Step 5 - Pragmatics
Tutor: Henry Lenis
Estudiante: Luisa Fernanda Ortega Perdomo
Grupo: 518017_32
Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD
Escuela de Ciencias de la Educación
Licenciatura En Lenguas Extranjeras Con Énfasis en Ingles
Introduction to Linguistic
Aipe – Huila
2019
Activities to Develop
1. Read the document “Introduction”, Chapter 1, pages 1-20, in ‘Huang Y. Pragmatics.
Oxford: OUP Oxford; 2007.; found in the Course Contents, UNIT 2, in the Knowledge
Environment; once you have studied and deliberated on the concepts, please answer the
following analysis:
Study questions
2. What are the differences, if any, between sentence and utterance?
if there is a difference, in fact there is a large gap between these two.
The sentence an is independent of context, there can be many utterance of the same
sentence and the sentence is an abstraction of the grammatical and lexical content of an
utterance.
A sentence is a well-formed string of words put together according
to the grammatical rules of a language.
The utterance every time a sentence is spoken, the result is a new utterance of the same
sentence, the accent and voice quality belongs to the utterance and bound to a specific
situation context, and a specific speaker.
an utterance is the use of a particular piece of language—be
it a word, a phrase, a sentence, or a sequence of sentences—by a
particular speaker on a particular occasion.
3. What is context? Why is it so important to pragmatics?
Context is one of those notions which is used very widely in the linguistics literature, but to
which it is difficult to give a precise definition. From a relatively theory-neutral point of
view, however, context may in a broader sense be defined as referring to any relevant
features of the dynamic setting or environment in which a linguistic unit is systematically
used.
composed of three different sources:
Physical context – this encompasses what is physically present around the speakers/hearers
at the time of communication. What objects are visible, where the communication is taking
place, what is going on around, etc
Linguistic context – what has been said before in the conversation. The “history” of things
said so far.
Thirdly and finally, we have the general knowledge context. The information derivable
from this type of context explains why is pragmatically well-formed but is pragmatically
anomalous. This is because, given our real-world knowledge, we know that whereas there
is a Forbidden City in Beijing, there is no such a tourist attraction in Paris.
Because context is very important for pragmatics, because this is what deals with how
language is used and integrated into its context.
4. Imagine the following situation: a lady friend comes from a beauty parlor; she has a new
haircut. Once you see her you say: “you just had your hair cut!”.
Cleary, you are not saying anything unknown, you friend knows perfectly that she just had
her hair cut… then, what is the function and purpose of your utterance? Explain (Taken
from: Escandell.2011)
I believe that the purpose and function of my speech is to expose my astonishment.
example:
in the physical context my body would react somewhat surprised.
5. The concept ‘Linguistic underdeterminacy’ it is explained as “a huge gap between the
meaning of a sentence and the messages actually conveyed by the uttering of that sentence.
In other words, the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence radically underdetermines
the proposition the speaker expresses when he or she utters that sentence” Huang (2017:5),
this concept is pivotal at understanding how pragmatics meaning work; how do you
understand it, give one example.
I understand that the sentences are one, but their interpretation is several and these depend
on the context.
example
it's raining cats and dogs
The meaning of the word group phrase is one, but its meaning is another.
6. At a daily basis, in teaching and translating areas, linguistics is used even without being
realized; do an inquiry and explain how this disciplined is implemented in any task at
teaching or translating. Your writing will emphasize in any of the classical linguistic levels:
grammar, speech sounds, semantic or pragmatic level. In your explanation be clear and
concise, avoid fuzzy ideas.
Linguistics is used in teaching tasks because thanks to its studies it is possible to see a
variability, laws or norms that have different languages, because thanks to this it is
responsible for classifying and identifying them, because this study is the main sample of
language evolution and the main source of variability to speak in different ways with
different rules that must contribute to their grammatical level, although all languages have a
different order, meaning or sound for which it must be done with the order imposed by the
rules of Your languages
We use linguistics in any field of teaching or translation because now there are educators
much more didactic than the hand of linguistics and wed 2.0 make it much more practical
to know