Lecture
1. The concept of informational and phatic acts.
2. Meaning and sense. Components of the sense of an utterance:
3. Intention and reference. Choice and presentation of the referent in a communicative act.
1. Informational and phatic acts can be used in the process of communication.
Phatic act (PA) (from English phatic communion ‒ conversations that are not essential in informational terms) ‒ is an act whose purpose consists in establishing or maintaining communicative contact. Formally PAs are perceived as informational, based on mutually pleasant or neutral topics, they do not obligate the interlocutors to anything, their main goal being «social approval». PAs are characteristic of ritual communication. An informational act ‒ is a communicative act,
whose purpose consists in a substantive
exchange of information.
2. In the process of communication, a message
is transmitted from the sender to the addressee. The message has meaning and sense.
Meaning ‒ is the generalized image, associated with a specific linguistic unit in
the mind of a native speaker, of a particular
object or situation, fact, event. Meaning is connected with
language, while sense is connected with speech.
Sense ‒ is «the way of representing the denotatum in a sign» (Gottlob Frege's definition). This means, in particular, that a sign can have several senses with a single denotatum (the object designated by this sign). Not only a word has sense, but also a sentence (message). The sense of a message can be conveyed explicitly and implicitly.
Explicit (Lat. explicito ‒ overt, expressed) ‒ overt, expressed sense, which is perceived by communicants based on the meaning of linguistic units. Explicit information is recognized by the addressee as the thought for the sake of expressing which this utterance was used.
Implicit (Lat. implicito ‒ non-overt) ‒ non-overt, hidden sense, which is inferred by the addressee from the meanings of linguistic units under the influence of a specific situation or context of communication.
The sense of a message is constituted by the referent, presuppositions and implicatures.
Referent ‒ is the object (or objects) of extralinguistic reality to which a specific linguistic expression, sentence, corresponds in the message.
Accordingly, reference ‒ is the process or result of the correlation between a word (language) and an object (the world of objects).
From a pragmatic point of view, at least three types of reference are distinguished:
1) introductive, when it concerns an object known only to the sender (I have an idea);
2) identificative, when it concerns an object known to all participants in the communication (but this idea will interest no one). Identificative reference, which is given significant attention in the best-known concepts, covers three types of relations:
demonstrative, naming, designation;
3) indefinite (reference of indefiniteness), when it concerns an unknown object (they say he has some idea).
One and the same type of pragmatic reference can
be expressed by various means:
1) demonstrative or personal pronouns;
2) proper names, which perform a nominative function;
3) nominal (substantive) constructions, which perform a denotative function;
4) actualizers, which narrow the scope of reference from a whole class to a specific object.
Presupposition (Lat. prae ‒ in front, before and suppositio ‒ assumption) ‒ is an assumption or reliance on the fact that part of the information offered is obvious and/or well known to the addressee. Presupposition is opposed to the communicatively relevant content of the utterance and enters into the semantics of the sentence as a «fund of shared knowledge» of the interlocutors, as a precondition. Presupposition is sometimes defined as the presence of prior knowledge among the communicants. A related phenomenon ‒ implicature ‒ is connected with presupposition.
Implicature (lat. implicatio ‒ interweaving, intertwining) – is a component of the content of an utterance that the addressee derives from the context of the speech act.
Implicature, in essence, ‒ is what is «read between the lines». The difference between implicature and presupposition is that implicature is a less stable semantic component of an utterance than presupposition, since it
depends more on context; secondly, implicature, unlike
presupposition, is optional.
3. Any communicative act begins with a certain purpose, and each of the interlocutors, entering a communicative act, has certain intentions, or intents. Therefore, in the process of communication the referent does not appear, so to speak, in pure form, because it is «accompanied» by the intentions of the communicants ‒ the ideas, thoughts, hopes, desires of the interlocutors associated with that referent. The success of communication will depend on how well the participants in the communication can understand or at least become aware of how much «add-on» has become attached to the referent and how this has affected the referent.
Intention ‒ is the communicative intent of the speaker. By the choice and presentation of the referent, pragmatics means the interest of both communicants in communicating precisely in connection with this
referent.
The intentional aspect of the analysis of a communicative act ‒ is the study of it from the point of view of how and
in what direction the referent is presented in the situation of speech interaction.
Three such directions are distinguished:
Positive speech intention consists in presenting the referent from a positive side and is realized in the organization of: acts of propaganda, agitation, advertising; procedures of attraction, encouragement and the like.
Negative intention presents the referent from a negative side and is realized in creating acts of condemnation, criticism, in procedures of refusal, reprimand, etc.
Neutral (or constructive) intention presents the referent objectively. Constructive intention is embodied in acts of stating facts, demonstrating features, procedures of discussion, analysis and the like.
Thus, the referent in a communicative act does not appear, so to speak, «in pure form», but is overlaid with certain «add-ons» ‒ the ideas, thoughts, hopes,
desires of the communicants, directly connected with this referent.
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