1.) The performative utterance (I + Vperf) is rarely used isolatedty, as it is, because there should be that “saying” with the help of which a verbal 48


act is performed. There are explicitly and implicitly performative utterances. In the utterances with e x p l i c i t performativeness the performative part I + Vperf is used with a formular saying in case it can be used under different appropriacy conditions. But the formula itself can reveal its performativeness of a means for performing a particular verbal act. hi such cases the “performative” is zero, or rather, it is implicated in the semantics of the formular (cliche) saying. We agreed to dwell upon the functional peculiarities of English utterances in accordance with the subject - predicate relations. It is sufficient to emphasize that performative utterances reveal the actionality of the predicate in a specific way, the utterance itself being a means for the speaker to cany out this or that verbal act. C o m p a r e: I warn you that your friend will, not standfor you. (to warn = Vperf) I am warning you thatyour friend will not standfor you. (to warn - Vnon-perf) Since performative utterances are non-statements they cannot be assessed as true or false but rather as appropriate or inappropriate because in keeping with the speech-act interpretation the values “true” and “false” can be assigned only to utterances which constitute a description o f some event and are statements on the part of die speaker. All verbs of “belief’ share with verbs of “saying” their performative character but their performativeness, if any, is too specific. The present tense of such verbs signifies “present moment” coinciding with the time' of the utterance. The verb itself indicates “belief ’ as it is: 1 think she is right (Думаю, вона має рацію.) I suspect she is right. (Підозрюю, що вона має рацію.) The consideration Of performatives alongside actional verbs seems efficient for the contrastive exposvite of their semantic and functional differences. In performative utterances the predicate expressed by a verb with performative power is neutralized in its logical predicate function because it does not predicate activity1over the subject. The performative is a specific lingual entity which is used intentionally by the speaker as an instrument in performing a verbal act. The performative is not the verb itself but die combination 49


I + Vperfas a whole where the element / is the marker of the first-person agent of the action. It is obligatory for English performative utterances due to the analytical character of its structure. In synthetic languages the first-person subject with the verbs used performatively can be and, regularly, is indicated by inflection. (J.L.Austin. How to Do Things with Words. —Oxford U. - New York, 1973.) Discourse versus Text D.Nimcm Consider the following statements, which have been extracted from,a number of different sources. 1. discourse A continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative. (Crystal 1992) 2. text A piece of naturally occurring spoken, written, or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis. It is often a language unit with a definable Communicative function, such as a conversation, a poster. (Crystal 1992) 3. We shall use text as a technical term, to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act. (Brown and Yule 1983) 4. discourse: stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive. (Cook 1989) 5. text: a stretch of language interpreted formally, without context. (Cook 1989) From these extracts it can be seen that there is disagreement about the meaning of these two terms. For some writers, the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably; for others, discourse refers to language in context. All, however, seem to agree that both text and discourse need to be defined in terms of meaning, and that coherent texts/pieces of discourse are those that form a meaningful whole. Let us examine some of the claims and assumptions in the quotes. ASSERTION: the terms text and discourse are interchangeable. While some commentators appear to use the terms interchangeably, others draw a clear distinction between them. Some people argue that discourse is language in action, while a text is the written record of that interaction. According to this view, discourse brings together language, the individuals producing the language, and the context within which the 50


language is used. Yet other linguists tend to avoid using the temi discourse altogether, preferring the term text for all recorded instances of language in Use. In this book, I shall, use the term text to refer to any written record of communicative event. The event itself may involve oral language (e.g. a sermon, a casual conversation, a shopping transaction) or written language (e.g. a poem, a newspaper advertisement, a wall poster, a shopping list, a novel). I shall reserve the term discourse to refer to the interpretation of the communicative event in context. In this book, I shall discuss aspects of both text analysis and discourse analysis - that is, I shall deal with both the linguistic analysis of texts and an interpretation of those texts. ASSERTION: discourse analysis involves the study of language in use. The assertion here is that the analysis of discourse involves the analysis of language in use —compared with an analysis of the structural proprieties of language divorced from their communicative functions (which Cook, among others, refers to as text analysis). All linguists from the phoneticians, through the grammarian, to the discourse analysts - are concerned with identifying regularities and patterns in language. However, in the c^se of the discourse analyst, the ultimate aim of this analytical work is both to show and to interpret the relationship between these regularities and the meanings and purposes expressed through discourse. ASSERTION: a text or piece of discourse consists of more than one sentence and the sentences combine to form a meaningful whole. The notion that a text should form a “meaningful whole� - that is, convey a complete message - is commonsensical, although it is not always easy to determine where one text ends and another begins. The notion that a text should consist of more than one sentence or structure is arguable. Consider the following: STOP!, GO!, WAIT!, OUCH! Each of these sentences consists of a single word. However, they are, nonetheless, complete texts in their own right. Each conveys a coherent message, and can therefore be said to form a meaningful whole. I believe that, given an appropriate context, many words can function as complete texts. (NunanD. Introducing Discourse Analysis. -L .: Penguin, 1993. PP. 5-7) 51


The Structure of Conversations B.Spolsky Linguists have as a general rule focused on the smaller units of language like sounds, words and sentences, leaving it to other scholars to examine the larger units that make up speech events. In the case of the written language, the study of texts and genres has been the task of the literary scholar. There is also a crossover field of stylistics and poetics where occasionally linguists and literary scholars study the same objects and more occasionally talk to each other about their different views. Oral literary texts were also studied by folklorists and literary scholars, but the study of natural chunks of spoken language was generally ignored by linguists until ethnographers, sociologists and sociolinguists started to explore its structure. Because so much earlier linguistic analysis was based on the written language, it is understandable that the sentence should have been considered as the important unit to study. But sentences are less useful in the study of speech, for if you look at the verbatim transcription of a normal conversation, you will see how few sentences are finished. More usefully, the conversational interchange is the basic unit of the spoken language. Its structure was first teased out in some innovative studies of telephone conversations, where it was shown that a normal telephone conversation has a number of distinct parts: Who

Utterance

Coihment

Caller Other Caller Other Caller Other Caller Caller

(dials; phone rings) Hello? Hello, this is Joe. Is that Bill? Yes. The meeting js still on? Yes. I’ll see you there. OK. Bye.

This is the summons Answer Identification Identity stage Message Acknowledgement Close Hangs up

How do we know that telephone conversations are rule-governed behaviour? One quick way is to imagine what is likely to happen if someone doesn’t follow one of the rules we propose. If when you make a 52


telephone call, you hear the receiver being lifted but no one speaks, the conversation is usually stuck. You will usually issue another summons, saying something like “Hello! Are you there?” If, on the other hand, like many children who have not learned the rules yet, you start speaking as soon as the receiver is lifted, not waiting for the answerer to say something, there is a moment of confusion. If you call a number and hear a voice saying “I’m busy at the moment. Please call back” or “I’m not here at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep”, уоц assume you are talking to a machine and behave accordingly. To hang up without a formal close is considered abrupt and insulting behaviour. There is a great deal of culturally and socially determined variation in the possible choices within the pattern set out here, In England, people commonly answer the phone by reciting their telephone number. Telephone operators in offices are trained to answer by identifying their employer: “English Department: Good morning!” Intercom calls are answered with “Yes” rather than “Hello”. Asking “Is X there?” is interpreted as asking to speak to X. There are national differences in these rules. In some countries, it is considered impolite to ask to speak to someone else before initiating a series of polite social interchanges with the person answering. The development of answering machines and of voice-mail is adding new structures to the rules, setting new challenges for the novice or the conservative. The important notion from our point of view is that there is a formal structure to conversations, in part determined by the nature of the event (until the answerer says something, the caller has no one to talk to), and in part determined by social rules (what it is appropriate to say to specific people in defined circumstances). This quick analysis of the telephone conversation demonstrates the existence of socially structured rules for conversational interchanges. There have been studies of various aspects of conversation, such as the nature of service encounters (such as between a customer and a seller), the rules for turn-taking and interruption, the organization of invitations, the normal patterns of social intercourse in casual conversations. Service encounters also have a fairly straightforward underlying structure. The first element is similar to the bjell ringing in a telephone conversation: engaging the attention of the person meant to give the service. The task here is to establish the charnel between speaker and 53


hearer. This varies according to the social situation and cultural pattern. In some cultures and situations, it leads to a preliminary social exchange; in others, it involves simply catching the eye of the clerk or ticket-seller and making a gesture without saying anything; Shop-keepers in the Middle East remark on the brusqueness of tourists who start their conversation by pointing to something and saying “How much?” Their normal conversational interchanges starts with a formal set of greeting, including enquiries after the health of the parties and their presumed families, comments on the weather or some other neutral subject, and finally a mention that there is some commercial рифове to the event. In other words, they require that the topic be broached only after a social exchange. One kind of service encounter that has been highly developed in some societies is the process of bargaining, where the two parties seek to arrive at a price that satisfies both. In Middle Eastern usage, this often involves appeals to a neutral bystander, who initially is expected to agree with the buyer that the first price is too high, but is ultimately expected to confirm that the seller’s last price is a fair one. This kind of negotiation is even more highly developed in industrial bargaining and in diplomatic exchanges. Turn-taking, the question of who speaks, is one of the most intriguing aspects of conversational interchange. The physical constraint is obvious. If two people are speaking at once, they and others find it difficult to understand everything said. In various formal situations, there are clear rules on the order of speaking. In a classroom, teachers claim the right to control turn-taking. The teacher speaks more or less when he or she wants, and grants permission to students to talk. In a parliament or other public meeting, a chairperson is given the authority to determine who can speak and for how long. In trials, there are clear rules on who speaks first, who has the last word, who may ask questions, and who must answer them. Lay witnesses are often confused and usually at a disadvantage in their lack of understanding of these rules. In informal conversations and informal meetings, the issue of turntaking is often quite complex, depending on power and status. Who has the floor (the right to talk at any given moment) varies according to rules of the social group. Once someone has the floor, it is possible to try to interrupt, but a speaker can ignore this. Silence sometimes leaves the 54


floor open, but there are tum-holders - ways of signalling that the speaker intends to continue after a break - like “umm. . or avoidance of a final intonation pattern. (Spolsky B. Sociolinguistics. Oxford: OUP, 1998. -p p . 16-19)

Conversational Analysis J.C. Richards and R W. Schmidt Adjacency pairs are utterances produced by two successive speakers such that the second utterance is identified as related to the first as an expected follow-up. The two form a pair, the first utterance constituting afirst pair part and the next utterance constituting a second pair part. Coulthard (1977) describes adjacency pairs as “the basic structural unit in conversation�. Some examples of adjacency pairs are: Greeting-Greeting A: Hello. B: Hi. Summons-Answer A: Jimmy! B: Coming mother. Question-Answer A: Is that what you mean? B: Yes. Farewell-Farewell A: OK, see ya. B: So long. According to Schegloff and Sacks (1973), the basic rule of adjacency pair operation is that when a speaker produces a recognizable first pair part, that speaker should stop talking and the conversational partner should produce a recognizable second pair part. Adjacency pairs thus provide for turn-taking, and also prescribe the type of talking that the next talker can do. Questions are to be answered, and usually are. When a speaker fails to provide the proper second pair part, this is often noticed and commented on. For other adjacency pairs, there is much more freedom for conversationalistsresponding to first pair parts, with several options -available as second pair parts: Compliment-Acceptance 55


A: That’s a nice shirt. В: Thanks. -Agreement В: It is quite nice, isn’t it. -Rejection B: Well, I think it makes me look old. -Shift B: Judy found it for me. -Return B: Thanks, I like yours too. Complaint-Apology A: You ate the cake I left in the fridge! B: Sorry. -Denial B: No I didn’t, it must have been Susan. -Excuse B: You shouldn’t have left it there. -Justify В: I was hungry. It was just a small piece anyway. -Challenge B: So what? Offer-Accept A: Like a lift? B: You saved my life. -Reject: Thanks, but I’m waiting for my friend. Request-Grant A: Can you mail these for me, please? B: Sure. -Put off B: Sure, but I won’t have time today. -Challenge B: Why do you always ask me to mail them for you? -Refusal B: Sorry, but I won’t be near the Post Office. For language learning and teaching there are several possible areas of difficulty with adjacency pairs. First is the fact that a particular utterance may be intended as one of several first pair parts of adjacency pairs. “Hello” may be a greeting, or a summons (“Hello . . . anybody home?”), or an answer to a summons, as when answering the telephone. Questions may be information questions, or requests for action (“Could you do that for me?”) or criticisms (“Why did you do that?”) etc. In language teaching, we tend to treat all questions, particularly yes/no questions, as if they belonged to a single adjacency pair, namely “request for information - answer” (Richards 1977). Thus we teach students to reply to yes/no questions with yes or no plus repetition of the verb or auxiliary used in the question. As a consequence, many students are only capable of short stilted replies such as Yes, I can or No, I can’t, which while 56


grammatically correct, may be conversationally inappropriate as second part constituents of adjacency pairs. Students need a large stock of adjacency pairs and practice in using them in a wide range of situations if they are to be comfortable conversationalists. (Language and Communication. Ed. by J.C.Richards and R. W.Schmidt. London and New York: Longman, J983. -pp. 128-130.)

Linguistic Criticism R. Fowler According to philosopher H.P.Grice, an implicature is a proposition emerging from something that is said, but not actually stated by the words uttered, nor logically derivable from them. It must therefore be a product of the relationship between utterance and context; and a vital part of context would be the knowledge and motives of speaker and addressee. H.P.Grice suggests that conversation takes place under the guidance of a cooperative principle which binds speakers to express themthelves in such a way as not to impede interpretation - and hearers to assume that whatever is addressed to them is designed to make sense, so that they make an effort to find an interpretation even when the language does not offer difficulties. The speaker’s obligations are summarized by H.P.Grice under four maxims: 1. QUANTITY Make your contribution as informative as is required. Do not make your contribution more informative than it is required. 2. QUALITY Try to make your contribution one that is true: do not say what you believe to be false; do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 3. RELATION Be relevant. 4. MANNER Be perspicuous: - avoid obscurity of expression; - avoid ambiguity; - be brief; - be orderly. Writers can deliberately flout the maxims and still make sense, in the knowledge that their readers have tacitly agreed that deviations are 57


purposeful, intended to provoke a search for meaning. Thus, writers are permitted to say less (Imagism), or say more (Faulkner, Proust) than might be expected (maxim 1); utter what is kriown to be false or non­ evidenced (fairy-stories, science fiction) (maxim 2); create unexpected transitions between discrepant subjects (Joyce, nouveau roman) (maxim 3); be obscure, ambiguous, verbose, disjointed. (Symbolist poetry) (maxim 4). (A.Fowler. Linguistic Criticism. - Oxford: Oxf.Univ.Press, 1986. pp. 106-107) Linguistic Relativity C. Kramsch Philologists and linguists have been interested in the diversity of human languages and their meanings since the eighteenth century. The discovery by European scholars of oriental languages like Sanskrit, or the ability to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs at the end of the eighteenth century, coincided with a revival of nationalism in such countries as France and Germany, and was accompanied by increased interest in the unique cultural characteristics of their national languages. The romantic notion of the indissociability of language and culture promoted by German scholars like Johann Herder (1744-1803) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1762-1835), in part in reaction to the French political and military hegemony of the time, gave great importance to the diversity of the world’s languages and cultures. These scholars put forward the idea that different people speak differently because they think differently, and that they think differently because their language offers them different ways of expressing the world around them (hence the notion of linguistic relativity). This notion was picked up again in the United States by the linguist Franz Boas (1858-1942), and subsequently by Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (18971941), in their studies of American Indian languages. Whorf s views on the interdependence of language and thought have become known under the name of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Sapir-Whort hypothesis The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis makes the claim that the structure of the language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one thinks and behaves. Whorf recounts an anecdote that has become famous. While he was working as a fire insurance risk assessor, he noticed that 58


the way people behaved toward things was often dangerbusly correlated to the way these things were called. For example, the sight of the sign 'EMPTY' on empty gasoline drums would prompt passersby to toss cigarette butts into these drums, not realizing that the remaining gasoline fumes would be likely to cause an explosion. In this case, the English sign 'EMPTY' evoked a neutral space, free of danger. Whorf concluded that the reason why different languages can lead people to different actions is because language filters their perception and the way they categorize experience. So, for example, according to Whorf, whereas English speakers conceive of time as a linear, objective sequence of events encoded in a system of past, present, and future tenses (for example, “He ran” or “He will run”), or a discrete number of days as encoded in cardinal numerals (for example, ten days), the Норі conceive of it as intensity and duration in the analysis and reporting of experience (for example, wari = “He ran” or statement of fact, warikni - “He ran” or statement of fact from memory). Similarly, “They stayed ten days” becomes in Норі “They stayed until the eleventh day” or “They left after the tenth day”. Whorf insists that the English language binds English speakers to a Newtonian view of objectified time, neatly bounded and classifiable, ideal for record-keeping, time-saving, clock-punching, that cuts up reality into “afters” and “untils”, but is incapable of expressing time as a cyclic, unitary whole. By contrast, the Норі language does not regard time as measurable length, but as a relation between two events in lateness, a kind of “eventing” referred to in an objective way (as duration) and in a subjective way (as intensity). “Nothing is suggested about time [in Норі] except the perpetual ‘getting later’ of it”, writes Whorf. Thus it would be very difficult, Whorf argues, for an English and a Норі physicist to understand each other’s thinking, given the major differences between their languages. Despite the general translatability from one language to another, there will always be an incommensurable residue of untranslatable culture associated with the linguistic structures of any given language. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been subject to fierce controversy since it was first formulated by Whorf in 1940. Because it indirectly made the universal validity of scientific discoveries contingent upon the language in which they are expressed, it encountered the immediate 59


scorn of the scientific community. The positivistic climate of the time rejected any intimation that language determined thought rather than the other way around; the proposition that we are prisoners of our language seemed unacceptable. And indeed it would be absurd to suggest that Hopis cannot have access to modern scientific thought because their language doesn’t allow them to, or that they can gain a sense of Newtonian time only by learning English. One can see how a strong version of Whorf s relativity principle could easily lead to prejudice and racism. After all, it is always possible to translate across languages, and if this were not so, Whorf could never have revealed how the Hopis think. The link between a linguistic structure and a given cultural world view must, it was argued, be viewed as arbitrary. Fifty years later, with the rise of the social sciences, interest in the linguistic relativity principle has revived. The translatability argument that was levelled against the incommensurability of cultures is not as convincing as it seemed. If speakers of different languages do not understand one another, it is not because their languages cannot be mutually translated into one another - which they obviously can, to a certain extent. It is because they don’t share the same way of viewing and interpreting events; they don’t agree on the meaning and the value of the concepts underlying the words. In short, they don’t cut up reality or categorize experience in the same manner. Understanding across languages does not depend on structural equivalencies but on common conceptual systems, born from the larger context of our experience. The strong version of W horf s hypothesis, therefore, that posits that language determines the way we think, cannot be taken seriously, but a weak version, supported by the findings that there are cultural differences in the semantic associations evoked by seemingly common concepts, is generally accepted nowadays. The way a given language encodes experience semantically makes aspects of that experience not exclusively accessible, but just more salient for the users of that language. For example, Navajo children speak a language that encodes differently through different verbs the action of “picking up a round object” like a ball and “picking up a long, thin, flexible object” like a rope. When presented with a blue rope, a yellow rope, and a blue stick, and asked to choose which object goes best with the 60


blue rope, most monolingual Navajo children chose the yellow rope, thus associating the objects on the basis of their physical form, whereas monolingual English-speaking children almost always chose the blue stick, associating the objects on the basis of their color, although, of course, both groups of children are perfectly able to distinguish both colors and shapes. This experiment is viewed as supporting the weak version of the Whorf hypothesis that language users tend to sort out and distinguish experiences differently according to the semantic categories provided by their respective codes. But it also shows that the resources provided by the linguistic code are understandable only against the larger pragmatic context of people’s experience. A Navajo child learning English might start categorizing experience in Navajo the way English speakers do. Thus, the generic semantic meanings of the code that have established themselves over time within a given discourse community are subject to the various and variable uses made of them in social contexts. We are, then, not prisoners of the cultural meanings offered to us by our language, but can enrich them in our pragmatic interactions with other language users. Summary The theory of linguistic relativity does not claim that linguistic structure constrains what people can think or perceive, only that it tends to influence what they routinely do think. In this regard, the work of Sapir and Whorf has led to two important insights: 1. There is nowadays a recognition that language, as a code, reflects cultural preoccupations and constrains the way people think. 2. More than in Whorf s days, however, we recognize how context is important in complementing the meanings encoded in the language. The first insight relates to culture as semantically encoded in the language itself; the second concerns culture as expressed through the actual use of the language. (Kramsch K, Language and Culture. Oxford: OUP, 1998. -p p . 1114)

61


Language and Gender B.Spotsky All these cases have started to show how language reflec ts, records* and transmits social differences, so we should not be surprised to find reflexes of gender differences in language, for most societies differentiate between men and women in various marked ways. Observations of the differences between the way males and females speak were long restricted to grammatical features, such as the differences between masculine and feminine morphology in many languages. In earlier usage, the word gender was generally restricted to these grammatical distinctions. They cause problems for speakers of •languages like English, where grammatical gender is marked mainly in pronouns, when they learn a language like French, where non-sexed items like table (la table) can be grammatically feminine. It was ethnographers who first drew attention to distinct female and vnale varieties of language, often with clear differences in vocabulary. The famous anthropologist Levi-Strauss noted how an Amazonian father laughed at his young daughter for using the male word for “hunting”. Other ethnographers have provided cases of marked differences in the language of men and women. American servicemen in Japan who learned Japanese from the women with whom they associated were thus a source of amusement to people who knew the language. Historically, these differences sometimes seem to have arisen froth customs encouraging marriage outside the community. If there is a regular pattern of men from village A marrying and bringing home to their village women from village B, then it is likely that the speech of women in village A will be marked by many features of the village В dialect. The preservation of these introduced features depends on the maintenance of social differentiation in occupations, status, and activities. Children soon pick up the social stereotypes that underlie this discrimination. They learn that women’s talk is associated with the home and domestic activities, while men’s is associated with the outside world and economic activities. These prejudices often remain in place in the face of contrary evidence. Thus, while there is a popular prejudice that women talk more than men, empirical studies of a number of social 62


situations (such as committee meetings and Internet discussion groups) l,ave shown the opposite to be true. There is some intriguingly ;suggestive evidence of differences in „europhysiological process of aspects of language between males and females. In a recent set of studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging, phonological processing in males was shown to be located in the left half of the brain and in females to involve both left and right parts of the brain. No difference in efficiency was shown, nor is there any evidence so far that any neurophysiological difference accounts for differences between male and female language. The causes are social rather than biological. Of the social causes of gender differentiation in speech style, one of the most critical appears to be level of education. In all studies, it has been shown that the greater the disparities between educational opportunities for boys and girls, the greater the differences between male and female speech. This can be illustrated with American ultra-orthodox Jewish communities. Males in these communities are expected to spend longer studying traditional Jewish subjects. Linguistically, this results in their stronger competence in Yiddish and Hebrew, and their weaker control of English. Females on the other hand spend more time on secular studies. While their Hebrew knowledge is much less, their English is much closer to standard. Studies of differences between the speech of Arab men and women also provide evidence that the major cause of difference is educational. In one village, we found greater differences between male and female speech in the half where girls had less education than boys than in the half where both boys and girls had Imore or less equal opportunity for schooling. When offered an equal educational opportunity, there seems to be a tendency for women to be more sensitive than men to the status norms of the language. The tendency has been noted in some cities for lower-class males to have much tighter social networks (their neighbours are male relatives, alongside whom they work, and with whom they share leisure hours) and to find their norms within the tight network. The women in these cities have looser multiple networks; they mix more with people outside their community, and so their speech is influenced by the social norms of the wider society. 63


Studies of gender differences have shown the power of stereotyping. A poet is taken more seriously than a poetess; women’s status is lowered by references to the girls. In Hebrew, onlythe lower ranks in the army (up to the rank of lietttenant) have feminine forms. The use of generic masculine (“Everyone should bring his lunch, we need to hire the best man available”), however well-tneaning and neutral the speaker’s intention may be, reinforces the secondary status of worrten in many social groups. With the growth of social awareness in this area over the past decades, there have been many attempts to overcome this prejudicia use of language. In contrast to the words of the popular saying that “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, it has been shown that anthropocentric speech which assumes that men are more important than women is often accompanied by prejudices and actions that do real damage. These usages do not just reflect and record current prejudices, but they are easily transmitted, reinforcing the lower power and prestige ascribed to women m a society. Many publishfers and journals now adhere to guidelines to avoid gender stereotyping and gender prejudiced language usfe. Everyone should take care with their language. Exploring the correlations between gender-related linguistic differences and social differences between the genders is another way to see how closely language and social variation are related. But modem societies are divided in other ways too, one of the best studied being social stratification or division into soeial classes. (Spolsky B. Sociolinguistics. Oxford: OUP, 1998. - pp.36-39)

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ІУ: Глосарій лінгвістичних термінів

адресат - особа, на яку спрямовано повідомлення адресат-ретранслятор-проміжний риципієнт для сприйняття повідомлення і подальшої його передачі тендерний аспеїсг спілкування - особливості спілкування осіб різної або однієї статі декларатив тип мовленнєвого акту, іллокутйвна функція якого миттєва зміна суспільної свідомості або суспільної ситуації д іал о г- усна взаємодія двох або кількох комунікантів та обмін ними повідомленнями у вигляді реплік для досягнення певної комунікативної або позакомунікативної мети діалогічна єдність {adjacency pairs) - обмін двома мовленнєвими» ходами директив - тип мовленнєвого акту, іллокутйвна функція якого примусити когось зробити щось експресив - тип мовленнєвого акту, іллокутйвна функція якрго висловити своє ставлення стосовно партнера етнолінгвістика - напрямок мовознавства, що вивчає мову у співвідношенні з культурою окремої нації засіб спілкування - знакова система, що дозволяє кодувати смисли та обмінюватися ними зміст - інформаційний пакет, в якому кодується позакомунікативна та комунікативна інформація іллокуція - комунікативне оформлення змісту, або локуція плюс комунікативна інтенція інтенція (intention) - намір або мета, з якою вимовляється речення канал спілкування - середовище, в якому передаються мовні знаки кодекс стосунків комунікантів —набір характеристик соціальних параметрів, притаманних комунікантам під час спілкування комісив - тип мовленнєвого акту, іллокутйвна функція якого взяти на себе зобов’язання стосовно іншої особи комунікативна мета - вживання речення з метою впливу «а адресата комунікативна ситуація —елементи фізичної ситуації, у якій перебувають комуніканти 65


комунікація - Lat. “communico’■(“поєдную, роблю спільним, спілкуюсь”); комунікабельність - здатність спілкуватися; комунікабельний - товариський, компанійський конвенції спілкування - узгоджені правила мовної поведінки у певному соціумі локуція - зміст повідомлення, взятий у відриві від його комунікативного оформлення, або утворення абстрактного змісту макромовленнєвий акт - мовне утворення, в основі якого - більше двох речень, об’єднаних єдиною комунікативною інтенцією метакомунікативний мовленнєвий акт - тип мовленнєвого акту, іллокутивна функція якого регулювання комунікації мова - система знаків, одиниці якої формують впорядковану ієрархічну систему мовленнєвий акт - вживання речення або його еквівалента з певною комунікативною або позакомунікативною метою у відповідній ситуації спілкування мовленнєвий крок - складний елемент мовного матеріалу, побудований за моделлю складного мовленнєвого акту у вигляді поєднання мовленнєвих актів; мовленнєва дія одного із комунікантів, що реалізує його іллокутивну інтенцію - прохання, наказ, пораду, обіцянку тощо. Ознаками МК є зміна комунікативної ролі, зміна адресата, зміна комунікативної ініціативи, зміна сценарія мовленнєвий хід - одноразовий внесок комуніканта у діалогічну взаємодію мовлення - вид комунікативної діяльності, що має своє втілення у звуковій або графічній формі мовна картина світу - спосіб відбиття реальності у свідомості людини, що полягає у сприйнятті цієї реальності крізь призму мовних та культурно-національних особливостей мовна комунікація - утворення та обмін смислами для забезпечення життєдіяльності людей та досягнення ними спільних або приватних цілей непрямий мовленнєвий акт - мовленнєвий акт, в якому зміст і смисл відмінні перлокуція - вплив комунікативного змісту повідомлення на адресата 66


повідомлення - текст, що утворюється внаслідок кодування смислу, який належить передати адресату позакомунікативна мета - вживання речення або з метою здійснення реальної дії прагматика - галузь семіотики, що вивчає функціонування мовних знаків у мовленні презумпція - умови здійснення мовленнєвого акту пресупозиція - компонент смислу повідомлення, який мовець вважає самозрозумілим або відомим слухачеві, і такий, що перевіряється запереченням простий мовленнєвий акт - мовленнєвий акт, в основі якого просте речення психолінгвістика - наукова дисципліна, що вивчає процеси продукування та сприйняття мовлення відповідно до системи мови, розробляє модель мовленнєвої діяльності прямий мовленнєвий акт - мовленнєвий акт, в якому зміст і смисл збігаються, або існує тільки зміст регістр —ступінь дотримання соціальних та мовних норм під час спілкування (основні регістри: офіційний, нейтральний, неофіційний, або невимушений, інтимно-фамільярний) регулятиви мовної комунікації - норми і правила, що регулюють спілкування репрезентатив - тип мовленнєвого акту, іллокутивна функція якого - представити стан речей референція —співвідношення між предметом думки, що відображає явища об’єктивної дійсності і створює понятійний зміст, та мовною одиницею складний мовленнєвий акт - мовленнєвий акт, в основі якого сполучення речень, що не утворюють складного речення смисл - це зміст, реалізований у контексті соціолінгвістика - наукова дисципліна, яка вивчає широкий комплекс проблем, пов’язаних із соціальною природою мови, її суспільними функціями, механізмами впливу соціальних факторів на мову та роль мови в житті суспільства стратегія спілкування —головна лінія мовленнєвої поведінки комуніканта 67


сценарій - процедурний спосіб репрезентації стереотипних знань, які описуються у вигляді певних послідовностей мовленніх дій тактика спілкування - зумовлені стратегією мовленнєві кроки комуніканта, що у сукупності дозволяють досягти головної комунікативної мети; прийоми, які використовуються сторойою при аргументації своєї тези та при реакції на котраргументи іншої сторони тема - фрагмент змісту мовленнєвого акту або повідомлення, що знаходиться у фокусі уваги комуніканта теорія мовної комунікації - комплексна теорія, що має на меті пояснення явища мовної комунікації взагалі та окремих її складових з метою глибшого розуміння та поліпшення спілкування теорія мовленнєвих актів (Остіна-Сьорля) - лінгвістична теорія про побудову елементарної часточки мовного спілкування (мовленнєвого акту), який розуміється як актуалізація речення у ситуації безпосереднього спілкування типологія - класифікація об’єктів за пебною ознакою абб сукупністю ознак чтональність - комплекс формально-змістових характеристик висловлювання або дискурсу, що залежать від характеру стосунків комунікантів та ситуації спілкування універсологій - теорія мовлення, яка вивчає спільні ознаки та властивості усіх мов ускладнений мовленнєвий акт - мовленнєвий акт, в основі якого складне, як правило, складнопідрядне речення фатичне спілкування - спілкування заради спілкування при відсутності суттєвого інформаційного обміну фрейм - набір споріднених ідей для репрезентації знань фонові знання - наявність у риципієнта екстралінгвістичних знань та уявлень про факти дійсності характерологія - теорія мовлення, яка вивчає особливосїГтієї чи іншої мови

68


V. Питання, що виносяться на залік

1.Базові поняття ТМК (схема: “Мова та мовлення”) 2.Структура МК 3.Типологія МК 4.Модель МК 5.Теорії мовної комунікації 6.Продукування та сприйняття мовлення 7 .Фактор адресата 8.Тональність спілкування 9 .Функції мовлення 10. Прагматика 11.Теорія МА-в Остіна-Сьорля 12.МА як одиниця мовної комунікації (у порівнянні: речення ^М А) 13.Структура МА (локуція, іллокуція, перлокуція) 14.МА як багатоаспектна структура. (6 складових МА: зміст [референція, пресупозиція, прагматична пропозиція, презумпція], форма, тема, завдання, наслідки, функції). 15.Комунікативні параметри МА 16.Фреймова інтерпретація МА-в 17. Шість іллокутивних типів МА-в 18.Класифікації МА-в за характером пропозиційного змісту, за напрямком пристосування до реальності, за перлокуцією, за характером почуттів 19.Характеристика окремих типів МА-в 20.Прямі та непрямі МА 21.Прості, ускладнені, складні та макромовленнєві акти 22.Теорія діалогу: типологія; структура розгорнутого діалогу; основні елементи: діалогічна єдність, мовленнєвий хід, мовленнєвий крок; комунікативні поразки та методи їх подолання 23.Принцип співробітництва 24.Принцип ввічливості 25.Принципи соціальної взаємодії, економії мовленнєвих зусиль, дзеркальності 26.Кооперативно-спрямована стратегія та її тактики 27.Конфліктно-спрямоваяа стратегія та її тактики 28.Універсологія МК 29.Етноспецифіка МК 30.Тендерний аспект спілкування 31. Мовний портрет комуніканта

69


Рекомендована література

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