Pragmatics 5
Chapter 2: Pragmatics
Chapter Overview and Objectives
This chapter delineates concepts within pragmatics, specifically implicature and speech acts.
After completing this chapter, students should be able to
٪ Analyze the implicature raised by an interchange.
٪ Identify the conversational maxim that raises a particular implicature.
٪ Classify an illocutionary act into one Searle’s six types.
٪ Identify felicity conditions (or their violations) on various types of speech acts.
Key Terms and Concepts
implicature
maxim of quantity
maxim of quality
maxim of relation
representative
directive
question
commissive
performative verb
direct/indirect illocutionary
act
expressed/implied
Commentary on Chapter 2
As presented in this chapter, pragmatics is concerned with two basic questions: how speakers
say things without really saying them, and how context affects interpretation. As a way of
getting students to think about these questions, you might start by asking them to think of
some things they might say in the following situation: You go to a friend’s house in the dead of
winter and find that it’s uncomfortably cold. Use the board or overhead to record about 5-10
responses that students come up with, such as the following:
1. “It’s cold in here.”
2. “Turn up the heat.”
3. “I need a sweater.”
4. “What are you, a polar bear?”
6 Pragmatics
language allows us so many different ways to express these ideas—aren’t (2) and (8) sufficient?
You might then ask students to comment on which responses seem more (or less) polite than
others. For example, (2) and (8) are likely to be rated as relatively less polite than (5) and (7).
This can lead into a discussion of how speakers adjust their speech acts to achieve different
Suggested Answers to Exercises
Exercise A, p 7
1. quality
2. a. quantity
b. Jones didn’t do well.
3. †
4. a. relation
b. quantity
Exercise B, p. 9
1. a. expressive
b. directive
c. †
f. commissive
g. commissive
h. directive
Exercise C, p. 11
1. d
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4. One felicity condition for an ordinary question is that S doesn’t know P. For an exam
question, it is that S knows P.
Exercise D, p. 13
1. a. past tense rather than present tense
b. lacks a first-person subject (implied subject=You)
c. †
d. lacks a first-person subject
Exercise E, p. 15
1. a. (i) declarative, (ii) directive, (iii) indirectly
b. (i) imperative, (ii) offer
c. †
Exercise F, p. 18
1. a. implied
b. expressed
Exercise G, p. 19
1. a. (i) expressed, (ii) nonliteral
b. (i) expressed, (ii) literal
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Exercise H, p. 20
1. a. †
b. †
c. (i) nonexplicit, (ii) indirect, (iii) implied, (iv) literal
d. (i) nonexplicit, (ii) indirect, (iii) expressed, (iv) literal
Supplementary Exercises, pp. 21–24
1. (i) quantity; (ii) Turpentine cures distemper.
2. relation
3. manner (thereby raising the implicature that her mother’s husband is not her father)
4. quantity (thereby raising the implicature that Wally doesn’t want Beaver to know who the
caller was)
5. a. promises and threats
b. commissives
c. They differ in their felicity conditions: Whether the speaker believes the hearer does
Pragmatics 9
14. The inclusion of this sentence prevents the reader from having to draw the implicature
that the smear is normal (or from drawing an implicature other than that intended by the
writer).
Exploratory Exercises, p. 24
1. Answers will vary; examples of indirectness strategies include We ask (questioning the
request), individuals (impersonalizing the request), please (giving deference), this one small
area (minimizing the imposition), we would be grateful (incurring a debt).