Speech acts and conversational maxims

hello there and welcome back to the introduction to English Linguistics today we're getting started with a new topic namely pragmatics okay what is pragmatics pragmatics is the study of linguistic meaning in context the meaning of words phrases and sentences can vary across different situational contexts a sentence that I'm saying in one situation may mean one thing and saying the same sentence in a different situation may yield a totally different interpretation okay um so it makes sense to contrast pragmatics with semantics the study of conventionalized meanings meanings that are relatively context independent that behave in the

same way across different situations okay in this first session on pragmatics I'll talk about speech acts and about communicative maxims those are classic ideas in the study of pragmatics and they're a good place to start right let me Begin by showing you the code model of communication the code model of communication that's a traditional idea of how communication between speakers is supposed to work and uh let's look at this so we have a speaker who has a thought sounds familiar and um the speaker then encodes this thought into a message yeah thought being translated into

words and phrases and sentences the message then travels towards the hearer typically in the form of sound waves through the air and entering the hearer's ears and when they're there a process of decoding sets in so that the hearer translate uh the hearer translates bits of sound into bits of thought and in the end the hearer ends up with the same thought that the speaker had originally okay that's the code model of communication encoding and decoding of messages all right now I would like you to do a little exercise so get out a piece of

paper and press pause on the video and jot down a few ideas of things that strike you as problematic about this model okay what do you think is realistic about this and what do you think is maybe not so realistic about this ready okay I will continue now you guessed it there are some problems with this model the model is too simple in certain respects and one big problem is that it neglects the role of context so it rests on the assumption that meanings are context free yeah the the meanings are in the words in

a way it's a semantics only model and that those meanings are the same in all situations and this is really problematic second um the model neglects the role of what is called inference inference that's hearers figuring out what speakers meant although they did not literally say it for that I brought two examples here if person a asks who was the shooter and person B says Moretti has an alibi what person B wants the the hearer person a to figure out is that okay Moretti probably wasn't the shooter that's not what person B says literally that's

not what's right there in the words but it's rather it's a conclusion that person a draws um or take the second example here let's go to to the movies tonight um person B answers I have to study for an exam yeah it's not a very realistic example sorry um so what person B wants the hero to figure out is that sorry I can't accept the invitation okay it's a no essentially but since people in conversation tend to be p poite we'll talk about politeness later on um they tend to sugarcoat this no and offer an

explanation for why it would be that they would have to say no and they let person a figure out that the answer is no right so the conclusion of all of this is that knowing a language is not simply a matter of knowing how to encode and decode messages you know transmit messages to a second party and and then the second party decodes them and understands what we intended to say rather it's that conversation is very much a collaborative activity yeah you're giving people things to figure out and they figure it out and meaning is

not context free on the contrary it's strongly context bound so what is context if meanings are context bound okay what's this context well there are things like the physical environment yeah so I can say things like over there and you know what I mean just because um well I can you know point to something with my eyes or with my uh index and we're both in the same physical environment and that's how you can figure it out now video like this that doesn't work as easily uh participants you know who's there think about it the

words I and you mean different things depending on who's there uh and who you're talking to the social setting plays a role whether you're in a situation with close friends or whether you're in a situation with work colleagues or whether you're in a situation like University classroom setting something like that so that influences the way you talk and the way in which you interpret what is being said prior discourse plays a role if there are things that you know your interlocutor knows or if there are things that you know your interlocutor doesn't know that that

influences the way you say things and the way you interpret things and to round things off of course context also includes cultural norms and expectations so that well in a certain culture you ask questions more directly in other C cultures you ask questions more independent uh more indirectly uh In some cultures if somebody invites you it's okay to say no I don't have any time ask me again tomorrow um okay I once was at an airport in uh Finland and um I was there early so I asked uh the the person at the counter if

maybe there was space on an earlier flight and um the person looked at me and said the flights are all busy you should be happy to have a seat on your flight and I thought okay okay okay right just wanted to ask um yeah so cultural norms and expectations different across different communities so context makes things go without saying that's one of the roles of of context if things are there in the physical environment I don't have to name them explicitly context is always available as a resource yeah you can fall back on context and

um so that means that meaning is really contextually bound it's not context free it's not just you know the conventionalized meanings that words have but rather there is a whole lot that is modulated by context okay I mentioned this concept inference um that hearers figure out stuff on their own and uh The crucial idea here with inference is that the conveyed message is not identical with the stuff that is literally said in the words okay or it goes beyond what has been said in the words so hearers infer the intended meaning they enrich the message

that you're actually actually pronouncing and this is not something that's special or that's a little extra to language rather it is the meat and potatoes of how communication works it's the norm in language right so what can be inferred in these examples if you want to you can again pause the video here and uh write down some of the inferences that run through your mind when you read these examples here uh like okay I'm going to continue in and spell things out a bit um since Bob has been running the coffee house the espresso tastes

a bit funny okay that encodes a temporal relationship between two events Bob running the coffee house and um as soon as Bob started making the coffee it it tasted a bit funny and what you infer is that well there's a causal relationship yeah it's probably Bob who's responsible for the poor quality of the Espress um second example Bob is poor but honest these uh poor but honest examples they always make me chuckle because they betray social stereotypes so what you're saying here is in effect well given that someone's poor it's it's actually remarkable that they're

honest poor people normally or such and such okay um so excellent device to to discriminate against minorities and then you know whoever um third sentence here the king had a heart attack and a republic was declared what you infer here well there are two events that are being expressed and what you infer is that there's a temporal relation between them so the king had a heart attack first and then okay the King was gone what do we do now let's declare Republic contrast that with the fourth example a republic was declared and the King had

heart attack here well that's probably also a temporal relationship but on top of that there's a causal relationship the king noticed that oh my God they've declared a republic and uh he was so shocked that he dropped dead yeah had a heart attack okay bottom line is that we need to distinguish between what is said and what is meant okay what is said that would be according to the code model what is there in the words what is the conventionalized meaning of those words and then what is meant is the stuff that is context modulated

what do you mean by the thing that you said there are fancy words for this technical terms so the locution would be what is said the literal meaning of the word and illocution is what is meant what the speaker tries to convey with the words okay in the rest of uh this video I want to contrast direct speech acts and indirect speech acts and uh direct speech acts are those speech acts those utterances where the locution that is what is said and the elocution what is meant coincide quite often that is the case but by

all means not always in sentences such as please was wash the dishes or I bet you $5 that the Hotspur with an odd combination betting uh American currency on a British soccer team but anyway I hearby pronounce you man and wife yeah that locution and elocution match that's not always the case think again about um when I go for the movies I have to study for an exam there is not quite the same and these examples are called indirect speech acts so in indirect speech acts the locution and the illocution differ from one another yeah

um so when I ask you could you wash the dishes um I'm not really asking whether you have the the ability to wash the dishes so if you're saying yes um or yes I could um that's not that's kind of not the answer that I was hoping for um I was hoping for the answer yeah I'll do it I'll do it um okay uh two more examples again the movie example I want to see a movie tonight and B says I got to study yeah uh locution and elocution differ how is that introductory Linguistics class

and B says don't ask they're not asking you not to uh communicate with them they're telling you this class really sucks okay right locution and illocution differing from one another here's an example of a person who has trouble distinguishing direct speech acts and indirect speech act and that person is called Mr logic um so again you can pause the video and read through this on your own um do an awful thing and explain the joke now um okay so at the precinct uh this lady asks Mr logic excuse me sir uh do you mind if

I stop you for a second Mr logic says no I don't mind at all Waits a second and walks on um and then the the lady starts her Spiel on you know would you be interested in a credit card and so on and so forth all right so do you mind if I stop you for a second is a an indirect speech act yeah um and there are two things in there that we might identify the do you mind if bit Yeah and of course for a second that is not literal either that is a

conventionalized way of asking for you know a longer stretch of time right so what is wrong with Mr logic um well what's wrong with Mr logic is that he does not have a grasp on this indirect speed checked idea it is by all means not the only function of sentences to state facts um and if we look at actual languages it turns out to be a very very minor function of language in use if you read through transcripts of people holding conversations they don't spend a whole lot of time giving each other useful information most

of the time it's about the hello how are you nice weather today oh I like that sweater of yours you know these uh social grooming things in a way yeah I'll scratch your back you scratch mine and we're all having a good time um so one person who who noticed this was um JL Austin nobody knows his first names um I do uh John longshaw I think um so he wrote a book that was called uh how to do things with words and um it pretty much founded this speech act Theory so I'll say a

few things about speed tracks it's some it's gotten a little dated these days but nonetheless it's important to know a few things about speech acts and uh in the rest of this video I want to lay out uh six General types of speech acts namely Representatives commissives directives declaratives or declarations uh expressives and veric Dives okay let's start uh representatives are in a way um the only kind that Mr logic would acknowledge okay things like assertions statements claims hypotheses stating facts that are either true or false so the uh Pythagorean theorem a sare + b²

= c² that is a representative speech act okay Paris is the capital of France a representative speech acts uh we have no milk left that's also representative speeches so they don't always have to be like sciencey or hyro okay Representatives then um there are speech acts that are called commissives and um they're called commissives because commit the speaker to a course of action you're saying something like uh I'll be there at 5: and that commits you to a certain action being there at 5 I'll call you later yeah um so this includes promises like I'll

call you later but it also includes threats do that once more and you shall regret it for the rest of that's um threat uh vows I promise to serve this country uh and old and so on and so forth yeah commissives directives um well you direct the hearer to a course of action um that works well if you're a military General but it also works in more pedestrian situations like ordering a meal at a restaurant or asking somebody to bring you that toilet paper when youve run out um orders request requests but also questions yeah

asking for information those are directive speech acts declarations they result in the state they name and um well this is arguably a little more restricted in uh you know the you have to be a certain person in order to pronounce a blessing or a hiring or a firing uh a baptism an arrest or a marriage see um if I were to declare my best friend the new pope um that wouldn't really work because I'm not supposed to declare somebody uh being the next Pope yeah I would be entirely inappropriate for for this job um nonetheless

declarations there you have it they result in the state they name um you are now men and wife yeah husband and wife whatever it's called um that's a declaration expressives that's something that also uh you and I can can do a couple of times a day um they indicate the speaker's attitudes so if we greet somebody if we apologize to somebody if we thank somebody um those are expressive speech acts yeah we put our feelings on display then um there's the type of verdictive verdictive are assessments judgments and again you need to have a certain

social role to be able to uh you know do an assessment do a judgment um or pronounce conviction um if you sentence somebody to 3 years in prison well that's um not everybody can do that right um moving on from these speech act types um here's another famous person uh namely HP GCE again nobody knows their first name um Herbert I think is one of them and um HP Grace came up with an important idea namely the idea that speakers cooperate they cooperate even when they argue in a way they're still playing a game together

a language game um so all speakers design their utterances in accordance with certain Norms of talk and they can expect everyone else to do so as well and Grace was a philosopher so he thought well why why are speakers doing this why are speakers cooperating why are they um speaking in accordance with Norms uh he thought that it was because this is a rational thing to do kind of a social contract social contract like uh the people who are working now are paying taxes to pay um the pensions of the people who are old now

and we expect the younger people to do the same for us when we are old that kind of thing it's a rational thing it's maybe not always nice but it's something that you do in order to get by there is a greater good right um so you're cooperating because if everybody did just uh what they wanted there would be Anarchy and everybody would be worse off for it right um there are four maxims and I'll say a few things about each of these uh the maxim of quantity the maximum of relevance the maximum of manner

and the maximum of quality okay what's the maxim of quantity the maximum of quantity is that speakers have in their mind a little voice that says so enough but not too much for instance if person a asks do you have any pets person B obeys the maximum of quantity and says I have two cats and expects the hearer to figure out that okay okay two cats that's really the maximum of cats that I have um I don't have five cats I also don't have any dogs or llamas or frogs or parrots or any other pets

you might think of um notice you know if I had a zoo at home and uh that Zoo contained two cats it would still be true yeah technically if I said well I I own two cats apart from all the other stuff but uh the maximum of quantity tells me okay say just enough so that uh the hero can can figure out the rest that's the maximum of quantity the maximum of relevance certain theories of pragmatics have taken this to be the master principle yeah be relevant don't say anything that's too far off topic um

so the maximum of relevance explains certain uh indirect speech acts where the locution and the illocution differ from one another so if person a asks do you have any pets and person B says I'm allergic they're not technically answering the question okay do you have any pets but um person B can assume that okay if I say I'm allergic that is an explanation for the fact that I might not have any pets so I'm asking the hero to figure out okay I don't have any pets and in case you wonder why it's because I'm allergic

that is the reason and uh so even if you are a big lover of of dogs and cats and frogs and whatnot don't be offended that I don't have any pets it's just that I have this allergy thing yeah maximum of relevance another important thing the maxim of Menner a little voice in your head that tells you be orderly clean your room not really not not really clean your room but present the things that you say in an orderly fashion so person a asks you how do I get to the station you tell them well

exit the building when you're outside the University Building go towards the main road yeah there's a red church somewhere you know go past that red church and then turn left follow the main road until you see the fambul so people not familiar with things in Nel the ful that is a a funny kind of mountaineering type of means of Transport uh kind of like a Subway but to do with mountains going up mountains and then either take the ful or walk up the hill until you see the station and what you notice here is that

um you're presenting these pieces of information pretty much in the order order that a person walking along that path would experience them so they are ordered in a temporal sequence to facilitate interpretation um yeah this um maxim of of manner also shows itself in uh sentences like getting married and having children is better than having children and getting married um see if language were logical this would mean something like uh 2 + 3 is better than 3 + 2 which doesn't make any sense yeah it's uh the same things yeah getting married and having children

okay having children and getting married that should be the same thing but it's not because what is implied here is a certain order of events so getting married first having children then that's the interpretation that we want the hearer to figure out lastly there is the maxim of quality say what you believe to be true um and again here's the gracian rationality shining through you have a social contract that the default should be you say things that are true um because if speakers lied all the time then communication would make darn little sense yeah telling

the truth as a default makes it possible to achieve communicative effects with obviously untrue statements and this has been called flouting the maxims so the idea here is it's okay to disregard the maxims as long as this is completely obvious to the hearer okay um so for instance you can flout the maximum of quantity say enough yeah just enough um but not more than that when you're saying things like if it rains it rains well that's completely obvious if it rains of course it rains um so what does somebody mean by well if it rains

it rains um that's something called a tautology something that is trivially true business is business war is war boys will be boys um yeah and uh so if you're saying this you're disregarding the maxim of quantity and uh speak hearers are interp are realizing this and uh reason that okay you must mean something more than what is there in the words if you're saying if it rains this rains uh you're not just pointing out that okay if there's a state of rain then it rains uh but rather you're saying something more with that that and

so they're motivated to find out there something more that you mean or um you can flout the maximum of quality and say things that are patently untrue yeah if person a says I love the intro to Linguistics class and then person B goes yes and I enjoy uh I like to be hit on the head with blunt objects for prolonged periods of time then you will recognize that okay this this is probably not really true and uh so this person is flouting the maximum of quality they're saying something that is untrue and thereby they want

to convey something else which probably is that the Linguistics class really sucks okay I'm coming to an end here the important thing to take away from this video is that there are certain types of speech acts and from these pictures I'll let you figure out what these different types are see you next time