University of Baghdad

College of Arts

Department of English / PhD. Linguistics

Set by: Zahraa Ali Hasan

2. Micropragmatics and Macropragmatics

Micropragmatics can be defined as the study of illocutionary force at the utterance

level (i.e. the pragmatics of utterance based concepts such as deixis, anaphora,
presupposition, etc). In contrast, the focus of macropragmatics is not on the utterance, but
on a series or sequence of utterances which form discourses/texts, seen as bearers of global
intentionality of the speaker and as initiators of complex effects (i.e. the pragmatics of
discourse based concepts such as speech events, global intentionality or macro speech
acts).

The distinction between micro- and macropragmatics follows from several factors
as well as research developments. The main factors include: the pragmatic perspective and
considerations of context.

2.1 The pragmatic perspective

Pragmatics offers flexible definitional boundaries. It has a unique, function-based

perspective on all aspects of human (linguistic) communication. It is concerned with all
facets of a communicative act or a series of acts, such as the speaker, his/ her background
knowledge and contextual assumptions, the lexical and grammatical constituents of an
utterance, the hearer’s interpretations and patterns of inferencing, etc. All these are studied
against a network of social factors, preconditions, norms and expectations that govern
communication, both within a culture and across cultures. Since communicative acts
involve linguistic units, whose choice is dictated by language-internal rules, as well as
their interpersonal, social and cultural embedding, pragmatic studies bridge the system and
the use side of language. They examine what is lexically and grammatically available for a
speaker to accomplish a communicative goal, and at the same time explore the ways in
which the linguistic potential is realized in a specific social context.

Since the language forms and the social contexts in which these forms are used in
communication are virtually infinite and heterogeneous, pragmatics naturally draws upon
a number of diverse disciplines in linguistics (and beyond). It is generated collectively by
phonologists, morphologists, syntacticians, discourse analysts – but also psychologists,
sociologists and other scientists in the Humanities – as long as their work has a functional-
communicative bent. Pragmatics is thus defined by its perspective more than by a set
number of its objects of investigation. It offers explanations which apply to different
lexical and structural levels of language– word, phrase, sentence, discourse.

2.2. Context

Context is a fundamental concept to account for in describing the micro-macro

dialogue in pragmatic studies because different types of context are naturally prominent at
different levels of communication (utterance, series of utterances, discourse, genre).

One can speak of a ‘static’ and a ‘dynamic’ conception of context. The static view
sees context as a set of variables (linguistic, cognitive, social) that ‘surround’ strips of text.
They constitute an a priori, static infrastructure of resources which are there for
interlocutors to determine the meaning of utterances at hand. On the dynamic view ,
context is never ‘given’ and interlocutors keep creating current contexts for current
utterances – the moment a sentence is uttered “it becomes part of the environmental
resources on which the contextual interpretation of the following as well as the preceding
utterances has to draw” (Bublitz 2003: 383).

The dynamic notion of context is a vital concept for micro- and macropragmatics
since it allows speculations over, a) the extent to which the interpretation of meaning is
guided by text; b) what factors may cause such an interpretation to be insufficient; c) at
which level of analysis such a deficit becomes visible.

The domains of micro- and macropragmatics are complementary in terms of their

contribution to analytic labor. There is no micropragmatic analysis that would not provoke
a macropragmatic extension of scope; similarly, there is no macropragmatic study that
would not question, retrospectively, its micropragmatic components, thus prompting
revision or modification of the original analytic track. Altogether, we arrive at a bottom-
top-bottom cycle of upgrades on the explanatory power of both micropragmatic and
macropragmatic concepts. This cycle involves looking at different aspects of context
(linguistic, cognitive, social) from two different perspectives, a more linguistic bottom-up
perspective and a more social top-down perspective.

2.3 A micropragmatic perspective on deixis, presupposition, implicature and speech

acts – with implications for macropragmatics

2.3.1 Deixis
 micropragmatic analysis is marked by establishing a ‘tangible’, lexicogrammatical
architecture of the utterance, and especially the explicit manifestations of the relation
between the words used and the context. The analyst’s task is to identify the lexicalized
‘pointers’ which indicate who utters the words to whom to accomplish what, when and
where. This task endorses the status of deixis as the initiator of the (micro)pragmatic
analysis since deixis is the concept that captures the relationship between the language
form and the context in the most evident and direct manner. It can be viewed as the main
phenomenon whereby features of context are encoded in utterances by primarily lexical
(e.g. demonstratives) but also grammatical (e.g. tense) means.

While the analysis of deixis ‘sets the stage’ for a more complex examination of the
utterance, its potential to interact with the other parameters of description (presupposition,
implicature) is limited. As a concept involving lexicalized or grammaticalized forms of
expression, it makes a relatively small contribution to the illocutionary force of the
utterance, especially in implicit communication.

Most types of deixis (person, time, place) are analyzed at the utterance level.
However, a notable exception is discourse deixis, which crosses the utterance-discourse
boundary, thus becoming a macropragmatic worktool. Discourse deixis involves the use of
a lexical item within an utterance to point to the preceding or following utterances in the
same discourse situation (speech event).

Deixis is an essentially micropragmatic phenomenon which sets analysis of the

utterance ‘in motion’, but, by itself, adds little to the characteristics of the speech act(s)
residing in it.

2.3.2 Presupposition

Presupposition can be defined as a mechanism whereby the speaker addresses a

body of knowledge and experience, involving both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts,
which he or she assumes to be common to him-/herself and the hearer. The assumption of
the existence of the shared knowledge may cause the speaker not to grammaticalize (or
lexicalize) it in the utterance. This characterization takes presupposition to be a
phenomenon lying at several intersections: the encoded and the assumed, the semantic and
the pragmatic, (or even) the linguistic and the nonlinguistic.

Presupposition comes in contact with deixis on the plane of its partial anchoring in
lexical and structural forms. However, since many instances of presupposition can only be
approached with reference to (non-linguistic) context, presupposition also reaches out in
the direction of the implicit, constituting, in a sense, a shared knowledge prerequisite for
communicating messages whose final destination is their inference by the hearer.

Most communicative goals served by presupposition (relevant to both the micro-

and macropragmatic analysis) have to do, in one way or another, with economy of
expression. If a speaker could not rely on shared assumptions, the lexical and grammatical
load of his/her utterance would grow in size, potentially obstructing its comprehension.

2.3.3 Implicature

The relevance of the analysis of implicature to micropragmatics (and, potentially,

macropragmatics) is twofold. First, implicature studies account for the further processing
of information that has been encoded by the speaker based on his/her presuppositions.
Second, in doing the latter, they eventually recognize the contribution implicature makes
to the update of the utterance-discourse context.

From the analytic standpoint, the explanatory powers of presupposition and

implicature are inherently complementary, shedding light on both the speaker and the
hearer side of the speech act formation. They are suited to cover the whole process of
encoding messages by speakers and decoding them by their hearers. This process is
essentially a continuum, where making a presupposition paves the way for the utterance
before it takes on a linguistic form, in which the presupposition is lexically or non-
lexically salient. Implicatures created within the boundaries of the utterance (the micro
level) are often ‘returned to’ or ‘readdressed’ purposefully later on in the unfolding
discourse (the macro level).

A central property of implicature is cancellability. Many implicatures are cancelled

for ironic or sarcastic effects, which is well documented in humor studies. Another area
where implicatures are cancelable is public (especially political) discourse.The
phenomenon of the cancellability of implicature belongs to macropragmatics, since, first,
the context that determines the cancellations is made up of a heterogeneous number of
social and institutional factors, second, the ‘distance’ between implicature and its
cancellation is a matter of discourse, rather than utterance.

2.3.4 Speech acts – towards macropragmatics

 The category of the speech act sits at the methodological borderline between the
micro and the macro domain. The speech act is at the same time an umbrella category for
deixis, presupposition, implicature, and, potentially, a component category in the macro
considerations. The orientation of speech acts to both parties of a verbal exchange, as well
as to its linguistic matter, is visible at a glance from the traditional distinction between the
locutionary(represents the most objective aspect), the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary
aspects (represent dynamic negotiation of meaning between the speaker and hearer) of a
speech act.

The classificatory, controlling power of the speech act is further reflected in its
network offelicity conditions, i.e. the conditions that underlie a successful, logical,
‘felicitous’ production of different acts. For example, a speaker cannot make a successful
order if he or she does not sincerely want the order to be followed, or if he or she deems
the hearer incapable of following it. These two felicity conditions are excellent
illustrations of the connection that holds between the concept of the speech act and the
other ‘micropragmatic’ concepts.

Thus, speech act theory turns out to be harmonious with the other apparatuses.
Moreover, it extends over all of their fields of application, from the stage where
knowledge is assumed to get encoded in the utterance, to the stage where the utterance is
interpreted. Conceivably, a single speech act can be ‘realized’ through recourse to an x
number of presuppositions, an x number of deictic markers in the utterance, which the
latter could produce an x number of implicatures.

Thus a micropragmatic hierarchy of analysis has been arrived at, with the speech act
constituting a category superordinate over the other micropragmatic categories. At the
same time, however, the speech act should not be considered the top-most variable of
description; in order to account for discourses, rather than individual utterances, we are in
need of yet higher-rank concepts.

2.4 Macropragmatics

Most speech acts residing in individual utterances tend to combine into larger
functional units, thus paralleling the combination of utterances into texts and discourses.
This process can be seen from the analysis of (3). Assume that instead of reading out
students’ names from the attendance list at the beginning of a seminar, one simply asks:

(3) Hello, are we all here?

In uttering (3), two direct speech acts are performed (greeting and asking), as well
as an indirect act of requesting the students to reveal the names of the absentees. The
speech acts involve a deictic anchoring (e.g., “here” recognized as classroom),
presuppositions (e.g., of some students still missing), and the indirect act involves a
process of inference. This is, with some simplification, where a micropragmatic analysis
of (3) can get us.

However, the producer of (3) can enjoy the privilege of stating with absolute
certainty that, most of the time, he does not open the class with this utterance for the mere
sake of greeting, asking, and requesting. That would be unlikely considering that (3)
happens regularly and has thus become (a part of) expectable routine, a pattern that arises,
usually, from some kind of a larger intention. The larger intention in (3) is to begin the
seminar, making sure all things are in place for a productive meeting. Additionally, more
than just (3) may need to be said to successfully begin the seminar. Some typical cases
may be: “It’s getting late”, “Would you close the doors please?”, “Now, Adam, listen up,
will you?”, “Right, shall we begin?”, “And the chalk is missing as usual!”, “I can’t
remember when we last started on time”, etc. All these seemingly diverse utterances
contribute, in one way or the other, to realization of the principal intention. Interestingly,
they do so while performing different speech acts (assertives, directives, expressives)
whose force may also be different, direct or indirect. Consequently, each of these acts may
accommodate a different input from deixis, presupposition, and implicature. The routine of
performing individual speech acts to realize a more general intention, can be defined as a
speech event. In (3) the speech event which realizes the intention to successfully begin the
seminar is not only an umbrella category for a series of individual acts, but may itself be
subordinate to a larger discourse goal, that is, conducting a productive seminar meeting as
a whole. This leads us to the 'uppermost’ or ‘global’ category of intentionality which
would be to encompass all the subordinate intentions realized in speech events and their
attendant acts. The concept of macro speech act describes this situation, which is, in van
Dijk’s words, a global speech act performed by the utterance of a whole discourse, and
executed by a sequence of possibly different speech acts.

Huang (2017: 4) states that current topics of inquiry in macro- pragmatics can
roughly be divided into three groups: (i) cognitively oriented, (ii) socially and/ or
culturally oriented, and (iii) those that are not easily or neatly placed in the first two
groups.

1. Group I: Cognitively oriented macro- pragmatics: This category includes cognitive

pragmatics, psycho- or psycholinguistic pragmatics (including both developmental and
experimental pragmatics), computational pragmatics, clinical pragmatics,
neuropragmatics, and part of interlanguage pragmatics.
2. Group II: Socially and/ or culturally oriented macro- pragmatics: This group includes
mainly sociopragmatics, cultural, cross- , and intercultural pragmatics, and part of
interlanguage pragmatics. Institutional, interpersonal, postcolonial, and variational
pragmatics, and conversation analysis also belong to this category.

3. Group III: this group involves Historical pragmatics, synchronic pragmatics, applied

pragmatics, literary pragmatics, legal pragmatics, and feminist pragmatics.