xford Introductions to Language Study Series Editor H.Widdowson Pragmatics George Yule OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford Introductions to Language Study Pragmatics Until 1995, George Yule was a Professor in the Linguistics Program at Louisiana State University. He now lives and writes in Hawaii. Oxford Introductions to Language Study Series Editor H. Widdowson Published in this series: Rod Ellis: Second Language Acquisition Claire Kramsch: Language and Culture Tim McNamara: Language Testing Peter Roach: Phonetics Herbert George Yule Schendl: Historical Linguistics Thomas Scovel: Psycholinguistics Bernard Spolsky: Sociolinguistics H.
Widdowson: Linguistics George Yule: Pragmatics OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the .University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in for Maryann Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dares Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 1996 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1996 2008 2007 2006 2005 10 9 No unauthorized photocopying All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only.
Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content iSBN-13: 978 o 19 437207 7 ISBN-IO: o 19 437207 3 Typeset by Wyvern 21 Limited, Bristol Printed in China Contents Preface xi SECTION I: Survey i 1 Definitions and background Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics 4 Regularity 4 The pragmatics wastebasket 6 2 Deixis and distance Person deixis 10 Spatial deixis 12 Temporal deixis 14 Deixis and grammar 15 3 Reference and inference Referential and attributive uses 18 Names and referents 19 The role of co-text 21 Anaphoric reference 22 4 Presupposition and entailment Presupposition 26 Types of presupposition 27 The projection problem 30 Ordered entailments 33 5 Cooperation and implicature The cooperative principle 36 Hedges 38 40 SECTION 2 Conversational implicature Generalized 40 Readings 91 conversational implicatures Scalar implicatures 41 SECTION 3 Particularized conversational implicatures 42- References 117 Properties of conversational implicatures 44 SECTION 4 Conventional implicatures 45 127 Glossary 6 Speech acts and events Speech acts 48 IFIDs 49 Felicity conditions 5° The performative hypothesis 51 Speech act classification 53 Direct and indirect speech acts 54 Speech events 56 7 Politeness and interaction Politeness 60 Face wants 61 Negative and positive face 61 Self and other: say nothing 62 Say something: off and on record 63 Positive and negative politeness 64 Strategies 65 Pre-sequences 67 8 Conversation and preference structure Conversation analysis 71 Pauses, overlaps, and backchannels 72 Conversational style 76 Adjacency pairs 76 Preference structure 78 9 Discourse and culture Discourse analysis 83 Coherence 84 Background knowledge 85 Cultural schemata Cross- 87 cultural pragmatics 87 Preface Purpose What justification might there be for a series of introductions to language study? After all, linguistics is already well served with introductory texts: expositions and explanations which are com- prehensive and authoritative and excellent in their way. Generally speaking, however, their way is the essentially academic one pf providing a detailed initiation into the discipline of linguistics, and they tend to be lengthy and technical: appropriately so, given their purpose. But they can be quite daunting to the novice. There is also a need for a more general and gradual introduction to language: transitional texts which will ease people into an under- standing of complex ideas.
This series of introductions is designed to serve this need. Their purpose, therefore, is not to supplant but to support the more academically oriented introductions to linguistics: to prepare the conceptual ground. They are based on the belief that it is an advantage to have a broad map of the terrain sketched out before one considers its more specific features on a smaller scale, a general context in reference to which the detail makes sense. It is sometimes the case that students are introduced to detail without it being made clear what it is a detail of.
Clearly, a general under- standing of ideas is not sufficient: there needs to be closer scrutiny. But equally, close scrutiny can be myopic and meaningless unless it is related to the larger view. Indeed, it can be said that the precondition of more particular enquiry is an awareness of what, in general, the particulars are about. This series is designed to provide this large-scale view of different areas of language study.
As such it can serve as a preliminary to (and precondition for) the PREFACE XI more specific and specialized enquiry which students of linguist- that there must be an alternative to a technical account on the one ics are required to undertake. hand and an idiot's guide on the other if linguistics is to be made But the series is not only intended to be helpful to such stu- relevant to people in the wider world. There are many people who take an interest in language without being academically engaged in linguistics per se. Such Readings people may recognize the importance of understanding language Some people will be content to read, and perhaps re-read, the for their own lines of enquiry, or for their own practical purposes, summary Survey.
Others will want to pursue the subject and so or quite simply for making them aware of something which will use the Survey as the preliminary for more detailed study. The figures so centrally in their everyday lives. If linguistics has reveal- Readings provide the necessary transition. For here the reader is ing and relevant things to say about language, then this should presented with texts extracted from the specialist literature.
The presumably not be a privileged revelation, but one accessible to purpose of these readings is quite different from the Survey. It is to people other than linguists. These books have been so designed as get readers to focus on the specifics of what is said and how it is to accommodate these broader interests too: they are meant to be said in these source texts. Questions are provided to further this introductions to language more generally as well as to linguistics purpose: they are designed to direct attention to points in each as a discipline.
text, how they compare across texts, and how they deal with the issues discussed in the Survey. The idea is to give readers an initial Design familiarity with the more specialist idiom of the linguistics liter- ature, where the issues might not be so readily accessible, and to The books in the series are all cut to the same basic pattern. There encourage them into close critical reading. are four parts: Survey, Readings, References, and Glossary.
References Survey One way of moving into more detailed study is through the This is a summary overview of the main features of the area of Readings. Another is through the annotated References in the language study concerned: its scope and principles of enquiry, its third section of each book. Here there is a selection of works basic concerns and key concepts. These are expressed and (books and articles) for further reading.
Accompanying com- explained in ways which are intended to make them as accessible ments indicate how these deal in more detail with the issues dis- as possible to people who have no prior knowledge or expertise in cussed in the different chapters of the survey. The Survey is written to be readable and is uncluttered by the customary scholarly references. In this sense, it is simple. Glossary But it is not simplistic.
Lack of specialist expertise does not imply Certain terms in the Survey appear in bold. These are terms used an inability to understand or evaluate ideas. Ignorance means in a special or technical sense in the discipline. Their meanings are lack of knowledge, not lack of intelligence.
The Survey, therefore, made clear in the discussion, but they are also explained in the is meant to be challenging. It draws a map of the subject area in Glossary at the end of each book. The Glossary is cross- such a way as to stimulate thought, and to invite a critical parti- referenced to the Survey, and therefore serves at the same time as cipation in the exploration of ideas. This kind of conceptual an index.
This enables readers to locate the term and what it cartography has its dangers of course: the selection of what is signifies in the more general discussion, thereby, in effect, using significant, and the manner of its representation will not be to the the Survey as a summary work of reference. liking of everybody, particularly not, perhaps, to some of those inside the discipline. But these surveys are written in the belief XII PREFACE PREFACE XIII Use The series has been designed so as to be flexible in use. Each title is separate and self-contained, with only the basic format in SECTION I common.
The four sections of the format, as described here, can be drawn upon and combined in different ways, as required by Survey the needs, or interests, of different readers. Some may be content with the Survey and the Glossary and may not want to follow up the suggested references. Some may not wish to venture into the Readings. Again, the Survey might be considered as appropriate preliminary reading for a course in applied linguistics or teacher education, and the Readings more appropriate for seminar dis- cussion during the course.
In short, the notion of an introduction will mean different things to different people, but in all cases the concern is to provide access to specialist knowledge and stimulate an awareness of its significance. This series as a whole has been designed to provide this access and promote this awareness in respect to different areas of language study.WIDDOWSON XIV PREFACE Definitions and background Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as commun- icated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.
This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they're talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances. Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning. This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpreta- tion of the speaker's intended meaning.
This type of study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated. We might say that it is the investigation of invisible meaning. Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said. This perspective then raises the question of what determines the choice between the said and the unsaid.
The basic answer is tied to the notion of distance.