1. Which definition of Pragmatics that fits you best? Why? and give your reasons.
2. How is Pragmatics different from Semantics?
3. Which theories of contexts give you better understanding, Firth, Hymes, or Halliday?
II. Article
PRAGMATIC
CONTEXTS
MALINOWSKI’S CONTEXTUAL
MEANING AND PRAGMATIC MEANING
By: R. Yohanes
Radjaban
Abstract
A
study on context is problematic (Schiffrin, 1994: 383). One reason for this is
that the study on context means the study on ‘something else’ that is vague and
really broad in a sense. Another reason for the study is that there is often
overlapping definitions on context proposed by pragmatics and sociolinguistics
since both of them study contexts. This article is particularly going to
discuss pragmatic contexts that are different from sociolinguistic ones. Malinowski’s
contextual meaning which inspires further studies by some linguists of the same
interest represents the embryonic ideas on sociolinguistic context. His
affected followers try to define contexts to help understand utterance meaning.
Keywords:
pragmatic context, contextual meaning, utterance meaning
I. INTRODUCTION
When first I read J. K. Rowling’s
three-year-bestseller book ‘Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone’, I found out that Rowling’s way to begin her
story is similar with the one found in Peter
Pan, The Indian in the Cupboard, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Each
book begins with the real world and moves to the fantasy, and then returns to
the real world. There is a kind of a classic fantasy pattern in those five
books. It is worth noting that the books have different authors, settings,
plots, and even themes. Is it a coincidence? Surprisingly, the answer is no. It
is not a coincidence. Lévi-Strauss (Widdowson, 1997; 73) argues that all
myths—stories and other cultural products are considered myths—have structural
pattern which gives the myths meanings. He believes that this linguistic model
will uncover the basic structure of the human mind—the structure, which governs
the way human beings shape all their institutions, artifacts and forms of
knowledge. (pp. 73-74) To Lévi-Strauss, the structures of myth point to the
structures of human mind common to all people—that is, to the way all human
beings think. Myth thus becomes a language—a universal narrative mode that
transcends cultural or temporal barriers and speaks to all people, in the
process tapping deep reservoirs of feeling and experience. (Guerin, L. Wilfred
& Friends; 1992: 336)
Lévi-Strauss, like other structuralists, agrees that
literature has a special relationship with language: it draws attention to the
very nature and specific properties of language. (Widdowson, 1997; 72)
According to Jan Mukarovsky, the work of art is perceived as such only against
a more general background of signification. In Saussure’s view, words are not
symbols which correspond to referents, but rather are ‘signs’ which are made up
of two parts: a mark, either written or spoken, called a ‘signifier’, and a
concept—what is thought when a mark is made—called a ‘signified’. (p. 67 – 68)
Language is one among many sign-systems. The science
of such system is called ‘semiotic’. (p. 68). Within semiotics, Morris
(Levinson, C. Stephen, 1983: 1) distinguished three distinct branches of
inquiry: syntactics, being the study
of ‘the formal relation of signs to one another’, semantics, the study of ‘the relations of signs to the objects to
which the signs are applicable’, and pragmatics,
the study of ‘the relation of signs to interpreters’.
Talking about pragmatics means talking about meanings
of utterances which cannot be accounted for by straightforward reference to the
truth conditions of the sentences uttered. (Qazdar in Levinson, 1983; 12) It
means that pragmatics is concerned with the study of the aspects of meaning not
covered in semantics. Another definition of pragmatics says that pragmatics is
the study of the relations between language and context that are basic to an
account of language understanding. Poedjosudarmo differentiates meanings into
two types of meanings. One is contrastive
meaning and the other is contextual
meaning. To obtain the meaning of utterances, Malinowski argues that one need
merely correlate the utterances with the
context of concurrent human activity.
In this paper, the discussion will
mainly focus on meanings, which Malinowski concerns and which pragmatics
concerns. I am interested in talking about this simply because both Malinowski
and pragmatics correlate meanings to contexts. I would like to find out if both
of their views on meaning have relation. This paper will also explicate (1) the
principles of Malinowski’s view on meanings, (2) the definitions of pragmatics
and the aspects of meaning in pragmatics.
II. DISCUSSION
In this section, I will describe
some theories related to the main focus of this paper. They are (1) the
principles of Malinowski’s view on meanings, (2) the definitions of pragmatics
and the aspects of meaning in pragmatics. Based on these theories, the paper
will analyze the relation between Malinowski’s contextual meaning and pragmatic
meaning.
a.
Malinowski’s view on meanings
Bronislaw Malinowski is an anthropologist.
He did a lot of research in ethnographical fields. He was the only
anthropologist who had had an abiding interest in language. (Langendoen, D. Terence,
1968; 2) Malinowski’s view on language are reflected on his ethnographical
findings summed up in: ‘Classificatory
Particles’ (1920), ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’ (1922), ‘The Problem of
Meaning’ (1923), and ‘Coral Garden
and Their Magic’ (1935).
1.
‘Classificatory Particles’
(1920)
Throughout the paper, Malinowski asserted
that there is a need for the development of a theory of semantics that will
enable researchers in linguistics to probe more deeply into language structure.
He argued that a semantic theory should be connected closely with ethnographic
theory, since an understanding of what people mean by what they say depends
upon what their culture is (p. 7). Since Malinowski’s understanding of
universal grammar was traditional school grammar, he proposed that a semantic
theory must provide a basis for the definition of the traditional parts of
speech, their ‘modification’ like cases and tenses, and certain grammatical
relations like subject and predicate.
Malinowski added that the definition of
categories and relations of universal grammar should take into account the
semantic circumstances provided by the cultural environment in which the
language is spoken (p 10). Malinowski simply argued that the cultural
importance of bunches of fruit in Kiriwina accounts for the existence of a special classificatory particle for each of
several nouns designating bunches of fruit in the language. Similarly, there is
a classificatory particle used only with
a noun designating batches of fish, since batches of fish play an important
role in the economic life of the island (p 11).
2.
‘Argonauts of the Western
Pacific’ (1922)
Malinowski had little to say about language
in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. He remarked that the language of magical
texts is not like ordinary language. Magical style does not serve to
communicate ideas from one person to another but is an instrument serving
special purposes. It is for the exercise of man’s specific power over things
and its meaning can be understood only in correlation to this aim (p. 15).
Malinowski seemed to believe that the
meaning of magical text could be arrived at through rules, which are different
from the rules governing the meaning of ordinary discourse. In sentences of
ordinary discourse, the meaning is arrived at by concatenation of the meanings
of the elements in the sentences. He added that the order of words in sentences
reflects the order of ideas in the mind. The semantic properties of magical
texts are exceptional.
3.
‘The Problem of Meaning’ (1923)
In this article, Malinowski’s linguistic
views are radically different. He exactly reversed his assertion in Argonauts
of the Western Pacific that the language of magic is a kind of a language use.
In this article he considered that the language of magic is an exemplification
of the basic and primary use of language, and that the use of language to
communicate ideas is special or derivative.
An utterance receives its meaning not from a
logical concatenation of the ideas expressed by the words comprising it but
from its relation to the situational context in which it occurs (p. 16).
Utterances and situation are bound up with each other and the context of the
situation is indispensable for the understanding of words. Utterance has no
meaning except in the context of situation.
To obtain the meaning of utterances,
Malinowski argues that one need merely correlate the utterances with the
context of concurrent human activity. The problem then occurs when one is going
to obtain the meaning of written language. Written language is the only kind of
language for which a semantic interpretation cannot be supplied by a context of
human activity. He then explains that it might be possible to characterize the
meaning of the sentence in terms of the meanings of the lexical items
comprising it. At one point Malinowski denied the assumption that the meaning
of lexical items is ‘contained’ in
them, yet here he explicitely refers to the meaning of lexical items (p. 19).
Malinowski proposes three different types of
context of situation. Those are: (1) situation in which putatively speech
interrelates directly with bodily activity that is culturally ‘significant’,
(2) narratives—the situation of the moment of narration and the situation
referred to by the narrative, (3) situation in which speech is used to fill—so
to speak—a speech vacuum. (p. 21)
4.
‘Coral Garden and Their Magic’
(1935)
In this book, Malinowski introduced three
major ideas into his semantic theory, and all of them are related to the notion
that the objective of linguistic analysis is to interpret actual texts in a
foreign language in the language of the ethnographer. The first is concerned
with the context of linguistic data. The real linguistic fact is the full
utterances within its context of situation. The second new major idea concerns
with the range of meaning. If a sound is used in two different contexts, it
cannot be called one word. It must be considered as really two words that
happen to be homophonous. The third major notion in Coral Garden is that the
context of situation may be enable one to disambiguate sentences that are
semantically ambiguous. Within Malinowski’s theory, on the other hand, no
sentence should be ambiguous, since it can be correlated with at most only one
context of situation at a time. (p. 30 – 31)
b.
Defining Pragmatics and the
Aspects of Meaning in Pragmatics
A number of distinct usages
of the term pragmatics have sprung
from Morris’s original division of semiotics: the study of the huge range of
psychological and sociological phenomena involved in sign systems in general or
in language in particular; or the study of certain abstract concepts that make
reference to agents (Carnap’s sense); or the study of indexicals or deitic
terms (Montague’s sense); or finally the recent usage within Anglo-American
linguistics and philosophy.
Traditionally, syntax is
taken to be the study of he combinatorial properties of words and their parts,
and semantics to be the study of meaning, so (1) pragmatics is the study of language usage. Such a definition hardly
suffices to indicate what the practioners of pragmatics actually do. Let us
consider a set of possible definitions of pragmatics. One possible definition
might go as follows: (2) pragmatics is
the study of the principles that will account for why a certain set of
sentences is anomalous, or not possible utterances. The sentences like ‘Fred’s children are hippies, and he has no
children’; ‘I order you not to obey this order’ do not have contexts in
which they could be appropriately used (Levinson, 1983: 7). Although an
approach of this sort may be quite a good way of illustrating the kind of
principles that pragmatics is concerned with, it will hardly do as an explicit
definition of the field.
Another kind of definition
that might be offered would be that (3) pragmatics
is the study of language from a functional
perspective, that is, that it attempts to explain facets of linguistic
structure by reference to non-linguistic pressures and causes. Such a
definition for pragmatics would fail to distinguish linguistic pragmatics from
many other disciplines interested in functional approaches to language,
including psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics.
One quite restricted scope
for pragmatics is that (4) pragmatics
should be concerned solely with principles of language usage, and have nothing
to do with the description of linguistic structure. To ivoke, Chomsky’s
distinction between competence and performance, pragmatics is concerned
solely with performance principles of language use. Katz and Fodor suggested
that a theory of pragmatics would essentially be concerned with the
disambiguation of sentences by the contexts in which they were uttered. (p. 8)
In fact, it is clear that contexts do a lot more than merely select between
available semantic reading of sentences.
Here we come to the heart
of the definitional problem. Let us consider some potential definitions that
are more plausible candidates. We may begin with a definition that is specially
aimed at capturing the concern of pragmatics with features of language
structure. (5) Pragmatics is the study
of the relations between language and context that are grammaticalized, or
encoded in the structure of a language. (p. 9) The main strength of this
definition of pragmatics is that it restricts the field to purely linguistic
matter. It is a definition that handles the aspect of pragmatics concerned with
linguistic structure, but not the side concerned with principles of language
usage, or at least only indirectly as they impinge on linguistic organization.
In the definition above,
the notion of encoding implies that pragmatics is concerned with certain
aspects of meaning. One kind of definition that would make this central might
run is that pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not
captured in a semantic theory. Such a theory means that there will be a great
deal of the general field of meaning left unaccounted for by a restricted
semantic theory, and this could be indeed the domain of pragmatics. (p. 12)
The distinction between
sentence and utterance is of fundamental importance to both semantics and
pragmatics. A sentence is an abstract theoretical entity defined within a
theory of grammar, while an utterance is the issuance of a sentence in an
actual context. Semantics is concerned with sentence-meaning, and pragmatics
with utterance-meaning. (p. 18 – 19)
Let us turn to another
definition that would give he context-dependent nature of such phenomenon more
centrality. (6) Pragmatics is the study
of relations between language and context that are basic to an account of
language understanding. Here the term understanding is used to draw
attention to the fact that understanding an utterance involves a great deal
more that knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the grammatical
relations between them.
The strengths of such a
definition are hat it recognizes that (7) pragmatics
is essentially concerned with inference (Thomson in Levinson, 1983; 21).
Given a linguistic form uttered in a context, a pragmatic theory must account
for the inference of presuppositions, implicatures, illocutionary force and
other pragmatic implications. Secondly,
it does not make the distinction between semantics and pragmatics along the
encoded or non-encoded line. This is important because there still controversy
over whether such pragmatic implications as presuppositions or illocutionary
force are or are not encoded or grammaticalized in linguistic forms. Thirdly,
it includes most aspects of the study of principles of language usage. (p. 21)
Let us now turn to one of
the definitions most favoured in the literature. This definition would make
central to pragmatics a notion of appropriateness or felicity. (8) Pragmatics is the study of the ability of
language users to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate.
Such a definition provide a nice parallel with semantics: for just as a
semantic theory is concerned with the recursive assignment of truth conditions
to well-formed formulae, so pragmatics is concerned with the recursive
assignment of appropriateness-conditions to the same set of sentences with
their semantic interpretations. In other words, a pragmatic theory should
predict for each and every well-formed sentence of a language, on a particular
semantic reading, the set of contexts in which it would be appropriate. (p. 24
–25)
Let us now turn to the last
definition of pragmatics that is simply to provide a list of the phenomena for
which a pragmatic theory must account. (9) Pragmatics
is the study of deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech act, and aspects of
discourse structure. (p. 27)
c.
Defining Pragmatic Context
Based on the definition of pragmatic context
above general pragmatics focuses the study on real language utterances. In the
real communication, any utterance is always affected by communicative contexts
usually called pragmatic contexts. In a simple way, pragmatic contexts consist
of all factors defining utterance’s meanings. The fact that there is a
relationship between language and the context in which it occurs can be
demonstrated in a number of ways.
First, note that we use different language
to achieve similar purposes in different contexts.
(1)
You haven’t got any money on
you, but want to buy a newspaper.
(2)
You need to borrow a few
thousand pounds to buy a new flat.
(3)
You would like to go on a world
cruise, but need to borrow most of the money for this from your bank.
Clearly, in each situation many different
things could be said. What is important to note is that different types of
language are likely to be appropriate in different contexts, and our choice of
language depends on such things as who is involved in the communication and the
relationship between them, and what we hope to achieve through our
communication.
Second, the same language can have different
meanings in different contexts. Think about what the questions mean in the
following situations:
(4)
Andi has fallen off his bike
and landed awkwardly. Dany does an initial assessment of his injuries and the
says:
“Can you move your legs?”
(5)
Nicole is sitting with legs
outstretched in an armchair in a small sitting room. Nanny is carrying a tray
of glasses past where Nicole is sitting. Nanny says:
“Can you move your legs?”
While an analysis of linguistic form would
suggest that the two utterances are identical, the messages they convey in the
invented contexts is different. In the first, Dany asks about Andi’s physical
ability to move his legs in order to assess the seriousness of the injury. In
the second, Nanny makes a request. The same words, then, can convey different
messages depending on the context in which they occur.
Third, even when a stretch of language is
taken out of context, we can sometimes infer a great deal about the context
from which it was taken. Think abour what we can say about the context for each
of the following:
(6)
Fifteen – love.
(7)
First check the content to make
sure that nothing is missing.
(8)
This town ain’t big enough for
both of us.
The usual context for the first is quite
specific: said by an umpire in a tennis match. The second is often the first
instruction that comes with a self-assembly item, for example flat-packed
furniture. The third is the kind of thing said in old cowboy and western films
prior to a confrontation between two characters.
d.
Approaches to study linguistic
contexts
Although Malinowski highlighted the
significance of context in communication, he did not set out to describe
precisely either the nature of context, or its impact on language choice, and
it has left to later researchers to explore in more detail the relationship
between context and how language is organized to achieve communication. Three
in particular –John Rupert Firth, Dell Hymes, and Michael Halliday— have had a
major impact on linguistic contexts.
1.
John Rupert Firth
Firth’s concern was to determine which of
the many variables in a situation allow us to predict the language to be used.
He suggested the following dimension of situation as being of potential influence:
1)
The relevant features of
participants: persons, personalities,
(i)
The verbal action of the
participants,
(ii)
The relevant objects,
(iii)
The effect of the verbal
action.
To illustrate, we might imagine a scene in a
theatre box office where a customer is booking a ticket for a future
performance. Relevant features of the participants may be that one is a
customer who wishes to check seat availability and purchase a ticket while the
other is a booking clerk who has access to information about availability and
the means of receiving payment. Verbal actions may involve greeting, checking,
requesting, confirming, and so on. Non-verbal actions may include keying in
information on the computer, pointing to a seating plan, and handing over a
credit card. Relevant objects might include a computer, a seating plan, a
credit card, and a machine for transacting credit card payments. The effect of
the verbal action is that the customer receives tickets for the performance,
and the seats are designated reserved by the booking clerk.
2.
First’s interest in specifying
the features of context which are potentially relevant to the form, appropriacy
and meaning of utterances was also pursued by Dell Hymes (in Bell, 1976). Hymes
provides what is essentially a checklist of contextual factors that could be
noted by researchers in investigating communicative events. He usually
organizes these using the mnemonic ‘SPEAKING’:
S refers to the
setting and scene, including the time, place and concrete physical
circumstances in which the event is produced.
P refers to the
participants involved. Some events, such as a conversation, may have just two
participants who encourage roles between speaker and hearer, while a formal
lecture will have many participants but only one who takes on the role of
speaker.
E refers to ends, or
the purposes or goals of an event. Some events have very clear ends. Announced
over the public address system during the interval in a concert, the purpose of
the following is very clear: “Ladies and gentlemen. This evening’s performance
will recommence in five minutes. Please take your seats in the auditorium now.’
A refers to act sewuence, or the form and
content of the ‘event’. Events such as lecture, chat, shopping, list and
instruction manual will be associated with different things talked or written
about and different kinds of language.
K refers to key, the
tone in which a communicative act is done, such as serious or painstaking.
I refers to instrumentalities, including the channel in which
communication takes place such as speech, writing or some other mode of
communication.
N refers to norm of
interaction and interpretation, such as the norms associated with interaction
in a church service or speaking to a stranger.
G refers to genre,
such as poem, sermon or joke.
3.
Building closely on Firth’s
work, Michael Halliday explores which aspects of context influence how we use
language. For Halliday (1978) the social context consists of those general
properties of the situation which collectively function as the determinants of
text, in that they specify the semantic configurations that the speaker will
typically in contexts of the given type. He suggests that in any situation
these general properties can be organized into three dimensions that have
linguistic consequences, which he calls the field,
tenor, and mode. Field refers to what the language is being used to talk
about. Tenor refers to the role relationships between the people involved in
the interaction. Significant variables include the relative status of the
interactants, how frequently interaction between them occurs, and the extent to
which the interactants are involved emotionally in a situation. Mode refers to
the way in which language function in the situation: for example, whether it is
spoken or written.
III. CONCLUSION
From the two different basic theories, we
may say that Malinowski made of the knowledge of context of situation to
interpret particular utterances in the texts that he had collected. We discover
that in fact he use it to supply their semantic interpretation and to
supplement his knowledge of their meaning, which he obtained independently of
his knowledge of their contextual setting. In evaluating the influence of
Malinowski’s views about language, and in particular about semantics, it is
important to realize that his idea on the role of context to assert meanings
have great effects. Viewed from the sequence of time, I can say that
Malinowski’s idea influences very much Morris’s introduction of
pragmatics—pragmatics is the study of aspects of language that require reference to the users of the language. Afterwards, Malinowski’s idea on
contextual meaning plays very great role on pragmatists’ further definitions on
pragmatics—definitions (6), (7), (8), and (9).
From the date of publication, Malinowski’s
articles about semantics, in particular about the important role of contexts in
decoding meanings, were issued earlier—‘Classificatory
Particles’ (1920), ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’ (1922), ‘The Problem of
Meaning’ (1923), and ‘Coral Garden
and Their Magic’ (1935)—than Morris’s introduction of the trichotomy
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics—(1938). I do not think that Morris’s semiotic
trichotomy was issued three years after Malinowski’s ‘Coral Garden and Their Magic’ (1935) was a coincidence.
Based on the two arguments above, I might
argue that Malinowski’s views on semantics, in particular about the idea of his
contextual meanings, very much inspired the scope of pragmatics meanings,
especially the ones which account for the role of contexts in decoding
meanings.
œ
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