Pragmatics: Tu vs Vous

Historical use of 'tu' and 'vous':

• The original T/V distinction was a reflection of power
• When used non-reciprocally, the person with power used 'tu' and the person without it used 'vous'
• Non reciprocal use 
• e.g. Older -> younger = tu
• e.g. Younger -> older = vous
• e.g. Noble -> Peasant = tu
• e.g. Peasant -> Noble = vous 
• Reciprocal use was for equals in power
• Noble classes used vous for each other
• Common people used tu 
• The choice of pronoun can indicate solidarity, degrees of closeness and intimacy
• These days a reciprocal relationship is reflected in reciprocal pronoun use
• Powerful people with no shared common ground will use 'vous', but with common ground they will use 'tu'

Conflict in choice:

• Sometimes there is a conflict between people's level of solidarity and the power dynamics of their relationship
• e.g. in a parent/child relationship
• this is a solidarity relationship but it is also power bound 
• in the past, they would have had a non reciprocal relationship
• these days solidarity is more important than power displays
• the more powerful individual decides on the use of tu or vous

 Social factors:

•  Politically radical individuals are more likely to use the tu form 
• rural children are more likely to use a non reciprocal vous form with adults
• Urban children are more likely to use a reciprocal tu form with adults
• Gender - familiar male adults will use reciprocal vous with teenage girls, non reciprocal tu with younger girls and non reciprocal tu with boys of all ages

Discourse: Pragmalinguistics

Pragmalinguistics:

• The link between form and function
• form - the linguistic elements/structures used to complete a speech act
• e.g. the imperative is used for command, a negated modal is used for requests

Sociopragmatics: 

•  Mapping form and function of linguistic elements to the appropriate social context
• e.g. donne moi vs donnez moi
• the choice is based on the question of politeness, formality, prestige, age, situation and the number of people

Politeness Theory and Face:

• 'Face' is the positive social value a person effectively claims
• i.e. how you present yourself and how you are perceived 
• Positive Face serves the purposes of:
• Enhancement of positive self image
• Preserving one's own face
• Intimate behaviour - showing social closeness
• Negative Face serves the purpose of: 
• Non imposition on the hearer
• Preserves the hearer's face 
• Achieving distance, in order to demonstrate respect

Face Threatening Act:

•  An act which endangers either one's own image or somebody else's
• e.g. requests - can be viewed as showing weakness, opening oneself up to rejection (Positive Face) or imposing on the hearer (negative Face)
• French and English have similar language use for requests - designed to reduce the threat to face
• the presumption of rejection so as not lose face in the event 
• FTAs are communicative acts that do not respect either the hearer's need for space (negative face) or the speaker's desire to uphold their own self image (Positive face) or both 

Choices in FTA Performance:

• Every time we are confronted with an FTA we face a choice whether or not to perform it

Discourse: Pragmatics

Pragmatics:

• The analysis of the unsaid
• Examining the deeper meaning of language 
• e.g. nous sommes Paris vs Je suis Charlie 
• The change in deitic reference (nous vs je) leads to an entirely different meaning
• from the personal to the universal
• Deitic references are often used in contrast with each other 
• The unsaid - the je/nous are excluding the tu/vous

What is the study of Pragmatics? 

• The study of the relationship between what is said and what is actually meant
• It focuses on the functions of language
• e.g. "you wouldn't pass the salt"
• literal meaning - an accusation - in the past, I asked you to pass the salt and you refused
• however because of our social experience, we know that what is actually meant is a request to pass the salt 

Studies on Pragmatics:

• Morris, 1938, coined the term pragmatics and defined it as the study of the relationship of signs to the user (speaker) and the interpreter (hearer)
• Katz, 1977, described pragmatic phenomena as those in which knowledge of setting and context of an utterance plays a role in its understanding
• Fesold, 1991, described pragmatics as the use of context to make inferences about meaning
• Bach, 2004, defined it as the theory of language use

A Working Definition of Pragmatics: 

A set of internalised rules which tell us how to use language in socio-culturally  appropriate ways, taking into account the participants in a communicative interaction and the features of the context within which the interaction takes place.

Speech Act Theory: 

• Austin and Serl
• Divides language into functions
• e.g. requests, apologies, compliments, advice, complaints, suggestions, insults, etc
• The study of utterances as functions
• They created two categories of language 
• Performatives - whereby saying and doing are conflated to perform an action 
• e.g. "I now pronounce you man and wife" 
• the words make the action happen 
• when the act of speaking changes a situation or physical circumstance
• Characterised by the first person pronoun and a valid speaker, hearer and context
• Constatives - whereby the utterance can be said to be true
• focused on truth values 
• e.g. "The cat is in the house" 

Focus of Pragmatics: 

• What's done with language and how it's accomplished
• The three major concerns of pragmatics
• the difference between literal and intended meaning
• directness vs indirectness
• conventional vs non conventional

Literal vs Intended Meaning:

•  Locutionary Act - the actual utterance
• the physical act of constructing utterance and meaning is determined by the rules of language
• Illocutionary Act - the intended meaning
• e.g. "It's really hot in here" could mean "Please open the window"
• Perlocutionary Act - the effect of the locutionary act and the illocutionary act
• e.g. Locution: "Vous ne pouvez pas m'aider."
• the literal meaning is "You can't help me" as in "you don't have the ability or the possibility of helping me"
• Illocution: a request for help 
• Perlocution: the person will help or refuse
• Therefore it is the illocutionary act which is the key to the success or failure of an exchange
• if the hearer understands the speaker's intention as voiced through the illocution, then it is a successful exchange 
• If the hearer's understanding differs from the speaker's intention then there is a mismatch between locution and illocution

Indirectness vs Directness:

•  With a Direct Act, there is no possibility of a mismatch
• With an Indirect Act, the possibility of a mismatch exists

Conventionalised vs Non-Conventionalised:

• Conventionalised - the normal, universal way of saying something
• e.g. "Vous ne pouvez pas m'aider" is universally recognised as a request for help
• no room for ambiguity
• Non-conventionalised - a personal way of expressing something, which is not universally recognised as having that meaning
• e.g. "T'as pas faim?" could mean "I am hungry and would like to eat."
• personal - depends on context for understanding
• the hearer will need to disambiguate the meaning

 The interpretation of speech acts is highly subjective and depends a lot on context.

Discourse: Text Cohesion and Coherence

Devices of discourse:

• Deixis - shows the way speakers and writers orientate themselves and others in discourse 
• through the use of deitic expressions
• What:
• Demonstratives - ce/cette, ces ... là, celui-là
• Possessives - sa, son, ses etc
• Who:
• Verbs in 1st/2nd/3rd person
• Pronouns - je, tu, il etc
• When: 
• Time adverbs - maintenant, autrefois etc
• Tense of verbs - j'ai donné, je donnerai, etc
• Where:
• Spatial adverbs - ice, là, là-bas
• Deitic expressions are used to point out or indicate something to the speaker or listener

Coherence and Cohesion:

• Coherence - in order to be considered discourse, a text must be coherent
• i.e. it can't be a random sequence of sentences 
• it must tell its audience what is going on 
• Cohesion - how sentences are linked together  
• A text can be cohesive without being coherent  
• i.e. it can be linked together by a topic without having any logical structure
• In order to create coherence, we used subordinating and coordinating clauses
• Coordinating conjunctions - mais, et, ou, ou bien
• Subordinating conjunctions - parce que, si, tandis que, dont, lequel, où, que, qui
• Coordinating clauses can exist independently, are equally important as each other in a sentence
• Subordinating clauses are dependent on the main clause to make sense and cannot exist independently 

Cohesive Ties: 

• Hold discourse together
• e.g. d'abord, ensuite, en plus, enfin, cependant, au contraire d'autre part 
• give the text a logical structure

Endophora:

• An expression which is used to refer to something which has been or which will be said or written in a text
• it can refer to something mentioned earlier or something that will mentioned later 
• e.g. demonstrative pronouns are often used to avoid noun repetition and ambiguity
• Two types of endophora - anaphora and cataphora
• Anaphora - use of pronoun or demonstrative to refer back to something previous mentioned 
• Cataphora - use of pronoun or demonstrative to refer forward in text to something which will be mentioned

Examples:

Je ne vous présente pas un programme, au sens habituel du mot. Je l'ai fait en 1981 alors que j'étais à la tête du Parti socialiste.

Analysis: 

• Deitic expressions in bold, anaphora underlined, cataphora overlined
• je ne vous présente
• je & vous = demonstratives, verb ending = time indication
• je l'ai fait en 1981
• je = demonstrative, fait, en 1981 = time indication, l' = anaphoric reference

Introduction to Discourse

Studying Discourse:

• Discourse is any body of text, written or spoken, which is longer than a sentence
• The study of discourse takes the organisation of texts as a whole into account 
• Taking a broader view of how the composite elements of language work together as a whole, successfully or not
• The study of discourse focuses on language as a social, cultural context
• Texts and discourse:
• compositions of phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax and lexicology 
• created by identifiable participants
• bearing in mind sociocultural and historic constraints such as time/place/content

Speaking - Dell Hymes: 

• Hymes' model to assist the identification and labeling of components of linguistic interaction
• S - setting (when and where is the interaction taking place)
• P - participants (who's taking part? Speaker? Audience?)
• E - end (what are the goals and outcomes of the interaction)
• A - act sequence (what is the form and order of the message?)
• K - key (what is the tone/manner/spirit of the interaction? Is it serious/humorous/etc?)
• I - instrumentality (forms and styles of the interaction)
• N - norms of interaction in a particular culture (social rules governing the interaction)
• G - genre (what kind of speech act is it? A story? A lecture?)
• A change in any one of these factors would mean a change in discourse 
• This was one of the first attempts made at socially situating language
• Before this, people had always been more interested in discussing the structure of language as an abstract concept
• However language can't survive if not socially situated 

Co-operative Principles - Grice:

• According to Grice, in order for discourse to be successful, the four maxims of the co-operative principle must be followed:
• Quantity - say no more and no less than is necessary
• Quality - be truthful
• Don't say anything you know to be untrue or can't provide adequate evidence of 
• Relation - be relevant to what has been said before
• Manner - be lucid 
• speak in a clear and orderly fashion to avoid ambiguity 
• These maxims are relevant to an idealised interaction
• The correct use of the maxims is entirely context dependent