A Pragmatic Case

NEVER ON WEDNESDAY



Abstract

A dialogue is a speech event. As a speech event a dialogue is a unified text. Semantic principle often fails to help understand a text since Semantics does not take into account non-linguistic contexts. Pragmatics principles are needed to understand a unified text since a unified text consists of utterances, which are the representations of the projected worlds of the participants. The projected worlds are very much determined by the life-long experiences of the participants therefore they are varied according to the participants.
Because of the projected world as the background knowledge of the participants and the participants’ assumptions that the partners have similar projected world, they communicate effectively and efficiently. They do not need to state all the ideas in words. With all the pragmatic theories and principles, the participants of a speech event understand that every speech event always has a discourse, which determines the whole process and meaning of the dialogue.
Keywords: pragmatics, speech events, implicature, projected world.


I. Introduction

Fred : ‘Dad, can I use the car tonight?’
Dad : ‘Uhmmm?’
Fred : ‘I said, “Can I use the car tonight?”’
Dad : ‘May I ...
Fred : ‘Okey. May I?’
Dad : ‘No.’
Fred : ‘Why not?’
Dad : ‘It’s Wednesday.’

Reading the above dialogue, common people will immediately think that the dialogue is impossible to understand. People who study Semantics will think that the dialogue is about Fred asking his Dad for permission to use the car. Fred’s Dad does not give him permission, but the reason does not make sense. This group of people will then think that this dialogue is not common, since Wednesday or the other names of the days is not a usual reason for the refusal.
People who study Syntax will think that the dialogue has ill-formed sentences. Fred has limited knowledge on syntax. He makes some mistakes and his Dad is trying to correct him. This group of people will think that the dialogue is a good dialogue for Fred to improve his skills on English syntax, but the choice of words is awkward. It is better for his Dad to choose the word like ‘It’s better for you to study in your room’ or ‘It’s not the time for out play.’ instead of ‘It’s Wednesday.’
People who study Pragmatics will think that the dialogue is an ordinary dialogue. It is meaningful and makes sense. It is a common dialogue that might be repeated daily. How can it be like that? This paper is aimed at discussing some issues on the above dialogue from pragmatics point of view. To be specific, this paper is going to answers the following questions:
1. Why are some of the utterances semantically and syntactically not understandable?
2. What pragmatic theories applied to make each of the participants in the dialogue understand the partner’s utterances, and then produce appropriate responses?
To answer the first question, theories on lexical and sentence meaning will be the basis to analyze the utterances in the dialogue. The answers to the second question will rely on pragmatic theories applied to analyze the utterances in the dialogue.

II. Discussion

To study a dialogue means to study an example of language use. It is clear that language is used for communication, and one of its real language uses is in the forms of a dialogue. From the dialogue, which is pragmatically a speech event, the discussion starts finding the answers to the two questions dealing with how a conversation proceeds in such a way that the participants are able to successfully communicate their ideas appropriately in the daily life.
a. Semantic Analysis on Linguistic Expressions.
Language functions, among others, as a means of communication. People communicate because they need to express themselves to others for the sake of survival. People need language in order to understand what other people are communicating to them. It happens because people express thought in language. A majority of people’s thinking is done in words. The words are the ideas because ideas are generated in language. What people perceived about the world is projected in the forms of ideas. This is why people feel that they have not really understood something until they have been able to express it in language. It means that language does not only express thought, it even also creates it. To understand others, people need to understand what the words, which others express mean.
A branch of linguistics, which studies linguistic meanings, the meanings of words and sentences, is called semantics. In philosophical semantics, meaning is an indirect association between a signifier and a signified, with thought playing the mediating role. Ogden and Richard (in Frawley, 1992: 7) characterize meaning as a semantic triangle, a relation between a symbol (word) and referent (an object), mediated by concept:

Thought/ Concept


Symbol/ Word Referent/ Object

The bond between word and concept is called ‘association’; the bond between concept and object is called ‘reference’; and the bond between object and word is called ‘meaning’. When people try to understand the word table, for example, they try to find the association, with the help of thought, between the word and the object it refers to. Since language is a sort of convention, people of the same language have conventionally the same mechanism of associating the words, with the help of thought, and the objects they refer to. This is why people of the same language are able to communicate, expressing their ideas in the forms of words and understanding other people’s ideas in the forms of words, appropriately.
Since semantics is concerned with the literal and contextually non-variable meaning of linguistic expressions, semantic analyses on a speech event often come to a failure. Some expressions in the dialogue above are semantically not straightforwardly interrelated. Semantically, the expression ‘Uhmmm’ does not refer to any referent. Syntactically, Fred’s first utterance is an interrogative of which the appropriate answer is either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. ‘Uhmmm’ with a question mark cannot be a proper answer.
Viewed from the lexical and sentence meaning, Dad’s second expression ‘May I ...’ indicates Dad’s intention to ask for permission. Fred’s response ‘Okey. May I?’ either semantically or syntactically cannot be the proper response since ‘Okey’ is an expression indicating an acceptance of an offer or advice. Dad’s last answer ‘It’s Wednesday.’ is not semantically selected to be the answer by the question ‘Why not?’. A question like ‘Why may someone not use the car?’ does not semantically select Wednesday or the other names of the days the answer to the question.
Since some expressions of the dialogue above are not semantically and syntactically interrelated, the whole dialogue is semantically and syntactically not understandable. In the real practice, the short dialogue confuses the people who happen to listen to it. Even if the analyses are semantically able to figure out all the word and sentence meanings of the expressions in the above dialogue, the dialogue is still confusing. It is worth noted that the relation between the signifier and signified is indirect, and expressions in a speech event are unified as a text. As a unified text, the expressions are reductive and therefore cause confusion.
b. Pragmatic Analyses on Linguistic Expressions.

If Semantics focuses on the study of literal and contextually non-variable meaning of linguistic expressions, Pragmatics is a sub-discipline of linguistics, which studies the relation between natural language expressions and context—their uses in specific situations. Pragmatics studies all aspects of meaning not captured in a semantic theory. Pragmatics has, as its topic, those aspects of meaning of utterances, which cannot be accounted for by straightforward reference to the truth conditions of the sentences uttered.
The above short dialogue as a speech event can be the main source to describe all aspects of meaning, which Pragmatics is concerned with and which makes the structure of the dialogue above possible.
As is cited earlier, a speech event is a unified text. The expressions in the text are not merely of stimuli and responses. The expressions in the forms of words, phrases, or sentences are the representations of the comprehensively projected world of the participants in the speech event. The ’projected world’ is very much influenced by the life long experiences of the participants. Since people’s experience is bound to people’s life, all sorts of knowledge, feelings, emotions, practices, and other unlimited aspects of their life accumulate to form the projected world.
Based on this projected world, people communicate with other people who, they presume, have their own projected worlds, which are very much depended on their own life. It needs noting that the developments of people life are, of course, different from one another. This is why people sometimes misunderstand other people’s expressions. It happens when the projected worlds of the people communicating are very much different. On the other hand, this projected world makes people able to proceed communication as is represented by the above dialogue. Since people presume that other people they communicate with have similar projected worlds, people do not need to express all ideas in words. When communicating, people do not need to express all background knowledge that they presume other people already have. This is why in daily speech events, there are some expressions, which seem to be not interrelated, as is described in the above dialogue. It is indeed true that they are semantically not interrelated but pragmatically they are interrelated.
This phenomenon can be clearly seen in Fred’s first expression ‘Dad, can I use the car tonight?’. To express his intention to ask for permission to use the car, he does not need to explain what the pronoun I means and the relation between I and Dad from which it is possible for Fred to borrow a car. The knowledge on kinship and its psychological, social and cultural aspects creates a general knowledge saying that it is common for a son to ask for using his father’s car and other properties. It is impossible for Fred to say the same expression to someone who does not have this relation. He cannot address someone who does not have conditions to be his father with ‘Dad’ and the participant he communicates with will definitely ask for explanation towards what ‘I’ means—who damn are you? It is now clear that using dexis (personal deixis: Dad and I; time deixis: tonight) is common in a real speech event. Using deixis and applying the background knowledge, the participants of a speech event are trying to be economical in using the language. It is worth noted that beside personal and time deixis, there are still some other types of deixis i.e. place deixis: here, there, etc.; discourse deixis: this, that, etc. (referring to some portion of the discourse that contains that utterance); and social deixis: Sir and some other ‘polite’ pronouns and titles of address.
Beside deixis, the above dialogue shows that conversational implicature is also applied. Conversational implicatures are non-truth-conditional inferences, which are not derived from superordinate pragmatic principles like the maxims, but are simply attached by convention to particular lexical items or expressions. In a real conversation, speakers and hearers strictly follow the felicity conditions in which both speakers and hearers assume that they have similar background knowledge and experiences of what they are talking about, and that each of them follows the cooperative principles of a conversation. Since they assume to have similar background knowledge and experiences, speakers and hearers do not express all detail information in their utterances. They tend to be economical by uttering the new information only (or they think new information). Conversational implicature provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what it is actually said. Grice (in Wardhaugh, 1992: 290) maintains that the overriding principle in conversation is one he calls the cooperative principle. He said: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. You must therefore act in conversation in accord with a general principle that you are mutually engaged with your listener or listeners in an activity that is of benefit to all, that benefit being mutual understanding.”
Based on the theory of conversational implicature above, Fred can immediately understand that his Dad’s expression ‘Uhmmm’ implies that Fred’s father could not catch his words completely and therefore he asks for repetition. The ‘Uhmmm’ (with a question mark) with raising intonation has been internalized in both Fred and his Dad, which implies a specific meaning. Based on this background knowledge, Fred’s Dad presumes (he takes it for granted) that Fred can understand the meaning of his ‘Uhmmm’. Fred takes it for granted that with ‘Uhmmm’ his father wants him to repeat what he has just said. This is why Fred then repeats his question.
Another pragmatic aspect involved in the dialogue above is speech act. According to Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) (in Clark & Clark, 1970: 26) in their theory of speech acts, each sentence is designed to serve a specific function. It can be meant to inform listeners, warm them, order them to do something, question them about a fact, or thank them for a gift or act of kindness. The function it serves is critical to communication. Every time speakers utter a sentence, they are attempting to accomplish something with the words. In this process, speakers are performing a speech act (Austin called it an illocutionary act).
It can be clearly observed from Fred’s first sentence ‘Dad, can I use the car tonight?’. This sentence is an interrogative with which Fred does not merely want to ask for an agreement (Yes or No) but rather intends to ask for a permission to use a car. What Fred says, ‘Dad, can I use the car tonight?’ is the locutionary act; his intention to ask for a permission to use a car is his illocutionary act, and what Fred’s father interpret and the impact it has to his father—to answer ‘No’—is the perlocutionary act. Without applying the speech acts, the dialogue does not work. If Fred’s father fails to get the intention of Fred’s utterance, he will not get proper interpretation and therefore will give different response to Fred’s utterance, which might be inappropriate.
Presupposition is another aspect of pragmatics which is applied in the above dialogue. Presupposition is concerned with the information that must be assumed in order for a sentence to be meaningful. Fred’s first question ‘Dad, can I use the car tonight?’ presupposes that Fred’s Dad has a car and the car is usable. With these presuppositions, both Fred and Fred’s father can communicate economically and effectively. Fred does not need to state that his father has a car first, make sure that the car is usable, and then ask his father for permission to use the car.
The analysis on conversational structure, one aspect of pragmatics, provides explanation to understand the above dialogue. Viewed from the turn-taking principle, the dialogue has good turn-taking sequence. The dialogue shares the turns between the two participants to speak. The sequence is typical to two participant dialogue i.e. A—B—A—B—A—B.
The dialogue (like most of all real speech events), however, seems to violate the adjacency pair principle. This happens because of non-linguistic contexts in the forms of conversational implicatures, presuppositions, speech acts, and background knowledge in the forms of projected world. Because of the contexts, the violations do not cancel the dialogue.
Based on all of the pragmatic theories above, the real conversation can be pragmatically explained as follows:
Fred : ‘Dad, can I use the car tonight?’ (It presupposes that Fred’s Dad owns a car; Fred intends to ask his Dad for permission to use the car that night).
Dad : ‘Uhmmm?’ (It is conventionally understood as an expression of his father for not being able to catch Fred’s expression clearly and for asking for repetition).
Fred : ‘I said, “Can I use the car tonight?”’ (Fred proceeds the turn-taking principle and adjacency pair principles to take the turn to speak and repeat what he said before).
Dad : ‘May I ... (Fred’s Dad is a bit disappointed with Fred’s knowledge on English grammatical structure; that is not good and therefore he needs to correct Fred’s grammars of his English).
Fred : ‘Okey. May I?’ (Fred realizes that he produces inappropriate grammars and agrees to make it up. Fred can also catch the illocutionary act of ‘May I ..., therefore he corrects his grammar).
Dad : ‘No.’ (Fred’s Dad proceeds the turn-taking principle and adjacency pair principles to take the turn to speak and give a definite answer).
Fred : ‘Why not?’ (Fred can catch his Dad illocutionary act, and then proceeds the turn-taking principles and adjacency pair principles to take the turn to speak and give a response to ask for the reason of the refusal).
Dad : ‘It’s Wednesday.’ (Fred’s Dad can catch the illocutionary act of Fred’s question, and proceeds the turn-taking principle and adjacency pair principles to take the turn to speak and give the definite answer; Fred’s Dad is trying to remind Fred of the rules on using a car. One of the rules says that Fred may use the car only at the weekends, and it is Wednesday. This is why Fred is not allowed to use the car).
III. Conclusion
A dialogue is a speech event. As a speech event a dialogue is a unified text. Semantic principle often fails to help understand a text since Semantics does not take into account non-linguistic contexts. Pragmatics principles are needed to understand a unified text since a unified text consists of utterances, which are the representations of the projected worlds of the participants. The projected worlds are very much determined by the life-long experiences of the participants therefore they are varied according to the participants.
Because of the projected world as the background knowledge of the participants and the participants’ assumptions that the partners have similar projected world, they communicate effectively and efficiently. They do not need to state all the ideas in words. With all the pragmatic theories and principles, the participants of a speech event understand that every speech event always has a discourse, which determines the whole process and meaning of the dialogue.

Reference:
1. Clark, H. H., & Clark, V. C., 1970, Psychology and Language, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, New York, USA.
2. Frawley, William, 1992, Linguistic Semantics, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Publishers, 365 Broadway, Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642.
3. Gazdar, Gerald, 1979, Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition, and Logical Form, Academic Press Inc., 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003.
4. Kral, Thomas, 1997, Plays for Reading, Matterials Development and Review Branch, English Language Programs Division, United States Information Agency, Washington, D. C. 20547.
5. Leech, Geoffrey, 1983, Principles of Pragmatics, Longman Group Limited 1983, New York USA.
6. Levinson, C. Stephen, 1983, Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge CB2 1RP.
7. Martinich, A. P., 1996, The Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
8. Wardhaugh, Ronald, 1992, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Blackwell Publishers 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.