An Introduction to the Study of Pragmatics = Bevezetés a pragmatikába

A Bevezetés a pragmatikába című jegyzetünk megírásának célja az volt, hogy rávilágítsunk a pragmatika helyére és szerepére a nyelvészet tágabb kérdéskörében. A fordító szakos diákjaink számára szeretnénk érthetővé és elérhetővé tenni olyan kérdéseket és fogalmakat, mint a beszédaktus-elmélet, a beszédaktusok szerkezete és tipológiája Austin és Searle olvasatában, az illokúciók különböző vetületei, előfeltételezések, deiktikus nyelvi elemek, implikatúrák és Grice implikatúraelmélete, a beszédaktusok társadalmi beágyazódása és dimenziói, az udvariasság elmélete, valamint az udvarias közlésmód és indirekt beszédaktusok viszonya, és nem utolsósorban a kontextus meghatározó szerepe a nyelvi árnyalatok és értelmek kifejezésében. Könyvünkben külön fejezetben tárgyaljuk a pragmatika szerepét a fordítástudományban. A legfontosabb pragmatikai fogalmakon kívül a tudományág legújabb vetületeit is szeretnénk diákjaink elé tárni. Célunk az, hogy megértessük hallgatóinkkal a nyelvhasználat és az emberi lét más vetületei közt létező nagyon árnyalt kapcsolatrendszert, hogy rávilágítsunk arra, hogy a (nyelvi és társadalmi) kontextus milyen módon alkotja és csiszolja az értelmeket, valamint hogyan határozza meg a kommunikációs aktusban résztvevők szerepeinek az alakulását. Nem utolsósorban, könyvünk megírása által azt szeretnénk elérni, hogy a pragmatikát tanuló hallgatóink megértsék és tudatosítsák azt az összetett kapcsolatrendszert, amely a (nyelv)tudás és a tapasztalat, azaz a nyelv használata között létezik

Enrichments and Their Use for Manipulating Commitments

PTDC/FER-FIL/28278/2017 EXPL/FER-FIL/0276/2021 UIDB/00183/2020 UIDP/00183/2020The fallacy of ignoring qualifications, or secundum quid et simpliciter, is a deceptive strategy that is pervasive in argumentative dialogues, discourses, and discussions. It consists in misrepresenting an utterance so that its meaning is broadened, narrowed, or simply modified to pursue different goals, such as drawing a specific conclusion, attacking the interlocutor, or generating humorous reactions. The “secundum quid” was described by Aristotle as an interpretative manipulative strategy, based on the contrast between the “proper” sense of a statement and its meaning taken absolutely or in a certain respect. However, how can an “unqualified” statement have a proper meaning different from the qualified one, and vice versa? This “linguistic” fallacy brings to light a complex relationship between pragmatics, argumentation, and interpretation. The secundum quid is described in this paper as a manipulative argument, whose deceptive effect lies in its pragmatic dimension. This fallacy is analyzed as a strategy of decontextualization lying at the interface between pragmatics and argumentation and consisting of the unwarranted passage from an utterance to its semantic representation. By ignoring the available evidence and the presumptive interpretation of a statement, the speaker places it in a different context or suppresses textual and contextual evidence to infer a specific meaning different from the presumable one.publishersversionpublishe

Towards More Graceful Interaction: A Survey of Question-Answering Programs

One of the aims of Natural Language Processing (NLP) is to facilitate the use of computers by allowing users to interact with systems in natural language. Since such interactions often take the form of question-answering sessions, the process of question-answering is an important part of NLP. In this paper, we are concerned with the progress made towards building question-answering systems which are natural and satisfying to users, allowing them to express themselves freely and answering questions appropriately. Such systems are said to provide graceful interaction. We survey the evolution of question-answering programs, presenting steps and approaches that have been taken towards providing graceful man-machine interaction, and pointing out efficiencies of existing programs and theories. Our emphasis is on the various issues and difficulties encountered in building a user-friendly question-answering program

Ignoring Qualifications as a Pragmatic Fallacy: Enrichments and Their Use for Manipulating Commitments

The fallacy of ignoring qualifications, or secundum quid et simpliciter, is a deceptive strategy that is pervasive in argumentative dialogues, discourses, and discussions. It consists in misrepresenting an utterance so that its meaning is broadened, narrowed, or simply modified to pursue different goals, such as drawing a specific conclusion, attacking the interlocutor, or generating humorous reactions. The “secundum quid” was described by Aristotle as an interpretative manipulative strategy, based on the contrast between the “proper” sense of a statement and its meaning taken absolutely or in a certain respect. However, how can an “unqualified” statement have a proper meaning different from the qualified one, and vice versa? This “linguistic” fallacy brings to light a complex relationship between pragmatics, argumentation, and interpretation. The secundum quid is described in this paper as a manipulative argument, whose deceptive effect lies in its pragmatic dimension. This fallacy is analyzed as a strategy of decontextualization lying at the interface between pragmatics and argumentation and consisting of the unwarranted passage from an ut-terance to its semantic representation. By ignoring the available evidence and the presumptive interpretation of a statement, the speaker places it in a different context or suppresses textual and contextual evidence to infer a specific meaning different from the presumable one

Impoliteness as a vehicle for humour in dramatic discourse

This study aims to investigate the proposed complementary relationship between impoliteness (as a form of aggression), and humour (as a form of entertainment). Taking the fictional film As Good As It Gets, I draw from a number of scenes involving the main protagonist Melvin Udall. Although this character is extremely offensive to others, the film is classified as a romantic comedy. As such, it offers a good basis on which to test out my ideas regarding the proposed relationship between impoliteness and humour, and more importantly, how and why we may feel the need to laugh at what is essentially socially proscribed and disturbing behaviour. My work, then, contributes to two main academic fields of interest: with regards the field of impoliteness I demonstrate why offensiveness can be entertaining by making specific links with humour theory, and within the field of stylistics I show how a multi-disciplined approach to character analysis can offer us richer observations and interpretations of behaviour, than would otherwise be available through analysis of models in isolation

Subtitling Humour from the Perspective of Relevance Theory: The Office in Traditional Chinese

Subtitling the scenes containing humorous utterances in cinematic-televisual productions encounters a myriad of challenges, because the subtitler has to face the technical constraints that characterise the professional subtitling environment and the cultural barriers when reproducing humorous utterances for viewers inhabiting another culture. Past studies tend to explore more limited humour-related areas, which means that a more comprehensive picture of this specialised field is missing. The current research investigates the subtitling of humour, drawing on the framework of relevance theory and the British sitcom The Office, translated from English dialogue into Traditional Chinese subtitles. This research enquires into whether or not relevance theory can explain the subtitling strategies activated to deal with various humorous utterances in the sitcom, and, if so, to what extent. The English-Chinese Corpus of The Office (ECCO), which contains sample texts, media files and annotations, has been constructed to perform an empirical study. To enrich the corpus with valuable annotations, a typology of humour has been developed based on the concept of frame, and a taxonomy of subtitling strategies has also been proposed. The quantitative analysis demonstrates that the principle of relevance is the main benchmark for the choice of a subtitling micro-strategy within any given macro-strategy. With the chi-square test, it further proves the existence of a statistically significant association between humour types/frames and subtitling strategies at the global level. The qualitative analysis shows that the principle of relevance can operate in a subtle way, in which the subtitler invests more cognitive efforts to enhance the acceptability of subtitles. It also develops three levels of mutual dependency between the two variables, from strong, weak to null, to classify different examples. Overall, this study improves our understanding of humour translation and can facilitate a change in the curricula of translator training

When the Gods Speak: Oracular Communication and Concepts of Language in Sophocles

Oracles in Sophoclean tragedies are consistently misunderstood, not because the gods speak in out-and-out lies, but because they communicate in a decidedly non-human mode that appears to violate the unwritten rules of effective human conversation. I use pragmatic linguistic theory to examine how oracles are misunderstood, since pragmatics is concerned precisely with these unwritten rules—how context, inferences, and implications complement the basic semantic content of language. These non-semantic elements are conspicuously absent from oracular communication, which leads to misinterpretation. I examine how the liminality and strangeness of oracular speech afford Sophocles the flexibility to explore the different components of language. Oracular speech—precisely because it is not bound by the rules of “normal” speech—offers a context in which pragmatic principles can fail and artificially constructed miscommunications can “break” pragmatic rules. By exploring the limits of communication and miscommunication, Sophocles illustrates exactly those guiding principles that underlie effective communication.PHDClassical StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138792/1/apistone_1.pd

Raising Greek high-school students’ awareness of conversational implicatures with the use of corpora

Τα τελευταία χρόνια ιδιαίτερη έμφαση έχει δοθεί στην διδασκαλία της πραγματολογίας γενικά (Kasper, 1997; Rose and Kasper, 2001; Rose, 2005) και ειδικότερα στην αξία της διδασκαλίας της πραγματολογίας κατά την εκμάθηση της Αγγλικής ως ξένη γλώσσα (Tanaka, 1997; Lee, 2002; Taguchi, 2002; Alcón Soler, 2005; Taguchi, 2005; Aksoyalp and Toprak, 2015). Ωστόσο, παρόλο που οι Έλληνες μαθητές διδάσκονται αγγλικά από πολύ νεαρή ηλικία, αυτό που στην πραγματικότητα δημιουργείται είναι μια γενιά ικανών χρηστών της Αγγλικής που αντιμετωπίζουν πρόβλημα ανεπαρκούς κατανόησης όταν επικοινωνούν διαπολιτισμικά λόγω της έλλειψης πραγματολογικών γνώσεων. Η παρούσα μελέτη στοχεύει να διερευνήσει την εξοικείωση των Ελλήνων μαθητών λυκείου με την έννοια των ‘implicatures’ (υπονοούμενα) και να καλύψει ένα σημαντικό κενό στον τομέα της διδασκαλίας τους κατά το μάθημα των αγγλικών σε τάξεις ελληνικών σχολείων με αποτελέσματα που μπορούν να αποδειχθούν καθολικά για τη διδασκαλία των ‘implicatures’ στα αγγλικά αλλά και σε άλλες γλώσσες. Οι κύριοι στόχοι μου ήταν η αξιολόγηση της επίδρασης της διδασκαλίας των ‘implicatures’ με τη χρήση αυθεντικών κειμένων που ανακτήθηκαν από σώματα κειμένων (corpora) και η ανάπτυξη διδακτικού υλικού που μπορεί να αποδειχθεί χρήσιμο για την βελτίωση και την αξιολόγηση της πραγματολογικής επίγνωσης των μαθητών. Η μελέτη μου είχε ως στόχο να προσφέρει μια ολοκληρωμένη προσέγγιση για την αύξηση της πραγματολογικής ευαισθητοποίησης (Ifantidou, 2014) των μαθητών, καθώς περιλάμβανε υλικό βασισμένο σε παραδείγματα της πραγματικής ζωής (Boulton and Landure, 2016). Επιπλέον, επικεντρώθηκε σε πιο δημιουργικά ‘implicatures’ παρά σε συμβατικά, τα οποία είναι τυποποιημένα και, επομένως, μπορούν να επεξεργαστούν πιο εύκολα από τους μαθητές χωρίς να προκαλέσουν σοβαρά επικοινωνιακά προβλήματα (Vega, 2007). Προς αυτή την κατεύθυνση, υιοθετήθηκε το θεωρητικό πλαίσιο της Relevance Theory (Θεωρία Συνάφειας) (Carston, 2001; Wilson and Sperber, 2004; Wilson, 2009) και ακολουθήθηκε η διαδικασία ‘pre-test – teaching sessions on implicature—post-test’ τόσο για την πιλοτική όσο και για την κύρια μελέτη. Μετά την ποσοτική και ποιοτική αξιολόγηση των ευρημάτων, συνήχθη το συμπέρασμα ότι αυτό που καθιστά τo συγκεκριμένo υλικό κατάλληλο για διδασκαλία είναι το γεγονός ότι βασίστηκε αποκλειστικά σε αυθεντικές πηγές και όχι σε παραδοσιακά, μη αυθεντικά κείμενα που δεν εκθέτουν οι μαθητές στην πραγματική χρήση της γλώσσας. Επιβεβαιώθηκε επίσης ότι η διαδικασία ανάκτησης των ‘implicatures’ μπορεί να είναι ένας σημαντικός παράγοντας για τους μαθητές προκειμένου να επεξεργάζονται τη γλώσσα μόνοι τους. Τέλος, επαληθεύτηκε ότι η Relevance Theory για την προσέγγιση των ‘implicatures’ είναι πιο ακριβής και σαφέστερη όταν πρόκειται για τον ορισμό τους και είναι ιδιαίτερα ωφέλιμη για τους εκπαιδευτικούς που θέλουν να δώσουν έμφαση στα συμφραζόμενα (context).Over recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the teaching of pragmatics in general (Kasper, 1997; Rose and Kasper, 2001; Rose, 2005) and to the value of explicit teaching of pragmatics in an EFL classroom in particular (Tanaka, 1997; Lee, 2002; Taguchi, 2002; Alcón Soler, 2005; Taguchi, 2005; Aksoyalp and Toprak, 2015). In the Greek EFL context, although English is taught from a very young age, proficient Greek speakers of English are confronted with several misunderstandings when communicating cross-culturally. The present research aimed to investigate the familiarity of Greek high-school students with the concept of implicature and fill in a considerable gap within the field of teaching pragmatics in the EFL classroom of Greek schools, hoping that it may influence the teaching of implicatures in English, and possibly also in other languages. My main purpose was, on the one hand, to evaluate the effect of explicit teaching of implicatures with the use of authentic texts retrieved from corpora and, on the other hand, to develop teaching and testing materials with a view to raising and assessing learners’ pragmatic awareness. My research aimed to offer a complete approach to raising learners’ pragmatic awareness (as defined in Ifantidou, 2014) as it encompassed both teaching and testing materials based on real-life examples retrieved from corpora (Boulton and Landure, 2016). Moreover, it focused on creative conversational implicatures rather than conventional ones, since conventionalized implicatures are formulaic and patterned and can, thus, be processed more easily by EFL learners without causing serious communicational breakdowns (Vega, 2007). Towards that direction, the relevance-theoretic framework was adopted (Carston, 2001; Wilson and Sperber, 2004; Wilson, 2009) and the process of pre-test, teaching sessions on implicatures, post-test was followed both during the pilot and the main studies. After the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the findings, it was concluded that what made particularized conversational implicatures amenable to teaching is the fact that they appeared in contexts retrieved from authentic resources instead of traditional, expository and non-authentic texts, which fail to expose learners to real-life language. It was also confirmed that the process of implicature retrieval may be a crucial factor for induction, and advantageous for learners to process language on their own. Finally, it was verified that the relevance-theoretic approach to implicatures is more adequate when it comes to defining what an implicature is and provides the most plausible approach for teachers who intend to assign prominence to the role of context in implicature retrieval

Communicative strategies used by witnesses of the Leon and Phumaphi Commissions of Enquiry in Lesotho

Text in English with summaries in English, South Sotho and XhosaBibliography: leaves 196-215This study explored the communicative strategies which were used by participants who were called in as witnesses before the Leon Commission and the Phumaphi Commission of Enquiry in Lesotho in 1998 and 2015 respectively. The study specifically looked into the types of communicative strategies employed, their linguistic realisations and their conversational effectiveness in providing required information to the commissions. It further compared the use of strategies by participants in both commissions. Data for this study was obtained from twenty-six audio recordings of twenty-six witnesses. The study established that participants used twelve types of communicative strategies which are classified under the following groups based on their functional characteristics: conversational category which includes strategies such as code-switching, fillers, vague language and circumlocution; a grammatical category that comprises personal pronouns, direct speech, passive voice and questioning; a sociocultural category that covers strategies such as figurative language, indirect communication, direct refusal and indirect criticism. The study established that communicative strategies such as code-switching, fillers, personal pronouns, and direct quoting were conversationally effective as participants strategically employed them to succinctly express themselves. However, strategies with concealing attributes such as those found under a sociocultural category and those under the grammatical category (passive voice and questioning) were considered conversationally ineffective as they withheld required information from the commissioners. The study further established that participants of the latter commission were even more unwilling to reveal information than those of the former, which suggests a growing unwillingness to share information to commissions of enquiry.Phuputso ena e hlahlobile maano a puisano a neng a sebediswa ke dipaki ka pela Komishene ya Leon le Komishene ya Phumaphi ya dipatlisiso naheng ya Lesotho ka 1998 le 2015. Phuputso e nyebekollotse ka kotloloho mefuta ya maano a puisano a sebedisitsweng, tshebediso ya ona kahara puo le katleho kapa tshetiso ya ona ho fana ka tlhaiso-leseding e neng e hlokwa ke di Komishene. E boetse e bapisitse hore na dipaki dikomisheneng ka bobeli di sebedisitse maano ana jwang. Ditaba tsa boithuto bona di fumanwe ho tswa direkotong tse mashome a mabedi a metso e tsheletseng (26) tsa dipaki. Phuputso e netefaditse hore dipaki di sebedisitse mefuta e leshome le metso e mmedi (12) ya maano a puisano a arotsweng tlasa dihlopha tse latelang ho ipapisitswe le ditshobotsi tsa ona: sehlopha sa puisano se kenyelletsang maano a joalo ka tshebediso ya dipuo tse fetang bonngwe, ho kgitlela, puo e sa hlakang, le ho potoloha. Sehlopha se seng ke sa tlhophiso ya puo mme sona se na le maano a kang seemedi, puo e qotsitsweng, sehlwai-potoloho. Sehlopha sa setso sona se kenyeletsa maano a joalo ka mekgabo-puo, puo e potetseng, ho hana ka kotloloho, le nyefolo e kubutileng hlooho. Phuputso e netefaditse hore maano a puisano a joalo ka tshebediso ya dipuo tse fetang bonngwe, ho kgitlela, seemedi, le puo e qotsitsweng, di sebedisitswe hantle ka ha di atlehile ho thusa dipaki ho itlhalosa ka nepo le ho fana ka lesedi le hlakileng ditabeng tsa bona. Leha ho le joalo, maano a sa bueng puo-phara a kang a fumanwang tlasa sehlopha sa setso le a mang a sehlopha sa tlhophiso ya puo (a kang sehlwai-potoloho le dipotso), boithuto bona bo sibollotse hore a sebedisitswe ho sitisa tlhahiso-leseding e hlokwang ke bakomishenara. Phuputso e boetse e netefaditse hore dipaki tsa komishene ya morao-rao di ne di sa ikemisetsa ho fana ka tlhahiso leseding papisong le dipaki tsa komishene ya pele. Boithuto bona bo utullotse hore maikemisetso a ho fana ka tlhaiso-leseding ho dikomishene tsa dipatlisiso a qepha.Esi sifundo sijonge ubuchule beendlela zonxebelelwano ezohlukileyo phakathi kwabantu ababemenyiwe ukuba bathathe inxaxheba njengamangqina kwiKhomishoni yoPhando KaLeon eyenzeka ngo1998 kunye neKhomishoni kaPhumaphi eyenzeka ngonyaka ka2015. Olu phando luye lwaqalasela ezindlela zokuqhakamishelana ezisetyenziswe apha, ukusetyenziswa kolwimi kunye nobuchule bokuthetha kula mangqina ngethuba enikeza ubungqina kwezi khomishoni. Olu phando luphinde lwathelekisa indlela amangqina asebenzise ngazo ezindlela zoqhakamishelwano kwezi khomishoni zombini. Ingqokelela-lwazi yolu phando ithathwe kumangqina angamashumi amabini anesithandathu apho kushicilelwe izimvo zawo kwezi khomishoni. Olu phando lufumanise ukuba la mangqina asebenzise ubuchule beendlela zonxebelelwano ezingamashumi amabini. Obu buchule beendlela zonxebebelwano ziqukwa ngokokusebenza kwazo ekuthetheni ngolu hlobo lulandelayo: ukuncokola okuquka ukuthetha iilwimi ezohlukeneyo ngexesha elinye, amazwi amafutshane angenantsingiselo asetyenziswa kwizimo ezinje ngokukhuza, ulwimi olungacacanga kunye nokusetyenziswa kolwimi ngendlela yokuba umntu athethe into inde apho ngeyethethe ngamagama ambalwa ukucacisa into afuna ukuyicacisa ngendlela engcono. Eyesibini yimo yokusetyensizwa kolwimi ngokuthetha nqo, ngokungathethi nqo kunye nokubanemibuzo. Eyesithathu kukujonga ulwimi nenkcubeko ngokuba kubukwe indlela abantu abasebenzisa ulwimi ngokweenkcubeko zabo apho bathetha besebenzisa iinkcazelo ezisuka kwiinckubeko zabo, ukungathethi nqo ngenxa yemo yabo yentlalo nokuthetha, ukungafuni ukuthetha ngenxa yezizimo zentlalo nenkcubeko kunye nokugxeka ngendlea ekwekwayo ngenxa yezizimo zentlalo nenkcubeko. Olu phando lubonise ukuba obu buchule beendlela zokuthetha lusetyenziswe ngamangqina ezi khomishoni luquke imo apho amangqina ebethetha iilwimi ezohlukeneyo ngexesha elinye, amangqina ayakwasebenzise amagama amafutshane angenantsingiselo asetyenziswa kwimo ezifana nokukhuza, aphinda acaphula. Ngowekenza ngolu hlobo, amanqina abanokalisile ukuba ezi ndlela zobuchule bokuthetha zincedisene nomsebenzi wezi khomishoni ngoba amangqina akwazile ukubangamaciko ekuchazeni izimvo zawo. Nangona kunjalo, ezinye iindlela zobuchule zoqhakamishelwano ezifana nezo zichaphazela inkcubeko nentlalo yabantu kunye nezokungathethi nqo, ziwachapahezele kakubi amangqina kuba zenze ukuba amangqina angakhululeki ekunikezeleni ubungqina apho kubonakale ukuba abakwazanga ukunikeza iinkcukaca ezibalulekileyo kwezi khomishoni ngenxa yoku. Olu phando luphinde lwabonakalisa ukuba amangqina weKhomishoni loPhando kaPhumaphi aye awodlula amangiqna weKhomishoni kaLeon ngokungafuni ukunikeza ngobungqina obuthile. Le nto ibirhanelisa ukuba bekukho umoya apha kwamangqina wokungafuni ncam ukunikeza ngobungqina kwezi khomishoni.Linguistics and Modern LanguagesD. Phil. (Languages, Linguistics and Literature