2. Deictic expressions: I, now, you, that, here, tomorrow. 3. Anaphoric expressions: she, him, it. 4. (1) He bought the beer. (2) You have a watch.
(3) We bought a car.
5. Direct acts: (1)/(5); Indirect acts: (2)/(3)/(4)
6. (a) The Maxim of Quality: (1) Do not say what you believe to be false; (2) Do not say that
for which you lack adequate evidence.
(b) The Maxim of Quantity: (1) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the
current purpose of the exchange); (2) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
(c) The Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
(d) The Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous (1) Avoid obscurity of expression; (2) Avoid
ambiguity; (3) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity); (4) Be orderly.
7. The speaker is particularly careful about the maxim of Agreement in PP. The
response begins with ―well‖ rather than ―no‖ in order to minimize disagreement between the speaker and hearer.
8. It is an indirect speech act. Carol invites Lara to a party, but Lara wants to decline the
invitation. To be polite, she doesn‘t choose a direct refusal, instead she says “I‘ve got an exam tomorrow‖ as a reasonable excuse to decline the invitation. In this way, she minimizes the expression of impolite beliefs, thus the utterance conforms to PP
Chapter 7
Discourse Analysis
1. De?ne the following terms brie?y.
(1) discourse: a general term for examples of language use, i.e. language
pro-duced as the result of an act of communication. It refers to the larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations and interviews.
(2) discourse analysis: the study of how sentences in written and spoken
language form larger meaning units such as paragraphs, conversations and interviews. (3) given information: the information that the addresser believes is known to
the addressee.
(4) new information: the information that the addresser believes is not known to the
addressee.
(5) topic: the main center of attention in a sentence.
(6) cohesion: the grammatical and/or lexical relationships between the different elements of
a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or different parts of a sentence.
(7) coherence: the relationship that links the meanings of utterances in a
discourse or of the sentences in a text.
(8) discourse marker: the technical term for all the items that are used to help
construct discourse, such as signifying the beginning or ending of a paragraph or a turn in conversation. They are commonly used in the initial position of an utterance and are syntactically detachable from a sentence, such as well, I mean, now, then, ?rst, second, ?nally.
(9) adjacency pair: a set of two consecutive, ordered turns that ―go together‖ in a
conversation, such as sequences of question/answer, greeting/greeting, invitation/ acceptance, criticism/denial.
(10) preference structure: in the conversations there can be several second parts
related to one ?rst part, but they are not of equal status. The structural likelihood is called preference, and this likely structure is the preference structure that divides second parts into preferred and dispreferred. The former is the structurally expected and the latter unexpected. In answering the question “Have you got a light?‖, the reply ―Here you are‖ is preferred and ―Sorry, no, I don‘t smoke‖ is dispreferred.
(11 presequence: the opening sequences that are used to set up some special potential actions,
such as greetings before formal conversations. ―What are you doing tonight?‖ can be used
as a presequence if it is followed by ―If nothing special, come over and have dinner with us please.‖
(12) critical discourse analysis: the analysis of language use directed at, and committed to,
discovering the concealed ideological bias, injustice, inequality in the power relations among speakers and hearers.
2. In the study of discourse, cohesion refers to the grammatical and/or lexical relationships
between the different parts of a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or different parts of a sentence. It concerns the question of how sentences are explicitly linked together in a discourse by different kinds of overt devices. Such cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ellipses, conjunction and lexical cohesion. 3. one→the look-out
4. them (line 4)→plant and animal species (line 3)
that (line 7)→“Every ecosystem everywhere can’t be preserved intact.” it (line 7)→“Every ecosystem everywhere can’t be preserved intact.” it (1st one, line 8)→how can it be made consistent with the earlier objective?
it (2nd one, line 8)→to deprive some people in some parts of the world of a piece of their
ecosystem but not others.
5. It is not a coherent discourse. Although it has connection words such as a Ford –– a
car and black –– Black, which look like cohesive devices, they refer to entirely different things. There is a total lack of internal relation among the sentences. A text can‘t be only based on super?cial connections between the words to pursue coherence; there must be some relationship that links the meanings of the sentences in a text, too. This text is not in line with our real experience of the way the world is. Thus, we can‘t make sense of it directly unless we are laborious to create meaningful connections which are not actually expressed by the words and sentences. So it‘s not a coherent discourse. 6. Coherence is the relationship that links the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the
sentences in a text. This extract is coherent. All the sentences (questions in fact) are organized around the topic ―interview‖, and they are arranged from the general to the more speci?c in a logical order so that the text is easy to follow.
Chapter 8
Sociolinguistics
1. De?ne the following terms brie?y.
(1) sociolinguistics: the study of the relationship between language and society, that is,
how social factors in?uence the structure and use of language.
(2) standard language: the variety of a language which has the highest status in a community
or nation and which is usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language.
(3) dialect: a language variety characteristic of a particular social group; dialects can be
characteristic of regional, social, temporal, occupational or gender groups. (4) register: a language variety associated with a particular situation of use, e.g. baby talk
and legal language.
(5) pidgin: a variety of language that is not a native language of anyone, but is
learned in contact situations.
(6) creole: a language that begins as a pidgin and eventually becomes the ?rst
language of a speech community through its being learned by children.
(7) language planning: planning, usually by a government or government agency,
concerning choice of national or of?cial language(s), ways of spreading the use of a language, spelling reforms, the addition of new words to the language, and other language problems.
(8) diglossia: a situation when two distinct varieties of the same language are
used, side by side, for two different sets of functions.
(9) bilingualism: the use of at least two languages either by an individual or by a group of
speakers, such as the inhabitants of a particular region or a nation.
(10) code-switching: the movement back and forth between two languages or dialects
within the same sentence or discourse.
(11) taboo: a word or expression that is prohibited by the polite society from general use. (12) euphemism: a word or phrase that replaces a taboo word or is used to avoid reference to
certain acts or subjects, e. g. ―powder room‖ for ―toilet‖.
2. Idiolects are varieties of a language used by individual speakers, with peculiarities of
pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.
3. A president who did not have an accent may refer to a president who speaks the standard
language. The standard language is a particular variety of a language that is of?cially given a status higher than any other, and therefore a dominant or prestigious
variety. The standard language is usually based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of the language and is generally used in government documents, education, broadcasting and printing. A good president is expected to speak the prestigious variety of his language.
4. Language planning is usually done by a government or government agency which concerns
the choice of national or of?cial language(s), ways of spreading the use of the language(s), spell reforms, the addition of new words to the language, and other language problems. In order to carry it out effectively, the of?cial attempt may concentrate on either the status of a language with regard to some other language or variety or its internal condition with a view to changing it. Language planning usually involves two aspects: status planning and corpus planning. Status planning changes the function of a language or a variety of a language and the right of those who use it. And corpus planning seeks to develop a variety of language or a language, usually to standardize it, that is, to provide it with the means for serving most language functions in society. Governments may take both sides into consideration.
5. A pidgin is a special language variety that mixes or blends languages and it is used by people
who speak different languages for restricted purposes such as trading. Pidgin arose from a blending of several languages such as Chinese dialects and English. Typically pidgins have a limited vocabulary and a much reduced grammatical structure characterized by the loss of in?ections, gender and case. When a pidgin has become the primary language of a speech community, and is acquired by the children of that speech community as their native language, it is said to have become a creole. The structure of the original pidgin is expanded to enable it to ful?ll its new functions. The vocabulary is vastly enriched, and new syntactic-semantic concepts developed. Notable examples of creole are the English-based creole of Haiti.
6. There are many euphemisms for toilet, such as WC, powder room, Men‘s room, Ladies‘
room, Gentlemen, bathroom, restroom and so on. In many cultures, people avoid referring to this place by ―toilet‖ or ―lavatory‖ because they are unpleasant to the ear. The use of euphemisms re?ects social attitudes or social customs. We choose the words or expressions of euphemism because they are more polite or pleasant to use without embarrassing others. 7. There are two possible reasons. One reason is that women are usually more
status-conscious than men and they are aware of their lower status in society and as a result, they may use more standard speech forms in their attempt to claim equality or even achieve a higher social status. The other reason might be attrib-uted to the education. Women are educated to behave ―like a lady‖ when they are little girls, and