MICROPRAGMATICS DEIXIS AND IMPLICIT MEANING
The term 'micropragmatics' is used by some pragmaticians (e.g. Mey, 1993) to refer to the pragmatics of lesser units of human language use, such as questions of deixis, anaphora, implicature or speech acts, in other words micropragmatic contexts.
For the beginning, let's suppose (with Mey, 1993:89) that you are in a foreign country, sitting in your hotel room at night. There is a knock at the door. You don't open the door, but ask: 'Who's there?'. The visitor answers: 'It's me'. What do you do then?
There are two possibilities. Either you recognise the visitor's voice, and then decide whether or not to open the door. If you don't, then what do you do with a voice that refers to a 'me', when you don't know who that 'me' is. Since the 'me' always refers to 'I', and every 'I' is a 'speaking me', the utterance 'It's me' is always necessarily true, but totally uninformative to establish a speaker's identity.
In more technical terms, there is no known 'referent' for 'me' by virtue of the linguistic expression alone. We are dealing here with a problem that is basically philosophical, but which has serious consequences bot 121j95b h for theoretical linguistics and for our use of language.
We use language to refer to persons or things, directly or indirectly. In the first case (direct reference), we have names available that lead us to persons or things. In the second case (indirect reference), we need to have recourse to other, linguistic as well as non-linguistic, strategies in order to establish the correct reference. For example, 'Me who' or 'Who's talking?'
I. DEIXIS
"Deixis" is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic things we do with language. It means "pointing" via language, and any linguistic form used to accomplish this pointing is called deictic expression or indexicals. They are among the first forms to be spoken by young children and can be used to indicate
people via person deixis ('me', 'you'), or social deixis
location via spatial deixis ('here', 'there')
time via temporal deixis ('now', 'then')
and discourse via discourse deixis (referring expressions in texts)
Person deixis
The distinction described above involves person deixis, with the speaker 'I' and the addressee 'you'. To learn these deictic expressions, we have to discover that each person in a conversation shifts from being 'I' to being 'you'. According to Yule (1996:10), all young children go through a stage in their learning where the distinction seems problematic and they say things like 'Read you a story' (instead of 'me').
Person deixis operates on a basic three part division, the speaker (I), the addressee (you) and other(s) (he, she, it). As Yule (1996) observes, in many languages these deictic expressions are elaborated with markers of social status. Expressions which indicate higher status are described as honorifics (social deixis).
For example, in French and Romanian there are two different forms that encode a social contrast within person deixis, 'tu' (tu) and 'vous'(dumneavoastra). This is known as T/V distinction
In deictic terms, third person is not a direct participant in basic interaction, and being an outsider, is more distant. Using a third person form, where a second person would be possible, is one way of communicating distance. This can also be done for humorous or ironic purposes, as in the following examples given by Yule (1996:11):
'Would his highness like some coffee?'
The distance associated with third person forms is also used to make potential accusations less direct, as in:
Somebody didn't clean up after himself.
There is also a potential ambiguity in the use in English of the first person plural. There is an exclusive we (speaker plus others, excluding addressee) and inclusive we (speaker and addressee included), as in the following possible reply to the accusation:
We clean up after ourselves around here.
The ambiguity present here provides a subtle opportunity for a hearer to decide what was communicated. Either the hearer decides that he/she is a member of the group to whom the rule applies, or an outsider.
Temporal deixis
Deixis is a form of referring tied to the speaker's context, with some basic distinctions being 'near speaker' versus 'away form speaker'. In English, the 'near speaker', or proximal terms are 'this, 'here', 'now'. Proximal terms are typically interpreted in terms of the speaker's location, or the deictic centre, so that 'now' is generally understood as referring to some point or period of time that has the time of the speaker's utterance at its centre. The psychological basis of temporal deixis is that we treat events and objects that move towards us (into view) or away from us (out of view).
One basic type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice of verb tense, which has only two basic forms, the present and the past (the proximal and the distal). The past tense is always used in English in those if-clauses that mark events presented by the speaker as not being close to present reality.
E.g. If I had a yacht.(source: Yule, 1996:15)
The idea expressed in the example is not treated as having happened in the past. It is presented as deictically distant from the speaker's current situation. So distant, that it actually communicates the negative (we infer that the speaker has no yacht).
Spatial deixis
The concept of distance is relevant to spatial deixis, where the relative location of people and things is being indicated. Contemporary English makes use of two adverbs, 'here' and 'there', for the basic distinction. Some verbs of motion, as Yule (1996:12) observes, such as 'come' and 'go', retain deictic sense when they are used to mark movement toward the speaker ('Come to bed') or away the speaker ('Go to bed').
It is important to remember that location from the speaker's perspective can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporarily away from their home location will often continue to use 'here' to mean the (physically distant) home location. According to Yule (1996:13), speakers also seem to be able to project themselves (deictic projection) into other locations prior to actually being in those locations.
E.g.: I'll come later (=movement to addressee's location).
I'm not here = would be nonsense if 'here' means the place of speaker's utterance. It ceases to be so if we know that the utterance is produced by an answering machine. In this case, I am projecting presence, for future audience, to be in the required location.
A similar deictic projection is accomplished via dramatic performance when using direct speech to represent the person, location, and feelings of someone else.
E.g.: I was looking at this little puppy in a cage with such a sad look on its face. It was like, 'Oh, I'm so unhappy here, will you set me free?' (from Yule, 1996:13)
Discourse deixis refers to forms of expressions that point at earlier, simultaneous or following discourse (Verschueren, 1999:21), such as linkers.
All indexical expressions refer to certain world conditions, either subjective or objective in nature. The following story, borrowed from Levinson (1983:68) is meant to illustrate the importance of having the right point of view, and how one can anticipate the way people will construe the world in terms of their point of view.
'A melamed (Hebrew teacher) discovering that he had left his comfortable slippers back in the house, sent a student after them with a note for his wife. The note read: "Send me your slippers with this boy". When the student asked why he had written 'your' slippers, the melamed answered: 'Yold! (Fool) If I wrote 'my' slippers, she would read 'my slippers' and would send her slippers. What could I do with her slippers? So I wrote 'your' slippers, she'll read 'your' slippers and send me mine." '
II. IMPLICIT MEANING
Pragmatics looks at language as a form of action - when we say something we also perform an action (we make requests, ask for information, apologise, order, etc) - It is anchored in a real-world context, and it pays attention to types of meaning that go beyond what is 'given' by the language form itself, or what is literally said. Thus, implicit meaning becomes a topic of investigation. There are three things involved here: the impossibility of complete explicitness, conventional linguistic means to cope with this impossibility, and strategies to exploit it. We will next look at the impossibility of complete explicitness, and at presuppositions as a carrier of implicit meaning.
The impossibility of complete explicitness
Let's take the following example, adapted from Verschueren (1999:25-26): imagine that Debby and Dan are at a dinner party and Debby asks Dan 'Go anywhere today?'
The difference between what people usually say and what they mean, and the impossibility of complete explicitness, can be seen if we imagine what Debby would have to say to clarify in completely explicit linguistic terms what she means when asking the above question.
'Assuming that we are sitting close enough together for you, Dan, having normal hearing capabilities and a workable knowledge of English, to understand me, I am addressing you. I also assume that we share some knowledge about where we are, and why we are here. Further, I guess that you, like me, do not want us to sit here silently but that we both want to interact socially and sociably by means of a conversation. Since we also share the knowledge that it is now dinner time, that the main part of the day is over, and that during a day like there are many things one can do, a basic option being either to remain here or to leave, it seems reasonable for me to start a conversation by asking you whether you went somewhere today. So I am asking you: 'Did you go anywhere today?' And I would very much appreciate it if you could say something in response to the question' (from Verschueren, 1999:26)
The world of unexpressed information which an utterance carries along is called background information common knowledge or common ground). Because of the impossibility of full explicitness, and the need to 'explicate' aspects of general background information to achieve full understanding of any instance of language use, the term explicature has been introduced. For example, the School is closed during Holidays, requires as 'explicatures' a further specification or which 'School' it is that one is talking about, of whether 'Holidays' is meant to be Holidays of a specific year or of every year, and of whether 'closed' means closed for every living creature or only for students. Explicatures are simply representations of implicit forms of meaning.
Conventional means for conveying implicit meaning
Language provides numerous conventionalised carriers of implicit meaning, which are tools for linking explicit content to relevant aspects of background information.
Presuppositions
A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions. Thus, we can identify some of the potentially assumed information that would be associated with the following utterance (Yule, 1996:25):
Mary's brother bought three horses.
In producing the utterance, the speaker will normally be expected to have the presuppositions that a person called Mary exists and that she has a brother. The speaker may also hold the more specific presupposition that Mary has only one brother and that she has a lot of money. All of these presuppositions are the speaker's and all of them can be wrong.
According to Verschueren (1999:27), there are linguistic forms as indicators of potential presuppositions, which can only become actual presuppositions in contexts with the speakers.
Existential presuppositions presuppose the existence, at a given place and/or time, of entities in a 'real' world. Examples would be possessives ('your car' presupposes 'you have a car'), and more generally any definite noun phrase. The following example (Verschueren, 1999:27):
The King of France is talking to Napoleon
said at this time in history and using the present tense, is devoid of real meaning because the existential presuppositions carried by the referring expressions 'The King of France' and 'Napoleon' are not satisfied.
Factive presuppositions
A number of verbs, such as know, realise regret, or phrases involving be aware, be glad, have factive presuppositions. The following examples have been taken from Yule (1996:28-29):
E.g.:
She didn't realise he was ill. (He was ill)
We regret telling him (We told hem)
I wasn't aware that she was married. (She was married)
I am glad that it's over (It's over).
Non-factive presuppositions
There are examples of non-factive (presuppositions assumed not to be true) presuppositions associated with a number of verbs: dream, imagine, pretend.
Eg:
I dreamed that I had a lot of money (I didn't have a lot of money)
We pretended that we knew what it was all about (We didn't know)
Lexical presuppositions
The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning is understood. For example verbs like manage (presupposing tried), stop, start.
E.g
He managed to repair the car (He tried hard)
She started smoking (She wasn't smoking before)
Structural presuppositions
Some sentence structures have been analysed as conventionally presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true. For example, the wh-question constructions in English are interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form is already known.
E.g. (Yule, 1996:29):
When did you leave? (You left)
Where did you buy the bike? (You bought the bike).
We have seen that what people say carries a whole world of unexpressed information, and that it would be impossible to communicate with complete explicitness. Presuppositions are one form of conveying aspects of implicit meaning, and we say that speakers hold a number of presuppositions when producing utterances.
III. SUMMARY
The term 'micropragmatics' is used by some pragmaticians (e.g. Mey, 1993) to refer to the pragmatics of lesser units of human language use such as deixis.
Deixis means "pointing" via language, and any linguistic form used to accomplish this pointing is called deictic expression or indexical. Indexicals are among the first forms to be spoken by young children and can be used to indicate:
people via person deixis ('me', 'you'), or social deixis
In many languages these deictic expressions are elaborated with markers of social status. Expressions which indicate higher status are described as honorifics (social deixis). In deictic terms, third person is not a direct participant in basic interaction, and being an outsider, is more distant. Using a third person form, where a second person would be possible, is one way of communicating distance. There is also a potential ambiguity in the use in English of the first person plural. There is an exclusive we (speaker plus others, excluding addressee) and inclusive we (speaker and addressee included).
time via temporal deixis ('now', 'then')
'Now' is generally understood as referring to some point or period of time that has the time of the speaker's utterance at its centre.
location via spatial deixis ('here', 'there')
It is important to remember that location from the speaker's perspective can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporarily away from their home location will often continue to use 'here' to mean the (physically distant) home location. Speakers also seem to be able to project themselves (deictic projection) into other locations prior to actually being in those locations.
discourse via discourse deixis (referring expressions in texts)
Conventional means for conveying implicit meaning
Pragmatics pays attention to types of meaning that go beyond what is 'given' by the language form itself, or what is literally said.
Presuppositions
A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions.
Existential presuppositions presuppose the existence, at a given place and/or time, of entities in a 'real' world.
Factive presuppositions
A number of verbs, such as know, realise regret, or phrases involving be aware, be glad, have factive presuppositions.
Non-factive presuppositions
Presuppositions assumed not to be true associated with a number of verbs: dream, imagine, pretend
Lexical presuppositions
The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning is understood. For example verbs like manage (presupposing tried), stop, start.
Structural presuppositions
Some sentence structures have been analysed as conventionally presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true. For example, the wh-question constructions in English are interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form is already known.
IV. TASKS
1. Deixis (Mey, 1993:106-107):
An hour before
dawn on March 7-th, 1974, Kaspar Joachim Utz died of a
second and long-expected stroke, in his apartment at No. 5,
Three days later, at 7.45 a.m., his friend Dr. Vaclav Orlik was standing outside the Church of St. Sigismund, awaiting the arrival of the hearse and clutching seven of the ten pink carnations he had hoped to afford at the florist's. He noted with approval the first sings of spring. In a garden across the street, jackdaws with twigs in their beaks were wheeling above the lindens, and now and then a minor avalanche would slide from the pantiled roof of a tenement.
Ehile Orlik waited, he was approached by a man with a curtain of grey hair that fell below the collar of his raincoat.
'Do you play the organ?' the man asked in a catarrhal voice.
'I fear not', said Orlik
'Nor do I ', the man said, and shuffled off down a side-street.
Bruce Chatwin, Utz, 1988)
QUESTIONS
a. What types of deixis are found in the excerpt?
b. Make an inventory, and try to establish a preliminary classification (you can proceed either by looking at the 'type' of deixis, or at what deictic elements refer to in the text).
2. Analyse the following utterances in terms of presuppositions (Verschueren, 1999:28):
I regret the year of prosperity and peace has ended.
The UN managed to bring about peace.
A time of prosperity and peace will return.
What the UN did was to bring about peace in
1996, which was a year of prosperity and peace, will be remembered forever.
Study the following sign, appearing at selected private parking sites throughout the Greater Chicago area (Mey, 1993:15)
WILL BE TOWED BY
TOWING SERVICE TO 4884 N.CLARK
FEE $80.00 CASH,
VISA & MASTER CHARGE ACCEPTED
PHONE 561-4433
QUESTIONS:
a. What does this sign tell you explicitly? And implicitly?
b. Who do you think is the sender of the message?
The owner of the parking lot?
The owner of the phone number?
The police?
(Argue your point of view)
c. Judging
from the text of the message, would you say that illegal parking is a criminal
act in
(Justify your answer).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Keenan, E., O., 1976, The universality of conversational
implicature, in Language in Society, 5, 67-80
Verschueren, J., 1999, Whose discipline? Some critical
reflections on linguistic pragmatics, in Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 869-879
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