Table of Contents

Preface x

Part I: Basic Notions 1

1 Defining Pragmatics 3

1.1 Preliminaries 3
1.1.1 A look at history 3
1.1.2 The importance of being a user 4

1.2 Pragmatics: Definition and Delimitation 6
1.2.1 A definition 6
1.2.2 Component, perspective or function? 8       
1.2.2.1 Component vs. perspective 8
1.2.2.2 Function 10

1.3 What Use is Pragmatics? 11
1.3.1 Theory and practice 11
1.3.2 Uses and aims 12
1.3.2.1 Why do we need pragmatics? 12
1.3.2.2 The aims of pragmatics 14

2 Some Issues in Pragmatics 19

2.1 The Pragmatic Waste-basket 19

2.2 Linguists Without Borders 21

2.3 Philosophers, Ordinary People and Ordinary Language 23

2.4 Of Cats and Ducks 25

2.5 Linguistics and Reality: Presupposition 27

2.6 A World of Users 29

Part II: Micropragmatics 37

3 Context, Implicature and Reference 39

3.1 Context 39
3.1.1 The dynamic context 39
3.1.2 Context and convention 42

3.2 Implicature 45
3.2.1 What is an implicature? 45
3.2.2 Implications and implicatures 45
3.2.3 Conversational implicature 46
3.2.4 Conventional implicature 49

3.3 Reference and Anaphora 52
3.3.1 On referring 52
3.3.2 Reference, indexicals and deictics 53
3.3.3 From deixis to anaphora 56

4 Pragmatic Principles 67

4.1 Principles and Rules 67

4.2 Some Principles Discussed 68
4.2.1 The Communicative Principle 68
4.2.2 The Cooperative Principle 71
4.2.2.1 Dostoyevski and the rubber ball 72
4.2.2.2 Cooperation and ‘face’ 73
4.2.2.3 Cooperation and ‘flouting’ 76
4.2.3 Politeness and other virtues 79

4.3 Rethinking Grice 82
4.3.1 Horn’s two principles 83
4.3.2 Relevance and ‘conspicuity’ 85

5 Speech Acts 92

5.1 History and Introduction 92
5.1.1 Why speech acts? 92
5.1.2 Language in use 93
5.1.3 How speech acts function 95

5.2 Promises 97
5.2.1 A speech act’s physiognomy: promising 98
5.2.1.1 Introduction: the problem 98
5.2.1.2 Promises: conditions and rules 99
5.2.1.3 The pragmatics of rules 101

5.3 Speech Act Verbs 105
5.3.1 The number of speech acts 105
5.3.2 Speech acts, speech act verbs and performativity 106
5.3.3 Speech acts without SAVs 109

5.4 Indirect Speech Acts 111
5.4.1 Recognizing indirect speech acts 111
5.4.2 The ten steps of Searle 113
5.4.3 The pragmatic view 114

5.5 Classifying Speech Acts 117
5.5.1 The illocutionary verb fallacy 117
5.5.2 Searle’s classification of speech acts 119
5.5.2.1 Representatives 120
5.5.2.2 Directives 120
5.5.2.3 Commissives 120
5.5.2.4 Expressives 121
5.5.2.5 Declarations 122
5.5.3 Austin and Searle 124

6 Conversation Analysis 134

6.1 Conversation and Context 134

6.2 From Speech Acts to Conversation 135

6.3 What Happens in Conversation? 136
6.3.1 How is conversation organized? 137
6.3.1.1 The beginnings of CA 137
6.3.1.2 Turns and turn-taking 139
6.3.1.3 Previewing TRPs 140
6.3.2 How does conversation mean? 143
6.3.2.1 Pre-sequences 144
6.3.2.2 Insertion sequences, ‘smileys’ and repairs 145
6.3.2.3 Preference 149
6.3.3 From form to content 153
6.3.3.1 Cohesion and coherence 153
6.3.3.2 Adjacency pairs and content 157
6.3.3.3 Types and coherence 159
6.3.3.4 Conversation and speech acts 162

Part III: Macropragmatics 171

7 Metapragmatics 173

7.1 Object Language and Metalanguage 173

7.2 Pragmatics and Metapragmatics 175
7.2.1 Three views of metapragmatics 176
7.2.2 I Metatheory 177
7.2.2.1 Rules 178
7.2.2.2 Principles and maxims: the case for ‘economy’ 179
7.2.3 II Constraining Conditions 182
7.2.3.1 General constraints 182
7.2.3.2 Presuppositions 184
7.2.3.3 Speech acts and discourse 189
7.2.3.4 Worlds and words 193
7.2.4 III Indexing 196
7.2.4.1 Reflexivity and simple indexing 196
7.2.4.2 Invisible indexing and indexicality 198

8 Pragmatic Acts 206

8.1 What Are Pragmatic Acts All About? 206

8.2 Some Cases 208

8.3 Defining a Pragmatic Act 210
8.3.1 Co-opting, denying and the CIA 210
8.3.2 ‘Setting up’ 211
8.3.3 Pragmatic acts and speech acts 212
8.3.4 Pragmatic acts and action theory 214

8.4 Pragmatic Acts in Context 217
8.4.1 The common scene 217
8.4.2 Situated speech acts 219
8.4.3 Pragmatic acts and body moves 223
8.4.4 Pragmatic acts as social empowerment 227

9 Literary Pragmatics 236

9.1 Introduction: Author and Reader 236

9.2 Author and Narrator 238

9.3 Textual Mechanisms 239
9.3.1 Reference 240
9.3.2 Tense 241
9.3.3 Discourse 244

9.4 Voice and ‘Point of View’ 247

9.5 Reading as a Pragmatic Act 252

10 Pragmatics Across Cultures 262

10.1 Introduction: What Is the Problem? 262

10.2 Pragmatic Presuppositions in Culture 264

10.3 Ethnocentricity and its Discontents 266

10.4 Cases in Point 268
10.4.1 Politeness and conversation 268
10.4.2 Cooperation and conversation 269
10.4.3 Addressivity 271
10.4.3.1 Forms of address 272
10.4.3.2 Social deixis 273
10.4.4 Speech acts across cultures: the voice of silence 275

11 Social Aspects of Pragmatics 289

11.1 Linguistics and Society 289
11.1.1 Introduction 289
11.1.2 Language in education 291
11.1.2.1 Who’s (not) afraid of the Big Bad Test? 291
11.1.2.2 A matter of privilege 293
11.1.3 The language of the media 297
11.1.4 Medical language 299

11.2 Wording the World 301
11.2.1 Metaphors and other dangerous objects 302
11.2.2 The pragmatics of metaphoring 305

11.3 Pragmatics and the Social Struggle 308
11.3.1 Language and manipulation 308
11.3.2 Emancipatory language 310
11.3.3 Language and gender 313
11.3.4 Critical pragmatics 315
11.3.4.1 What is ‘critical’? 315
11.3.4.2 ‘Critical pragmatics’: the Lancaster School 316
11.3.4.3 Power and naturalization 317

11.4 Conclusion 320

Epilogue: Of Silence and Comets 329

Notes 333

References 348

Subject Index 363

Name Index 386

About the Author

Jacob L. Mey is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense Main Campus. In 1977 he founded, with Hartmut Haberland, the Journal of Pragmatics, of which he is the chief editor. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Zaragoza, Spain in 1992. His latest publications include The Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (editor, 1998), and When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics (1999).

Reviews

"Strongly recommended reading for those with an interest in pragmatics, and certainly for those requiring an up-to-date and user-friendly pragmatics textbook." Australian Journal of Linguistics (of the First Edition)
"This is a fine and wide-ranging book." Journal of Sociolinguistics
"This second edition of Mey's book provides a valuable introduction to pragmatics in general and to some of Mey's theoretical ideas in particular. As such it is an appropriate text for both the undergraduate student of pragmatics and the more advanced reader in the field." Louise Cummings, Nottingham Trent University