SUMMARY OF PRAGMATICS

PRAGMATICS

Ø  Syntax is the study of relationship between linguistics forms, how they are arranged in sequence and sequences are well-formed. It is concerned with the grammatical and structural words.

Ø  Semantics is the study of relationship between linguistics forms and entities of the world. That is, words literally connect to thing. It is concerned with the logical and literal meaning.

Ø  Pragmatics is the study of linguistics forms and the users of those forms. It is concerned with contextual meaning.

Ø  The advantage of studying language via pragmatics is that we can talk about people’s intended meaning, their assumption, their purposes and goal, and the kind of actions that they performing when they speak.

Ø  The big disadvantage is that all these very human concepts are extremely difficult to analyze in a consistence and objective way.

Ø  There are four element concepts of pragmatics, namely:

1. Speaker
2. Hearer
3. Context
4. Utterance

Ø  Context is the key element of pragmatics.

Ø  Context is broader than situation

Speech act

Action performed via utterance. People do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words but also they perform actions via those utterances.

Classification of speech act

            Representative

            Directive

Commisive

Expressive

Declaration

Level of speech act (the bar will be closed in five minutes)

Locutionary (utterance)- the bar will be closed in five minutes

Illocutionary (intention/meaning) – please get ready to go out

Perlocutonary (effect)- the addressee will soon get out.

How to perform speech act

Directly or indirectly – by way of performing another speech act

Literally or nonliterally – depending on how we are using our words

Explicitly or inexplicitly – depending on whether we fully spell out what we mean.

The performative hypothesis

Deixis

Personal

Deixis             Special

Temporal

Deixis

Proximal

Distal

POLITENESS

Politeness is to reduce face threatening act

Deference is to fulfill face satisfying act

The concept of face

1. Relational
2. Communal
3. Hierarchy
4. Moral

Brown and Levinson (1978;1987)

Ø  Positive face is hope or will of face owner that his/her work and achievement will be recognized and appreciated by the environment.

Ø  Negative face is a hope or will of face owner that he/she does not want to be disturbed by environment.

Principle of politeness (leech: 1983)

1. Speakers’ illocutionary goal
2. Speakers’ social goal
3. Interpersonal rhetoric
4. Textual rhetoric

Grice (1975) requires that to be politeness, it must cover cooperative principle:

1. Maxim of quality
2. Maxim of quantity
3. Maxim of relation
4. Maxim of manner

Principle of mutual consideration (Azis: 2000)

Ø  Use the utterance to your hearer that you will be glad if anyone use it to you and vice versa

Ø  Do not use the utterance to your hearer that you will be glad if anyone use it to you and vice versa

1.      Harm and favour principle

2.      Shared feeling principle

3.      Prima facie principle

4.      Continuity principle

The predominance of PMC

Ø  Work in causal mechanism

Ø  Assume and even require

1.      Pre-event politeness

2.      On-the-spot politeness

3.      Post-event politeness

THREE DIMENTION OF POLITENESS

1. Godliness/heavenly contentment
2. Individual freedom
3. Social harmony