ENG503 Final Term Highlighted Handouts by Zainee Academy

English-503 · Final Term · Zainee · Lesson-21 · UNDERSTANDING AND TEACHING THE LANGUAGE IN USE

Topic- 110: What is Pragmatics?

MCQ The study of what speakers mean or “speaker’s meaning” is called . “It is the study of or how we recognize what is meant even when it isn’t actually said or written” (Yule, 2010). This includes background knowledge of context i.e. people know about each other and the world. People have a shared understanding of how they should co-operate in their communication (Cooperative Principle).

Pragmatics may vary from culture to culture.

MCQ The relationship between the linguistic form and communicative function is of central interest in Pragmatics. It looks at the ways in which people perform speech acts (e.g., apologizing, requesting, etc.) and choose to perform a speech act in a particular way (e.g., reasons and manners of politeness in different cultures).

Context and Pragmatics

It is important to analyze what is said and what is understood. This may include:

Physical Context

The social context, the mental worlds and the roles of people are involved in the interaction. The social, political and cultural understandings that is relevant to interaction. The background knowledge of context is cultural and interpersonal knowledge.

Linguistic Context (Co-text)

Co-textual context: what people „know about what they have been saying‟ (Cutting, 2002, p.3). The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. Like using the word pupil which means both the students or a part of eye

Topic- 111: Deixis and Reference

. The deictic expressions always take their meaning from some aspects of the context in which they are uttered. It is also known as the „Indexicality of language‟ or Indexical as they operate as indexes of specific meaning in a context, for example: here, there, this, that, now, then, pronouns (you, me, she, him), etc. Some modifiers with deictic reference are used alongside pragmatics “invisible” meaning

Deixis (Greek) means „pointing‟ via language referring expressions in order to help interlocutors to identify the particular referents of an expression, such as demonstrative pronouns, as in „this dog‟, „that woman‟, „these tables‟, „those helicopters‟. Some verbs are deictic too, e.g., „come‟ and „go‟, as they give evidence of location.

Major Kinds of Deixis

Person Deixis: They usually operate in three-part division of pronouns; those of first person (I, we), second person (you), and third person (he, she, they).

MCQ him, them, those, Khan, Qureshi, etc are Examples of personal deixis

Spatial Deixis: MCQ Spatial deixis are used to indicate the relative location of people and things. They are also known as „place deixis‟.

Examples are here, there, near that, etc. Temporal Deixis: It is also known as „time deixis.‟ Temporal deixis and the choice of verbs are present tense (proximal form) and past tense (distal form). Psychological basis of temporal deixisis „the coming week‟ is now (present) Versus then (past and future), last week, next week, today, tonight, and yesterday, etc.

Long question Explain Reference and its forms?

Reference:

MCQ An act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader) to identify something is known as reference. The words don‟t refer to anything, people do by using proper nouns, other nouns or pronouns. There is a range of references for each word or phrase. The pronouns (e.g. it, they, he, she, them, etc.), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), the article the, etc. are used for identification.

Major Forms of Reference

Endophoric Reference (Endophora) - where the interpretive source lies in the co-text.

An Endophoric reference can be divided into two sub-types:

• Anaphoric Reference (Anaphora): where the referent lies in the prior text, e.g. respect a man, he will do the more.

OR

MCQ A word in a text refers back to other ideas in a text for its meaning is called Anaphoric reference.

• Cataphoric Reference (Cataphora): where the referent lies in the text to come, e.g. When I met her, Mary looked ill.

Exophoric Reference (Exophora): where the interpretive source lies in the context, e.g. (Mary is standing there) I like her.

Topic- 112: Presupposition and Entailment

Presupposition: A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presupposition. It is treated as a relationship between two propositions. E.g., Mary‟s dog is cute. (=p) Marry has a dog. (=q) p >> q

Types of Presupposition

1. Existential Presupposition - It is the assumption of the existence of entities named/committed by the speaker. Present in possessive constructions (your car – you have a car) and more generally in any definite noun phrase (the prince of Haiderabad, the cat, etc.).

Tom’s car is new.

2. Factive Presupposition - The assumption that something is true due to the presence of some verbs such as „know‟, „realize‟, „regret‟, „odd‟, and „glad‟. Example

1. I’m glad it’s over. (It is over now.) 2. We regret inviting him. (We invited him.) 3. She did not realize he was ill. (He was ill.)

3. Lexical Presupposition - Use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning is also understood (Yule). He managed to do something. („Succeeded‟ + „tried‟) Andrew stopped running. (>> He used to run.)
4. Structural Presupposition – The certain sentence structures have been analyzed as conventional and regular, presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true.

Example: wh - question in English.

When did she travel to the USA? ( >> she travelled.) Where did you buy the house? (>> you bought the house).

5. Non-Factive Presupposition – The assumption that something is not true, like verbs "dream” "imagine" and "pretend" follows what is not true.

Example

I dreamed that I was rich. (>> I am not rich.) He pretends to be rich (>> He is not rich.).