1. PRAGMATICS

2. 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)

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

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

5. 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]

6. 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!

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

8. 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?

9. 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”

10. 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)

11. 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

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

13. 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

14. Sociocultural competence
Dialect
Can I help you duck?
Register
/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.

15. 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.