Discourse analysis , pragmatics , discourse and politeness

1. Department of English Language and Literature
Major: English Language and Literature
Discourse Analysis
Sessions 10 Discourse and pragmatics:
Session 11: Politeness
Dr. Badriya Al Mamari
Academic year 2021/2022

2. 1. What is Pragmatics ?
• Pragmatics is the study of meaning in relation to the
context in which a person is speaking or writting.
• Pragmatics assumes that when people communicate
with each other they normally follow some kind of
co-operative principle (Quantity, Quality,Manner &
Relevance)

4. 2. Language, Context and
Discourse
• An understanding of how language functions in context is
central to an understanding of the relationship between
what is said and what is understood in spoken and
written discourse.
• The relationship between context, language and
discourse consists of : phsycal context, background
knowledge context, linguistics context and situational
context.

5. 3. Speech Acts and Discourse
Austin (1969) argued that there are three kinds of act which
occur with everything we say. These are :
a. The Locutionary act (literal meaning)
b. The Illocutionary act (speaker’s intention)
c. The Perlucotionary act (the effect this utterance has)
Example:
• a. ‘It’s hot in here’ referring to the temperature
• b. a request for someone to turn on the air conditioning
• c. someone getting up and turning on the air conditioning).

6. 4. The Co-operative Principle and
Discourse
Grice (1975) based his co-operative principle on four sub-
principles (maxims). Consists of :
a. Maxims Quality
b. Maxims Quantity
c. Maxims Relation
d. Maxims Manner

7. 5. Flouting the Co-operative
Principle
The Differences between flouting, violating and
overlapping maxims, Thomas (1995) and Cutting (2002) :
A speaker Flouting a
maxim
A person is violating Overlaps between
Maxims
if they don’t
observe a maxim
but has no intention
of deceiving or
misleading the other
person.
if there is a
likelihood that they
are liable to mislead
the other person.
flouting the
maxims of quality
and quantity at the
same time.

8. 6. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and
Discourse
The ways in which people perform speech acts, and
what they mean by what they say when they perform them,
often varies across cultures. These are include:
i. Communication Across
ii. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics
iii. Pragma-linguistics and socio-pragmatics
iv. Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure

9. 7.

10. A.Conventional implicatures
Conventional implicatures are:
1.not based on cooperative principle or maxims.
2.encoded in the lexicon or grammar.
3.not dependent on context for their interpretations.
4.Are associated with specific words and result in addition conveyed
meaning when those words are used “ conjunctions such as but, yet
and even”.
Examples:
George is short but brave. (contrast)
Sue and Bill are divorced. (conjunction)
He jumped on his horse and rode away. (sequence)
I dropped the camera and it broke. (consequence)

11. B.Conversational Implicature
• Conversational implicature refers to the inference a
hearer makes about a speaker’s intended meaning that
arises from their use of the literal meaning of what the
speakers said. Participants are adhering to the
cooperative principle and the maxims.

12. • Example:
• Wife : I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.
• Husband : Ah, I brought the bread.
• Comment:
• In this case, the husband did not mention the cheese.
He must intend that the wife infers what is not
mentioned was not brought. The husband has
conveyed more than he has said via a conversational
implicature.

13. • B.2.Particularized conversational implicatures:
*occur when a conversation takes place in a very specific
context in which locally recognized inferences are assumed.
Example:
Rick: Hey, coming to the wild party tonight?
Tom: My parents are visiting.
• In order to make Tom’s response relevant, Rick has to
draw on some assumed knowledge that one college
student in this setting expects another to have. Tom will
be spending that evening with his parents, and time spent
with parents is quiet ( consequently +> Tom not at
party).

14. • B.1.Generalized Conversational Implicatures
• Using the symbol +> for an implicature, we can
represent the additional conveyed meaning:
• Wife: b & c?
• Husband: b ( +> NOT c)
Possibility to perceive that there is no special
background knowledge required in the context to
calculate the additional conveyed meaning.

15. B.1.1.Scalar Implicature
occur when certain information is communicated by choosing a
word which expresses one value or quantity from a scale of values.
From the highest to the lowest : (all, most, many, some, few) or
(always, often, sometimes)
Example:
I am studying linguistics and I’ve completed some of the required
courses.
“some of the required courses” the speaker creates an implicature
(+> not all )
The speaker creates the implicatures (+> not all, +> not most, +>
not many).
The basis of the scalar implicature is that when any form in a scale is
asserted, the negative of all forms higher on the scale is implicated.

16. B.1.2.Phrases with indefinites “a / an”
Example:
I was sitting in a garden one day. A child looked over
the fence.
An X +> not speaker’s X
• There is a car in front of the house.

17. 8. Politeness, Face and Discourse
• Politeness and face are important for understanding
why people choose to say things in a particular way
in spoken and written discourse. These are includes :
i. Involvement and independence in spoken and
written discourse.
ii. Choosing a Politeness Strategy

18. 9. Face and Politeness across
cultures
• It is important to point out that the specific nature of
face and politeness varies from society to society and
from culture to culture.
• Gift-giving is an example of a politeness strategy that
varies across culture.
• (Davies and Ikeno 2002) The gift-giving may still have
the function of maintaining social relationships, but be
much less an expression of intimacy and rapport.

19. Department of English Language and Literature
Major: English Language and Literature
Discourse Analysis
Session 11: Politeness
Dr. Badriya Al Mamari
Academic year 2021/2022

20. 10. Politeness and Gender
• Holmes (1995) showing differences in the use of
politeness strategies between men and women.
• Her work reveals that the relationship between sex,
politeness and language is a complex one and that
while research shows that, overall, women are more
polite than men, it also depends on what we mean by
‘polite’ as well as which women and men are being
compared and what setting or community of practice
the interaction occurs in; that is, the particular local
conditions in which the man or woman is speaking.

21. 11. Face-Threatening acts
• Some acts ‘threaten’ a person’s face. These are called
face-threatening acts. For example between the
librarian and the student, the librarian shows no signs
of closeness or rapport and the student’s face is
‘threatened’.

22. 12. Politeness and Cross-Cultural
Pragmatic Failure
• Politeness and strategies are not the same across
languages and cultures and might mean different
things in different linguistic and cultural contexts.
• Different views of pragmatic appropriateness, then,
can easily lead to misunderstandings and inhibit
effective cross-cultural communication.
• In cross-cultural settings, in particular, people need an
awareness, as well as an expectation, of
sociopragmatic differences, as much as they need an
understanding of how these differences might be
expressed linguistically.

23. References:
• Grice, H. Paul. "Logic and Conversation." Syntax and
Semantics, 1975. Reprinted in "Studies in the Way of
Words." Harvard University Press, 1989
• Cutting, J. (2005). Pragmatics and discourse: A resource
book for students. Routledge.
• Paltridge, B. (2012). Discourse analysis: An introduction.
Bloomsbury Publishing.