Target domain – tenor
Source domain – vehicle
Features of metaphors
Metaphors are systematic.
Metaphors can create similarities between the two domains involved.
Metaphors are also characterized by imaginative rationality.
Chapter 7 Pragmatics
What is pragmatics?
Pragmatics can be defined as the analysis of meaning in context.
Pragmatic analysis of meaning is first and foremost concerned with the study of what is communicated by a speaker/writer and interpreted by a listener/reader.
Analysis of intentional meaning necessarily involves the interpretation of what people do through language in a particular context.
Intended meaning may or may not be explicitly expressed. Pragmatic analysis also explores how listeners/readers make inferences about what is communicated.
What are the differences between the two linguistic studies of meaning – semantics and pragmatics?
Semantics studies literal, structural or lexical meaning, while pragmatics studies non-literal, implicit, intended meaning, or speaker meaning.
Semantics is context independent, decontextualized, while pragmatics is context dependent, contextualized.
Semantics deals with what is said, while pragmatics deals with what is implicated or inferred.
Deixis and reference
Deixis is a word originally from Greek. It means pointing via language. An expression used by a speaker/writer to identify something is called deictic expression.
Out of context, we cannot understand sentences containing deictic expressions, because we do not know what these expressions refer to respectively.
According to referential content, deixis can be put into person deixis, place deixis, time deixis and discourse deixis.
Person deixis: I, we, you, me, he, etc.
Place deixis: here, there, above, over, this, that…
Proximal and distal terms
Proximal terms are used when something is close to the speaker, while distal terms when something is away from the speaker.
Time deixis: next…, by…, before…, etc.
Tenses: coding time
Discourse deixis
Anaphoric: backward reference
Cataphoric: forward reference
The deictic centre – ego-centric centre
Speech acts
In linguistic communication, people do not merely exchange information. They actually do something through talking or writing in various circumstances. Actions performed via speaking are called speech acts.
Performative sentences
Implicit performatives – It’s cold here.
Explicit performatives – Please close the door.
Types of speech acts
Locutionary speech act – the action of making the sentence
Illocutionary speech act – the intentions
Perlocutionary speech act – the effects
Of these dimensions, the most important is the illocutionary act.
In linguistic communication people respond to an illocutionary act of an utterance, because it is the meaning intended by the speaker.
If a teacher says, “I have run out of chalk” in the process of lecturing, the act of saying is locutionary, the act of demanding for chalk is illocutionary, and the effect the utterance brings about – one of the students will go and get some chalk – is perlocutionary.
In English, illocutionary acts are also given specific labels, such as request, warning, promise, invitation, compliment, complaint, apology, offer, refusal, etc. these specific labels name various speech functions.
