英语专业语用学考试笔记.doc

一、 名词解释
1、 Psychological distance: it may be that the truly pragmatic basis of special deixis is actually psychological. Physically close objects will tend to be treated by the speaker as psychologically close. Also ,sth that is physically distant will generally be treated as psychologically distant.
2、 Reference: reference is an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or reader, to identify something.
3、 inference: Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.
4、 Presupposition: a presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance, speakers, not sentences, have presupposition.
5、 Entailment: an entailment is something that logically follows from what is asserted in the utterance, sentences, not speakers, have entailments.
6、 Face,: face means the public self-image of a person. It refers that emotional and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize.
7、 Politeness: in an interaction, can then be defined as the means employed to show awareness of another person's face.
二、 简答题
1、what's pragmatics ? Types of it.
Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker( or writer) and interpreted by a listener{or reader}
① pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.
②pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.
③pragmatics is the study of how more gets it communicated than is said.
④pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance.
2、 what's deixis ?
Deixis is a technical term( from Greek) for one of the most basic things we do with utterance. It means 'pointing' via language. Any linguistic form used to accomplish this 'pointing' is called a deictic expression. Deictic expressions are also sometimes called indexicals. They are among the first forms to be broken by very young children and can be used to indicate people via person deixis( me, you), or location via spatial deixis( here, there), or time via temporal deixis( now, then).
3、 Types of presupposition.
①The existential presupposition is not only assumed to be present in possessive construction ( for example, ' your car '>> 'you have a car)
②The presupposed information following a verb like ' know ' can be treated as a fact, and is described as a factive presupposition, such as ‘realize’ and ‘regret’..
③ General speaking, in lexical presupposition, the use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another ( non-asserted ) meaning is understood, such as ‘stop’, ‘star’, and ‘again’.
④ In addition to presupposition which are associated with the use of certain words and phrases, there are also structural presupposition. ( for example, when did he leave? >> he left. / where did you buy the bike ? >> you bought the bike. )
⑤ A non-factive presupposition is one that is assumed not to be true. ( example, I dreamed that I was rich.>> I was not rich/ we imagined we were in Hawaii.>>we were not in Hawaii. / he pretends to be ill.>>he is not ill. )
⑥At end of the discussion of deixis, a structure that is interpreted with a non-factive presupposition. Indeed, this type of structure creates a counter-factual presupposition, meaning that what is presupposed is not only true, but is the opposite of what is true, or ' contrary ' to ' facts'. ( example, if you were my friend, you would have helped me.>>you are not my friend.)
4. Cooperation and implicature.
The cooperative principle: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at stage it which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
①Quantity,
i. Make your contribution as informative as is required ( for the current purposes of the exchange).
b) Do you make your contribution more informative than is required.
②Quality. Try to make your contribution one that is true.
a) Do not say what what you believe to be false.
b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
③Relation. Be relevant.
④Manner. Be perspicuous.
a) Avoid obscurity of expression.
b) Avoid ambiguity.
c) Be brief( avoid unnecessary prolixity).
d) Be orderly.
Properties of conversational implicatures
1. Conversational implicatures are deniable. They can be explicitly denied(or alternatively, reinforced) in different ways.
2. Implicatures can be calculated by the listeners via inference. In terms of their defining properties, then, conversational implicatures can be calculated, suspended, cancelled, and reinforced.
Speech act
The action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts.
1. Locutionary act, which is the basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression,
2. The illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance.
3. Depending on the circumstances, you will utter on the assumption that the hearer will recognize the effect you intended. This is also generally known as the perlocutionary effect.

Positive and negative politeness
A positive politeness atrategy leads the requester to appeal to a common goal, and even friendship, via expressions such as those in the following example(a. how about letting me use your pen? b. hey, buddy, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me use your pen.)
However, in most English-speaking contexts, a face saving act is more commonly performed via a negative politeness strategy. For example(a. could you lend me a pen? B. I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you for a pen or something? C. I know you are busy, but might I ask you if-em-if you happen to have an extra pen that I could,you know-eh-maybe borrow?)
三、论述题
1. Speech act classification.
①Declaration are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their utterance. ( example. Priest: I now pronounce your husband and wife./ Referee: you're out. / Jury Foreman: we find the defendant guilty.)
In using a declaration, the speaker changes the world via words.
②Representatives are those kind of speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not. ( example. The earth is flat. / Chomsky didn't write about peanuts. / it was a warm sunny day.)
In using representative, the speaker makes the words fit the world( of belief)
③Expressive are those kind of speech acts that state what the speaker feels. ( example. I'm really sorry. / congratulations / Oh, yes, great, mmmm, ssahh. )
In using an expression, the speaker makes words fit the world( of feeling).
④Directives are those kinds of speech that speakers use to get someone else to do something. (example. Gimme a cup of coffee. Make it black. / could you lend me a pen, please?/ don't touch that.
In using a directive, the speaker attempts to make the world fit the words( via the hearer).
⑤Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some future action. ( I'll be back/ I'm going to get it right next time/ we will not do that. )
In using a commissive, the speaker undertakes to make the world fit the words (via the speaker)
These five general functions of speech acts, with there key features, are summarized in Table 6. I.
The role of co-text
1. The co-text clearly limits the range of possible interpretations we might have for a word like “Brazil”. It is consequently misleading to think of reference being understood solely in terms of our ability to identity referents via the referring expression. The referring expression actually provides a range of reference, that is, a number of possible referents.
2. Of course, co-text is just a linguistic part of the environment in which a referring expression I used. The physical environment, or context, is perhaps more easily recognized as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions are to be interpreted.
3. Reference are depends on local context and the local knowledge of the participants. It may crucially depend on familiarity with the local socio-cultural conventions as the basis for inference (for example, if a person is in a hospital with an illness, then he or she can be identified by nurses via the name of illness). These conventions may differ substantially from one social group to another and may be marked differently from one language to another. Reference, then, is not simply a relationship between the meaning of a word or phrase and an object or person in the world. It is a social act, in which the speaker assumes that the word or phrase chosen to identify an object or person will be interpreted as the speaker intend.