Adjoinment - the use of specifying words, most often particles: He did it – Only he did it

• Enclosure – inserting modal words and other discourse markers: after all, anyway, naturally, etc.

1. The utterance. Informative structure of the utterance

The utterance as opposed to the sentence is a unit of speech. The categories of the utterance from the point of view of its informative structure are considered to be the theme and the rheme. They are the main components of the Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) – actual division of the sentence (though most grammarians stick to the term “sentence” but actually what they mean is “utterance”).

In English, there is a “standard” word order of Subject + Verb + Object: The cat ate the rat – here we have a standard structure (N1 + V + N2). However, there are numerous other ways in which the semantic content of the sentence can be expressed:

1. The rat was eaten by the cat.

2. It was the cat that ate the rat.

3. It was the rat that the cat ate.

4. What the cat did was ate the rat.

5. The cat, it ate the rat.

Which of these options is actually selected by the writer or the speaker will depend on the context in which the utterance occurs and the importance of the information. One important consideration is whether the information has already been introduced before or it is assumed to be known to the reader or listener. Such information is referred to as given information or the theme (topic) defined as the elementwhich serves as the point of departure of the message. It contrasts with information which is introduced for the first time and which is known as new information or the rheme (comment).

Informative structure of the utterance is one of the topics that cannot help attracting linguists’ attention nowadays. It is well recognized that the rheme marking devices are:

1. Position in the sentence. As a rule new information in English generally comes last: The cat ate the rat.

2. Intonation.

3. The use of the indefinite article. However, sometimes it is impossible (as in 1): A gentleman is waiting for you.

4. The use of ‘there is’/ ‘there are’. There is a cat in the room.

5. The use of special devices, like ‘as for’, ‘but for’, etc.: As for him, I don’t know.

6. Inverted word order: Here comes the sun.

7. The use of emphatic constructions: It was the cat that ate the rat.

However, sometimes the most important information is not expressed formally: The cat ate the rat after all. The rheme here is the rat. At the same time there is very important information which is hidden or implicit: the cat was not supposed to do it, or – it was hard for the cat to catch the rat, or – the cat is a vegetarian (this hidden information will depend on the context or situation). In other words, we may say that this sentence contains two informative centres, or two rhemes – explicit and implicit.

Besides, recent research in the field has convincingly proved that there is no direct correspondence between the theme-rheme division and the grammatical structure of the sentence [Alexandrova, Komova 1998: 176].

1. Basic notions of pragmatic linguistics

The term pragmatics is associated with Charles Morris, a philosopher who was the first to introduce this term in 1936. He contrasted pragmatics to semantics and syntax. He claims that syntax is the study of the grammatical relations of linguistic units to one another and the grammatical structures of phrases and sentences that result from these grammatical relation, semantics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to the objects they denote, and pragmatics is the study of the relation of linguistic units to people who communicate. “Thus, syntax was associated with the purely formal study of semiotic relationships, semantics was considered as a certain relation of the sign to its user including the psychological, biological and social aspects of the sign, pragmatics included such components as discourse, strategy, sociolinguistics” [Александрова, Комова 1998: 187].

If semantics deals with the binary opposition of form and meaning, pragmatics has to do with “the triple relationship between the speaker, the form and the meaning” [Александрова, Комова 1998: 187]. Within the pragmatic approach the addressee, the person who receives the verbal signal, is also taken into account: the background knowledge, the context of the speech-event, and the communicative value of the utterance should be equally shared by the interlocutors. Thus, G. Leech defines pragmatics as the study of meaning in connection with the situation of speech. Jean Aitchison explains in plain words that “pragmatics is that branch of linguistics which studies those aspects of meaning which cannot be captured by semantic theory”. Taken in its narrow sense, pragmatics shows how speakers use language apart from linguistic knowledge. In its broader sense, pragmatics deals with the principles people stick to communicating with one another [Aitchison 2010: 104].

Very often linguists proceed from the statement that linguistic pragmatics is the study of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the context in which they would be appropriate. An ‘appropriate context’ implies that when we play different social roles in everyday communication (for instance, those of a student, a friend, a daughter, a son, a client, etc.) we choose different words and expressions suitable and appropriate for the situation. We use the language as an instrument to implement our purposes.

E.g.: (a) What are you doing here? We’re talking.

(b) What the hell are you doing here? We’re chewing the rag.

These sentences have the same referential meaning but their pragmatic meaning is different, they are used in different contexts. Similarly, each utterance combines a proposition or propositional base (objective part) with the pragmatic component (subjective part). It follows that an utterance with the same propositional content may have different pragmatic components. Thus, for instance ‘ It’s hot’ may serve different pragmatic goals:

just mentioning the fact

explanation

It’s hot! inducement to do something about it

menace

excuse

To put it in other words, they are different speech acts or acts of communication. “To communicate is to express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of attitude being expressed. For example, a statement expresses a belief, a request expresses a desire, and an apology expresses a regret. As an act of communication, a speech act succeeds if the audience identifies, in accordance with the speaker's intention, the attitude being expressed’ [Bach]. Thus, speech acts are simply things people do through language – for example, apologizing, instructing, menacing, explaining something, etc. The term speech act was coined by John L. Austin and developed by another philosopher John Searle.

John Austin is the Oxford philosopher who is usually credited with generating interest in what has since come to be known as pragmatics and speech-act theory. He developed speech-act theory in the 1930s. This theory was expounded in a series of lectures which Austin gave at Harvard University in 1955. These lectures were later published under the title ‘How to do things with words’. His first step was to show that some utterances are not statements or questions but actions. He reached this conclusion through an analysis of what he termed performative verbs. Austin paid attention to those sentences which do not describe, state, or report anything, and of which it is no sense to ask whether they are true or false. He called these utterances performatives or performative utterances. The point of these sentences is doing some action. He gives a number of examples: I pronounce you man and wife, I do, as uttered as part of a marriage ceremony; I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth, as uttered by the appropriate person while smashing a bottle against the stem of the ship in question; I give and bequeath my watch to my brother, as written in a will; I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow. Some other examples are: I declare war on France; I apologize.

The peculiarity of these sentences, according to J. Austin, is that they are not used to say or describe things, but rather actively to do things. After you have declared war on France or pronounced somebody husband and wife the situation has changed. That is why J. Austin termed them as performatives and contrasted them to statements which he called constatives. Thus by pronouncing a performative utterance the speaker is performing an action. The performative utterance, however, can really change things only under certain circumstances. J. Austin specified the circumstances required for their success as felicity conditions. In order to declare war you must be someone who has the right to do it. Only a priest (or a person with corresponding power) can make a couple a husband and wife. Besides, it must be done before witnesses and the couple getting married must sign the register.

Performatives may be explicit and implicit.

E.g.: I promise I will come tomorrow ÷ I will come tomorrow;

I swear I love you ÷ I love you.

J.L. Austin distinguished a triad of locution, illocution, and perlocution. On any occasion the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts (a three-fold distinction):

1) locutionary act – producing a meaningful linguistic expression, uttering a sentence. If you have difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance (because you are a foreigner or tongue-tied) then you might fail to produce a locutionary act: it often happens when we learn a foreign language.

2) illocutionary act – we form an utterance with some kind of function or purpose on mind, with a definite communicative intention or illocutionary force. The notion of illocutionary force is basic for pragmatics.

3) perlocutionary act – the effect the utterance has on the hearer. Perlocutionary effect may be verbal or non-verbal.

E.g. I’ve bought a car – Great!

It’s cold here – and you close the window.

1. Speech act theory. Direct and indirect speech acts. Types of speech acts

Various kinds of actions performed with the help of language: making statements, asking questions, giving commands, offering wishes, blessings, curses; performing rituals and ceremonies, pardoning or sentencing a criminal, opening or closing a meeting, etc. are referred to as speech acts. In short, the speech act is an utterance conceived as an act by which the speaker does something [Matthews 1997: 349]. J. R. Searle developed a theory of speech acts and proposed their detailed classification on the basis of work by J.L. Austin. This classification includes five major classes of speech acts: declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and commissives:

Table 1. Types of speech acts and their meaning

Speech act type	Direction of fit	S - Speaker, X - Situation
ü Declarations E.g. You’re fired. I pronounce you man and wife. ü Representatives E.g. It was a warm sunny day. John is a liar. ü Expressives E.g. I’m really sorry. Happy birthday! (statements of pleasure, joy, sorrow, etc.) ü Directives E.g. Don’t touch that (commands, orders, suggestions) ü Commissives E.g. I’ll be back (promises, threats, pledges – what we intend to do)	words change the world   make words fit the world     make words fit the world     make the world fit words     make the world fit words	S causes X   S believes X     S feels X     S wants X   S intends X

This speech-act classification has had a great impact on linguistics. J. Searle can also be merited for introducing a theory of indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts are cases in which one speech act is performed indirectly, by way of performing another: Can you pass me the salt? Though the sentence is interrogative, it is conventionally used to mark a request – we cannot just answer “yes” or “no”. According to the modern point of view such utterances contain two illocutionary forces, with one of them dominating. Thus, “indirect speech acts are those in which there is a mismatch between the sentence type and the intended force” [Kroeger 2006: 197].

E.g.: (a) Why don’t you just be quiet? (command, interrogative form)

(b) Don’t tell me you lost it! (question, imperative form)

(c) Who cares? (statement, interrogative form)

The reason why indirect speech acts are used is often politeness. Formulating an indirect speech act like Can you pass me the salt? the speaker allows for no as an answer. Thus politeness is one of the topics studied in pragmatics.

Another classification of speech acts was introduced by G. Potcheptsov. It is based on purely linguistic principles. The main criterion for pragmatic classification of utterances is the way communicative intention is expressed. This classification includes six basic speech acts: constatives, promissives, menacives, performatives, directives and questions [Иванова et al 1981: 267-281].

The authors of ‘ Cambridge Grammar of English’ divide speech acts into five broad types: constatives (the speaker asserts something about the truth of a proposition, associated with acts such as: affirming, claiming, concluding, denying, exclaiming, maintaining, predicting, stating beliefs), directives (the speaker intends to make the hearer act in a particular way, associated with acts such as: advising, challenging, daring, forbidding, insisting, instructing, permitting, prohibiting, questioning, requesting, suggesting, warning), commissives (the speaker commits to a course of action, associated with acts such as: guaranteeing, offering, inviting, promising, vowing, undertaking), expressive, or acknowledgements (the speaker expresses an attitude or reaction concerning a state of affairs, associated with acts such as: apologizing, appreciating, complimenting, condemning, congratulating, regretting, thanking, welcoming), and declarations (the speaker performs the speech act solely by making the utterance, e.g.: I pronounce you man and wife; I declare the meeting closed, I name the ship X). As it is seen, speech acts has to do with the speaker’s intention rather than the content-meaning of the utterance [Cambridge Grammar 2007: 680]. On the whole, this theory focuses on the interpersonal meanings of grammar.

1. Discourse analysis as the study of language in use

Text as a unit of the highest level manifests itself as discourse in verbal communication. Therefore actual text in use may be defined as discourse. Discourses are formed by sequence of utterances. It is obvious that many utterances taken by themselves are ambiguous. They can become clear only within a discourse. Utterances interpretation, or discourse analysis, involves a variety of processes, grammatical and pragmatic. Pragmatic processes presuppose the processes used to bridge up the gap between the semantic representations of sentences and the interpretation of utterances in context. Quite often, the sentence may be ambiguous:

E.g. His soup is not hot enough

The hearer must not only recover the semantic representation of the sentence uttered, but decide who the referential expression he refers to, whether the ambiguous word hot means very warm or spicy, whether the vague expression his food refers to the food he cooked, the food he brought, the food he served, the food he is eating, etc.

Besides, utterances have not only propositional content but illocutionary force, and ambiguities may arise at this level:

E.g. You’re not leaving.

The hearer must not only recover its explicit propositional content, but also decide whether it is a statement, a question or an order. Furthermore, utterances have not only explicit content but also implicit import:

E.g.: A: Would you like some coffee?

B: Coffee would keep me awake.

The hearer (A) must recover the implication that B does not want any coffee (or, in some circumstances, that he does).

v Maxims of politeness

Understanding the meaning of discourse requires a lot of knowledge. There are times when people say (or write) exactly what they mean, but generally they are not totally explicit. They manage to convey far more than their words mean, or even something quite different from the meaning of their words. It was Paul Grice who attempted to explain how, by means of shared rules or conventions, language users manage to understand one another. He introduced guidelines necessary for the efficient and effective conversation. He defined these guidelines as Cooperative Principle. Cooperative Principle presupposes that conversation is governed by four basic rules, Maxims of Conversation.

1. The Maxim of Quality	ü Do not say what you believe to be false. ü Do not say for what you lack adequate evidence.
2. The Maxim of Quantity	ü Make your contribution as informative as required. ü Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
3. The Maxim of Relevance	ü Be relevant.
4. The Maxim of Manner	ü Be clear. ü Be orderly.

v Implicatures of discourse

Communicative maxims make it possible to generate inferences which are defined as conversational implicatures and conventional implicatures. Conversational implicatures aresuch components of an utterance that are not expressed semantically but are understood by communicants in the process of communication: Was it you who broke the cup? This question presupposes: Someone has broken the cup. If you did not do that your normal reaction would be: What cup?, while the answer I didn’t do that shows that you know about the fact. Conversational implicatures are universal, they do not depend on the language used. The second type of implicatures, conventional implicatures, are derived from a definite lexical or grammatical structure of an utterance: I saw only John (conventional implicature – I didn’t see anyone else), Even Bill is smarter than you (Everybody is smarter than John, John is stupid).

v Implicatures and indirectness

Both kinds of implicatures are of great interest for discourse analysis. When there is a mismatch between the expressed meaning and the implied meaning we deal with indirectness. Indirectness is a universal phenomenon: it occurs in all natural languages. Let us see how conversational implicatures arise from Maxims of Conversation and thus create indirectness.

A). In the following example Polonius is talking to Hamlet:

Polonius: What do you read, My Lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

In this dialogue Hamlet deliberately gives less information than is required by the situation and so flouts the Maxim of Quantity. At the same time he deliberately fails to help Polonius to achieve his goals, thereby flouting the Maxim of Relevance. The Maxim of Quantity is also flouted when we say: Law is law, woman is woman, students are students. This makes us look for what these utterances really mean.

B). In the utterance You’re being too smart! the Maxim of Quality is flouted and the hearer is made to look for a covert sense. Similarly, the same maxim is flouted with metaphors. If I say: He is made of iron, I am either non-cooperative or I want to convey something different.

C). The Maxim of Relevance can also be responsible for producing a wide range of standard implicatures:

E.g.: A: Can you tell me the time?

B: The bell has gone.

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