PRAGMATICS

Pragmatic differences across cultures Deborah Tannen level of indirectness tolerated paralinguistic signals of different speech acts: attention, turn taking, silence different cultural expectations - stereotypes (the pushy New Yorker, the stony American Indian, the inscrutable Chinese)

Example 1: TAKING THE FLOOR Indian English (by raising volume) British English (by repeating the introductory phrase)

Attention and interest: Hungarian polite listening: waiting for the other person to finish accompanying with signals of acknowledgement “cross-chatting” is acceptable

Example 2: ‘Thanksgiving dinner’ situation A: In fact one of my students told me for the first time, I taught her for over a year, that she was adopted. And then I thought – uh – THAT explains SO many things. B: What. That she was – A: Cause she’s so different from her mother B: smarter than she should have been? Or stupider than she should’ve been. A: It wasn’t smart or stupid, Actually, it was just she was so different. Just different. B: [hm]

Silence Taboo in most Western cultures Politeness in Nordic cultures Make your voice heard (in schools) Small talk Politeness in Nordic cultures Keep your joys and sorrows to yourself! No small talk – defend your private world! Lack of inner depth in China Listen to your thoughts!

Ethnocentric view of speech acts and the Gricean maxims? Intellectual traditions behind expectations of directness colelctivism individualism

Cross-cultural differences in directness Anna Wierzbicka Cross-cultural differences in directness Mrs Vanessa! Please! Sit! Sit! Will/Won’t/Would you sit down? Please, have a little more! You must! Would you like to have some more? How about a beer? What’s the time? You wouldn’t happen to have the correct time, would you?

Indirectness and politeness You are to get off. Not to show oneself to me here! Why don’t you bloody get off? Get off, will you. Go to hell! ?Would you go to hell? Open your books! Would you like to open your books? Underlying beliefs individualism/ collectivism „compromise”

Should you not make your utterance more informative than required Should you not make your utterance more informative than required? (How are you?) Should you always be truthful? (I’m fine thanks. No, I really couldn’t take more) Should you always be relevant and straightforward? (Arab business, collectivism)

Communicative competence „An aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meaning interpersonally within specific contexts” (Dell Hymes , 1967) CALP and BICS

Communicative competence (Celce-Murcia, 2008:36) SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE DISCOURSE COMPETENCE FORMULAIC COMPETENCE STRATEGIC COMPETENCE INTERACTIONAL COMPETENCE

Interactional competence Speech acts: expressing intentions Implicature: reading between the lines Conversation management Non-verbal communication Grice’s Interaction Theory (1975) Maxims of Quality Quantity Relevance Manner Cooperation

Sociocultural competence Dialect Can I help you duck? Register Email/letter style, address forms Naturalness Good bye, birthday boy! Pá’, viszlát, jó napot! I just love that levander shirt! (F/M) Cultural references & figures of speech I need it like a hole in my head.

Goals of a pragmatic theory produce a classification of speech acts, analyse and define speech acts, specify the various uses of expressions, relate literary and direct language use to linguistic structure, the structure of the communicative situation, the social institutions, speaker-meaning, implication, presupposition and understanding.