Linguistica inglese 2, Appunti di Linguistica Inglese

Scarica Linguistica inglese 2 e più Appunti in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity! Lingua inglese II Pragmatics and the English language Pragmatic: level that look at contextual uses of language Some linguistic expressions can’t be fully interpreted if their actual context of use is not properly taken into account. This equally holds for meaning conveyed at a lexical, syntactic and utterance level. - lexical level : I’m in front of a bank Bank can be a financial institution or the longside of a river. This sentences is obviously ambiguous, so what’s the meaning here? Only the context can help disambiguate the meaning of this word. - Sentence level: Can you see the man with the telescope? With the telescope is a prepositional phrase that modify the head noun man (adjectival function: a man has a telescope) or it has an adverbial function, if it refers to the instrument used to see the man. This means that even syntax is ambiguous and only the context or the shared assumptions can help use to parse (analyze syntactically) the sentence. A: how do you make a cat drink? —> main verb/the head of a noun phrase B: Easy, put it in a liquidiser (frullatore) A pronounced an ambiguous sentence and B got the wrong interpretation (drink is the head of a noun phrase) and the most irrational one, because we don’t drink animals. - Utterance level Do you have any firearms with you? What to you need? B interprets A sentence has A wanted some arms for him/her. In communication we always try to understand the speaker intentions. But this intention are not always explicit and we have to do an additional effort in order to understand them. When we consider pragmatic meaning dictionaries are not very useful. Because when we look at a word’s meaning we see that a word can be use in different context and with different meaning. And dictionary can’t list of the possible meaning of a word, because contexts are numerous. As a consequence meaning is something that has an interactional basis in the sense that it emerges as the conversation unfolds. 1 Interactional meaning: what the speaker means by an utterance and what the hearer understand about it and how these emerge and are shaped during interactions. In all this the discourse situation, the role of participants and mutual assumptions are all aspect that inevitably have an huge influence in the way we construct meaning. There are two views of pragmatics, a narrow view and a broad view the narrow view Pragmatics is an additional component of linguistics along with syntax and semantic. Charles Morris distinguished: SYNTAX: relationship between linguistic signs SEMANTICS: relationship between linguistic signs and the things in the world that they designate. PRAGMATICS: relationship between linguistic signs, things they designate and their users/interpreters. Morris distinguishes pragmatics as an area that deals with context, but he makes also clear that it has some aspects in common with syntax and semantics. Morris seems to have a “micro” view of context, because he mentions just users and interpreters and doesn’t mention social relations or situations. This view of pragmatics is usually identified as Anglo-American view. The topics discussed within in include reference, deixis, presupposition, speech acts, implicature and inferencing. the broad view: The Continental European view of pragmatics does not exclude the topic discussed in the Anglo-American view, but it encompasses much beyond them and has a rather different perspective. Pragmatics is not simply about adding a contextual dimension to a theory of language, but a “general cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in forms of behavior. (Verschueren, 1999) Pragmatics is therefore not simply sited in linguistics, but has to do with cognitive, social or cultural fields of study. And the final part of this quotation indicates that pragmatics look at the linguistic phenomena in actual usage. Relevant aspect of pragmatic research/domains in which pragmatics has a lot to say: - Metapragmatics: how the language is used to describe pragmatic phenomena. 2 The black cat is crossing the streets. —> I take for granted that the black cat is visible and known by interlocutors. Russel (1905): not only definite expressions presuppose the existence of a reference, but also its uniqueness in a context of a discourse. So, using the example above, there is only one cat in the visual field. More example: The book you’re reading is great —> you’re reading only one book A book you’re reading is great —> I’m referring to a particular book among the one you’re reading. Definite expressions: definite noun phrases, phrases with genitive, or proper nouns. The determine the definiteness of the whole noun phrase. There are various ways in which language can signal definiteness: - The: the most frequent word in written and spoken language - Possessive determiner pronouns (my, your, our…) - Demonstratives (this/that…) - Genitive (Jonathan’s book) Also proper nouns can express definiteness. ATTRIBUTIVE VS REFERENTIAL DEFINITE EXPRESSION (KEITH DONNELLAN) Smith’s murderer is insane. Definite expression like this can have two interpretation: - attributive interpretation: indicate any referent having the attributes of Smith’s murder. Whoever is Smith’s murderer he/she is insane. Who don’t know is murder, but we know that there is a murderer. - referential interpretation: indicates a specific murderer identifiable by both speaker and receiver. Proper nouns - used to identify the unique individual we are talking about. They are not preceded by a definite article because they inherently identify a unique individual. 5 Indeed in general in English we do not normally put a definite article before a noun. We can’t stay *the Jonathan or *the Michael but we can say: - The John (who) I met last weekend is not your cousin In this case we need to be more specific because for example that there is more than one John that we know. This is also possible because there is a relative clause. - That John is not your cousin. Deixis - relies on the extralinguistic context - anchor the utterance to the context - involves connections between a reference point and aspects of the situation in which the utterance takes place. - deictic expressions invite participant to work out these connections in a conversation. Meet me here at noon tomorrow with a stick about this big All underlined expression lack a precise deictic center or anchorage point. Put otherwise they don’t have any antecedent to send back. We can understand their meaning only by looking to the context. Deixis type Personal Participants I, we, you… Social relationship Madame, your grace, Sir, Professor Leech … Spatial* this, here, there, away, come, go, … Temporal now, then, today, recently, …. Discourse that chapter, this means that… * spatial deixis- proximal (here, this/these), distal (there, that/those) Personal deixis: refers to the identification of three discourse roles in the speaking situation: - The speaker (1 person) 6 - The hearer (2 person) - The party being talked about (the third person) Invite participant to identify the relevant discourse roles the context. Note that the deictic person markers are typically the first and the second persons, not the third. In general third person are anaphoric. EXAMPLE: WE ARE GOING TO THE CINEMA A sub-category of personal deixis is social deixis. To mark social relationship English relies largely on vocatives. Geoff, come here vs Geoff came here= deictic vs non-deictic Good night, sir Thank you, mum. Spatial deixis: express a relationship relating to distance between the deictic center and the referent. English has proximal- distal contrast (here/ there and this/that) Example: I LEFT THE BOOK ON THAT TABLE/ BRING THAT BOOK HERE Temporal deixis: express a relationship between a deictic centre and the time of a speaker’s utterance. EXAMPLE: SEE YOU TOMORROW Discourse deixis: involves making connections with a segment on discourse. This category is not so pure and it overlaps with the notion of anaphora. Anaphora - relationship between two linguistic elements, wherein the interpretation of one (called an anaphor) is in some way determined by the interpretation of other (called an antecedent) Should Michael peel the potatoes on the board? yes, he can do them there anaphoric vs cataphoric reference Anaphora : I met Jane and I told her that she has to apologize for the behavior Cataphora: There is something I have to tell you: I’m pregnant 7 Common ground - Definite expressions are primarily used to invite the participants to identify a particular referent from a specific context which is assumed to be shared by interlocutors. Common ground is also referred to as “mutual knowledge” , “shared knowledge” , “shared assumptions”, “shared belief”. -It is all common knowledge shared by the speaker and the receiver. - it is gradually constructed by interlocutors in a recursive manner (recursivity: you apply the rule to an element that is the application of the rule itself.) This means that the process by which some knowledge is put in common is repeated several time, until a solid common ground is built. And it is mutual, both speaker and receiver contribute with sth. We always share meaning which become part of the common ground. - it can be seen as the a subset of background knowledge, the subset that is relevant to the communication because it is believed to be in common amongst the participant involved. What is common ground made of? - Practices and conventions of our cultures and communities - Physical and natural laws - experiences involving others - personal experiences with other people - whether other are co-present at an event or not - Kinds of relations among speakers - Particular discourse context (From more objetive to more subjective factors, from external factors to internal factors) People chose their referring expressions according to assumptions about the common ground. Informational Pragmatics = Information structure or micro-pragmatic Example: About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? vs The car smashed into each other. How fast were they? 10 The book on pragmatics, let’s hope it’s good! vs Let’s hope this book on pragmatics is good! This couple of sentence refer to the same state of affair (stato di cose), but they focalize on different piece of information. These sentences has different information structure, they mean the same but they differ for the informational hierarchy. Informational pragmatics aim at researching: - how to segment the message into information units (unità informative); - how to assign degree of prominence to different parts of the message; - how to order the parts of a message; (Leech:1983) Remember! sentence= it refers to the syntactic form utterance= sentence in terms of their pragmatics profile The reason why we assign different information structure to the utterances we produce is because we want to make those utterance more easily decodable by the receiver. Where has John gone? He has gone SHOPPING Capital letter—> prosodic emphasis on a constituent It’s the NEWSPAPER you had to buy. (cleft sentence) If we do not assign different prosodic profile or syntactic patterns that may highlight some constituents, the interlocutor won’t be in the condition to properly decode information. Background and Foreground A person cannot perceive both aspects of the picture simultaneously. When you pay attention to sth you can’t perceive different aspects at the same time. Our attention will be probably capture by those parts which are more salient, even in terms of color. Indeed in every picture some aspects are put in the backgrounds others in the foregrounds. The same happens in sentences: some information are put in background others in the foreground. 11 He has gone SHOPPING background foreground —> new information The foreground/background distinction somehow correlates with the notion of cognitive status, which concerns the extension to which sth is cognitively foregrounded in the minds of participants. This also allows the speaker to leave some content unexpressed. A:What model is your car? B1: My car is an Outback B2: It’s an Outback B3: An Outback Accessible information can be omitted. The only information that here is unaccessible is the model of the car. The terms background and foreground are mostly used in literature, so from now on we will substitute them with this two term: My car(topic=background) is an outback (focus=foreground) accessible information Topic: information unit indicating what the sentence is about Focus: what is predicated about the topic In terms of informativity degree the topic is the less important information. Instead focus is the new information and the most purposeful information. = the reason why we produce an utterance is to convey the focus. Indeed the focus can’t be omitted. So all sentences have to have a focus but they don’t have to have a topic. Cognitive vs discourse givenness- presentation/packaging of information What is given is related with what is cognitive salient. Given/new: a psychological opposition Topic/focus: a linguistic opposition A: I saw your brother yesterday. He looked pretty sad indeed. B: [His girlfriend] let him two months ago. topic focus (Anche un topic può essere un’informazione nuova) It is possible that A may not know that B’s brother had a girlfriend. It may be completely new information. However his girlfriend is the topic. Indeed the 12 counterfactive presupposition (third conditional) : they presuppose that a proposition is not true. If the computer had crashed, we might have lost our book manuscript =the computer has not crashed superlatives: they presuppose a gradation She is the best student in my class Presupposition: there are students that are less good quantifiers: they presuppose the existence of a reference All desert spiders are poisonous Presupposition: there are desert spiders. TABLE3.2 Presupposition cannot be denied, it is constant under negation. Either we say We are/are not glad to have written this chapter we always presuppose that we have written this chapter. John stopped smoking presuppositions: John smoked It’s not John who stopped smoking presuppositions: John smoked Projection problem: how presupposition are inherited by the main clause. change-of- state verb factive verb John stopped accusing Mary of beating her husband. He used to accused Mary Mary beat her husband The main clause presuppose that John used to accused Mary, but also inherits the presupposition that Mary beat her husband. This second presupposition is projected in the scope ( =dominio sintattico/ syntactic domain) of the change-of- state verb (primo attivatore di presupposizioni che assorbe tutti gli altri attivatori di presupposizioni) Es. il dominio sintattico di un verbo per esempio è il verbo stesso e il complemento. Stalnaker considered presuppositions as a pragmatic notion, not a semantic trigger. His definition of presuppositions: “To presuppose a proposition in the pragmatic sense is to take its truth for granted, and to presume that others involved in the context do the same” 15 The distinction between presupposition and assertion: “The distinction between presupposition and assertion should be drawn, not in terms of the content of the presupposition expressed, but in terms of the situation in which the statement is made- the attitudes and the intentions of the speaker and his audience. Presupposition, on this account, are sth like the background beliefs of the speaker- presupposition whose truth he takes for granted, or seem to take for granted in making his statement”. What does this mean? - presupposition are not only properties of sentences but involve the beliefs of speakers (we are shifting the focus from the meaning of the sentence, along with is structure, to speaker’s attitude towards some information) - are part of a presumed common background beliefs of participants. Presumed because we can’t know what our interlocutor already know. We have to imagine that some information is already shared or not shared yet. - often serve economic purposes in conversations because they allow speakers to avoid spelling out all the assumption when producing utterance. We can say “My sister broke his leg” (instead of : I have a sister. She broke her leg) even though the interlocutor does not know that I have a sister. In this way we presuppose the existence of my sister. Informational foreground Foregrounding =enhance receivers’ attention on some content. Foreground elements are characterized by unexpectedness, unusualness and uniqueness —> newness According to Leech more interpretative efforts is focused on foreground elements than on backgrounding elements. Foregrounded elements are not cognitively more striking but also regarded as more important in relation to the overall interpretation of the text. In general syntactic order in a sentence is somehow related to the way we process utterances. We generally prefer given information to be placed in the first part of the sentence because it anchor to some pre-existing knowledge. In terms of processing it is better for our cognitive system to start processing information that is already given and then new information. Older information is usually easier for the mind to cope with than newer and there is less to remember before one gets to the final constituents of the sentence, so the cognitive load in interpreting the utterances is reduced. This is called by Leech: end-focus/end-weight = focalized information are likely to occur at the end of the sentence In this case we are talking about not marked sentences that is sentences without a syntactic manipulation. 16 Focus and prosodic prominence JOnathan gave his students chocolate. (not Charles) (Every word has a main accent which is more stressed when a word is focalized) Jonathan GAVE his students chocolate (he did not lend it) Jonathan gave HIS students chocolates (not his colleague’s students) Jonathan gave his STUdents chocolate. (not his children) Jonathan gave his students CHOcolate (not sweets) In all sentences the focused element would be pronounced with a pitch accent contour. Prosodic prominence on a word will also generate a relevant assumption associate with a sentence. There are some languages which have a focus marker, that is a morphological marker that indicates that constituents is focalized. ex: In Somali: CALI baa (focus marker) …. Japanese instead has a topic marker: Marco wa (topic)…. However intonation is always present. Focus and syntactic structures The book call “Focusing” any emphasising structures, but focusing sth is different from topicalizing sth. Preposed construction (Topicalization) In a sentence we can place before the topic What the future holds (topic), I don’t know (focus) dislocated structures (Topicalization) That dancing man, he makes me happy Right dislocation That’ll be a bit crispy, that bit this is like “i remind you we are talking about this topic” Cleft sentences 17 representation. A representation is essentially a generalized meaning form or interpretation that we find displayed in or through natural language constructions. Meaning representation which are not linguistically expressed but constitute the speaker intended meaning in a conversation have been referred to by Grice as implicatures. implicature= intention which is not expressed in the literary level of a message, but it has to be derived to the meaning of the literal expression. An aspect related to the notion of implicature intentional meaning: the meaning doesn’t have to be seen as a property of an utterance but as a communicative intention of the speaker. This is how communication comes about. In general communication takes place thanks to a mutual understanding of communicative intentions. Meaning and intention in Grice’s Perspective According to Grice, meaning arises from the speaker’s having a particular kind of meaning intentions. Example: Charlie Brown: Shovel your walk? Lucy: you? Charlie Brown: I never know how to answers those one-word question. Lucy’s intentional meaning: Are you really able to do that ? Why are you (and not someone else) going to shovel the walk With a one word message Lucy, in that particular context and with a certain intonation, convey others meaning and interpretation. Implicatures Grice was the first one to use this term to refer to speakers’ intentional meaning. Implicature arises moving from inferencing the speaker’s meaning moving from either linguistic or contextual coordinates. Whether such coordinates are linguistic or contextual this allows distinguishing between the following three types of implicatures: - Conversational implicature - Conventional implicature - non-conventional/non conversational implicatures Conventional implicature They are contents implicated by particular words or expressions such as but or even, rather that being part of their truth-conditional content 20 She is poor but honest/He is handsome but stupid Implicature: Poor people are not honest/Handsome people are clever We finally arrived to London Implicature: Our arrival in London was long-awaited Even Jane went to Paris Implicature: Sb else went to Paris This is also a presupposition. In whatever context we use but, it always convey the same contrasting meaning. And the same things happen when we use finally or even. So conventional implicature are inferences associated to the semantic value of an expression, and for this reason they always rise in any context in which these expressions occurs. The implicature you derive from this expression does not really depend to the pragmatic context. Conversational implicature A: Are you joining Lisa for the school party? B: Actually, I’m not through my chores yet B is not directly replying to A’s question; he is rather hinting at a reply. B imply that s/he’s not going rather than say it directly because B want to appear more polite (“No, I don’t" seems more rude). But at the same time B in this way provide more information. The conveyance of hints is made possible by the expectation that the speaker is being cooperative in the conversational exchange, and therefore acting in compliance of a Cooperation Principle. “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”. (Grice) Conversational Maxims: Grice says that in order to be cooperative we have to observe four maxims, which are not rules each speaker must abide by, but expectations on their conversational moves. Implicature originate when one more or these maxims are violated. Maxims of Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true, and specifically: - Do not say what you believe to be false - Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 21 Maxims of Quantity: - make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of exchange. - Do not make your contribution more informative than is required Maxims of relevance: Make your contribution relevant (pertinente), consistent to the topic of the conversation Maxims of matter: Be perspicuous and specifically: - avoid obscurity - avoid ambiguity - be brief - be orderly Maxim of quality: You’re the sunshine of my like The person is not a sunshine. This is a metaphor. When we use metaphors we are always violating the maxim of quality, because we are not say sth truth. But we accept those utterances because in any case we assume the speaker to be cooperative. And assuming that we are capable to understanding what “you’re the sunshine of my life”. Maxims of Quantity: Where did you park your car? Somewhere in one of those gardens The answer is violating the maxim of quantity because it does not provide enough information. It is too vague. Some politics keep telling lies This utterance is violating this maxim because we do not know “Who keep telling lies? What kind of lies?” Many times politicians omit the agent of an action. This strategies are used in propagandistic speech or language of advertising. This make the understanding of a message much more difficult. Maxims of relevance: Are you coming with us tonight? Actually, I’m a bit tired B is not consistent because his/her answer is not direct. But since A expects B to be cooperative A can catch the meaning. 22 What did you have for breakfast? If no other information is made available by the speaker we would understand that the missing piece of information is “this morning”. We produce utterances like this all the time. Very often we produce utterances where some information is lacking and we have to integrate that information in order to contextualize the utterance in the communicative situation. What Grice said is true: depending on the structure we choose for an utterance, we may leave some content unexpressed or to be reconstructed by the receiver. Another important distinction is the one proposed by Levinsonin in 2000: utterance type vs utterance token meaning. The question we have seen is an utterance type: an utterance that has a stereotypical meaning because of its structure. John has three children (= John has only three children). We take this utterance as it is because of its structure. This is an utterance type meaning: a meaning you derive from an utterance because of the structure the utterance has. If a mother says: “Do you really intend to leave your room like that?” She expects her child to go to his room and tidy the mess. It is an orderer or an indirect speech act. This is an utterance token: the meaning of an utterance depend on how it is used in a specific context. So an utterance type meaning is a meaning associated to structural properties of a sentence, while an utterance token meaning is associated with the way an utterance is used in a given context. Contextualist approaches On one hand there are formalist approaches which believe that syntax has a priority over pragmatic meaning representations. On the contrary, contextualist approaches believe that pragmatic meaning representations that determine how syntax has to be built. Grice said that all the possible pragmatic interpretations depend on particular element of a sentence, whereas contextualist approaches believed that it is not only what is said that determine pragmatic meaning representation but also what is not said. What the speaker says is not only a semantic concern but also inheres in the pragmatic dimension of language use. Because the receiver generally brings about some enrichment of missing meaning, and this enrichment is often called explicature. EXPLICATURE VS IMPLICATURE (CARSTON) Explicature arise, just like implicatures, through inference. However, the former are tied to what is explicitly communicated, because they are always a 25 development of (a) linguistically encoded logical form of an utterance, or (b) a sentential subpart of a logical form. - Implicature: are not tied to what is explicitly said. In some case they have nothing to do with what is linguistically said. - Explicature: integrated meaning that is missing from the surface structure of a sentence. They are calculated thanks to the contribution of the sentence’s logical form. Explicature is enriched meaning which complete the logical form of the sentence. Examples: What did you have for breakfast [this morning, yesterday, last Sunday]? This is a difficult task [for me, for my students, for you] It is up to the receiver to understand what the speaker means. In general both implicatures and explicature are calculated on the basis of Relevance (pertinenza) considerations. Whenever we produce an utterance we usually expect our interlocutor to be relevant to the communicative task at hand. Relevance: Defined in terms of balance between the cognitive value of particular information, and the processing efforts required to gain that information. Something is more relevant when it involves more useful information that takes relatively little effort for the hearer to figure out and is less relevant when it involves less useful information or takes relatively more effort to figure out for the hearer. Relevance-theoretic approaches: both what is said and what is implicated are made available by the speaker through general mechanism of relevance construction. What is implicated and what is explicated depends on a general tendency in cognitive processing for individuals to maximize the extraction of information at the same time as minimizing their efforts in doing so. All in all, we need pragmatics also to compute the meaning of what is said and what is not said. Meaning representations Moving from the assumption that it is speakers who mean and that hearers have to infer what speakers mean, in “successful communication” the speaker’s intended meaning and the hearer’s inference about it can be treated as if they are virtually synonymous. 26 Obama: Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? 1-Obama means that he wants to build an economy where richness is more widely spread 2-Obama is saying that with the current government richness is only for a few people. These are two implicature, both relevant. So how people select the correct implicature? - communicative context. However it is never possible to assess whether the speaker’s meaning and the hearer understanding of that meaning match. Participant roles in a conversation Each communication acts entails establishing a particular footing, that is a perspective with respect to the proposition conveyed (Goffman) Whenever we convey an utterance we also delineate a footing. The perspective determines: - the structures of the utterance itself - roles of participants of the conversation a speaker: production of the utterance footing entails at least a hearer: takes on a participation status Pragmatic meaning representations can be understood differently depending on the footing of the individual concerned. Goffman identify 4 different (production) roles: - animator (or utterer): the one who produce the utterance (or a talk) - author: entity that creates or designs the content of an utterance - principal (source): party responsible for an utterance - figure: character portrayed within an utterance Candidate Biden: You want a better President, don’t you? - animator: Biden 27 subjects. Then the movie was followed by some verification questions. Some questions contained false presuppositions, others false assertion. For example if the movie was about a car accident then a false presupposition could be: Where was the traffic light? (when there was not a traffic light) In this way she want to observe what happened in the subject representation and recalling process of the contents of short movies, when false information were conveyed as presupposition. Almost all the subjects had distorted representations of the short movie. They believed the contents that were presupposed were actually true contents. When she asserted the existence of a reference (Was there a traffic light?) the subject were more aware that some false information was given to them. Other experiment like “reading times” or “eye tracking” (Langford and Holmes 1979) show that presuppositions were read faster than assertions. These are behavioral perspectives on the processing of implicit meaning by presuppositions. The following study show what happens in our brain when new presuppositions are processed. This study is based on the study of event-related potentials: = the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event. When we want to represent a response of the brain to a linguistic stimulus we have to represent it in this way.    DEFINITE EXPRESSIONS VS INDEFINITE EXPRESSIONS: Le terapie (presupposition —> accomodation) potrebbero limitarne le conseguenze più gravi Ci sono terapie che potrebbero limitarne le conseguenze più gravi 30 SUBORDINATE CLAUSE VS MAIN CLAUSE: Quando venne catturato (presupposition) aveva 21 anni Venne catturato a 21 anni Event-related potential can be observed only in a single word: they are sensitive to word-length stimuli. Results: - Definite presuppositions proved to be costlier. - Processing a new temporal clause is costlier the same piece of information is asserted. Indeed new information is expected to be packaged as assertion. This go against to the trends delineated by behavioral studies: here the presuppositions seems to be costlier . Another study has showed a similar trend between presuppositions that al already given and new presupposition. The presupposition that does not have an antecedent in the discourse proved to be costlier. Meaning and accountability Accountability has to do with the epistemic responsibility of the speaker in saying or not saying sth. If I say “the cat is on the mat” I’m accountable for the truth of what I have said. So we are always accountable for whatever we say, but in some cases we 31 can opt for some communicative strategies that may reduce the degree of accountability. In general when pragmatic meaning arise in an interaction someone is always held responsible or accountable for those meanings. However the speaker is not always the responsible participant. If we take sth for granted you reduce your responsibility to the truth of that content. To be held accountable means that the person concerned is taken to be committed to the belief, thought, desire, attitude, intentions and so on, and/or responsible for the interpersonal and real-word consequences of making this belief. Maybe the sentence “the cat is on the mat” is not true, but the particular way in which I’m saying it give the impression that I believe that. The packaging of information has an important role in all this. This means that the way you convey some information guides the interpretation of the sentence and of the speaker role in the conversational exchange. If I use reported speech (example: “He told me the cat is on the mat” ) I’m not responsible. Accountability arise as a consequence of presumptions about intentionality and agency (speakers’ capability of changing the meaning representation of a sentence), not exclusively speakers intentions, as has often been assumed. So, intentionality and agency are two important ingredients that constitute the degree of accountability of a speaker. You’re accountable when you show intentionality to communicate sth but if you also agent in construction a particular representation in the receiver mind. Speakers may also retreat to what is literally said in attempting to evade being held accountable for pragmatic meaning. They can decide to reduce their level or responsibility or increase it. When you presuppose sth you take sth for granted and in this case you’re reducing you level of accountability. Instead, if you assert it you enhance your level of responsibility. Also implicatures reduce accountability. As speakers we have a sort of sensitivity towards this packaging of the information. Ways to mean something … (besides directly conveying of contents) hint (“dare un segnale”): sth you say or do that shows what you think or want, in a way that is not direct.  «one is thinking something that would quite like to say aloud but that one refrains from doing so – presumably because one thinks that one shouldn’t say it.» (Wierzbicka 1987: 271) 32 Austin talks about three different levels to describe an utterance’s meaning: - Locutionary act: the levels which refers to the structure of the utterance and its meaning. It refers to the formal properties and to the semantic values of an utterance. - Illocutionary act: the purpose of a specific utterance. Every utterance is an illocutionary act because it has a specific purpose, goal. - Perlocutionary act: this level has to do with the effects that I want to trigger in my interlocutor. Examples: The cat is on the mat Locutionary act: the performance and the meaning of this utterance Illocutionary act: The utterance has an informative function Perlocutionary act: I can say this I so that you take it and bring it somewhere else/update receiver mental model of discourse with the missing information (the receiver does not know were the cat is so the speaker convey the new information) = enrich the common ground with new information I promise that I will come to your party Locutionary act: the performance and the meaning of this utterance Illocutionary act: inform of a specific intention (make a promise) Perlocutionary act: the receiver may feel more confident because he knows that sb is coming yo his part. The perlocutionary act depends on the situation/other context and on the relationship between the speaker and the receiver as well. 1- The cat is on the table =I just want to inform you about that 2- The cat is on the table = go there and take it down Locutionary act: the two have the same form Illocutionary act: 1- inform 2- produce an order: “go there and take it down” The interpretation of the functions depend on the context Perlocutionary act: 1- the background knowledge of the receiver is updated 2- the receiver takes the cat off the table 35 Here we have two different types of speech act (when we speak we perform a action) The case 1 is a more direct speech act. In the first case there is a match between the locutionary (declarative sentence) and illocutionary level (update of the common ground). In the second case the illocutionary level (declarative sentence) does not match the purpose of a sentence: we are not describing a state of affair but we are inducing sb to do sth. For this reason, the first utterance is a direct speech act, while the second one in an indirect speech act. Seartle has proposed a taxonomy of the speech acts, according to the direction of fit (=direzione di adattamento), that is the relationship between the words and the world. Questi predicati possono essere anche impliciti speech act types direction of the fit Responsibility DECLARATION (Naming, baptizing, Sentences) the words change the world. Speaker REPRESENTATIVES (stating, affirming, describing) The words fit the outside world. Speaker EXPRESSIVES (apologizing, thanking, congratulating) The words fit the “psychological state of the speaker” Speaker ROGATIVES (questioning, asking, queyring) The words fit world. Hearer (who has to provide information and so it is responsible of provide true information) COMMISSIVES (promising, threatening, offering) The world will fit words. Speaker DIRECTIVES (commanding, requesting, suggesting) The world will fit the words Hearer 36 Speech acts and socio-cultural contexts In different languages these speech acts can be used in different ways. So we cannot be sure that this taxonomy is universal, because it has to be adapt according to the language and the social- cultural contexts in which speech acts are used. For any activity to be successful it has to be expected, not in the sense that sb is waiting for the act to be performed, but rather in a general sense: this particular kind of act is apposite/appropriate in this particular discursive interaction. (Mey) Mey proposes the notion of “pragmene”: a kind of situational prototype capable of being executed in a situation, basically language string that are expected in a specific situation. What time is it?—> A pragmene can be “10 o’ clock”. A pragmene is said to consist of an activity part and a textual part which, when instantiated in a particular situated context, constitutes an individuated, individual pragmatic act. (Mey: 2001) So a “pragmene” can be defined as a specific pragmatic act that is expected in a given communicative situation. Presuppositions and translation Presuppositions are a pervasive phenomenon in human communication, but also in texts. They strongly interact with the process of meaning construction. Moreover they have important implication in translation processes. Presupposition has been captured either in semantic terms or in pragmatics terms. In semantic terms presuppositions has been delineated has a property of utterances. This was the view of formal philosophers, who conceived language as sth which could be described in a rigorous way. On the contrary the pragmatic view propose a definition of presupposition in terms of speaker’s attitude towards knowledge. When we presuppose sth you are adopting a specific attitude towards knowledge. I may take for granted some information because I want to do so. And givenness is not a sine qua no condition for contents to be presupposed. Etymologically presuppositions means that you presuppose that sth is already shared but it in not a constraint on presupposition use. You can also presuppose knowledge that is not shared. Stalnaker is the one who proposed that presuppositions are mainly pragmatic phenomena, in the sense that it is up to the speakers to presuppose sth or not according to what they consider relevant in the speech. He uses the term “pragmatic presuppositions” to stress the fact that presuppositions are mainly pragmatic phenomena. 37 judgement to make except in specific instances when the translator can know with some precision who will be reading the translation”. If the presuppositions are not shared a delicate balancing act is required. The translator has to reach a balance between what is not shared and at the same time what the text should presuppose. You cannot convert all presupposition in assumption because presuppositions have functions that have to be maintained in the target text. So the translator has to decide what presuppositions have to be explicitated and which should remain exactly the same. In general the translator can opt for different path. He can: - patronize the target audience by treating them as if they know nothing and lack the means to find out. In this case he has to explicitate the presuppositions providing the target audience the missing information. - leave the target audience in the dark by not supplying what is needed to make sense of the text in a situation where the target reader is unlikely to have the means or the inclination to pursue their own research. He does that for example because he doesn’t want to take on the possibility of explicitate (make explicit) some context. Indeed the choice of interpret them entails responsibility: the translator has to chose the correct interpretation of the source utterance. If the reader does not share presupposed knowledge the translator can decide to disentangle the presupposition or not. But what is the best way to pass on the information with a minimum of disruption if at all possible? If a translator want to disentangle a presupposition he has to use assertion: The black cat is crossing the street —> there is a black cat. The black cat is crossing the street. An implication of this process is that it tremendously slow down the discursive and the argumentative architecture of a text. So searching a perfect balance is not very easy. Disentangle or not a presupposition also depend on: - 1. On the type of text to be translated - 2. aspects of cultural compatibility - 3. prominence of the information item in the text to be translated. Presupposition put contents in the background. So if a content is put in the background why should I transform it in an assertion? If I do this I would alter its information status in the target text and you would also induce a different way of representing that information in the receiver mind. Because if some information is presupposed that I know that it does not require much attention. 40 Instead if it is asserted then it probably requires more attention because is more important, more relevant and so on. Cooperation and literacy translation By Kirsten Malmkjaer The author observed the observance and non-observance of the Cooperation Principle in literary translation. Cooperation has be described in terms of expectance and expectations that basically we have in some communicative moves. We generally expect our interlocutors to be cooperative, that is to provide true information, information in a clear way and so on. In general cooperation differently than speech acts can be regarded as a universal principle operating in any language and in any communicative situation. In each language speakers try to cooperate to one another. In literature we expect this principle to be applied in the same ways. But for example infringing some implicature can have some rhetorical function in literary text. Coleridge says that cooperation can be regarded as a “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith”. Basically when you decide to convert sth indirectly you are leaving some beliefs pending. And this inevitably leads the receiver to make an effort to understand what the author actually means. “to approach a text, whether fictional or not, as a literary work, constitutes a type of cooperation with the text and with the norms and expectation of the culture within which it exists and is accepted as a literary text”. Whenever you translate a text you get into a type of interactional relationship with the text. You have to cooperate with the text in different ways. In general Gricean cooperation principle seem to have been conceived as conversation phenomena, that is phenomena which comes about in spoken conversations. According to Lyons a canonical situation of utterance is: «one-one, or one-many, signalling in the phonic medium along the vocal-auditory channel, with all the participants present in the same actual situation able to perceive one another and to perceive the associated non-vocal paralinguistic features of their utterances, and each assuming the role of sender and receiver in turn». This is a canonical situation of utterances: a situation in which where there is a speaker, a receiver, and where you can for example modulate your speech signal according to expressions made by the receiver, and you can understand how the interaction is unfolding. All this awareness fades away when it comes to writing a text, because you write to an unknown receiver. You cannot assess intersectional parameters and you cannot also modulate your intonation because in written language there is not phonetics that help you to emphasize a portion of an utterance instead of other. 41 But Lyons also noticed that: “many utterances which would be readily interpretable in a canonical situation-of-utterance are subject to various kinds of ambiguity or indeterminacy if they are produced in a non-canonical situation; if they are written rather than spoken and dissociated from the prosodic and paralinguistic features which would punctuate and modulate them…; if the participants in the language- event, or the moment of transmission and the moment of reception, are widely separated in space and time; if the participants cannot see one-another, or cannot see what the other can see, and so on.” In general, in conversation utterances do not only convey specific meaning but also specific intention. And according to Strawson there are some condition for meaning sth in conversation, to point to the receiver that you want to mean sth by producing an utterance. «S[peaker] means something by an utterance x if, and only if, S intends: (1) to produce by uttering x a response r in an audience A and (2) that A shall recognise S’s intention (1) and (3) that this recognition on the part of A of S’s intention (1) shall function as A’s reason, or part of the reason, for A’s response r.    Basically you produce an utterance and you also expect to produce a response in the audience. The response could be derived from your intentional meaning. And the real intentional meaning represents the reason for understanding that utterance. This means that in some cases literal meaning becomes a secondary meaning, because is the direct intentional meaning is the reason to utter a sentence. Relevant factors in implicature computation In general whenever the speaker infringes a maxim the receiver is expected to bring about some processing operation or computational operation. This means that he has to look for 1. the conversational meaning of words used and the reference of referring expression 2. the cooperation principle and its maxims 3. the co-text (linguistic context) and context 4. background knowledge (in order to derive implicature, a common ground has to be shared by the speaker and the receiver) 5. the supposition that all participants suppose that all relevant items falling under (1-4) are available to them. You have to assume that all these aspects are relevant and accessible to both interlocutors. 42 their mental effort and make translation more relevant to them.” (Ibid.:97).      = it is the translator who has the demanding task to make sense of the original text and try to explicitate the implicature conveyed in it. But a translator can also chose to leave the text just as it is and can leave to the reader the task of deriving the implicatures. This is obviously a difficult cognitive operation because of a lack of a real shared common ground. The target reader and the source writer could not share the same common ground, so how do we know that the reader will successfully derive the correct implicature? Extract from a speech of Salvini: Io penso anche ai tanti insegnanti, riempiti di promesse da una Sinistra che li ha traditi. Insegnanti che ogni giorno, ormai, sono aggrediti in classe, anche per colpa di una Buona Scuola che ha cancellato il merito. Nel Paese che ho in testa, oltre ai diritti, torneranno a essere importanti anche i doveri. Oltre ai sì, sarà importante dire di no. Come si fa a garantire tutto gratis per tutti? Come si fa a garantire che non verrà bocciato più nessuno? Che generazione tiri su? Che studenti tiri su? Che genitori tiri su? Quelli che se il figlio porta a casa una nota, invece di prendersela col figlio, vanno a scuola a prendere a cazzotti il professore. La buona scuola deve tornare a essere un luogo di educazione, di rispetto, di regole, di crescita, di convivenza, con gli insegnanti che torneranno a fare gli insegnanti e non i poliziotti. I also think about the many teachers, filled with promises by a Left party who betrayed them. Teachers who are everyday attacked in class, also due to a “Good School” who completely obliterated the idea of merit. In the country I have in mind, besides rights, also duties will regain importance. Besides “yes”, i twill be important to also say “no”. How it is possible to make everything free for everybody? How is it possible to assure that nobody will fail? What sort of generation are we raising? What sort of students are we raising? What sort of parents are we raising? Those who if their child get a demerit at school, they go punching the teacher instead of reproaching their child. The “Good School” must go back to being a place of education, of respect, of growth, of cohabitation, with teachers who will continue to be teachers and not policemen. These are rhetorical question. So the implicature are: - it is impossible to make all free for everybody - The current government is allowing a system in which everything is free for everybody, and also in which nobody will fail. He is probably addressing the prime minister for doing sth like that. How far do we know if an American or an English citizen understand something like these? In these cases the computation of an implicature would be difficult and demanding in terms of processing these information. 45 A part of a Donald Trump speech “We also believe that patients with terminal conditions should have access to experimental treatments that could potentially save their lives. People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure”. “También creemos que los pacientes con afecciones terminales deberían tener acceso a tratamientos experimentales que podrían salvarles la vida. Las personas con enfermedades terminales no deberían tener que ir de país en país buscando una cura". Here the implicature are left unaltered. In this case Trump is imply that people who are terminally ill go from country to country to seek a cure. If an average American citizen can be thought to already know that in the U.S.A. terminal patients do not have access to experimental treatments and that they have to move from country to country to be cured, the probability that a Spanish citizen may know about these problems in advance is legitimately lower. Therefore, a Spanish recipient will more probably run into the extra mental work of reconstructing unknown communicative intentions, thus adjusting common ground accordingly.  (The Spanish reader has to update is common ground with this information.) You never find some explicitation procedures in a translation of a political speech. Most of the time the translations of political speech are published in websites and in some case we do not even know the name of the translator. Instead when you read a translation of a literary text you have plenty of introductory pages before reading the text. Those introductory pages explain a lot about translation choices. The translator explain why he or she has chosen to translate some expressions in a way. The fact that a politician may imply more than one proposition in producing an utterance is far from rare. Yet, understanding which implied contents are to be considered more relevant is nothing more than a question of subjective evaluation; and this evaluation is entirely entrusted to the translator. A reliable and sound interpretation of the author’s intentions thus becomes a fundamental step of the translation and explicitation of an implicature and obviously involves reaching a well-grounded understanding of the political context of the source text as well as of the ideas and stances upheld by the politician. Choosing between one or another implicature to explicitate not only has repercussions on what types of contents will make up the translated text, but also on the construal that the final recipient will make of that text and of the thought of its original author. 46 - If you opt for explicitation you potentially alter the representation of the text meaning in the recipient mind. Because if you opt for an implicature instead of another that that implicature became part of the recipient mental representation of that text. Obama example: Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? 1. If you vote for me I will turn richness into a privilege for all people 2. Today, USA is a country where richness is only for few people.  If the translator chooses to explicitate implicature (1), he will emphasize the fact that Obama will do something good to the American people, should he be elected President. If implicature (2) is explicitated, the focus of the question will be on a negative aspect of today’s America. Put otherwise, while (1) induces a more foreward-looking view on the future, (2) is somewhat bound to make receivers aware of an undesiderable social and economical situation of the country. This means that a translator can manipulate the recipient perspective on some contents. So, if you want to opt for some explicitation strategies you have to be sure you’re doing the right thing. This is why in most cases the translator chose to leave the implicature as it. Explicitating a implicature is a responsibility. To understand what an author/politician means a translator should also get informed about the topic of the text. Strategies for dealing with implicature A translator’s task in dealing with implicit meaning entails first of all evaluating what and how much can be left under - or unexpressed in a translated text – based on what she assumes the receiver already knows – and how to make the text more relevant to the recipient so as to spare him or her a cognitively laborious decoding of its main content. Explicitation is one of the most recurrent strategies to achieve high relevance in a translated text and it allows the translator to achieve “the maximal interpretive resemblance between source and target text” (Gutt 1991). Through explicitation, contextual effects of a target text are increased which reduces the need of additional processing efforts. Also, as a relevance-based measure*, explicitation shrinks (=reduce) the range of meanings potentially intended by the original author and, in so doing, it links up the receptor’s assumptions with the original writer’s intentions. 47 Instead in the dialogue: “A: Will Sarah be long? B: She is with Frank now” the receiver get more information other than the ones literally expressed, but at the same time he also know the reason why his friend is not coming. Whenever a person sets out to communicate something, s/he automatically communicates the presumption that what s/he is going to say is believed to be optimally relevant to the audience. It is precisely this assumption of optimal relevance which guides the recipient in identifying the speaker’s intended context for a given utterance. How mind is not capable of processing too many information items at a times. The reason why we need to concentrate on a narrow content, which is the content relevant to the task at hand, is that we don’t have infinite processing resources. In order to use our available resources we have to concentrate on small set of assumptions. Simultaneously we can’t process many things. Procedures carried out by the addressee to calculate the speaker intended meaning. 1. The addressee starts the interpretation process from information most readily available to him at that time (accessibility).  2. The addressee will assume that, when combined with the right context, the utterance will yield an interpretation that is worth the effort invested in processing it.  (Not all interpretations are relevant) 3. The recipient will proceed with the interpretation process until he or she arrives at an interpretation that fulfils both conditions: it is derivable without unnecessary effort and yields adequate contextual effects. This 2 condition are sine qua no condition for a preposition to be optimally relevant. 4. The claim to optimal relevance leads the hearer to accept the first interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance as the right, that is, the speaker-intended, interpretation.   In some cases this process of selection the optimal relevance utterance can be successful and in other cases not, because many indirect meaning can be relevant. So it is up to what the politician was thinking at the moment (question: Will we accept…?) In translation, the translator will seek to pursue an optimal interpretive resemblance between the source and the target text. The interpretations that the reader of the source text derives should be the same of the ones the reader of the target text derived. (Il testo fonte e il testo di arrivo attivano gli stessi processi interpretativi). This entails that not only do the two texts share the same meaning, but also the same implicatures and explicatures. 50 This search also rests upon the assumption of the speaker’s compliance to some degree of faithfulness; and, in translation: The speaker guarantees that her utterance is a faithful enough representation of the original: that is, resembles it closely enough in relevant respects (Wilson & Sperber 1988: 137) Translation is intended to restate in one language what someone else said or wrote in another language.  But at the same time the translator has to make the text somehow in interpretative terms. The translator is thus expected to design her translation in such a way that «resembles [the original] closely enough in relevant respects» (Sperber & Wilson 1988: 137) [Il concetto di pertinenza comprende e in un certo senso supera le massime di Grice] Interpretative resemblance must be intended as entailing a degree of sharing implicature and explicature. When we translate a text we have to ask ourselves: are we also rendering all its implicature and explicature correctly, transparently? The concepcion of interpretative resemblance can also turn the notion of translation in to a scalar one: translation can be regarded as more or less accurate and faithful to a grater or lesser degree. Because as a translator we may also choose not to translate and implicature and only concentrate on the surface level. But then it happens that the texts meaning are not completely rendered. Even the representation that the target reader will have of that text is probably partial. So, depending on how you deal with the implicature and the explicatures of a text, you can produce a text that is more or less accurate or more faithful. There could be a large number of translations of the same original, all of which may share the same number of explicatures and implicatures, but which still would be quite different from each other in content since the particular explicatures and implicatures shared would be rather different from one text to another.  This partly recalls what we have said for some exploitation criteria: if you want to explicitate an implicature, you have to be sure which implicature you are explicitating. If you decide to explicitate one implicature then you can produce a text that contain a complete different meaning. According to what you decide to make more explicit in the translation that will wild an enormous influence on the way you represent that text. Context-based problems Here we’re dealing with context-based problems. This translation problems are related to the way we understand and we use context. When we translate a text 51 for a target audience with a cultural background other than that original envisioned by the original writer, the translator is, in effect, quoting the original author out of context. Basically you are putting original author’s thought in a context which is not the same context of the author himself/ herself. These are called secondary communication situations (a situation that you have to translate comes from a different context, so must be related to an original common ground. The readership’s common ground is different). EXAMPLE OF THE ENGLISH-SPANISH TRANSLATION The implicature associated to these utterances can be easily understood by an American citizen, because the American citizen already share the common ground which is necessary to understand the implicature associated with these sentences. The Spanish reader does not probably share the same common ground so he has to accommodate the fact that in USA if you want to be cured you have to move from country to country. So a translation, if it doesn’t mach the same common ground of the original text, would be not so relevant. It would be less relevant and it will turn out in a more effortful cognitive operation. Because you, as a Spanish citizen, do not share the same common ground, then the implicature associated to these prepositions would not be accessible. You have to processing them as they were entirely new information. That’s why in some methodological criteria some decide to explicitate implicature because this makes the implicature more relevant (less effort in order to understand implicature). Schleiermacher observed that the translator can opt for two different strategies: he can leave the write in peace as much as possible and bring the reader to him (the reader has to make the effort to understand what the writer intended meaning is), or he can leave the reader in peace as much as possible and bring the writer to him. Bringing the reader to the original text would correspond to requiring him to process the translation in the context of the original. So there is actually a very huge gap that the reader must reach in order to assess the original context. This is the most effortful operation to make, because the reader has to gather information s/he does not have. And if you don’t get that information you have to get to process that information has entirely new. On the contrary if you bring the writer to the reader that would correspond to adapting the text to the context of the target readers. In this case the translator has to change the text in order to make the original contents more accessible. Opting for the first path, the translator tries to transport the reader to the location of the original text, which is obviously foreign to him (maybe he should provide some cues that may help the reader to better understand the context in which the original text was written). If there is not a clear understanding of the nature of communication problems in translation, the translator may not be aware that significant mismatches in 52 Classification of markers - Segmental (if they are part of the segmental level) and supersegmental (if they concern the supersegmental level: intonation aspects, tone of voice..) - Particles (ehm, uhm) or filler forms (anyway, well…) - Syntactic form classes (on top of that, on the contrary…) Pragmatic marker is a wide class which comprehend other specific sub-class of the discourse particles. Discourse particles are usually monosyllabic and are placed at the beginning of the sentence. When it comes to different languages we have to assess whether the status of this pragmatic markers is the same. This because the morphological structures in the different languages are not the same. Same languages are isolating languages, other are agglutinate languages, others are flexive languages. Obviously the morphological structure can influence or determine the class of pragmatic markers that a language may have, so it is important to see if some pragmatic markers expressed by lexical units in a language have to be translated in a morphological unit. Whenever we analyze pragmatic markers in languages we have to ask ourselves the following questions: 1- Which element fulfill pragmatic functions in the languages of the world? 2- How can these elements be classified in functional terms? 3- How can these elements be classified in formal terms? 4- How do language differ with regard to these functional and formal classes? 5- To what extent can pragmatic markers be considered universal? Polyfunctionality of pragmatic markers The fact that pragmatic markers do not directly contribute to the prepositional meaning of a sentence make it difficult sometimes to ascertain their actual meaning/functions. In the history of many languages, pragmatic markers have developed out of grammaticalization processes. In French to negate a sentence we say: - Je mange> Je ne mange pas (in origin pas meant “step”) Something similar happened in Italian: 55 - Mica in origin means “crumble”: Non mangio mica tutto (informal context) Example of grammaticalisation in Old English: brotherhood: /-hood/ in Old English meant “condition”. Now it only preserve a grammatical meaning boredom: /-dom/ meant “state” manly: /-ly/ meant “body” First a particle is grammaticalized and then it is applied to different words. The pragmatic markers have had the same evolution. When we communicate we do not use language simply to convey a message. We use certain linguistic elements metalinguistically to refer to the text of utterance itself. This relation is explained by our principle of reflexivity. We can also use pragmatic markers to point to contextual and social phenomena outside the utterance or the text. This relation between the speaker and the outer word is explained by a principle of indexicality. A pragmatic marker has a meta-status, and, an understanding of the function of pragmatic markers involves decoding their metalinguistic and metacommunicative character (reflexivity) Lucy (1993): “speech is permeated by reflexive activity as speakers remark on language, report utterances, index and describe aspects of the speech event…” Clark: communication is a joint activity. There is a primary system of communication which represents what people primarily try to do to engage in conversations. There are then other secondary system involved in achieving more local conversational goals. Indexicality - What is the semiotic status of pragmatic markers? - Do they have symbolic, iconic, deictic meaning? - It is believed that also pragmatic markers need to anchor to the context in order to be interpreted… Yet, what do they point to? - They may index positionings (stances, viewpoint) in relation to persons or to the proposition itself. What types of context is relevant for pragmatic markers? - Ideational structure - Action Structure - Exchange structure - Information state 56 - Participant framework Blakemore (1987) has analyzed discourse markers within the framework of Relevance Theory. She proposed the notion of procedural meaning to characterise the type of contribution these elements make to the communicative process. In Blakemore’s view expressions like “but", “moreover”, etc., «are instructions for processing propositions». All in all, all discursive markers are believed to be reflexive to some extent – at least in relation to a propositon – and most of them have indexical status. Heteroglossia - Co-existence of different language varieties within a «single language». - Stratification of any language into different «sociological languages», which are forms for conceptualizing different world views (Bakhtin 1981). - Monologue does not really exist. All language use is for dialogue. Bakhtin: a word, discourse, language or culture undergoes “dialogization” when it become relativized, de-privileged, aware of competing definitions for the same things. Undialogized language is authoritative or absolute. Speakers have options for positioning themselves in communication (alignments and disalignments, evidentiality, epistemic modality, etc.). Of course, naturally, oddly enough, not surprisingly… Speakers may opt for different epistemic positionings depending on their degree of certainty on the truth of a proposition (epistemic modality/ evidentiality). evidentiality: source of information/speaker attitude towards a preposition (a) I have seen a black cat crossing the street (direct evidentiality/first-hand information) (b) A black cat must have crossed the street (conjectural evidentiality/ inferred knowledge (c) They told me a black cat has crossed the street; you are reporting sb else’s experience (indirect evidentiality/second-hand info) These are three different and our personal attitudes towards knowledge. - According to Chafe (1986) some expressive choices are conditional upon speakers’ degree of knowledge. 57 - Strategic uses in a heteroglossic perspective (The strategic heteroglossic function of well is what makes it akin to other expressions such as actually, in fact, as a matter of fact, etc.) Translating pragmatic markers Translation of pragmatic markers can be an interesting testing ground to see what the linguistic status of these markers is in one or more language. But it also compel the translator look more closely at the contextual factors that determine the additional meanings that pragmatic markers can have in specific uses. Translation are rarely literal renderings of the original, because they generally reflect the properties of both source and target languages. It is difficult to opt for the strategy of literal translation because there are so many different parameters that have be taken into account when you translate. Context become a crucial component in the translation process: we have seen that in relevance theory context, which is a psychological construct, is an important component that you can get rid off if you want to make a good translation. In any translation you do not translate word by word but you have to see the word in the context in which it is used. Words contribute to determine the meaning of each single word. In a translation you don’t translate word by word. You have to understand how words are used in the context and you have to understand how words contribute to determine the meaning of each single word (example: phrasal verbs). Basically the criteria you comply with when you translate a text’s portion depend on the translator own judgement: you cannot form your subjective intuition when you translate, because there are also some objective parameters that have to be taken into account. In translating a pragmatic marker, it is important first of all to detect its core meaning (the meaning these expressions would have if they are not used as pragmatic markers). Well has the core meaning of adverb. Start with hypothesis on what the core meaning of the marker is, and then refine it depending on its behavior in a cross-linguistic perspective. The polysemous (=an expression that convey more than one sense) nature of well for example, is reflected in the manifold translations it has in other languages (e.g. Swedish, Dutch, among others). Response particle: Eng. Well> Swed. Ja Emotion expression: Eng. Well> Dutch tja Acceptance: Eng. Well> Dutch Ja One criterion to translate pragmatic markers involve tracing semantic fields: - Dyvik defines a semantic field as a “large, vague, potential, sense of a set of semantically related signs”. They are a group of words related semantically and 60 these meaning forms an organized network. This is also the way words are organized in our head (words in our head are organized in semantic fields). - To be sure that two or more words belong to the same semantic field, it is important to ascertain whether there are consistent translations for these items from the source language to the target and viceversa. If there are consistent one to one translation between English and for example Dutch, then I can trace a semantic field that comprehend specific use of well in English and specific corresponding uses in Dutch. If I can trace a consistent group, this can help me to find the correct translation. - this procedure seems to allow us to show how the pragmatic marker X is related to other pragmatic markers or to other linguistic items such as modal particles or response word, in the same language. First of all when you have to translate a pragmatic marker, you have to assess its core meaning and then you have to compare the other meaning to this core meaning. Because it is the core meaning that gave you the central category to trace the semantic field. It must be said that the range of the functions performed by pragmatic markers is not arbitrary. Maybe some uses came be predicted but not always, because they even depend on domain general constrains or language particular constrains. Each language organizes pragmatic markers in different ways, according to the function they have to perform in discourse. Language-particular observations are therefore necessary to better unveil the linguistic status of pragmatic markers in a given language. If one assumes a heteroglossic perspective to be operating in the use of pragmatic markers, then also factors involving interpersonal relations such as politeness persuasion, among others, have to be taken into account in translation process. For example if you want to use a pragmatic marker in order to mitigate the perlocutionary effect of a preposition then we can try using these markers in order to be more polite. In some cases you may want to persuade your interlocutor. On a balance What the author propose in dealing with pragmatic markers is to work out possible framework that can accomodate the full complexity of the functions of a pragmatic markers. Reflexivity, indexicality and heteroglossia have been proposed as possible criteria to account for the functions of pragmatic markers in an intralinguistic and cross linguistic perspective. - Reflexivity is one of the important properties of pragmatic markers. Reflexivity is at the base of language: we always use language to talk about the language. - Indexicality relates the pragmatic marker to the content. It means that a pragmatic marker cannot be translated without considering the context, because its status as a pragmatic marker is precisely defined by the context in which it is used. 61 And in general all these markers are heteroglossic because they provide strategies for positioning in an utterance in the context of the utterance. They also serve an important epistemic functions; epistemic because they allow speakers to present knowledge in different way depending on the degree of certainty. So, translation can be a method to unravel the meanings and functions of pragmatic markers within a language and also between language, but also a way to assess the degree to which language differ with respect to the status and use of pragmatic markers. If it is true that pragmatic markers are universal (they can be found in every language) their uses and functions differs between language. From a language to another you may have to look at the way pragmatic markers are organized and the type of function they can serve in different communicative context. - Examples of translating the pragmatic level AN ITALIAN TRANSLATION «Each event that is recorded in the accounting records is called a transaction (activated and then it is presented as topic. And the same happen in Italian). Each transaction causes at least two changes on the balance sheet (not counting the changes in the totals and in the date), even when only one side of the balance sheet is affected.» «Qualsiasi evento che venga contabilizzato è chiamato transazione e (the only different here is that translator opts for coordination. In Italian we have longer sentences) qualunque transazione comporta almeno due cambiamenti nello stato patrimoniale (senza contare i cambiamenti nei totali e nella data). Come nel caso in questione, entrambi i cambiamenti possono interessare anche una soltanto delle due sezioni dello stato patrimoniale.» This is a faithful translation of this text because the information structures is respected in the Italian rendering of the text. OTHER ITALIAN TRANSLATION Programme numer 1 appears in the window Nella scala appare il programma numero 1 In English even with intransitive verbs the subject has to be preverbal. This is a semantic constraint related to the meaning of the word. “Programme numer 1” would be more easily interpreted as topic. "Il programma numero 1” would be more easily interpreted as focus. 62 Vagueness Vagueness can be assigned to a single lexical unit: John is tall (how tall?) Mark is old (how old?) He is a child (child can refer to a baby or to sons in generally; it can also be used metaphorically to indicate an immature person) Syntactic vagueness can be found in sentences like these: A 50-year old man was found dead (who killed him) They said it would be better to change policy (who said this?) In translation vagueness is not straightforward to deal with. Because when it comes to translate a text we have to decide whether to leave the term vague or to give a more precise rendering. Translation and vagueness In Italian Construction on which the subject or an agent of an activity is left hidden: « […] sulla governance economica (+) europea l’obiettivo della stabilità e della crescita è comune (+) è però necessario anche condividere gli strumenti tecnici con cui raggiungere questo obiettivo (+) (who wants to reach this goal?) questo perché non è solo importante prefissare (+) un obiettivo da raggiungere (+) ma anche determinante è il modo in cui ci si arriva. (Impersonal subject)» German translation « […] was die (+) wirtschaftliche Governance der Europäischen Union ist das Ziel ein gemeinsames Ziel es ist aber allerdings notwendig auch die technischen Instrumente zu teilen mit denen wir (= noi: the interpreter makes the subject more explicit. This is a risky choice. Because are you sure that the politician meant that) dieses Ziel erzielen wollen (+) und das weil es ist nicht nur wichtig (+) sich eh ein Ziel zu setzen (+) sondern es ist auch von wesentlicher Bedeutung wie wir auch zu diesem Ziel gelangen.»  «He was growing very stout, and his voice was hoarse» (rauca)   Portuguese translation «Tornara-se muito corpulento e enrouquecera.»  (The same action is presented at the beginning= iniziava a diventare rauca) [‘He had become very corpulent and had gotten hoarse’] 65 The Portuguese translator changes the aspectuality of the verb. «Kino's brother Juan Tomás and his fat wife Apolonia and their four children crowded in the door and blocked the entrance»    Portuguese translation «João Tomás, irmão de Kino, a gorda Apolónia, mulher dele, e os quatro filhos vieram das suas cabanas, amontoaram-se à porta, barrando a entrada» [‘Juan Tomás, Kino's brother, the fat Apolonia, his wife, and the four children came from their houses, crowded at the door, blocking the entrance’] Barrando can have two meaning: block the entrance or “grout” the entrance. Concluding remarks 1- How should a translator render implicitly conveyed contents from a language to another? 2- What parameters should s/he consider to ensure the adoption of safe translation choices? 3- How can untranslated (or wrongly translated) implicit contents cause a text to be manipulative if some information is only early accessed by the addressee? In literary text you can realize an unfaithful translation. Instead in the case of political speech or commercial slogan text can became manipulative. 1- Any answer to this question does not entail an objective/generalized criteria. So it is always difficult to say that this rules can be used for all types of texts, all types of contexts. Texts are strongly intrenged with cultural dimensions. This is also what enhance the distance between a source and a target text, and what makes difficult for a translator to really opt for a sound translation choice. In same case you can opt for explicitation strategies. This could be one solution that makes the text more relevant. But on the other hand it is a risky operation, because we can be sure that we are explicitating the correct implicature. Explicitation has both positives and negative aspects: it can reduce manipulative attitude of a text instead in other cases it can enhance it, because when you alter the mental representation of a text you are making the text more manipulative. 2- first of all we have to understand what our potential readers might already know. Because you have to make sure that the text you’re translating preserve the communicative effectiveness of the source text. The source text and the target text should have the same communicative effectiveness. Although the source text it is conceived for a different readership. 66 As noticed by Scarpa: identifying the the type a text belongs to in the source culture is obviously a good start to gauge what aspects of the translation process should be given more attention and what methodology should be adopted to translate the text.  First we have to make a cultural translation of the text and then a linguistic translation of the text. Once we know the culture in which the two text have been produced, then we can move to local/linguistic strategies. If a text is conceived to be persuasive – and, if its persuasiveness hinges on some peculiar linguistic traits – these traits should remain, to a certain extent, unscathed.  EXAMPLE L’Oréal creates Vitalift complete care for men who still want to look good. Skin stimulated (topic: already given information) stimulated regains its vitality. change of state verbs: which presupposed that skin had a vitality before. L’Oréal crea Vitalift 5. Un cuidado completo para hombres que todavía quieren verse bien. Estimula la vitalidad de la piel (focal segment) In the original slogan it is presupposed that men used to have a vital skin, whereas “estimular” does not suggest that the skin used to be vital. A more faithful translation could have been: “recuperar/volver a mostrar su vitalidad” How can untranslated (or wrongly translated) implicit contents cause a text to be manipulative if some information is only partly accessed by the addressee? In the light of the foregoing considerations we should explicitate only those contents that we actually identify as the exact speaker’s intended meaning. If we are not sure about the speaker intentional meaning we should not take the risk. You should focus not only on this implicit meaning but also on how this meaning is provided. The speaker’s intentional meaning can be presented as assertion, as a presupposition, as a topic, an implicature. One consideration concern the content level, another consideration concern the packaging level. So if you translate a presupposition as an assertion or viceversa you are subverting the communicative effect of that text portion. The blessings of safety, prosperity and peace vs per essere benedette da sicurezza, pace e prosperità. 67