2.7 Pragmatics
In this section, we look at sentential meaning from the perspective of how it is influenced by and how it influences the context. The study of how context affects meaning, and subsequently how we use language in everyday communication settings, is called pragmatics.
2.7.1 Cross-community differences in discourse
Imagine a time where you were in a conversation with someone with a cultural background different from yours. Have there been times where miscommunication happened? There are different conversational rules for different language communities. What counts as a ‘friendly’ interaction? What counts as ‘polite’? When we study pragmatics, we need to be aware that there are cultures and conversational norms beyond your own. Encountering unfamiliar discourse rules in a language that you may not have encountered before may give rise to feelings of surprise, and that’s OK — but we hope that you will use your linguist mind to prevent this surprise from turning into negative judgments about other cultures and languages. Remember, all forms of language are valid!
2.7.2 The cooperative principle (Grice’s Maxims)
In this section, we will discuss the conversational logic behind why certain implicatures arise in discourse. Implicature refers to information that is suggested or implied by a speaker, but not explicitly stated in the utterance. It goes beyond the literal meaning of the words and involves a kind of indirect communication, relying on context, shared knowledge, and conversational principles.
Let’s start with the following example in (1).
| (1) | Aya: | Did Raj feed the cat and clean the litterbox? | |
| Bo: | He fed the cat. | ||
| Aya: | (Infers: ‘He didn’t clean the litterbox.’) |
Terminologically, the speaker/signer creates an implicature or they imply that content. The addressee makes an inference or they infer that content.
A way of analysing how implicatures arise in discourse is called the Cooperative Principle, proposed by philosopher Paul Grice. He proposed that one way of explaining how we get implicatures in a conversation is to think that there are implicit conversational principles that discourse participants follow. According to the Cooperative Principle, the major underlying assumption that we make in a conversation is that all discourse participants are acting in a way to accomplish conversational goals. For example, let’s say that the topic of discussion was “How much money should we spend on our cat’s birthday party?”. If everyone in the conversation agrees that the goal is to figure out a reasonable cost for the party, then all discourse participants assume that everyone in the conversation is acting in a reasonable way and uttering things in order to accomplish this goal. This is what is meant by “cooperation” in the Cooperative Principle. Specifically, Grice described four maxims (or general rules of conduct) that might be the basis of many conversations: the Maxim of Quality, Maxim of Quantity, Maxim of Relation, and Maxim of Manner. The idea is that if these are the conversational rules that people follow (and if people assume that other people follow these rules too), then there is an explanation of why certain implicatures arise in discourse. When the maxims are violated, this is called flouting.
Let’s take a look at the four maxims that Grice described.
The Maxim of Quality
Grice observed that discourse participants seem to follow a conversational rule about being honest. He stated this rule as the Maxim of Quality: in a conversation, you say what you believe to be true, and only say what you have sufficient evidence for. For your convenience, our previous example is reproduced below as (2).
| (2) | Aya: | Did Raj feed the cat and clean the litterbox? | |
| Bo: | He fed the cat. | ||
| Aya: | (Infers: ‘He didn’t clean the litterbox.’) |
This maxim says that the fundamental assumption that you make in discourse is that no one is lying in the conversation. Aya gets the the inference from Bo’s statement in (2) partially because she assumes he would only say true things. Their logic is that Bo must have not said Raj cleaned the litterbox because it would be false to say so.
If the Maxim of Quality is violated, someone would be overtly lying in the discourse. Imagine for example that the conversation in (2) took place, except that Raj never fed the cat (or clean the litterbox for that matter). Bo is being blatantly uncooperative in this conversation in this case. When a maxim is violated in a conversation, it gives rise to the intuition that something has gone wrong in the discourse. In this case, the objective in the conversation was to figure out if Raj fed the cat and if Raj cleaned the litterbox, but now Aya incorrectly thinks Raj did feed the cat. This does not help with the objective of the conversation, hence, something has gone wrong. Note that if Bo is a good liar, Aya might not realise that something has gone awry in the discourse during the conversation. But if it was revealed later that Raj didn’t feed the cat, Aya would certainly feel that the conversation she previously had with Bo was not a cooperative one: a maxim was violated.
In English and many languages, failure to try is what is considered a maxim violation. That is, if you were not trying to follow Quality at all, knew the statement was false but uttered it anyway, that is what is considered a violation. Let’s assume for a moment again that Raj actually didn’t feed the cat. If Bo truly thought that Raj fed the cat, saying “He fed the cat” would technically not be a violation under the Cooperative Principle. English users likely wouldn’t wouldn’t accuse Bo of lying because Bo truly had the belief that he was telling the truth (Carson, 2006). Bo said something false but didn’t lie.
In summary, the Maxim of Quality is paraphrasable as “don’t lie” and “make sure you have enough evidence for what you’re saying”, which is a maxim common to a lot of languages — but what counts as a lie (= a violation of the maxim) may vary from community to community.
The Maxim of Quantity
Grice also observed that discourse participants seem to follow a conversational rule about how much information they should give when trying to meet conversational goals. He stated this as the Maxim of Quantity: in a conversation, don’t be more informative than is needed by the purpose of the conversation, and don’t be less informative than is needed by the purpose of the conversation, either. You need to be as informative as is required. Informativity is generally measured based on entailment relations. This definition of informativity is given below. Take p and q to be variables for sentences.
| (3) | If p entails q (and p and q are not the same sentence), then p is more informative than q. |
By this definition, Panks is a Siberian Forest Cat (=p) is more informative than Panks is a cat (=q), because p entails q and they are not the same sentence. Let’s go back to our original example, reproduced below as (4).
| (4) | Aya: | Did Raj feed the cat and clean the litterbox? | |
| Bo: | He fed the cat. | ||
| Aya: | (Infers: ‘He didn’t clean the litterbox.’) |
The relevant entailment relation is between Raj fed the cat and Raj fed the cat and cleaned the litterbox. The latter sentence entails the former; so, Raj fed the cat and cleaned the litterbox is more informative than Raj fed the cat.
To understand how this maxim works, imagine in (4) that Bo knew that Raj actually fed the cat AND cleaned the litterbox, and still said what he said (“He fed the cat.”). This would be a violation of the Maxim of Quantity, because the statement He fed the cat is underinformative: the more informative thing to say in this situation would be Raj fed the cat and cleaned the litterbox. If Aya found out after the conversation in (4) that Raj actually cleaned the litterbox too, Aya would likely feel that Bo was being uncooperative in the conversation they had (“Why didn’t you tell me he cleaned the litterbox too, if you knew?!”). Bo didn’t make a false statement, but the true statement that he did make wasn’t the most informative one.
The flip side of this is being OVERinformative. For this, imagine this version of the previous discourse:
| (5) | Aya: | Did Raj feed the cat and clean the litterbox? | |
| Bo: | ?? | Yes, he fed the cat, he cleaned the litterbox, he brushed the cat, he trimmed the cat’s claws, he told the cat what a good boy he was, he pet the cat, he napped with the cat… |
Assume that Raj actually did all of the things that Bo said he did. This means that Quality is not being violated. What IS being violated is Quantity. This time, he gave more information than what was requested by Aya’s question. A simple “Yes (he fed the cat and cleaned the litterbox)” would’ve sufficed to meet the objective of the conversation.
The Maxim of Relation
Another one of Grice’s observation was that discourse participants seem to expect each other to stay on topic during a conversation. He described this as the Maxim of Relation: make your contributions to the conversation relevant to what is being discussed. Consider the following conversation in (7).
| (7) | Aya: | I used to take piano lessons when I was little. What sorts of extracurricular activities did you do as a kid? | |
| Bo: | Nice. When I was little, I used to go to weekly swimming classes. |
This is a perfectly normal and cooperative conversation, because Aya brought up the topic of what things they did in their childhood. Bo responds with something that is related to this topic: what he did as a child, which in this case is take swimming classes. The Maxim of Relation is being followed.
Contrast this with Bo’s reply in (8), which for some people is a slightly more surprising turn in the conversation.
| (8) | Aya: | I used to take piano lessons when I was little. What sorts of extracurricular activities did you do as a kid? | |
| Bo: | ?? | When I was little, my favourite food was chicken nuggets. |
Assuming that Bo is not lying, Bo has said something truthful, thus Bo is following the Maxim of Quality. We don’t get the sense that he is oversharing or undersharing, and he has at least said something about his childhood, which is to some extent informative — so Quantity doesn’t seem like the main maxim being violated either. The main reason that (7) might feel odd to some adult English users is because Bo is off topic. The topic under discussion is “what extracurricular activities did you do as a child”, so to stay on topic you would minimally name events, not stative properties like what your favourite food was. This in this context would be a violation of the Maxim of Relation.
If you find yourself thinking things like ‘Well, maybe Bo means that he took cooking classes, or that he didn’t do any extracurriculars at all?’, that is a valid inference you are trying to draw.
The Maxim of Manner
Grice’s fourth and final observation was that discourse participants seem to have an expectation about how they say things in a conversation too, not just what they say. He described this as the Maxim of Manner: be as clear, brief, and as orderly as possible when you make your contributions in a conversation. Consider the following conversation (Note: the hand-washing instructions are adapted from this CDC guideline).
| (9) | Aya: | How do I properly wash my hands? | |
| Bo: | ?? | Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them. Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails. Rinse your hands well under clean, running water. Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Wet your hands with clean, running water. Turn off the tap, and apply soap. |
Bo’s instructions are truthful, in that each step he listed indeed are things you do when you wash your hands. His contribution is also appropriately informative, and relevant to the question that was asked by Aya. However, Bo said the instructions in a funny way: he didn’t list the steps in order. So the oddness of Bo’s utterance mainly comes from a violation of the Maxim of Manner. For Bo to conform to the Maxim of Manner, we would of course have to change the order in which he presented each step:
| (10) | Aya: | How do I properly wash my hands? | |
| Bo: | Wet your hands with clean, running water. Turn off the tap, and apply soap. Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails. Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. Rinse your hands well under clean, running water. Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them. |
The Maxim of Manner essentially says that the way that you present the information should not get in the way of transmitting the information. So under the scope of this maxim are things like the order in which you present information, whether your statement is ambiguous, which words you choose, how quickly you speak or sign, and how loud you speak (for spoken languages).
2.7.3 Speech acts
Illocutionary meaning
Illocutionary meaning is the sentential meaning in terms of what the speaker/signer means in making an utterance. The idea is that after we compositionally build up the literal meaning of a sentence, we do something with this sentence in a conversation. In other words, what’s the point of saying something in a conversation?
To understand what this means, let’s take a look at the conversation in (1).
(1) (Context: Aya and Bo are roommates, and are trying to decide what to make for dinner.)
Aya: Should we have spaghetti for dinner?
Bo: We have tomato sauce and ground beef in the fridge.
Aya: Yeah. Can we make pasta bolognese with those ingredients?
Bo: Yeah, I think so.
Aya: OK, cool. We’ll do spaghetti then.
Let’s focus on Bo’s utterance, We have tomato sauce and ground beef in the fridge. The sense of this sentence is the lexical meaning of all the words it contains combined. But Bo is not saying this sentence in this conversation for the sake of expressing the sense of the sentence. He is saying this because he believes this sentence to be true, and he would like for the addressee, Aya, to agree with it. This layer of meaning is what we are referring to as illocutionary meaning, and what we mean by “what we mean in making an utterance.” In this case, Bo has made an assertion. In contrast, if you look at Aya’s first utterance in (1), she has posed a question: Should we have spaghetti for dinner?.Assertion vs. question is a way of classifying sentences based on their illocutionary meaning. There’s more that you can do in a conversation than just assert things and ask questions. For example, you might exclaim things in an exclamative (e.g., What a beautiful raccoon!) or you might give orders with an imperative (e.g., Look at the raccoon!).
Locutionary Speech Act
The locutionary act of a speech/sign act is an expression of the locutionary meaning of the sentence, which is the literal meaning of the sentence. The locutionary meaning of You’re manspreading is something like ‘the addressee, presupposed to be male, is sitting with their legs wide apart.’
Illocutionary Speech Act
The illocutionary act of a speech/sign act is an expression of the illocutionary meaning of the sentence, which is what you “do” in making an utterance. Typically, in making an assertion, what the speaker “does” is commit herself to the truth of the utterance (the performative version would be something like ‘I hereby publicly declare that I believe that you are manspreading’). In this particular case, she’s also likely “doing” something else too: making a request (for him to move his legs). Those are both illocutionary acts. Other than asserting and requesting, illocutionary acts can include: asking, resigning, promising, congratulating, and more.
Perlocutionary Speech Act
Finally, the perlocutionary act (or perlocutionary effect) of a speech/sign act is an expression of the perlocutionary meaning of the sentence, which is the actual effect of the utterance on the addressee. In this case, the perlocutionary effect of You’re manspreading might be that the addressee moves his legs to make more room for the speaker.
Chapter Attribution
This chapter has been adapted in parts from:
Essentials of Linguistics (2nd edition) by Anderson et al. (2022). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Pragmatics is the study of how context affects meaning, and subsequently how we use language in everyday communication settings.
