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Weekly Readings:
- Auer, Peter. 2009. “Context and Contextualization.” In Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights, eds. Jef Verschueren and Jan-Ola Östman. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 86–101. doi:10.1075/hoph.1.05aue.# Data and Knowledge 1: Perspectivity and Contextualization
Video Lecture Notes:
This lecture continues the exploration of the relationship between data, knowledge, and meaning in discourse, focusing on the inferred meaning that emerges beyond explicit textual content. It introduces and elaborates on three key pragmatic concepts essential for understanding how we interpret discourse:
1. Common Ground:
Proposed by Herbert Clark, common ground refers to the shared information, experiences, and assumptions that interlocutors rely on to achieve mutual understanding in communication.
- Key Idea: Understanding requires more than just a common language; it depends on trust and shared situational knowledge.
- Example: A father and his son on the beach both know that they are observing a shell, hearing the sea, and feeling the sun. They also know that the other is aware of this shared experience.
- Expanding to Larger Communities: In written or professional contexts where interlocutors do not share physical space, cultural communities (e.g., academic disciplines, social groups) serve as surrogates for physical shared environments.
2. Implicature:
Developed by Paul Grice, implicature refers to the additional meanings inferred from an utterance that are not explicitly stated. Grice introduced the Cooperative Principle, which underpins how we interpret these implicit meanings. The principle suggests that speakers generally aim to contribute meaningfully to a conversation according to the accepted purposes of the exchange.
- Conversational Maxims: Grice identified four maxims that guide cooperative conversation:
- Quality: Be truthful.
- Quantity: Be as informative as necessary.
- Relation: Be relevant.
- Manner: Be clear and orderly.
- Violations and Implicature:
- Deliberate or accidental breaches of these maxims can produce implicatures.
- Example:
- Host says: “It’s getting late.”
- Guest infers: “It’s time to leave.”
- A speaker violating Quality (e.g., saying “George is very smart” when he failed an exam) may imply sarcasm.
3. Presupposition:
Discussed by Stephen Levinson, presupposition is the background knowledge assumed to be true for an utterance to make sense.
- Key Idea: A presupposition remains intact even when the sentence is negated.
- Example:
- Sentence: “Unfortunately, there will be some impacts of climate change that we won’t be able to avoid.”
- Presupposition: Climate change exists.
- Even if the sentence is negated (e.g., “There won’t be impacts…”), the assumption that climate change exists persists.
- Courtroom Example:
- Question: “Do you regret killing him?”
- Presupposes: The person killed someone.
- Regardless of a “yes” or “no” response, the presupposition stands.
Significance of These Concepts:
These pragmatic mechanisms demonstrate that comprehending discourse involves more than decoding words; it requires activating background knowledge, making inferences, and recognizing what is left unsaid.
- Understanding Texts: Knowledge of common ground, implicature, and presupposition is crucial for interpreting both everyday conversation and complex texts.
- Challenges for Analysts: Discourse analysts must navigate the boundary between what is explicitly stated and what is inferred, recognizing that much of the meaning in communication is constructed beyond the surface of the text.
Conclusion:
The lecture reinforces the interactive and context-dependent nature of meaning in discourse. Mutual knowledge, inferential reasoning, and shared assumptions enable individuals to bridge gaps between linguistic expression and understanding, making these pragmatic tools indispensable for discourse analysis.
- What is knowledge?
- Meaning of the word: the sum of all assumptions about the world that are shared in a group or society and are considered true
- “I know that fruit trees bloom in spring.” vs “I know that apples taste better than pears.”
- shared undisputed assumption vs subjective judgement
- Implicit Knowledge: Experience-based knowledge that is not always obvious but essential, gained through practical application.
- Declarative Knowledge: Facts and information that describe what something is or how it works.
- Our personal knowledge has 3 sources:
- Experience
- Discourse
- Inferences that we draw out of discursive information based on our own personal experience with the material world
Live Lecture Notes:
- There are different school of thoughts when it comes to the nature of “knowledge”
- there are some argue that there is knowledge outside of language
- there are others, which says we need a semiotic structure to know what we know, to distinguish between different knowledges
- Different types of knowledge:
- Implicit Knowledge
- Declarative Knowledge
- Three sources of personal knowledge according to Teun van Dijk
- Experience (touch, feel, sight)
- Discourse
- Inferences we draw either from experiences or discursive knowledge: conclusions — if the streets are wet, then it must have been raining recently
- Knowledge means, experiencing the world in a social way, so it is a shared perspective in a way
- Frame Analysis
- Contextualizationxz