Welcome back to the World of Language in Use

Your host

Professor E. Aminudin AzizDepartment of English EducationIndonesia University of Education

2010

From Previous Lecture• Pragmatics is the backbone of the study of

language in use• Pragmatics has come to existence as one of the

trichotomy in the study of Semiotics• Pragmatics was considered as the ‘waste-basket’

of linguistics• Various definitions have been offered to describe

pragmatics, all of which suggest inclusions of participants, context, and the utterance

• Our participants (S-H):– are reasonable men in law;– have no personal idiosyncrasies;– are not omniscient, nor clairvoyant, nor

foolish.

• Our Context includes– Setting– The World Spoken of– Co-text (Textual environment)

• Utterance vs Sentence

Using and Understanding Language

• People use language in everyday conversation for transacting business, planning meals and vacations, debating politics, gossiping.

• Teachers use language for instructing students, preachers to parishioners, and comedians for amusing audiences.

• Lawyers, judges, juries, and witnesses use it in carrying out trials, diplomats in negotiating treaties, and actors in performing Shakespeare.

• Novelists, reporters, and scientists rely on the written word to entertain, inform, and persuade.

All are instances of language use - activities in which people do things with language.

Language use is really a form of joint action - carried out by an ensemble of people acting in coordination with each other.

• E.g.People waltzing, paddling a canoe, playing a piano duet, or making love.

These are realised not as the sum of their individual actions.

Doing things with language is likewise different from the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners - or writers and readers - perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles.

• Language use, therefore, embodies both individual and social processes. Speakers and listeners, writers and readers, must carry out actions as individuals if they are to succeed in their use of language.

But ….They must also work together as participants in the social units called ensembles.

• Some factsLanguage use, in some quarters, has been studied as if it were entirely individual processes, as if it lay wholly within the cognitive sciences - cognitive psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy.

In other quarters, it has been studied as if it were entirely a social process, as if it lay wholly within the social sciences - social psychology, sociology, sociolinguistics, anthropology.

While ….

We believe that it belongs to both. We cannot hope to understand language use without viewing it as joint actions built on

individual actions.

Setting of language use: spoken and written

• Personal settings: free exchange of turns among the two or more participants;E.g. conversations when gossiping, transacting businesses, or talking scientific matters.

• Nonpersonal settings: people speak for themselves, uttering words they formulated themselves for the audience before them, and the audience is not expected to interrupt;E.g. lectures, preaches, class presentations.

• Institutional settings: participants engage in speech exchanges that resemble ordinary conversation, but are limited by institutional rules.E.g. a politician holding a news conference, a lawyer interrogating a witness in court, a mayor chairing a city council meetinga professor directing a seminar discussion

• Prescriptive settings: the words spoken are completely, or largely, fixed beforehand.

E.g. members of a church or synagogue reciting

responsive readings from a prayer book; a bride and groom reciting vows in a marriage

ceremony; a basketball referee calling foul.

• Fictional settings: the person speaking is not always the one whose intentions are being expressed. Speakers are vocalising words prepared by someone else and are openly pretending to be speakers expressing intentions that are not necessarily their own.

E.g. Christine Hakim plays Tjoet Njak Dien in Tjoet

Njak Dien.

• Mediated settings: there are intermediaries between the person whose intentions are being expressed and the target of those intentions.E.g.

A dictates a letter for B to a secretary; a telephone company recording tells me of

the time and weather; a television news reader reads the evening

news; etc.

• Private settings: people speak for themselves without actually addressing anyone else.E.g.

I exclaim silently to myself, or talk to myself about solving a mathematics problems, or rehearse what I am about to say in a seminar, or curse another driver who cannot hear me.

These are not intended to be recognised by other people, but rather of use to myself.

Spoken settings Written settings

Personal A converses face toface with B

A writes letter to B

Nonpersonal Prof. A lectures tostudents in class B

Reporter A writesnews article forreadership B

Institutional Lawyer A interrogateswitness B in court

Manager A writesbusiness corresp toclient B

Prescriptive Groom A makes ritualpromise to bride B infront of witnesses

A signs officialforms for B in frontof a notary public

Fictional A performs a play foraudience B

Novelist writes novelfor readership B

Mediated C simultaneouslytranslates for B whatA says to B

C ghostwrites a bookby A for audience B

Private A talks to self aboutplans

A writes notes to selfabout plans

Conversation as basic setting

Not all settings are equal. According to Charles Fillmore (1981: 152)

the language of face-to-face conversation is the basic and primary use of language, all others being best described in terms of their manner of deviation from the base

Features of face-to-face conversation (Clark & Brennan 1991)

Copresence The participants share the samephysical environment

Visibility The participants can see each other

Audibility The participants can hear each other

Instantaneity The participants perceive eachother’s action at no perceptible delay

Evanescence The medium is evanescent – it fadesquickly

Recordlessness The participants’ actions leave norecord or artifact

Simultaneity The participants can produce andreceive at once and simultaneously

Extemporaneity The participants formulate andexecute their actionsextemporaneously, in real time

Self-determination The participants determine forthemselves what actions to takewhen

Self-expression The participants take actions asthemselves

Meaning and Understanding

• People begin their conversation with a great mass of knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions they believe they share, i.e. common ground.

• Their common ground may be vast. As members of the same cultural communities, they take as common ground such general beliefs as that objects fall when unsupported, that the world is divided into nations, that most cars run on gasoline, etc.

• Every social activity people engage in takes place on this common ground. Shaking hands, smiling at one another, waltzing, and even walking past each other without bumping all require them to coordinate their actions, and they cannot coordinate them without rooting them in their common ground.

• When language is an essential part of the social activity, there is an additional element of coordination b/w what Ss mean and Hs understand them to mean: S’s meaning and H’s meaning

Participants• Consider the following

When Rudy asks Rini about his cat, Anne may also be taking part in the conversation, and Iqbal may be overhearing from nearby. Rudy, Rini, Anne, and Iqbal each bears a different relation to Rudy’s question: participants (Rudy, Rini, and Anne), non-participants (Iqbal), side participants (Anne), and overhearers (bystanders and eavedroppers)

All listeners Eavedroppers

Bystanders

All participants

Side participants

Speaker Addressee

We just wandered around the jungle of Language in Use. Hope you enjoy it!

But … that’s just the beginning of our adventures. Be prepared for more

challenging experiences.Ta’.eaa

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