Some Theories of Pragmatics. Their Contributions

This post explores some important theories of pragmatics as well as their contributions to the richness of this area of linguistics.

Bach’s and Harnish’s Intention and Inference Theory

Bach and Harnish (1979) rejected Searle’s and Austin’s theory of speech acts which propose that an illocutionary act is based the speaker’s intention to perform actions such as christening or marrying. You will recall that Strawson (1971) had earlier rejected Austin’s theory and proposed an intention-centered theory. He argued that formalised ceremonial acts such as christening and marrying cannot represent everyday communication.

Bach and Harnish followed Strawson in distinguishing between ceremonial acts for which convention is taken to be the primary illocutionary act, and the case of non-ceremonial acts like asking and stating, which they call ‘communicative’ and for which they assume that intention is crucial to the accomplishment of the illocutionary act (Sadock, 2006). The major contributions of Bach and Harnish may be summarized as follows:

(i)               to suggest a very general Speech Act Schema (SAS) for communicative illocutionary acts,

(ii)             to show how inferences based on Mutual Contextual Beliefs (MCBs) play a role in communicative speech acts, and

(iii)          to make detailed use of Grice’s notion of conversational implicature in fleshing out the theory (2006:63).

The SAS is explained as follows:

2a.       S  is  uttering e

2b.                    S means.by e

2c.                    S is  saying so and so

2d.                    S is  doing such and   such (p.63)

Premise 2a follows from hearing the speaker utter e, plus the hearer’s knowledge of the language, and 2b follows from 2a plus the knowledge that in this language, e means.. .Then 2c follows from 2b, supplemented with the assumption that S is speaking, literally plus the knowledge that there are certain MCBs in the context in which e bas been uttered. The reasoning to the conclusion 2d – that S is doing such and such in uttering e – involves the previous conclusion, other MCBs and what Bach and Harnish call the Communicative Presumption (p.63).

This theory affirms that linguistic communication is basically an inferential process; therefore, illocutionary acts are performed with the intention that the hearer identify the act being performed. The inference made by the hearer and the inference he “takes himself to be intended to make is based not just on what the speaker says but also on mutual contextual beliefs (MCBs)” (Bach and Harnish, 1979:5). Inference (based on SAS) means that in inferring what S is saying, H also relies on the “presumption of literalness (PL)” i.e. “if S could (under the circumstances) be speaking literally, then S is speaking literally.

Conversely, if it is evident to H that S could not be speaking literally, H supposes to be speaking nonliterally and therefore seeks to identify what the nonliteral illocutionary act is” (1979:12). Non-literalness usually results in indirect speech acts in which S says one thing and means another or performs one illocutionary act while performing another at the same time.

Thus if S says “you met me well” S may be informing H he met him well (i.e. S is healthy) and at the same time inviting him to dinner. The success of the second act is tied to the first and therefore, for the second act to be understood, the first must be recognised. This account covers both literal and non-literal speech acts.

An act is communicatively successful as soon as the speaker’s illocutionary intention is recognised by the hearer. Therefore, “the intended effect of an act of communication is not just any effect produced by means of the recognition of the intention to produce a certain effect; it is the recognition of the effect.” Therefore “perlocutionary acts are limited to the “intentional production of effects on (or in) the hearer” (p. 15; Adegbija, 1999).

Levinson’s Tri-heuristic theory

You will recall that Grice identified some types of implicatures namely generalized and particularized conversational implicatures. And we have seen how a statement like “some Zambians are Muslims” results in a generalized Quantity (or Q) inference (notice some, i.e. not all) and the context-dependent particularized Relation (or R) inferences (i.e. relevant to the context). In his paper “Three Levels of Meaning” Levinson (1995) suggests that Q inferences (and Manner or M inferences) are instances of utterance-type meaning and R inferences are instances of utterance-token meaning.

Utterance-type is a predictable type of utterance which has regular inferred interpretation across a range of contexts (Grundy, 2000). An utterance token on the other hand is a single instance of an utterance whose interpretation depends on the context. Utterance meaning therefore yields conventional understandings or interpretations whose meanings, unlike those of utterance-tokens do not differ according to context. Utterance meaning resembles sentence meaning, but unlike sentence meaning, it is inferred and may be cancelled where the context does not allow the inference (Grundy, 2000).

Levinson argues that utterance-type implicatures may be traced to the insights (called heuristics) that give rise to Grice’s maxims of Quantity and Manner. The first Quantity (Q1) maxim – make your contribution as informative as is required is in effect a command to say as much as you can in the circumstance. Thus “What is not said is not the case” (Levinson, 1995:97). If I say ‘some’ it implies ‘not all.’ 

Leech (1983) argues that the Quantity maxim essentially requires the use of the indefinite article (i.e. a, an, or some} when the speaker/hearer lacks insufficient knowledge to refer to definitely (with the use of ‘the’).

Grice’s second Quantity (Q2) maxim which says: “do not make your contribution more informative than is required” enjoins us to say as little as we can so that if I say: ‘a female pilot’ I will take it for granted that the hearer will interpret it to mean ‘a woman that flies an aircraft’ but then inviting the M inference. Of course I may mean ‘a woman that flies an aircraft’ by saying ‘female pilot’ but may mean something else by simply saying ‘a woman that flies an aircraft.’

We can summarise Levinson’s contribution as follows:

(a)               identifies three levels of meaning: (i) utterance -type (instances of Grice’s quantity and manner maxims) (ii) token-type (related to relation maxim) (iii) entailment

(b)               Q2-inferences are not like Q1 and M (manner) inferences because they provide general expected interpretations which show the conventional way speakers and hearers resolve the meaning of certain interpretations.

(c)               Utterance typemeaning constitutes one of the three levels of meaning with token-meaningand entailment (Grundy, 2000)

Adegbija’s theory of Pragmatics

Adegbija (1982) proposed a “balanced and unified” theory of pragmatics building on the works of Searle, Grice, Bach and Harnish. He advocates utterance interpretation involving basically an inferencing process. Like Austin and Searle, Adegbija argues that we perform acts with words and the effects the words produce are not necessarily only hearer-directed. “Illocutionary acts may be conventional but need not always be because the force of some illocutionary acts is determined by the intention of the speaker while others still may have to do with the pragmatics of the particular situation of social interaction” (1999:203). 

Using his example, if my boy is tearing his toy and I say to him “hello,” he is likely to interpret this as a warning against his action. The pragmatics of the situation determines the illocutionary force and enables the boy to understand that “hello” is not appropriate to the situation and therefore functions as a warning against what he is doing or an order to stop tearing his toy. This interpretation is further determined by the relationship between father and son. 

Such inferential process according to Adegbija is nurtured by the pragmatics of the situation, the social relationship obtaining between father and son, and the linguistic elements used in performing the illocutionary act. These factors are called the “pragmasociolinguistic context” and Adegbija argues that these need not necessarily have anything to do with a specific intention of the speaker. The pragmatics of a situation of social interaction according to Adegbija (1982) may consist of any or all of the following:

(a)               the cognitive or effective states of the participants in the interaction at hand

(b)              special relationship obtaining among participants

(c)               mutual beliefs, understanding, or lack of these

(d)              the nature of the discourse and how this relates to the interests of both the hearer and the speaker and to the context of interaction

Adegbija argues that an illocutionary act always takes place and a perlocutionary effect alwaysoccurs even if these are not the ones specifically intended by the speaker. In other words, the hearer’s inference, based on the pragmasociolinguistic context, determines what illocutionary act he perceives the speaker as performing. This inference on the part of the hearer would seem to be more important in identifying and interpreting illocutionary acts than any fixed intentions which the speaker might have. Pragmatic factors often change in the course of discourse and this may influence the illocutionary force of utterances as well as their perlocutionary sequels.

Theories of Pragmatics in General perspective

Pragmatics theories illustrate the various attempts by scholars to explain how linguistic pragmatics demonstrates the nature of language and how it works in the context of speakers and situations. Beyond the works of Back and Harnish, Levinson and Adegbija examined in this unit, it is interesting to note that more studies in pragmatics have continued over the years. Some of these studies do not only concentrate on the explanation of pragmatics as a subject, but its interrelationship with other disciplines. This we shall be considering in the subsequent units.