Sociopragmatic ppt

•Definitions:
• Continental European view of Pragmatics : ‘ General cognitive, social and cultural
perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in form of behaviour’.
• Cognitive pragmatics, Relevance theory, inferences. E.g. Can I look at your
Chomsky?
• Sociopragmatics can be traced back to the work of Geoffrey Leech (1983) and Jenny
Thomas (1981, 1983).
• Sociopragmatics : intersection of pragmatics and sociolinguistics
The use of language in relation to society .
• Sociopragmatics has a clear defined heritage in the Anglo-American view of
pragmatics; Pragmatics is a theory of language (context).
•Characteristics of societies and their members have bearings on language use at more
local levels i.e., ‘ culture-specific’. Vs. universal pragmatic principles (non-local).
• Politeness principle operate variably in different cultures, language communities and
social situations.

Chinese vs. Western’s perspective of politeness:
- Greetings:
ChineseWesterns
-Have you eaten?
-Where are you going?
- What are you doing
here?
-Hello!
-How are you?
-Talking about the
weather.

• Sociopragmatics pays attention to the more specific 'local' rather than 'general'
conditions on language use (Leech:1983).
• A focal point for sociopragmatics is the way in which speakers exploit more
general norms to generate particular meanings, take up particular social
positioning.
• The immediate text and co-text of interlocutors is the most local;
• The social situation ( including speech events, activity types, frames, etc..) is
medial;
•Cultures (national/regional cultures, institutional cultures, etc..) tend to be the
most general.
• Sociopragmatics should primarily concern itself with the medial context and
the phenomena that constitute it. Culpeper (2009).

• Pragmalinguistics:
• Refer to the study of language use from the viewpoint of a language’s
structural resources. Crystal (2008).
• It might begin with the pronoun system of a language.
• Examine the way in which people choose different forms to express a range
of attitudes and relationships (such as deference and intimacy).
• Sociopragmatics might begin with the social backgrounds of the participants
in an interaction, and examine the way in which different factors (such as age,
sex, class) lead people to choose particular pronouns.
• Social situations provide a link between micro ‘linguistically-oriented’
consideration ‘ pragmalinguistics’ and macro ‘socially-oriented’ consideration
‘sociopragmatics’

Politeness principles from pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic
perspective:
Sociopragmatics.Pragmalinguistics.
-Scale of politeness varies
according to social factors; age,
gender, social status,
-Siblings of the same age ; lower
level of indirectness.
- Elder brother , sister.
-How politeness is conveyed or
manifested linguistically.
-Use of questions.
-Modal auxiliaries.
-Hypothetical past tense.
-Could you write it down for me?

•Historical Sociopragmatics: ‘Pragmaphilology’
• ‘ Historical sociopragmaics describes the contextual aspects of historical texts
including the addresser, addressees, their social and personal relationship , the
physical and social setting of text production and reception and goals of the text’
Jacobs and Jucker’s (1995).
• ‘ Aims to situate historical texts in their pragmatic context’ to give rise to
pragmatic meaning.
• Describing contextual factors is impressionistic. That’s why it has been
criticised.
• Theoretical notions central to Sociopragmatics include face, rights, obligation,
power, social distance, attitudes and opinions.
• Synchronic Sociopragmatics: language use in relation to context ‘ particular
point in the past’.
• Diachronic Sociopragmatics: change in pragmatic phenomena across different
historical stages of the same language e.g., you, thou.

Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on pieces of the inner layer of
birch bark, which was commonly used for writing before the advent of mass
production of paper. Evidence of birch bark for writing goes back many centuries
and in various cultures.

• The Domain of Study:
• How social and cultural factors influence Pragmatic strategies which are
manifested by linguistic forms e.g., speech acts, implicature, presupposition and
deixis.
• Sociopragmatics approach these pragmatic phenomena in empirical, socio-
cultural context and aims to present cultural and social differences in their
manifestation.
• Sociopragmatics differs from theories of pragmatics that are based in
philosophical logic or cognition such as relevance theory ; cognitive processes ;
interpretation of utterances, in strict isolation from their social context.
• Specific pragmatic phenomena that are intrinsically sociopragmatic. For
example, honorific expressions; cannot be used without reference to the social
roles of speakers and hearers.

•Investigating pragmatics with a more general socio-cultural focus that includes
cross-linguistic comparisons of communicative behavior e.g., CAD, intercultural
aspect of communication such as multilingualism, and lingua franca.
• Cross-cultural communication describes problems that appear in social context
made up of individuals from different cultures. E.g. Chinese and Americans.
• Lingua franca: Speakers from different cultural background; pragmatic failure.
•Sociopragmatics is also concerned with how speakers modify the propositional
content of utterances by various means including hedging, interjection, and
markers. E.g., yeah
• Previous studies document differences between standard and non-standard
varieties of English, as well as differences between adult and teenage speakers e.g.,
and so forth , staff like that.
• Geographic location of a person can be predicted from the use of certain
expressions.

• Different interpretational levels in Sociopragmatic studies: Speech acts and
Politeness principles.
• The relationship between politeness and indirectness is the cornerstone of
speech act theory.
• In this respect, Blum-Kulka (1989:58) argues that Hebrew speakers use a more
direct formula to ask for information where English speakers use an indirect
form such as Can you tell me…
• The study of speech acts is based on the so-called Discourse Completion Task
(DCT).
• Sociopragmatics is also concerned with the structural and organizational level
of discourse such as sequences, openings and closings of conversation are
realized differently depending on factors such as speech community, medium of
communication and activity type. E.g., classroom discourse. The organizational
unit in classroom Initiative-Response-Feedback.

• Pragmatic failure:
• The term 'cross-cultural' has been used by Thomas as a shorthand way of
describing not just native-non-native interactions, but any communication
between two people who do not share a common linguistic or cultural
background.
• Pragmatic failure was developed by Thomas (1983) who defined it as ‘the
inability to understand what is meant by what is said’ ‘cross-cultural
communication breakdown’.
• By contrast, pragmatic competence (the ability to use language effectively in
order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context).
• Thomas (1983) divides pragmatic failure into pragmalinguistic failure and
sociopragmatic failure

• Pragmalinguistic failure occur when a learner tries to perform the right speech
act but use the wrong linguistic means. It may result from interlanguage-specific
errors as well as pragmatic transfer.
• Negative transfer: pragmatic principles are not similar, it thus creates a gap in
learner’s perception and leads to poor communication.
Examples:
- Inappropriate use of directness. Hebrew and English speakers.
- Failure to recognize the indirectness of speech ‘ It is cold in here’.
- Ghawi & Johnson (1993) Arabic learners tend to apologize less than natives.
• Sociopragmatic failure is described as a lack of awareness or disregard for
‘….social conditions placed on language in use’’.

• Thomas presents ‘taboos’ as an example of sociopragmaic failure.
• Taboo ‘ words or activities that are considered inappropriate for ‘polite society’.(
Fromkin; 2014).
• Example:
Sarah, a native English speaker has just arrived in Korea, her host country. Laura,
Korean, is helping Sara unpack her clothes:
Laura: What nice things you have!
Sara: Thank you. It took me a long time to pack!
Laura: But your clothes are so tiny. You are too thin! How much do
you weigh?
Sara: Uh, well ... I m not sure.
Laura: Not sure! You re about 52 or 54 kilos, aren’t you?
Sara: Uhm well ....
Laura: My scale is right in the bathroom there. Let s weigh you now.
Sara: Uhm thank you, really, that’s OK.

•Example:
A Chinese student ( A) meets his friend (B) who is an American in the campus and they
have a talk.
A: You look pale. What’s the matter?
B: I am feeling sick. A cold, maybe.
A: Go and see the doctor. Drink more water. Did you take any pills? Chinese medicine
works wonderful. Would you like to try? Put on more clothes. Have a good rest.
B: You’re not my mother, are you?
• In Chinese culture, people tend to show their concern with others and express
friendliness by asking about other’s affairs and giving suggestions.
• In American culture, people focus on privacy. Invading someone’s privacy.
• Different social norms cause pragmatic failure.

• (Failure to understand the intended pragmatic force of S's utterance):
A: Is this coffee sugared?
B:I don't think so. Does it taste as if it is?
In this case, B interprets A's utterance as a genuine request for information
rather than, as A intended, a complaint (Gloss: As usual, you've forgotten to
sugar it!), the intended effect of which was to elicit an apology and an offer
to fetch the sugar.

•The effect of Sociopragmatic strategies on
foreign language learners:
• Knowledge of grammar, phonology and lexis, but also knowledge of certain
features and characteristics of the culture, which is a system of values and attitudes,
beliefs and norms that users of that language agree to.
•It is important to stress the cultural differences in order not to give rise to funny
misunderstandings, absurd consequences and sometimes embarrassment, frustration,
even anger or breakdown of communication.
•Enabling learners to have communicative competence in the target language should
be one of the important tasks in the foreign language teaching classroom.
•Basically, the sociolinguistic competence refers to rules of speaking which depend
on social, pragmatic and cultural elements.

• Making an apology or a request in any language might depend on the social
status of the speaker or hearer and on age, sex or any other social factor.
• A foreign language learner who is not familiar with contextual discourse
constraints of English might produce perfect pronunciation and grammar but fail
to achieve the communicative purpose of apologizing to a dinner host or hostess,
and instead appear to be impolitely critical or complaining.
• Idioms, expressions whose meanings cannot be derived from the conjoined
meanings of its elements, might be translated literally by foreign language
learners and thus lead to cultural misunderstanding.
• ‘he is a fly on the wheel’.

References:
1. Aijmer, K. and Anderson, G. (2011). Pragmatics of Society. Germany: Walter de Gruyter GmbH &
Co. 2. Barron, A. (2003). Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamin
Publishing Company.
3. Culpeper, J. (2011). Historical Sociopragmatics. USA: John Benjamin Publishing Company.
4.Culpeper, J. (2009) Historical sociopragmatics: An introduction. Journal of Historical
Pragmatics10 (2): 153--160.
5. Crystal, D. (2008). Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. UK: Blackwell Publishing.
6. Carr, E. Silvana. (1997). The Critical Link: Interpreters in the community. USA: John Benjamin
Publishing Company.
7. ÇAKIR, İ (2006). Socio-Pragmatic Problems in Foreign Language Teaching. Journal of Language
and Linguistic Studies: Vol.2, No.2.
8. Huang, Y. (2012). The Oxford Dictionary of Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman Linguistic Library.
10. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4, 20-39.
11. TANG Jingwei (2013). Analysis of Pragmatic Failure from the Perspective of Adaptation.Cross-
Cultural Communication, 9 (3), 75-79

Sociopragmatic ppt

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