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".
