2) Allowable contributions: some interactions are characterized by social or legal constraints on what participants say in a particular activity type.
3) The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to or are suspended. Clearly, the way in which the CP is either observed or flouted might be different from culture to culture and from one activity type to another and there might be different underlying reasons and motivations for the differences.
4) The degree to which politeness maxims are adhered to or are suspended. As is widely acknowledged, the way in which politeness principle is observed and the ?face? is saved might also be culture or activity type specific.
5) Turn-taking and topic control. A close examination of the turn-taking system can reveal the power relations between the participants in an activity type as well the personality traits of the participants and the specific pragmatic strategies used by them to control the interaction, to establish their respective agenda, etc.
6) The manipulation of pragmatic parameters, which might include a close examination and description of the following: power or solidarity, social distance, size of imposition and the relative rights and obligations, etc.
12. Please explain the calculating formula of the weightiness of an FTA: Wx = D(S, H) + P(H, S) + Rx
Wx is the numerical value that measures the weightiness of the FTA.
D(S, H) is the value that measures the social distance between the speaker and the hearer. P(H, S) is a measure of the power that the hearer has over the speaker.
Rx is a value that measures the degree to which the FTA is rated an imposition in that culture. Each of the three variables D, P and R can be measured on a scale of 1 to n, where n is some small number. They jointly contribute to the seriousness of an FTA, and hence the level of politeness with which an FTA will be performed.
IV. Answer the following questions in English. (10'×2＝20')
1. What is pragmatics?
2. What do pragmatics and semantics have in common and how do they differ from each other? What pragmatics and semantics have in common is that they both take meaning as the object of their study. But they differ in the level of meaning they study, and also in their approach to the study of meaning. Semantics, formal semantics in particular, studies the abstract, de-contextualized level of meaning while pragmatics studies the meaning in context, which is the actualization of abstract meaning.
3. What?s one of the tough question formal semanticists and philosophers of language encountered?
One of the tough questions encountered by formal semanticists and philosophers of language is the one called ?referential opacity?, which is also termed ?the problem of substitutivity?. We would expect that any two singular terms that denote one and the same thing would be semantically equivalent: we could take any sentence containing one of the terms and substitute the other of the two for the first, without changing the meaning or at least without changing the truth-value of the sentence. (P. 43)
4. What are the six weakness of Austin?s classification that Searle pointed out?
Searle pointed out six weaknesses of Austin?s classification: (1) there is a persistent confusion between verbs and acts, (2) not all the verbs are illocutionary verbs, (3) there is too much overlap of the categories, (4) there is too much heterogeneity within the categories, (5) many of the verbs listed in the categories do not satisfy the definition given for the category, and (6) there is no consistent principle of classification . The most serious weakness, it seemed to Searle, is the last one.(See Searle, 1976)
5. What model did Austin construct after he finally gave up his constative-performative antithesis? According to the new model, which has been widely accepted and applied, a speaker, when speaking, is performing three acts simultaneously, i.e. locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.
A locutionary act is the act of saying something in the true sense of ?say.? An illocutionary act is the act performed in saying something, which is identical to the speaker?s intention of saying something. A perlocutionary act is the act performed by or as a result of saying something.
The locutionary act is the act of expressing literal meaning through the utterance of words, phrases and sentences; the illocutionary act is the act of expressing the speaker?s intention through literal meaning. Once the speaker?s intention is recognized by the hearer and he acts accordingly, there will be the perlocutionary act, i.e. some outcome brought about by speaking. 7. What are the differences between the Gricean theory and relevance theory
The principle of relevance accounts for language use more succinctly and more explicitly than the Gricean framework. But the most important difference is that the principle of relevance is meant to explain ostensive-inferential communication as a whole, both explicit and implicit, while the Gricean theory is only concerned with the implicit side. 8.Why did Leech put forth Politeness Principle?
Leech put forth the famous Politeness Principle (PP) in Principles of Pragmatics (1983) with the intention to ?rescue? Grice?s CP. As we know, though the CP explains how the conversational implicature(CI) is inferred, it does not explain why people often choose to be indirect in what they want to say. Leech explains the problem in terms of politeness. In his view, indirectness is motivated by politeness. That?s why Leech?s Politeness Principle is also called the conversational-maxim view of politeness.
9. Why is Brown & Levinson?s politeness strategies called Face-saving theory?
Brown & Levinson put forward their politeness theory first in 1978, which was revised in 1987. They consider politeness as linguistic strategies to satisfy communicative and face-oriented ends. Thus, their theory is often called politeness strategies. To them, to be polite is to save face, and the central notion in their theory is “face”; therefore, their theory is also called Face-saving theory. 10. What the similarity and difference between presupposition and entailment?
In general terms, presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. So it is speakers, not sentences, that have presuppositions.
Entailment is a relation of meaning inclusion: the inferable meaning is included in the original proposition.
What presupposition and entailment have in common is that they both belong to the aspect of meaning of a sentence which is not explicitly expressed but is inferred.
Yule (1996) has concisely summarized the similarity and difference between presupposition and entailment. Both of them belong to the information not directly expressed through the speaker?s
utterance in communication, but they both belong to known information. The difference between them is that presupposition is speaker-based and entailment is sentence-based. The former refers to the assumptions held by the speaker while the latter is the conclusions derived from the contents of the sentence through inferences. Therefore, it is the speaker that presupposes, and it is the sentence that entails.
12. How do you understand the projection problem of presupposition?
What happens to the presupposition of a sentence when it is embedded in a larger sentence? It is generally assumed that the meaning of a sentence is the sum total of the meaning of its component clauses. In the same vein, it is assumed that the presupposition of a sentence should also be the sum total of the presuppositions of its component clauses. In other words, when a sentence is embedded, it carries with it its original presupposition. But a brief observation of some coordinate and complex sentences reveals that this is not the case. Whether presuppositions survive in a larger and more complex sentence is known as the projection problem of presuppositions.
When a sentence is embedded, there are two possibilities for its original presupposition. One is that it is cancelled, the other is that it survives.
V. Do the following item as required. (10') （考试会选其中一个）
1．Analyze the following utterances in terms of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary speech acts, imagining different contexts in which the utterances are made. (10')
For example, look at this sentence for example: when the husband comes back home and says to his wife “I?m terribly hungry.”
? The locutionary act performed by the speaker is his utterance of all the words “I” “am” “terribly” “hungry”. This expresses what the words literally mean. ? The illocutionary act performed by the speaker is that by making such an utterance he has expressed his intention of speaking, i.e. asking his wife to prepare some food.
? The perlocutionary act refers to the effect of the utterance. If his wife gets the husband?s message and sees that he means to tell her to cook, the husband has successfully brought about the change in the real world he has intended to; then the perlocutionary act is successfully performed.
设想出一个语境3分，推出三种言语行为各2分，整个表述包括措辞、语法1分。
2. Identify the presupposition triggers in the following sentences and the presuppositions they indicate. (2'×5＝10')
参考P. 289-297分析与例句。判断出前提语给1分，推出前提给1分。
VI. Discussion (30')
Write on ANSWER SHEET a passage of at least 250 words following the
requirement given above. Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow the instructions may result in a loss of marks.
1. Describe the development of Deixis. You are required to introduce the origin
of deixis, the linguist(s) who made great contribution, the definition, classification, examples, functions, and influence, etc.
2. Describe the development of Speech Act Theory. You are required to
introduce the origin of SAT, the linguist(s) who made great contribution, the definition, examples, classification, functions, and influence, etc.
3. Describe the development of Conversational Implicature. You are required to
introduce the origin of the theory, the linguist(s) who made great contribution, the definition, Cooperative Principle and its maxims, examples, classification, functions, limitations, and influence, etc.
4. Describe the development of pragmatic studies of Politeness. You are required
to introduce the origin of the theory, the linguist(s) who made great contribution, the definition, Politeness Principle and its maxims, face theory, examples, classification, functions, limitations, and influence, etc.