domingo, 31 de enero de 2021
English & American Literature Research Network
No se lo van a creer, o les va a parecer injusto, pero resulta que estoy entre los "Top Authors" de la red internacional de investigación en literatura inglesa y norteamericana, "LIT", del Social Science Research Network (SSRN). En concreto el número 2 me ponen, mundial, eh —y no parece que sea alfabéticamente.
Aquí: https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/lit/
Ahora estoy preparando los "méritos e indicios" de calidad para pedir el quinto sexenio de investigación, así que me vendrá bien esto como indicio. Aunque indicios hay para gustos; un colega que estuvo de evaluador en una comisión de éstas de evaluación investigadora iba diciendo por ahí que "todas esas cosas de internet, enlaces y demás, todo eso fuera, fuera".
Y aguántalos.
—oOo—
sábado, 30 de enero de 2021
viernes, 29 de enero de 2021
ПОЛИБИЙ О ПОНТЕ ЭВКСИНСКОМ: ИСТОРИЯ ГЕОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ВРЕМЕНИ
Me ha aparecido, albricias, una publicación más en Rusia o antigua URSS o antigua Escitia:
García Landa, José Angel. "Polybius on the Pontus: A Tale of Geological Time." Dictum – factum: от исследований к стратегическим решениям / from Research to Policy Making 2 (2020): 26-35.*
ПОЛИБИЙ О ПОНТЕ ЭВКСИНСКОМ: ИСТОРИЯ ГЕОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ВРЕМЕНИ
Хосе Анхел Гарсиа Ланда
доктор философии по английской филологии
POLYBIUS ON THE PONTUS: A TALE OF GEOLOGICAL TIME
José Angel García Landa
PhD in English Philology
АННОТАЦИЯ. В статье рассматриваются авторские отступления на тему гидрографии Черного моря (Понт Эвксинский) в четвертой книге Всеобщей истории Полибия. Наблюдения греческого историка за влиянием длительного воздействия рек и морских течений на геологические трансформации рельефа сделали его предвестником геологической теории униформизма. Размышления Полибия о гносеологических требованиях к надежности знаний в сфере естествознания представляют ранний подход к научному методу в геологии и к системному изучению глубокого времени и длительных геологических процессов в естественной истории.
Ключевые слова: Полибий, гидрография, геологическое время, Черное море, научный метод, естественная история, глобализация, греческая историография.
ABSTRACT. This paper examines Polybius' digression on the hydrography of the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) in Book IV of the Histories. The Greek historian's observations on the long- term action of rivers and sea currents in the transformation of large-scale geographical features make him a noteworthy precursor of geological uniformitarianism. His insightful reflections on the epistemological requirements of reliable knowledge on natural phenomena provide an early approach to the scientific method in geology, and to the systematic study of deep time and long- term geological processes in natural history.
Keywords: Polybius, Hydrography, Geological time, Black Sea, Uniformitarianism, Scientific method, Natural history, Globalization, Greek historiography.
Más sobre la revista:
Министерство науки и
высшего образования Российской Федерации Севастопольский государственный
университет
Институт общественных наук и международных отношений Кафедра иностранных
языков
Dictum
– factum:
от исследований к стратегическим решениям
СБОРНИК НАУЧНЫХ ТРУДОВ
по
материалам
Второй Всероссийской молодёжной научно-практической конференции с
международным участием
“LinguaNet”
(г. Севастополь, 22 – 23 октября 2020 г.)
ВЫПУСК 2
Севастополь-Белгород 2020
______________
The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation
Sevastopol State University
The Institute of Social Sciences and International Relations
The Department of Foreign Languages
Dictum – factum:
from Research to Policy Making
EDITED VOLUME
Proceedings of the Second All-Russian and International Research-to-Practice Conference
“LinguaNet” (Sevastopol, October 22 – 23, 2020)
ISSUE 2
Sevastopol – Belgorod 2020
(Sevastopol: Sevastopol State University; ISSN: 2713-2943)
Web de la revista:
https://www.sevsu.ru/nauka/pechat-izdaniya/item/9676-df
El texto en ruso iba en principio a un volumen monográfico sobre el mediterráneo; ya veremos dónde y cuándo aparece; de momento el texto inglés se ha publicado en este número junto con otros de tema histórico de Crimea y el Mediterráneo.
—oOo—
JUSTICIA CORRUPTA - Y MEDIOS CORRUPTOS
Twitter censura la información que denuncia el fraude electoral. Es decir, Twitter apoya y defiende el fraude electoral:
https://trump.news/2021-01-28-30-election-fraud-cases-active-no-court.html
—oOo—
EL MONIGOTE / THE PUPPET
Biden leyendo notitas de papel, con su salud deteriorada, no sabe lo que lee ni lo que firma. Y este es el presidente de los EEUU...
— Elena Berberana (@ElenaBerberana) January 29, 2021
Los progres tienen al hombre perfecto para sus fechorías. pic.twitter.com/xZe4LWqjXv
jueves, 28 de enero de 2021
Notes on Geoffrey Leech's Principles of Pragmatics
My notes (taken c. 1990) on Geoffrey Leech's Principles of Pragmatics (London: Longman, 1983). Pagination on the left; my parenthetical comments in italics.
Geoffrey Leech - Principles of Pragmatics
Preface
x- "Grammar (in its broadest sense) must be separated from pragmatics"; "my approach to pragmatics is by way of the thesis that communication is problem-solving" —the hearer must decode the speaker's intention from what he says. [JAGL: This is not the case for all kinds of communication]
1. Introduction
1.1. Historical preamble
4- After Generative grammar, a unified paradigm for language has been lost. Here: an argument in favor of a fresh paradigm. "The claim will be that grammar (the abstract formal system of language) and pragmatics (the principles of language use) are complementary domains within linguistics. We cannot understand the nature of language without studying both these domains, and the interactions between them." —The "formal-functional paradigm."
5- Postulates:
"P1: The semantic representation (or logical form) of a sentence is distinct from its pragmatic interpretation."
P2: Semantics is rule-governed (=grammatical): general pragmatics is principle-controlled (rhetorical).
P3: The rules of grmmar are fundamentally conventional; the principles of general pragmatics are fundamentally non-conventional, i.e. motivated in terms of conversational goals.
P4: General pragmatics relates the sense (or grammatical meaning) of an utterance to its pragmatic (or illocutionary) force. This relationship may be relatively direct or indirect.
P5: Grammatical correspondences are defined by mappings; pragmatic correspondences are defined by problems and their soloutions.
P6: Grammatical explanations are primarily formal; pragmatic explanations are primarily functional.
P7: Grammar is ideational; pragmatics is interpersonal and textual.
P8: In general, grammar is describable in terms of discrete and determinate categories; pragmatics is describable in terms of continuum and indeterminate values".
These assumptions should be tested.
1.2. Semantics and Pragmatics
6 - Langue / parole: 'what does x mean' / 'what do you mean by x' [note: intentionalist - JAGL]
Semanticism (Ross, Sadock) vs. pragmaticism (Austin, Searle):
7- "The third viewpoint, that of complementarism, is the one I shall suggest." Pro an explanatory and simple account, something not met by semanticists or pragmaticists.
9- 1.2.1. An example: The Cooperative Principle of Grice. "I shall want to introduce into pragmatics not only a Cooperative Principle (CP) but other principles, such as a Politeness Principle (PP)
10- Grammar as the formal language system.
1.3. General Pragmatics
"pragmatic descriptions ultimately have to be relative to specific social conditions".
11- General pragmatics divides into:
- Pragmalinguistics (related to grammar)
- Socio-pragmatics (related to sociology)
"My definition of general pragmatics will be further restricted to the study of linguistic communication in terms of conversational principles." Here, a rhetorical model of pragmatics, with little account of conventional implicatures,
12- or of referential pragmatics, or of style and register. Grammar interacts with pragmatics via semantics, but also
13- through pragmatically related aspects of phonology. [And syntax?]
1.4. Aspects of Speech Situations
(i) Addressers or addressees (receiver = "a person who receives and interprets the message" vs. addressee = "a person who is an intended receiver of the message").
(ii) The context of an utterance. "I shall consider context to be any background knowledge assumed to be shared by s and h and which contributes to h's interpretation of what s means by a given utterance." [JAGL—and... for US? for OUR interpretation?]
(iii) The goal(s) of an utterance. (Does not equal intention, as goals are not necessarily conscious).
14- (iv) The utterance as a form of act or activity or speech act (= illocutionary act, illocution).
(v) The utterance as a product of a verbal act (i.e. utterance).
15- "Thus the meaning of an utterance, in this sense, can be called its illocutionary force" —Pragmatics is only concerned with illocutionary acts. [An excessively restrictive definition - JAGL]
1.5. Rhetoric
Interpersonal vs. Textual rhetoric (from Halliday).
16- (Textual rhetoric includes the processibility principle, the clarity principle, the economy principle, the expressibility principle...)
17- Illocutionary goals do not equal social goals; illocutionary force is not the same as rhetorical force, which is he meaning the utterance conveys regarding's s's adherence to rhetorical principles (e.g. how far s is being truthful). Together, the illocutionary force and the rhetorical force of an utterance make up the pragmatic force." Sense does not equal force: "force includes sense, and is also pragmatically derivable from it..."
2. A Set of Postulates
18- "The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency." (Somerset Maugham, The Circle).
19- 2.1. Semantic Representation and Pragmatic Interpretation
20- (P1). Levin as an absurd example of the performative hypothesis. [Perhaps Leech is being too literalist in his rejection - JAGL].
21- Alston as an extreme pragmaticist. Searle too. For Leech, language is not the same as action.
22- 2.2. Rules and Principles
(P2). e.g. the passive: "both grammar and pragmatics conspire to provide an explanation of the passive: use explains how the passive is formed, the other explains the conditions under which it is likely to be preferred to the corresponding active." Vs. Searle's model based on illocutionary acts which follow rules.
23- "Such rules assume a taxonomic decision: either an utterance counts as a warning, or it does not." Vs. clear-cut overall; it is unrealistic and unusable. "Any account of illocutionary force which defines it in terms of rules like this will present a limited and regimented view of human communication". Classifying something as 'declaring', 'reporting', etc., is too simple [but are they valid as primitive illocutions? - JAGL]. Better, a "linguistic juggling act" model: the speaker has "to fulfil a number of goals which compete with each other." Negotiability of pragmatic factors: s may leave the force unclear, to be determined by h, etc.
24- 2.3. Convention and Motivation (P3) Searle conflicts with P3 - he says illucutionary rules are conventional. But "a promise is recognized as a promise not by means of rules . . . but by means of a recognition of s's motive." Sense is conventional but force is arrived at through CP and other principles.
26- Motivated conventionality is possible.
27- Pragmatics is only secondarily conventional. "In so far as grammar is motivated, it is motivated at least in part by pragmatic considerantions" (restrictions or exemptions).
28- "New rules entering the grammar normally begin as exceptions to other rules" —pragmatic constraints become conventionalized, grammar adapts itself to them.
29-30- "grammar is primarily conventional and secondarily motivated; pragmatics is primarily motivated and secondarily conventional."
30- 2.4. The relation between sense and force (P4).
Sense as semantic representation. Force as set of implicatures (in a broader sense than Grice's)—"all implicatures are probabilistic. We cannot ultimately be certain of what a speaker means by an utterance." —Interpreting as inference, hypothesis formation or guesswork.
31- "This is not a formalized deductive logic but an informal rational problem-solving strategy. It consists in (a) formulating the most likely available hypothesis, then (b) testing it, and, if it fails, (c) formulating the next most likely available hypothesis, and so on."
33- "no special illocutionary rules are required for indirect illocutions; indirect illocutionary force is stated simply by means of a set of implicatures." "I do not draw a distinction between direct and indirect illocutions. There is, however, a great deal of variation in their degree of indirectness. The most direct illocutions are simply those to which, in the absence of contrary evidence, we may apply the most likely pragmatic hypothesis, i.e. what may be called the defalut interpretation."
34- This position is similar to a combination of Grice plus Searle's speech act theory. Searle's SAT is reinterpreted in terms of a generalized version of Grice's conversational implicature. "Despite appearances, then, pragmatics is a study in which only the meaning which is publicly available for interpretation is analyzed." Meaning in pragmatics "is characterized as a REFLEXIVE INTENTION,
35- i.e. an intention whose fulfilment consists in its recognition by h. Intention is essential: Bach & Harnish's Communicative Presumption, and an assumption that pragmatic force is intended to be recognized by way of the sense of the utterance. [A problem]: "in so far as what s means by U is different from what h understands by U, it is not part of pragmatics to bother about such difference" —[but it is ALWAYS different! JAGL]
2.5. Pragmatics as problem-solving (P5)
36- h's interpretation as a meta-problem-solving procedure: h's problem is "What was the communicative problem s was trying to solve when s said U?"
37- 2.5.1. The speaker's task, viewed in terms of means-end analysis:
38- by fulfilment of subsidiary goals, etc.; "by this standard, all purposeful uses of language will be regarded as indirect."
39- Searle: not means/ends —but direct acts are useless. [?]
40- Not necessarily conscius intention or deliberate planning of goals —goal as in AI, "a state which regulates the behaviour of the individual in such a way as to facilitate a given outcome."
2.5.2. The addressee's task, seen in terms of heuristic analysis.
42- "The acceptance of the initial and most likely interpretation will be called the DEFAULT INTERPRETATION. That is, it is the interpretation that is accepted in default of any evidence to the contrary." Steps:
43- Implicatures, but automatized: "one should not expect that default interpretations are the same in different contexts" [This is crucial - JAGL]
44- Searle's SAT rules can be replaced byimplicatures with one exception. "The exception is the propositional content rule, which in my account corresponds to a statement of the sense of the utternace. The sense alone is conventional; all other rules, in my account, are non-conventional implicatures, derived (by means of the heuristic strategy) from the sense and from general conversational principles such as the CP."
3. Formalism and Funcionalism
"For use almost can change the stamp of nature" (Hamlet).
46- Formalists: Language is mental, universal are innate, acquisition is a built-in, autonomous system. For Fuctionalists: language is societal, universals come from the univerality of uses, acquisition comes from needs, from social roles and social function. "The correct approach to language is both formalist and funcionalist."
47- 3.1. Formal and funcional explanations (P6).
48- Pragmatic explanations are weaker, principles are only probabilistic, and place weaker constraints than grammatical rules.
3.2. Biological, psychological and social varieties of functionalism.
"What is meant by a functional explanation? It means explaining why a given phenomenon occurs, by showing what its contribution is to a larger system of which it is itself a sub-system."
49- Popper's functions of language, from lower to higher: A) Expressive (communicating inner states) —> B) Signalling —> C) Descriptive —> D) ARgumentative.
50- Missing link: societal facts, between B and C., and between subjective and objective. Then, Popper's four functions of language provide the means of transition whereby one world could have emerged out of another.
52-
54- "There is a hierarchy of linguistic theory - types, corresponding to the four worlds." (Treating language as a physical, a mental & subjective, a social or an objective fact).
55- "all those linguists, including Saussure and Chomsky, who have made language, as a system, abstracted from particular speakers and hearers, the form of their studies, have unwittingly taken a World 4 position".
56- "linguistics is unique, among scientific disciplines, in that it aims to provide World 4 explanations of World 4 phenomena." "Pragmatics, on the other hand, deals with relations between language as a World 4 phenomenon, and language as a World 3 (social) phenomenon (i.e., it is functional).
57-
3.3. The ideational, interpersional, and textual functions of language.
"whereas Halliday treats all his functions as being intrinsic to grammar, I interpret them differently" (P7). Ideational function: "language functioning as a means of conveying and interpreting experience of the world". Interpersonal: "as an expression of one's attitudes and an influence upon the attitudes and behaviour of the hearer." Textual: "Language functioning as a means of constructing a text, i.e. a spoken or written instantiation of language."
58-
- Interpersonal rhetoric (input constraints)
➹ ↓
Pragmatics (Semantics, Syntax, Phonology) ← Grammar (Ideational)
➷ ↓
- Textual rhetoric (output constraints)
59-
3.3.1. A Process model of language.
"Hence the whole utterance may be described as: DISCOURSE by means of MESSAGE by means of TEXT."
60- This is not sequential: psycholinguistics shows they often operate simultaneously. There is not always a plan before we talk: "it is common experience that we often start talking without being sure of what it is, in entirety, that we want to say" [My wife Beatriz, a linguist too, often says this is the case - JAGL] —"rather than say with Halliday that language has a textual function, it would make better sense to say that a text has a linguistic function—a function in the communication of linguistic messages."
3.3.2. An illustration. 3.3.3. The Textual pragmatics.
64- Slobin's maxims:
1) 'Be humanly processible in ongoing time'
2) 'Be clear'
3) 'Be quick and easy'
4) 'Be expressive'
[These maxims of appropriate linguistic behavior in conversation or everyday use should be reformulated for special contexts or modes like the literary use of language —JAGL]
68- Expressive and aesthetic aspects (4) — E.g. "Iconicity Maxim (which invites the user, all other things being equal, to make the text imitate aspects of the message".
69-70- "The felicity of an utterance, here as elsewhere, is a matter of balancing the competing claims of different maxims."
73- 3.4. The Ideational Function: Discreteness and determinacy (P8).
Rephrased: "GRAMMAR IS ESSENTIALLY CATEGORICAL, PRAGMATICS IS ESSENTIALLY NON-CATEGORICAL."
74-
3.5. Examples of 'overgrammaticalization'
Pro explanations of 'ungrammaticality' taking account of pragmatics and its maxims (End Weight, for instance). [A study of speech figures as deviation as 'ungrammaticality', but pragmatically motivated, could be derived from this approach -JAGL]
3.6. Conclusion. Sum up of the formalist/functionalist view.
76- "Language consists of grammar and pragmatics. Grammar is an abstract formal system for producing and interpreting messages. General pragmatics is a set of strategies and principles for achieving success in communication by the use of the grammar. Grammar is functionally adapted to the extent that it possesses properties which facilitate the operation of pragmatic principles."
4. The Interpersonal Role of the Cooperative Principle
4.1. The Cooperative Principle (CP) and the Politeness Principle (PP)
80- "The CP in itself cannot explain (i) why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean; and (ii) what is the relation between sense and force when non-declarative types of sentence are being considered"; "it has been argued that conversational constraints such as those of the CP do not work because the majority of declarative sentences do not have an information-bearing function" —Larkin & O'Malley, "Declarative Sentences and the Rule-of-Conversation Hypothesis"— or that these conversational constraints are culture-specific. OK, different societies use maxims differently—but the PP rescues the CP from serious trouble. Examples:
81- "an apparent break of the CP is shown, at a deeper level of interpretation involving the PP, to be no such thing: in this way, the CP is redeemed from difficulty by the PP. // In its negative form, the PP might be formulated in a general way: 'Minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs'; and there is a corresponding positive version ('Maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs') which is somewhat less important."
82- "The CP has the function of regulating what we say so that it contributes to some assumed illocutionary or discoursal goal(s). It could be argued, however, that the PP has a higher regulative role than this: to maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly reelations which enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place." "Irony is in fact a second-order principle, which builds upon, or exploits, the principle of politeness. The Irony Principle (IP) may be stated in a general form as follows:
"if you must cause offence, at least do so in a way which doesn't overtly conflict with the PP, but allows the hearer to arrive at the offensive part of your remark indirectly, by way of implicature."
84- Cultural-linguistic differences: English is rich in indirect impositives. In Japan, women & men use a different politeness scale, etc.
4.2. Maxims of Quality and Quality
Analysis of 'strong' and 'weak' expressions.
85- Maxim of Quantity-Quality: 'Make the strongest relevant claim justifiable by your evidence' (Harnish).
88- The maxim enables us to account for a large number of informal inferences; it shows that through the Cooperative Principle standard logical analysis can work quite well on natural language.
90- 4.2.1. Implicatures are connected with definiteness. (Analysis of examples).
4.3. Maxim of Relation: "Be relevant" —or "Be informative".
94- Relevance: "In cooperative and socially motivated conversation, it is normal for one participant to adopt to some extent the assumed goal or goals of the other".
99- Relevance: "An utterance U is relevant to a speech situation to the extent that U can be interpreted as contributing to the conversational goal(s) of s or h."
4.5. Maxim of Manner: According to Grice, it is not interpersonal, not CP, but a matter of textual rhetoric. (?)— NO.
4.5.1. The obliquity and uninformativeness of negation. This shows that Manner is a part of the CP. Negatives are not uninformative only when they are used to deny their positive.
5. The Tact Maxim
104- "Far from being a superficial matter of 'being civil', politeness is an important missing link between the CP and the problem of how to relate sense to force."
5.1. Varieties of illocutionary function.
"At their most general level, illocutionary functions may be classified into the following four types, according to how they relate to the social goal of establishing and maintaining comity":
(a) Competitive: The illocutionary goal competes with the social goal; e.g. ordering, asking, demanding, begging.
(b) Convivial: The illocutionary goal coincides with the social goal; e.g. offering, inviting, greeting, thanking, congratulating.
(c) Collaborative: The illocutionary goal is indifferent to the social goal; e.g. asserting, reporting, announcing, instructing.
105- Most written discourse comes under the collaborative function.
(d) Conflictive: The illocutionary goal conflicts with the social goal: e.g. threatening, accusing, cursing, reprimanding.
Politeness: prominent in A & B.
5.2. Searle's categories of illocutionary acts.
106- (Assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations).
107- Negative politeness in directives, positive politeness in commissives and expressives.
5.3. Tact: one kind of politeness. (Cost to s and h : degree of politeness and indirectness)
109- "There are two sides to the Tact Maxim, a negative side 'Minimize the cost to h', and a positive side, 'Maximize the benefit to h'. Assymetry of politeness:
110- "what must be expressed strongly by one participant as a 'polite belief' must be played down equally by the other participant as an 'impolite belief'".
5.4. Pragmatic paradoxes of politeness. (Conflict, obedience, will flouting or will incompatiblity)
114- The Tact maxim as a way of avoiding conflict; obeyed to a certain extent).
5.5. Semantic representation of declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives.
SYNTACTIC: Declarative Interrogative Imperative
↕ ↕ ↕
SEMANTIC: Proposition Question Mand
↕ ↕ ↕
PRAGMATIC: 'assertion' 'asking' impositive
115- "Thus the sense of a declarative sentence, of an interrogative sentence, and of an imperative sentence is respectively a proposition, a question, and a mand. The link between the semantic and the pragmatic categories, however, is less clear-cut, as we would expect."
116- Questions are less specified than propositions, mands even less.
5.6. The interpretation of impositives
A meta-maxim added to the Tact maxim:
119- "DO NOT PUT h IN A POSITION WHERE EITHER s OR h HAS TO BREAK THE TACT MAXIM".
123- [A rather unsatisfactory analysis of 'can't you shut up' —which makes it appear too indirect - JAGL]
5.7. Pragmatic Scales.
1) Cost-benefit scale
2) Optionality scale (cf. the choice allowed to h.).
3) The indirectness scale
124- s and h's viewpoints are similar, since h understands by inferring s's illocutionary strategy. Illocution is similar to a commercial transaction (benefit vs. cost).
125- "The goal of some speech acts, such as thanks and apologies, can then be seen as the restoration of equilibrium, or at least the reduction of disequilibrium, between s and h." — Cost to h, social distance, difference in authority h/s... —all these influence the need for optionality and indirectness in impositives.
5.8. Tact and condescension.
Vs. giving pseudo-optionality to inferiors. Being too polite can mean being impolite.
6. A Survey of the Interpersonal Rhetoric
6.1. Maxims of politeness (PP).
132-
"(I) TACT MAXIM (in impositives and commissives).
(a) Minimize cost to other [(b) Maximize benefit to other]
(II) GENEROSITY MAXIM (in impositives and commisseives)
(a) Minimize benefit to self [(b) Maximize cost to self]
(III) APPROBATION MAXIM (in expressives and assertives)
(a) Minimize dispraise of other [(b) Maximize praise of other]
(IV) MODESTY MAXIM (in expressives and assertives)
(a) Minimize praise of self [(b) Maximize dispraise of self]
(V) AGREEMENT MAXIM (in assertives)
(a) Minimize disagreement between self and other [(b) Maximize agreement between self and other]
(VI) SYMPATHY MAXIM (in assertives)
(a) Minimize antipathy between self and other [(b) Maximize sympathy between self and other]
133- "These maxims are observed 'up to a certain point', rather than as absolute rules".
137- The modesty maxim is more powerful in Japan than in English-speaking societies. "There is an obvious trade-off between different maxims of the PP, just as there is between the maxims of the CP." Although there is less evidence for other maxims, agreement and sympathy too.
139-
6.2. Metalinguistic aspects of politeness
"Politeness is manifested not only in the content of conversation, but also in the way conversation is managed and structured by its participants." E.g. hedged performatives as politeness devices,
140- "May I ask you....?" "We cannot automatically assume the right to engage someone in conversation, let alone to use that conversation as a means to our own ends".
141- Third-person address — pretending that the addressee is a hearer. Cf. Malinowski's phatic communion: talking to preserve sociability. Problem of how to end a conversation... Arguably, a PHATIC MAXIM: "Avoid silence", "Keep talking".
142- 'Useless' talk serves to extend the common ground of agreement and experience shared by the participants"; "the apparent uninformativeness of language is to be attributed to other conversational principles, and is not to be regarded as evidence against the validity of the CP."
6.3. Irony and Banter
Irony Principle (IP) parasitic upon CP and PP —a "second order principle", allowing to be impolite while seeming to be polite.
144- "because irony pays lip-service to the PP, it is less easy to break the PP in one's response to it. Hence the IP keeps aggression away from the brink of conflict." "While irony is an apparently friendly way of being offensive (mock-politeness), the type of verbal behaviour known as 'banter' is an offensive way of being friendly (mock-impoliteness)." "Like irony, banter must be clearly recognizable as unserious."
145- Banter is a third-order principle—it may exploit irony ('A fine friend you are'). Hierarchy of importance: PP—> IP —> Banter Principle.
146-
6.4. Hyperbole and Litotes
"h and l are further illustrations of the by now familiar pattern of conversational implicature: we reach the indirect force of s's remark by means of an obvious face-value violation of the CP" [Fiction too? - JAGL] Another principle: "Say what is unpredictable, and hence interesting"; "At the risk of proliferating too many pragmatic principles, I shall tentatively propose, then, an Interest Principle, by which conversation which is interesting, in the sense of having unpredictability or news value, is preferred to conversation which is boring and predictable" [Cf. originality in literature, the Russian formalists' ostranienie, defamiliarization.... A pragmatics of literature - JAGL].
(151- cf. De Beaugrande & Dressler: pro 'interesingness' as a desideratum of text) Moreover,
147-
Pollyanna Principle: "Postulating that participants in a conversation
will prefer pleasant topics of conversation to unpleasant ones."
148-
6.3. Conclusion
PP is relatively firm; the IP, etc., are more uncertain. Summary of all:
149- Interpersonal Rhetoric:
| First-order principles |
Higher-order principles |
Contributory maxims |
| Cooperative principle |
Quantity, Quality, Relation, Manner |
|
| Politeness Principle |
(Tact, Generosity) (Approbation,
Modesty) Agreement, Sympathy, Phatic? |
|
| Irony Banter |
||
| Interest Principle Pollyanna Principle |
150- Describing IP, etc., as principles, emphasizes the social over the psychological perspective—which must also be taken into account in the use of these rhetorical devices.
Culture-specific usage: "that some eastern cultures (eg China and Japan) tend to value the Modesty Maxim much more highly than western countries; that English-speaking culture (particularly British?) gives prominence to the Maxim of Tact and the Irony Principle; that Mediterranean cultures place a higher value of the Generosity Maxim and a lower value of the Modesty Maxim."
7. Communicative Grammar: An Example
7.1. Communicative Grammar and Pragmatic Force
152- "One of the implications of this model is that we can analyse my grammatical category (...) on three distinct levels" (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic). "We may describe as COMMUNICATIVE GRAMMAR an approach to grammar which aims to relate these three levels of description to each other."
153- We take like Grice the addressee's direction: "[the addressee] arrives at the force of an utterance by decoding its sense and then, by heuristic problem-solving, works out its force, or pragmatic interpretation." [NO: there is, rather, a hermeneutic circle, as he says before - JAGL]. Pragmatic force: force is defined by a set of conversational implicatures, based on sense, context & interpersonal rhetoric; implicatures inferred from this to a degree of probability, longer or shorter path of directness; different degrees of confidence or probability. The illocutionary force of an utterance is a subset of these implicatures; another is related to the interpersonal rhetoric (s's presumed rhetorical goals).
154- "Some implicatures contain more than one attitudinal predicate, one proposition being embedded in another"; "S assumes that [h is being modest]"; "Indeterminacy is necessarily a prominent factor in any model which attempts to represent realistically how linguistic communication works."
155- There may be planned indeterminacy: the force of utterance is left for negotiation between s and h. And more importantly, "it is impossible to determine a boundary between an utterance whereby s implicates some proposition p (...) and an utterance which merely communicates the unintended information that s believes p" —but the intended meaning decided is crucial too. "It is this overlap between 'intended' meaning and 'conveyed' meaning which is the central concern of pragmatics."
7.2. Remarks on pragmatic metalanguage
Here ordinary English is used—but ultimately a specialised metalanguage will have to be developed.
7.3. Some aspects of negation and interrogation in English [examples, etc.]
7.4. Implicatures of politeness
170- Reciprocity of perspectives is crucial: "to be really polite, one must assume that the hearer is also being polite, and must forestall his politeness."
171- The pragmatic interpretation of an utterance is built up from (a) a minimum illocutionary assumption, and (b) implicatures, including implicatures of politeness, which follow from, or accompany, this assumption (...). In this way, the addressee reconstructs the meaning as planned by the speaker."
7.5. Conclusion
Separation between semantics and pragmatics is justified. Different kinds of regularity at both levels can be described. Semantics: rules for logical relation affirmative/negative; assertive & non-assertive, etc.; Pragmatics: ways in which CP and PP determine linguistic behaviour. No need of Searle's specific speech act rules: meaning + context + maxims lead us to infer an utterance's force (Miller & Johnson-Laird).
8. Performatives
8.1. The Performative and Illocutionary-Verb Fallacies
Illocutionary-verb fallacy: the fallacy that the analysis of illocutionary force can be suitably approached through the analysis of the meaning of the illocutionary verbs: "illocutionary force, particularly because of its indeterminacy and scalar variability is more subtle than can be easily accomodated by our everyday vocabulary of speech-act verbs." Related, the performative fallacy: "the thesis that a performative (...) is the canonical form of utterance" [i.e. Austin and Searle]- Later, in Ross's 'performative hypothesis'.
8.2. The Speech-Act Theories of Austin and Searle
177- Vs. the Illocutionary-Verb Fallacy: "the categorical pigeon-holing of speech acts which this entails simply regiments the range of human communicative potential to a degree which cannot be justified by observation."
178- Also, "illocutions are in many respects more like puddles and ponds than like monkeys and giraffes: they are, that is to say, distinguished by continuous rather than by discrete characteristics."
8.2.1. Declarations (e.g. "I declare you man and wife"), "interesting though they are, do not by any means represent what is typical of illocutionary acts. In fact, there is a reason for arguing that they are not illocutionary acts at all. Instead, thy are conventional rather than communicative acts: the linguistic parts of rituals."
8.3. Illocutionary Performatives: Descriptive and Non-descriptive Approaches
182- Leech pro a descriptive view of performatives (vs. Austin and Searle); "performatives, like all other sentences in declarative form, are propositions. True, they are a rather unusual propositions [sic]; but they are, nevertheless, propositions, capable of being true or false."
183- —a special type of oratio obliqua utterance.
8.4. Illocutionary Performatives and Oratio obliqua
187- "The instantaneous present that occurs in performatives is no different from the instantaneous present that occurs in descriptions of non-verbal actions"; "the performative interpretation of a sentence follows unproblematically from its grammatical form and sense."
189- The performative describes the illocutionary force of the utterance of which it is a part, rendering it explicit in cases where clarity is important.
8.5. The pragmatics of illocutionary performatives
189- A performative is "a self-naming utterance which has the force indicated by its main verb" —instead of its having to be inferred pragmatically [JAGL: too simple: the verb means its purported force].
191- E.g. in "I admit that", we infer that the proposition is in conflict with other beliefs that s maintaints. [JAGL: So the phrase does something else besides admitting!] Vs. Austin: "in the present account, the meaning of the performative is arrived at as a special case of the interpretation of non-performatives."
8.6. The Performative Hypothesis.
Vs. Ross and Sadock: the performative hypothesis is in conflict with this account of the pragmatic nature of illocutionary force, and the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.
8.7. The Extended Performative Hypothesis (i.e. Sadock):
"the hypothesis that the illocutionary force not only of a direct speech act, but also of an indirect speech act, can be appropriately formalized in a performative deep structure." This fails to account for how communication works; Leech vs. Sadock's squeezing pragmatics into grammar.
8.8. Conclusion.
The meaning of illocutionary verbs is not a key to the nature of the illucutionary acts, but to the ways people talk about illocutionary acts.
9. Speech-act Verbs in English
198- "speech-act philosophers, in appearing to study speech acts, have tended to concentrate their attention on the meaning of speech-act verbs"; "the distinctions which are non-categorical or scalar in the former case are categorical in the latter case."
9.1. Locutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary
The illocutionary goal is only one among other goals of verbal activity (e.g. maintaining cooperation, politeness...)
199-
Perlocutionary: sequence 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
Illocutionary: sequence 2-3-4-5-6-7
Locutionary: sequence 3-4-5-6
Comparison: kicking the ball (locutionary), scoring a goal (illocutionary) and winning the match (perlocutionary).
202- This represents also some perlocutionary acts: "only a perlocutionary effect which follows as an intended result of the hearer's interpretation of this speaker's illocutionary goal."
203- Anyway, "perlocutionary effects do not form part of the study of pragmatics since pragmatic force has to do with goals rather than with results."
9.2. A survey of speech-act verb classes
Verbs & expression (adapted from Alston).
ILLOCUTIONARY: Report, announce, predict, admit, opine, ask, reprimand, request, suggest, order, propose, express, congratulate, promise, thank, exhort.
PERLOCUTIONARY: bring h to learn that, persuade, deceive, encourage, irritate, frighten, amuse, get h to do, inspire, impress, distract, get h to think about, relieve tension, embarrass, attract attention, lose.
Some verbs shift between one category and another, they are not clear-cut. The test of "try to + verb" (illocutionary failure or perlocutionary failure).
9.2.2. Classifying illocutionary verbs.
Searle: Assertive, Directive, Commissive, Expressive (plus Declarations).
206- "Searle's first four categories, therefore, will provide the nucleus of the set of English illocutionary verbs" + the group of rogative verbs (ask, inquire, query...)
9.2.3. Problems of classification and their solution.
Some verbs fill in more than one category.
Polysemy: a class of verb senses rather than verbs [= classification of illocutionary acts?]. Categories should be applied at the semantic (not syntactic) level:
ASSERTIVE: (S2 IP [P])
DIRECTIVE & COMMISSIVE: (S2 IP [M])
ROGATIVE: (S2 IP [Q])
EXPRESSIVE: (S2 IP [X])
S2= Secondary speaker, IP = Illocutionary predicate, P = Proposition, M = Mand, Q = Question, X = Propositional content (predication)
211- Illocutionary categories can be reduced to a small number of logical types. Parallel between illocutionary predicates / psychological predicates:
(report) assertive — creditive — Believe
(command) directive & commissive — volitional — Wish, etc.
(ask) rogative — dubitative —Wonder
(thank) expressive — attitudinal — Forgive
9.3. Is there a separate class of performative verbs? [NO.]
"performativity" as a characteristic of verbs can be predicted from other characteristics.
214-
216- "the set of performative verbs coincides with the set which is the union of the set of speech-act verbs and the set of verbs used in declarations, except for those speech-act verbs which for one reason or another are infelicitous in a self-referential function."
9.4. A Semantic Analysis of Some Illocutionary Acts (Componential analysis).
218- Expressives vs. Directives&Commissives contrast as posterior vs. non-posterior time.
Directives vs. Commissives contrast as h involved as participant of related action vs. h not involved.
Whether the action is beneficial to s or to h; conditionality factor or not, etc.
The componential analysis may reveal accidental gaps in the system (e.g. 'acknowledging thanks').
9.5. Assertive verbs
223- Predictives or retrodiction (like report, narrate and recount); making publicly or privately known; confident / tentative assertion; informative / argumentative....
9.6. Conclusion
225- "(a) it is pointless to attempt a rigid taxonomy of illocutionary acts; (b) it is, however, possible and illuminating to attempt a texonomy of illocutionary verbs or illocutionary predicates; and (c) it is reasonable to assume that on the whole, the dimensions of contrast which are significant to the definition of illocutionary verbs are also of relevance to the analysis of illocutionary activities."
10. Retrospect and Prospect
229- Grammar & rhetoric: now,
- grammar,
- interpersonal pragmatics (e.g. here)
- textual pragmatics
List of omissions here: textual rhetoric, formalization, testing, corpus data, extensions to connected discourse, discourse analysis, cross-linguistic analysis...
Discourse: a negotiation with several possible outcomes:
A adopts B's goal
B adopts A's goal
A & B agree on a common goal intermediate between A & B
A & B fail to agree on any goal.
And this is the end of my fragmentary notes with the central ideas in Geoffrey Leech's Principles of Pragmatics.
—oOo—
Encubren y apoyan
Los déspotas de Twitter y Facebook y Google y Amazon bloquean a Trump por denunciar que hay FRAUDE en las elecciones norteamericanas. No sólo atentan contra la libertad de expresión, sino que ENCUBREN Y APOYAN EL FRAUDE ELECTORAL.
miércoles, 27 de enero de 2021
Me citan en Cahiers de Narratologie
En este artículo sobre narratología del teatro:
Hennaut, Benoît. (U Libre de Bruxelles). "Narratologie et écritures théâtrales: Quel dialogue possible?" Cahiers deNarratologie 24 (2013): 1-19.*
http://journals.openedition.org/narratologie/6669
DOI : 10.4000/narratologie.6669
2021
Online at Semantic Scholar.*
http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a246/afe47f4afee795ead9e3eb78ae1f98434fe0.pdf
2021
—oOo—
An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts
This is a critique of the logicist theory of truth and facts set forth in the final section of John R. Searle's book 'The Construction of Social Reality' (1995). Searle's logicist account, much in the line of his theory of speech acts, is contrasted to a pragmaticist and interactionalist perspective on truth, facts, and discourse:
An Interactional Theory of Truth:
On Searle on Truth and Facts
Keywords: Discourse analysis, Truth, Facts, Philosophy, Epistemology, John R. Searle, Pragmatism, Interactionism, Statements, Pragmatics, Philosophy of language,
Suggested Citation:
Garcia Landa, Jose Angel, An Interactional Theory of Truth: On
Searle on Truth and Facts (May 4, 2016). Ibercampus (May 4, 2016),
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2780370
Reference Info: Ibercampus (May 4, 2016)
Date posted: May 20, 2016 ; Last revised: May 21, 2016
https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2780370
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José Angel García Landa. "On Searle on Truth and Facts." In García Landa, Vanity Fea 4 May 2016.*
http://vanityfea.blogspot.com.es/2016/05/on-searle-on-truth-and-facts.html
2016
_____. "An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts." Ibercampus (Vanity Fea) 4 May 2016.*
http://www.ibercampus.eu/on-searle-on-truth-and-facts-3881.htm
2016
_____. "An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts." Social Science Research Network 20 May 2016.*
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2780370
2016
Cultural Anthropology eJournal 20 May 2016.*
http://www.ssrn.com/link/Cultural-Anthropology.html
2016
Linguistic Anthropology eJournal 20 May 2016.*
http://www.ssrn.com/link/Linguistic-Anthropology.html
2016
Cognitive Linguistics: Cognition, Language, Gesture eJournal 8.15 (30 May 2016).*
http://www.ssrn.com/link/Cognitive-Linguistics.html (20 May 2016)
2016
History of Western Philosophy eJournal 9.13 (24 May 2016).*
2016
http://www.ssrn.com/link/History-of-Western-Philosophy.html (20 May 2016)
2016
Epistemology eJournal 9.13 (24 May 2016).*
2016
http://www.ssrn.com/link/Epistemology.html (20 May 2016).*
2016
Philosophy of Language eJournal 9.11 (24 May 2016).*
http://www.ssrn.com/link/Philosophy-Language.html (20 May 2016).*
2016
Rhetorical Theory eJournal 5.7 (1 June 2016).*
2016
http://www.ssrn.com/link/Rhetorical-Theory.html (20 May 2016).*
2016
_____. "An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts." In García Landa, Vanity Fea 29 June 2016.*
http://vanityfea.blogspot.com.es/2016/06/an-interactional-theory-of-truth-on.html
2016
_____. "An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts." Academia 2 May 2017.*
http://www.academia.edu/32764292/
2017
_____. "An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts." ResearchGate 3 May 2017.*
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316646162
2017
_____. "An Interactional Theory of Truth: On Searle on Truth and Facts." Humanities Commons 27 Jan. 2021.*
https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:34253/
http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/x4ny-w382
2021
—oOo—