语用学考试试卷
I.
Decide whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F): (15%)
1. ( ) Pragmatics is the study of language use, and more specifically, the study of speaker meaning as
distinct from word or sentence meaning.
2. ( ) Pragmatics concentrates on those aspects of meaning that takes into account the knowledge about
the physical and social world.
3. ( ) The typical verbal form of the positive politeness strategy in English is the interrogative with a
modal auxiliary.
4. ( ) “Jack continues to act foolishly” presupposes “Jack is acting foolishly at present.” 5. ( ) Saying “I forgot my pen.” is the use of on-record strategy for borrowing a pen. 6. ( ) “And” in English equals the logical sign “&,” meaning plus.
7. ( ) The conventional implicature of “Even John came to the party” is that “It was contrary to
expectation that John came to the party.”
8. ( ) A counter-factual presupposition means that what is presupposed is not true like the utterance “I
dreamed that I was rich.”
9. ( ) A social contrast encoded within person deixis is known as T/V distinction, in which T refers to
“non-familiar” while V to “familiar.”
10. ( ) In the utterance “Let’s start at once,” “let’s” is the exclusive-of-addressee use of the first person
deixis.
II. Match each of the items in the right column with the one in the left column by putting in the bracket
the letter corresponding to the answer. (10%)
1. John Lanshaw Austin: ( ) a. presupposing 2. Geoffrey Leech: ( ) b. Clean up this mess. 3. Herber Paul Grice ( ) c. independence 4. Brown & Levinson ( ) d. implicating
5. presupposition ( ) e. How to Do Things with Words 6. negative face ( ) f.. I’ll be back soon. 7. commissive ( ) g. cooperative principle 8. +> ( ) h. face theory
9. >> ( ) i. the projection problem 10. performative hypothesis( ) j. politeness principle III.
Fill in the blanks with proper words: (27%)
1. The social deictic center refers to the speaker’s social _________ and __________ to which the addressee and the referent are related
2.“There” in “Hi, how are you getting on there?” is a ____________ use of the deictic expression; while in “I’d like to move the desk there,” it is a ___________ use.
3. In “How do you like that? He stabs you in the back and then professes to be your friend,” “that” is known as _______________ reference.
4. ______________ is a very important concept in the use of deixis, which may be ___________, near the speaker, or __________, away from the speaker.
5. A conversational implicature is generated when one or more of the maxims of cooperative principle is ______________ with the hearer’s ______________.
6. The hyperbole in “She’s the most beautiful girl in the world” can be interpreted as being produced through the violation of the maxim of ______________.
7. The blessing expression “Happy new year!” is an example of __________ deixis.
8. According to politeness theory, the more ____________ the linguistic form is, the higher degree of politeness it has when used to make a request.
9. The locutionary act of an utterance is concerned with the basic act of its ____________ form; while the illocutionary act with its ____________. and the perlocutionary act with its_____________.
10. The final phrase “I guess” in “It will clear up tomorrow, I guess.” is called a __________ device that exemplifies the speaker’s observation of the maxim of ___________.
11. In saying “I don’t know if this is important, but some of the files are missing,” the speaker is observing the maxim of ________________.
12. According to Halliday, language plays three functions, namely ______________ function, _____________ function, and ______________ function,
13. A simple utterance like “I’m tired” may have different pragmatic meanings in different contexts. Write out the sentence semantic meaning，two of its possible pragmatic meanings and the corresponding contexts they are in.
the semantic meaning: ____________________________________________ pragmatic meaning 1: _____________________________________________ (the relevant context):_____________________________________________ pragmatic meaning 2: _____________________________________________ (the relevant context):_____________________________________________ IV.
Briefly answer TWO of the following questions (around 50-60 words for each) Write your answer on the other side of the paper. (Attention: Indicate your choices among the questions by writing their corresponding letters at the beginning of your answers.). (48%)
a)
It is strongly believed that background knowledge, to which culture is closely related culture, plays a very important role in communication. What implications do you think this belief has for intercultural communication and foreign/ second language teaching? b)
In what way is deixis or speech act theory or conversational implicature theory or presupposition theory, an important aspect of pragmatic study? (Give at least one example to illustrate your discussion) (15%) c) d)
One of the properties of politeness is gradation. Do you think the more polite an utterance is, the better it is? Why (not)? (15%)
Point out TWO of the five features of conversational implicature discussed in class and use examples to illustrate the features.
Answer Key
I. 1. T 2. T 3. F 4. F 5. F 6. F 7. T 8. F 9. F 10. F II. III.
1. e 2. j 3. g 4. h 5. I 6. c 7. f 8. d 9. a 10. b 1. status, rank 2. symbolic, gestural 3.cataphoric 4. distance, proximal, distal 5. violated, knowledge 6. quality 7. social 8. indirect 9. linguistic, force, effect 10. hedging, quality 11. relation 12. interpersonal, ideational, textual 13. (omitted)
IV. (omitted)