Here's the first draft of the presentation. I don't have your emails, so I'll just post it up here. See you guys on tuesday.
Semantics and Pragmatics Group Presentation
The story of our group presentation begins a long time ago in this very classroom when our heroes remembered they had a group presentation to write. Dr. Myers, their ravishing and erudite professor, had just finished class.
MF: Ok, guys. Let’s meet up next weekend on Saturday at two o’clock at the library.
MC: Ok, that sounds good. Let’s get this done. I love semantics so much that I really can’t wait to get started.
A: Ya, let’s start learning!
One week passes. Dr. Myers has just dismissed us from our Tuesday class.
MC: So where were you guys? I was down at the library at 2 o’clock this weekend and none of you showed up.
MF: But we weren’t supposed to meet last weekend, we were supposed to meet this weekend. Remember, I said ‘next’ weekend this past Tuesday.
A: Guys, guys, I think what we are suffering here from a deictic mix-up. We all seem to have different referents for the term ‘next weekend’. Mademoiselle Fennel’s “next weekend” meant the weekend over one week from her time of speaking because she, at the time of speaking, still considered the next upcoming weekend as ‘this’ weekend. The Lady Coulter believed that the upcoming weekend was the next weekend because the past weekend was still ‘this’ weekend.
You know, this reminds me of a blog post I did over this semester. Let me tell you about it….
MC: Oh, okay. That makes sense. Well then, let’s definitely work on the project this weekend. Let’s use a date.
MF: Oh, hey, here’s a note from Shannon, our other group member. Let me read it aloud:
“Hey guys, we should meet to work on our project here on this date”. What you guys think?
A; Ok, sounds great. Let’s start learning!
MC: Ok, it’s a deal.
One week passes. Dr. Myers has just dismissed us from our Tuesday class.
MC: Ok, I’m really getting tired of this. I was here last weekend and none of you guys showed up. We are never going to get this project finished.
MF: You were here? But the deictic center from Shannon’s note was clearly at the William T. Young library, where the note was written. We waited for you there for two hours before we finally gave up.
A: Deixis strikes again!
MC: Arg, where is here anyway?
A: Ok, here. We will meet at the William T Young Library in 5 days at the Rose Street entrance. There. No mix ups anymore.
That weekend they finally met up at the library. Now they are in the lobby trying to get a study room.
A: Ok, guys, let’s get this study room and finally get started on our wonderful project. Here, I know how to handle these library types. Watch my politeness style in action.
So, umm, ya, I was just walking around today, you know, with my backpack on… full of papers and homework to do and, you know, things to study. It’d be really great if there was some sort of room where I could, what’s the word, study(?). Gee, I would really like a room to study in…. Some sort of study room. If only there was some way to get one of those…
Ok, guys, the politness strategy of ‘hinting’ did not work. Maggie, why don’t you give it a shot.
MF: Ok, guess which politeness strategy I’m going to use. I’ll give you a hint. I am going to make sure that the library worker does not lose any face.
Dear Library Student Assistant, if it’s not to much trouble, would you kindly be so kind as to kind of be gracious enough to please allow us, again only if it is not too far beyond the call of duty, to lend us a study room key for just a little while, as long as its not too much of an imposition on you, which I would understand if it is.
Ok guys, that didn’t work either. The Library Student Assistant fell asleep while I was using that negative politeness strategy.
MC: Guys, sometimes a bald request is the best request.
Give us a study room key. Thank you.
See. That worked. This reminds me of a blog entry I once did.
(Maggie Coulter blog)
MF: You know, you’re not the only one to a do a blog entry on politeness. I did one on…
(MF blog)
A: Ok ok guys, there’s room in this library for more than one politeness blogger. Let’s put this behind us and get up there and start LEARNING!
Our heroes finally sit down in their study room to work on the group project.
MC: Ok guys, we should definitely start with something from semantics, because I’m sure we will have plenty of entries from pragmatics. Hey, like my synonyms post.
(Coulter blog bam)
A: Okay, that sounds like a good idea. We should definitely put that in the project. I’m glad we’ve finally started learning. Maggie, what blog entry would you like to contribute to this educational endeavor?
MF: Did you go to 80’s night at the Dame? Just kidding. See, that was an inappropriate response to your question in terms of adjacency pairs. What I should have done was answer your question. See, this reminds me of a blog I worked on.
(Fennel adjacency pair blog)
A: Hmm. Ya, we should put that into the presentation. Oh crap, I just realized that I’ve got to go.
MF: Ya, me too.
MC: But wait, what about the group project? What will we do?
A: It’ll be alright. We’ll just wing it. After all, semantics and pragmatics are all around us.
And now our heroes find themselves in the present moment at the front of the class talking out the final lines of the play they wrote about writing their group presentation.
(Andrew will finish this up and do the final part on either manwhore or grandma)
The article of Japanese reminded me of JPN 101 class which reminded me of how Japanese conversational habits demonstrate some of the politeness concepts we’ve been discussing. For instance, Japanese people tend to avoid saying no directly (‘bald’ declining). This is supposed to preserve harmony by avoiding confrontation, at least in theory. Some methods for declining without saying ‘no’ include:
1) Agree, then give a reason why you must say no.
Would you like more food? –Yes, but since I’m already so full…
2) Give an ambiguous answer that might be taken as either positive or negative.
Want to go shopping tomorrow? – Maybe.
3) Say you must consult someone before answering.
Will you buy this? – First I must ask my wife and see what she says.
So the standard way of declining in Japan is to either use indirect hints or to offer ambiguous answers. However these answers are not really ambiguous to other Japanese. They know the other person means ‘no’. However, this can be a problem for Westerners who might interpret the ‘maybe’ as being possibly affirmative. Many American men have been stood up for dates when they didn’t realize that their offer had been politely turned down.
Sidnell's article "Conversational Turn-taking in a Caribbean English Creole" gave me much food for thought regarding conversation analysis. Specifically the specialized vocabulary. I'm going to attempt to give examples of some of these vocab/concepts.
TCU - turn constructional unit - seems to be the 'atom' of turn-taking from which the dialectic of conversation is constructed.
Here are two TCUs:
A: Did ya see the show?
B: Unbelievable!
TRP or 'transition relevance point' = a projected point of possible completion of a TCU.
Here B interprets A's completion of 1 TCU as a TRP, leading to an interruption as A intended to continue with another TCU.
A: Sue and I went to the aquarium. We saw...
B: [Billy and I went there yesterday
Because B began without A selecting them to be the next speaker, B 'self-selects' themselves as the next speaker.
If I don't want to be interrupted, I need to come up with strategies for showing that I intend on taking a turn consisting of multiple TCUs.
One aspect of Grice's Maxim of Manner is avoiding obscurity. A deliciously ironic 'synonymous' locution of this maxim is to eschew obfuscation, which actually 'shews' in obfuscation as it poses the imperative to eschew it! (Because eschew and obfuscation are both obscure words).
Another such ironic flouting of the maxim of manner is to say, instead of the imperative to 'be brief' to say 'avoid all unnecessary prolixity when possible', which adds up to the same thing but says it in umpteen more syllables. Shakespeare said "brevity is the soul of wit", not "unnecessary prolixity is the essential core of clever repartee".
Thus humor, or at least a certain branch of humor, may consist in purposefully flouting the conventional conversational maxims.
Today's class reminded me of the many seemingly irrelevant locutions my grandma uses in conversation.
So, if she couldn't see the television and would like me to move, she would not use positive politeness, negative politeness, a bald request or a hand gesture. She would give her familiar hint: "You make a better door than a window" which means "move!" or "please move", depending on the tone of her voice.
Her response to the question: "Would you like some tomatoes?" would be "Tomatoes and I have an agreement". This may, at first seem to violate the maxim of relation (how could this be relevant to the question?) and possibly the maxim of quality (how could a sane person reach an accord with either fruit or vegetable?). However, it actually becomes relevant when you know the unstated second part of the statement: "Tomatoes and I have an agreement. I don't eat them and they don't bother me." So this translates to: "No."
An alternative answer to "Would you like some tomatoes" might be "I don't eat tomatoes on sunday*" (*insert here whatever day the question is asked on). This also translates to: "No."
If asked "Did you like the seasoning on the turkey?", she might respond: "I prefer a suggestion, not a shout", which is another way of saying "no".
There are, apparently, many ways to skin cats. In a similar vein, there are many ways of saying the same thing, that is to say, to say the same thing in a different more linguistic way, there are many different locutions that have the same illocutionary force. Oh, I see. You're callin' me out, huh? Don't think I can walk the talk, eh? Think I'm just spouting off? Just mouthin' off? Allow me to drop science.
Scenario: Homeboy borrowed your pen and you want it back. You utter shiznit to get it back i.e. perform utterances with the illocutionary force of 'requesting' or 'demanding' with the hope of the perlocutionary windfall of a returned ball point. Word. How many ways can you say it?
1) Hey, can I get my pen back? (ok, pretty direct but not very inventive?)
2) Man, I could really stand to write some things down right now. If only I had some device which could help me accomplish this goal. (Ya, that's a little too indirect, holmes)
3) *gesture with an empty hand back and forth*
4) Bring up different ways of using illocutionary force to get a person's pen back in class (Good - indirect, but clever enough that the person should get the message eventually)
In class we talked about the take versus bring distinction. How 'bring' goes toward the speaker or hearer and how 'take' means away from speaker or hearer. This made us raise an outraged outcry against the blasphemous sentence: 'Take it here'. This sentence offends the mind. If we are there where here is where we are, then there at that 'here' we would say bring instead of take.
But if we give a context for this sentence that changes the deictic center, it can make sense. If we were spies being given a mission impossible style impossible mission, the sentence could work i.e.
You will infiltrate the base. You will climb through the ducts. Make sure you have the suitcase nuke. Locate the bathroom. Take it here. Get the hell out.
The 'bring' versus 'take' distinction is found in German: 'hin' preposition meets 'out away from speaker' and 'her' means 'in towards the speaker', so you have to be careful when you ask some one to throw a knife 'hin' or 'her'.
I had a dream: to craft the deicticest sentence EVER. Now that dream has been realized. Behold:
Thou o'er yonder, we settle this there tomorrow!
Thou - social deixis - conveys informality normally with speaker, however this is being used ironically as a sign of disrespect here.
o'er yonder - gestural deixis - one has to see where the speaker is pointing/looking to figure out which 'thou' he's calling otu
we - personal deixis - inclusive 1st person plural; both will be settling 'this'
settle - temporal deixis - the lack of past tense markers is a kind of deixis, ya heard.
this - discourse deixis - referring to a past discourse element (whatever it is that needs to be settled). INTERESTINGLY it is referring to something in the past, once again proving Cruse wrong.
there - spatial deixis - straight up, dawg
tomorrow - temporal deixis - sheeit
BONUS: if we can get psychological deixis in there, this will be the undisputed champion.
I am intrigued by performative verbs. Could it be that these magical utterances actually perform their represented action in the very act of speaking them? If so, they are like the magic spells of yore. In the act of saying 'I vow to do my blog post' the 'vow' is done, even if the blog post is done. Who dare challenge this vow? Who dare say 'Nay, you've vowed nothing'? Bring me this knave and I promise you I shall visit many more performatives upon him. I swear I will compile a list of perfomative words (and...the swearing has already happened????!).
I declare this blog post nearly complete.
I warn myself to get some sleep.
I request and pray and beseech the semester will end soon.
I christen this keyboard a granfalloon.
Will I bless or will I curse?
I hereby decree this blog post is done: for better worse.
free gift; kill you dead - syntagmatic - hold between items which occur in the same sentence; they are an expression of coherence constraints.pleonastic abnormality - one of the combined terms adds nothing new to the other, thus is redundant. Freeness is implicit in gifthood.
giant purple pizza shoe - syntagmatic - semantic clash abnormality - "the ontological discrepancy is so large that no sense can be extracted at all without radical reinterpretation"
'the babies were madly in love'/'the child audited the tax return' - syntag. - semantic clash abnormality - love and the ability to do tax returns are not typical abilities of young human beings, thus there is semantic clash. However, because they are the ability of older human beings, I would say this is not a radical clash, and thus it is only an example of innappropriateness. 'cheerful carpet' on the other hand, is more radical, because cheerfulness implies not only a living thing, but a sentient being, and carpet is neither of these. Thus I would say it is a paradox. I see nothing wrong with 'a small crowd' since small is a relative adjective and some crowds are smaller than others.
You can't win them all - cliche - its propositional meaning is fully compositional, but it has 'global properties' as a whole phrase meaning 'I'm sorry that happened but that's what happened' or 'Chin up - you lost here but that's the way of things and there'll be more opportunity later' etc. The expression of similar meaning would be marked if you used non-default encoding i.e. 'It is not possible to be victorious in every competition' (never mind that, strictly speaking, it is possible).
'raining cats and dogs' - frozen metaphor - although it resists modification, transformation, so forth, the effect of synonym substitution doesn't collapse the non-literal reading i.e. 'it's raining felines and canines' still gets the point across (though maybe just because the phrase is so well-known)
