Table Of ContentP RAGMATICS
AN INTRODUCTION
';.,i
JACOB . L. MEY
This is a succinct introduction to the burgeoning field of pragmatics - the
study of language from the point of view of its users, of the choices they
make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction
and the effects their use of language has on other participants in an act of
communication.
Reviewing the work of Austin, Grice, Searle, Sacks and others, ·the book
includes chapters on what we say when we do not say (explicitly) what we
mean; on the regularities and irregularities of everyday conversation; on
the social importance and the societal determination of even the least con
sciously proffered 'act of language'. lt aims to introduce the reader to the
complexities of language use, and the use of language to cognitive and
social effect.
Jacob L.M ey
The author is Professor of Comparative Linguistics at Odense University,
Denmark. He has taught previously at the University of Oslo, Georgetown
University and the University of Texas, Austin. In 1 977 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 1 992.
Of related interest from Blackwell Publishers
Lectures on Conversation
Harvey Sacks
Understanding Utterances
Diane Blakemore
Cover illustration: William Dyce, Pegwe/1B oy, reproduced by kind permission of
the Ta te Gallery, London.
Cover design by Workhaus Graphics
ISBN 0-631-18689-1
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111 1
BLACl<WELL
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Oxford UK {!,, Cambridge USA 9 780631 186892
Pragmatics
An Introduction
13
PRAGMATICS
An Introduction
Jacob L. Mey
I]
BLACl<WELL
Oxford UK &, Cambridge USA
Copyright © Jacob L. Mey 1993
The right of Jacob L. Mey to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designsand Patents Act 1988.
First published 1993
Blackwell Publishers
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Oxford OX4 lJF
UK
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USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, me
chanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of
the publisher.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or
otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mey, Jacob.
Pragmatics: an introduction / Jacob L. Mey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-631-18689-1. - ISBN 0-631-18691-3 (pbk.)
1. Pragmatics. 1. Tide.
P99.4.P72M487 1993
306.4'4 - dc20 93-19925
CIP
Typeset in 10 on 13pt Sabon by Best-set Typesetter Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain by T. J. Press Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Contents
Preface lX
PART I: Basic Notions 1
1 lntroduction 3
1.1 What is pragmatics all about? 3
1.2 Pragmatic acts 5
1.3 Why do we need pragmatics? 7
1.4 What use is pragmatics? 10
1.5 A waste-basket? 12
Exercises and review questions 15
2 Why Pragmatics? 18
2.1 Introduction: A look at history 18
2.2 Linguists on the (Plymouth) Rocks 20
2.3 Logicians, language and the (wo)man in the street 22
2.4 Ordinary language and logic 23
2.5 A problem in syntax 25
2.6 A problem in semantics: Presuppositions 28
2.7 A world of users 30
Exercises and review questions 32
3 Defining Pragmatics 35
,,-----
3 .1 Preliminaries 35
vi Contents
3.2 The importance of being a user 36
3.3 Context 38_
3.4 Towards a definition of pragmatics 42
3.5 Pragmatics and the rest 41
3.6 Theory and practice 44
3.7 Component or perspective? 45
3.8 The functional way 47
Exercises an<l review questions 50
4 Pragmatic Principles 53
4.1 lntroduction: Why principles? 53
4.2 Principles and rules; the Communicative Principle 54
4.3 Nature, convention and context 58
4.4 Some principles discussed 65
Exercises and review questions 83
PART II: Micropragmatics 87
5 Reference and Implicature 89
5.1 Reference and anaphora ~9
5.2 Implicature 99,
Exercises and review questions 1-06
6 Speech Acts 109
6.1 History and introduction 109
6.2 Physiognomy of a speech act: Promising 118
Exercises and review questions 126
7 Speech Act Verbs and Indirect Speech Acts 130
7.1 Speech act verbs 130
7.2 Indirect speech acts 142
Exercises and review questions 149
8 Speech Acts and their Classification 151
8.1 Introduction: The problem 151
Contents vii
8.2 Searle's criteria: Act, force and point 152
8.3 On Searle's classification of speech acts 162
8.4 The case against speech acts: The pragmatic view 170
Exercises and review questions 175
PART ill: Macropragmatics 179
9 Introduction to Macropragmatics 181
9 .1 Introduction: Co-text and context 1 81
9.2 From sentence (pair) to tcxt 182
9.3 From speech act to conversation 184
9.4 Society and context 185
9.5 Society and discourse 186
Exercises and review questions 189
10 Conversation Analysis: Basic Nations 192
10.1 Introduction: From speech acts to conversation 192
10.2 Discourse analysis vs. conversation analysis 194
10.3 The handmaid's tale: Weaknesses of the philosophical
approach 196
10.4 The role of pragmatics in conversation 198
Exercises and review questions 211
11 Conversation Analysis: Part I 214
11.1 Introduction: What happens in conversation? 214
11.2 The ethnomethodological approach 215
11.3 Turns and turn-taking 216
11.4 Previewing TRPs 218
11.5 Pre-sequences and ~nsertion sequences 221
11.6 Preference 227
Exercises and review questions 233
12 Conversation Analysis: Part II 237
12.1 Introduction: From form to content 237
12.2 Coherence 237
12.3 Sequencing 241
viii Contents
12.4 Adjacency pairs 242
12.5 Conversation and speech acts 249
12.6 Beyond local organization 251
12.7 Pragmatic acts 256
Exercises and review questions 265
13 Metapragmatics 269
13.1 Introduction: Why metapragmatics? 269
13.2 Rules on rules? 272
13.3 Principles and maxims revisited 274
13.4 'Right or wrong, my .. .' 277
13.5 Pragmatic constraints 277
13.6 A constrained world? 280
Exercises and review questions 283
14 Societal Pragmatics 286
14.1 lntroduction: Linguistics and society 286
14.2 Language in education: A privileged matter 289
14.3 Other social contexts 291
14.4 Language and manipulation 296
14.5 Pragmatic presuppositions in culture 298
14.6 W ording the world 300
14.7 Pragmatics and the social struggle 304
14.8 The light at the end of the tunnel 309
Exercises and review questions 315
Notes 321
References 334
Index 344
