Pragmatics

• The three types of inferences are:

  • Entailment
  • Presupposition
  • Conversational implicature
• Entailment refers to inferring the truth from any extra information.
• Presupposition refers to assuming in advance. The four ways that presuppositions can be made are through:

  • A change of state verb ('stopped' presupposes that something used to happen.)
  • Definite Article ('the' presupposes that something there is...)
  • Factive Verb ('knows' presupposes that there is a fact)
  • Emotive Verb ('regrets' presupposes that something happened)
• Conversational implicature is when you interpret meanings within contexts. This is the most pragmatic inference because it relies on context.
• Implicature refers to inferring a meaning.
• Grice’s Conversational maxims:

  • Maxim of quantity (enough information)
  • Maxim of quality (truthful information)
  • Maxim of relation (relevant information)
  • Maxim of manner (clear information)
• Irony refers to using language to signal an attitude other than what is already being expressed.
• Deixis refers to the meaning depending on who is being referred to. For example, ‘him’.
• The three types of deixis:

  • Person (depends on who is being referred to)
  • Spatial (depends on the place that is being referred to)
  • Temporal (depends on the time that is being referred to)
• An example of spatial deixis is ‘there’.
• An example of temporal deixis is ‘then’.
• Positive face refers to being nice in order to be liked.
• Negative face refers to having awareness of freedom and choice, but not being completely negative.
• Politeness strategies are the behaviours that people show in order to save face. For example, positive and negative face’.
• Face threatening act refers to directly threatening the positive or negative face of someone. For example, ‘that was a rubbish presentation’.
• Face threatening act refers to directly threatening the positive or negative face of someone. For example, ‘that was a rubbish presentation’.
• Oppressive discourse strategy refers to an open and direct way of exercising power.
• Repressive discourse strategy refers to an indirect way of exercising power.
• Idiom refers to something that is not literal and is humorous.