Introducing Pragmatics: A Clinical Approach 1032011807, 9781032011806

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‘Comprehensive, innovative, and easy-​to-​use, Introducing Pragmatics is an indispensable resource for scientists and students interested in how real-​life pragmatic language failures shape our understanding of effective communication. Not only does the textbook contain a wealth of material on theory and experimental studies, but also wide-​ranging topics from a multi-​disciplinary perspective.’ Professor Elly Ifantidou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

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Introducing Pragmatics

This innovative, comprehensive course textbook uses a clinical approach to explore pragmatics and pragmatic language skills. Drawing on authentic, real-​ life examples of pragmatic breakdown in children and adults who have developmental or acquired language disorders, Louise Cummings expertly guides readers to core insights and principles for understanding where context and meaning in human communication meet. Key features include:

• • • • •

Chapter-​opening learning objectives and chapter-​closing summaries. Authentic illustrative cases of atypical pragmatic interaction. Exercises for checking knowledge and understanding. Annotated recommended further reading. A detailed glossary of important terms in pragmatics and clinical linguistics.

Aimed equally at undergraduate and graduate students who are coming to pragmatics for the first time, the text discusses the key issues and concepts of this field in a fascinating new way. With a common, easy-​to-​ follow structure across chapters and a wealth of pedagogical resources, this is an essential text for students of linguistics and applied linguistics, communication studies, speech-​language pathology, psychology and cognitive science, and beyond. Louise Cummings is Professor in the Department of English and Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. She is author or editor of many books, including Pragmatic Disorders, Clinical Linguistics, Clinical Pragmatics, The Cambridge Handbook of Communication Disorders, Pragmatics: A Multidisciplinary Perspective and The Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia. She is also Editor of the Routledge Research in Speech-Language Pathology book series.

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Introducing Pragmatics A Clinical Approach Louise Cummings

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Designed cover image: © Getty Images | gremlin First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Louise Cummings The right of Louise Cummings to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​01182-​0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​01180-​6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​17756-​2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003177562 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

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Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Language breakdown as a route into pragmatics  1 Pragmatics in everyday communication  2 Pragmatic language disorders  5 Pragmatic disorders illustrated  7

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1 Speech acts

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2 Implicatures

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1.1 Introduction  13 1.2 How to realize a speech act  15 1.3 A new approach to meaning  16 1.4 Happy and unhappy performatives  19 1.5 Explicit and implicit performatives  21 1.6 Saying and doing  22 1.7 Searle on speech acts  25 1.8 Indirect speech acts  28 Suggestions for further reading  31 Questions  32

2.1 Introduction  35 2.2 Grice and the cooperative principle  37 2.3 The cooperative principle and implicature  39 2.4 Types of implicature  42 2.5 Properties of implicatures  45 2.6 Relevance theory  49 Suggestions for further reading  53 Questions  54

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3 Presuppositions

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4 Deixis

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5 Figurative language

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3.1 Introduction  57 3.2 The economic rationale for presupposition  58 3.3 Presupposition triggers  60 3.4 Properties of presuppositions  62 3.5 Presuppositions in the real world  65 Suggestions for further reading  70 Questions  71

4.1 Introduction  74 4.2 Person and social deixis  76 4.3 Place deixis  81 4.4 Time deixis  83 4.5 Discourse deixis  86 4.6 Anaphora  88 Suggestions for further reading  91 Questions  92

5.1 Introduction  94 5.2 Idioms  96 5.3 Metaphors  100 5.4 Irony  104 5.5 Hyperbole  106 5.6 Proverbs  109 Suggestions for further reading  114 Questions  115

6 Politeness

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7 Topic management

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6.1 Introduction  118 6.2 Brown and Levinson on politeness  122 6.3 Politeness and face in clinical settings  129 6.4 Criticisms of Brown and Levinson  134 Suggestions for further reading  137 Questions  138

7.1 Introduction  140 7.2 Topic management in clinical settings  142 7.2.1 7.2.2 7.2.3 7.2.4

Topic selection  142 Topic introduction  144 Topic development  146 Topic termination  148

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Contents  ix 7.3 Analysing topic management in conversation  151 7.4 Analysing topic management in narration  155 Suggestions for further reading  161 Questions  162

8 Clinical pragmatics

8.1 Introduction  165 8.2 The communication cycle  167 8.3 Cognition and the communication cycle  173 8.4 Theory of mind  175 8.5 Executive functions  178 Suggestions for further reading  183 Questions  183

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Answers

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Glossary Bibliography Appendix Index

197 211 218 219

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Preface

This book introduces readers to pragmatic concepts by exploring how these concepts unfold in the interactions of speakers and hearers with pragmatic language disorders. It will be argued that pragmatic principles on the use of language are most clearly brought into focus when they are misapplied by people who did not develop knowledge of these principles in the first place or who acquired this knowledge only to lose it through illness, injury, or disease. For these individuals, pragmatic language disorders pose a considerable barrier to effective communication. The communicative struggle of these children and adults represents a valuable opportunity for students to explore pragmatic aspects of language. In standard textbook treatments, pragmatic concepts are first outlined and then illustrated through one or more examples. Illustration has often taken place in contrived exchanges; in recent years, naturalistic conversational contexts have been increasingly used. Speakers and hearers in these exchanges are presumed to operate according to normative principles within a universal pragmatic competence. In this way, the speaker who ostentatiously flouts the maxims of quantity and manner is presumed to do so because this is a conventional means of generating implicatures of an utterance. But what happens if a speaker lacks the pragmatic resources that are needed to comply with these normative principles? This is the situation that children and adults with pragmatic language disorders experience when they engage in communication. For these language users, communication often ends in failure. It is the central thesis of this book that we can use this failure to learn more about the pragmatics of language than a more traditional examination of pragmatics makes possible. Speakers and hearers who cannot comply with the pragmatic demands of conversation force pragmatic behaviours into sharp focus for the analyst or, in this case, the reader who wants to learn about pragmatics. This perspective is lost or is at least partially occluded from view when speakers and hearers with intact language skills exercise their pragmatic competence during communication. Who should use this book? This book has been written for readers who are approaching the study of pragmatics for the first time. Most readers will be students at university who are studying pragmatics as

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xii Preface part of a degree course in linguistics, English language, or communication studies. It is also suitable reading for students of all levels in cognate disciplines like psychology who want an overview of pragmatics without having to navigate complex theoretical issues that lie beyond their current learning needs. A very important readership are students, clinicians, and researchers in speech-​language pathology. It is speech-​ language pathologists who assess and treat children and adults with pragmatic language disorders. For this to be possible, these clinicians must be able to characterize pragmatic aspects of language with accuracy. This volume addresses all pragmatic aspects of language that speech-​language pathologists must be adept at identifying and describing as part of their clinical practice. Finally, this book has several key features that will benefit students and instructors:

• The book contains exercises at the end of each chapter. Answers

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accompany these exercises and are a valuable resource for students and time-​pressed instructors. The exercises give readers the opportunity to check their understanding and knowledge of pragmatic concepts and principles before progressing to new chapters and topics. Text boxes are used at the end of each chapter to summarize the main issues addressed. Bullet points are used for ease of reference. Suggestions for further reading occur at the end of each chapter. These readings are annotated and contain a mix of introductory and higher-​level readings. A glossary of key terms is provided. Readers do not need to consult other sources to understand what important terms and expressions mean. A text box at the start of each chapter sets out in bullet-​point form the learning objectives for the chapter.

These features are intended to support the learning of students and to develop their understanding of pragmatics. If students emerge from the reading of this volume with a sound knowledge of pragmatics and an appreciation of what it means to have a pragmatic language disorder, then the aims of the author will have been achieved. Louise Cummings Hong Kong November 2022

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Acknowledgements

There are several people whose assistance I wish to acknowledge. I particularly want to thank Ze’ev Sudry, formerly Editor in English Language and Linguistics at Routledge, for responding so positively to the proposal for this book. I am indebted to all the individuals who have participated in my research over the years. Their contribution and the assistance of their spouses and other family members have been invaluable and have provided me with much of the data that appears in this volume. I also wish to acknowledge the Faculty of Humanities of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University for its funding of my research and PRO-​ED Inc. for its permission to reproduce the Cookie Theft picture. Finally, I have been supported by family members and friends who are too numerous to mention individually. I am grateful to them for their kind words of encouragement during my many months of work on this volume.

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Introduction

1.1  Language breakdown as a route into pragmatics This book is about pragmatics, the branch of linguistics that studies the use of language in context by speakers and hearers. A novel perspective to the study of pragmatics is adopted. In most textbooks, pragmatic concepts like speech acts and implicatures are described and then illustrated, most often by means of contrived examples. This approach certainly appears to be effective. Readers exposed to this instructional approach do seem to grasp the main features of pragmatic concepts. Also, authors who systematically describe and illustrate the core concepts of pragmatics according to this approach do appear to convey knowledge of pragmatics to readers. But is this approach as effective as it initially appears to be? Or is there a better route into the study of pragmatics? I will argue in this book that there is a more effective way in which readers can be introduced to the pragmatics of language. That way involves considering what happens when pragmatic language skills do not develop normally or break down after they have been acquired. This situation is a lived reality for many millions of children and adults worldwide with pragmatic language disorders. It is often said that we do not appreciate all sorts of things in life –​ health and wellbeing, family members, the natural world around us –​ until we no longer have them. When it comes to language, this statement is certainly true. Language is the vehicle through which we express our thoughts and desires, negotiate relationships with others, and reflect on situations that cause us joy, sadness and a wide range of other emotions. Yet, how many of us ever stop to think about what it must be like not to have the language skills that make these everyday activities possible? This book will encourage readers to do just that –​to assume the perspective of speakers and hearers who lack certain language skills –​with a view to developing a deeper appreciation of what it means to know and use language. Language is a very broad construct with many components that exceed the scope of this book. The language skills that are central to this volume relate specifically to the pragmatics of language. As the discussion unfolds, we will see that this aspect of language is very wide-​ranging DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-1

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2 Introduction in nature, encompassing everything from the use and appreciation of humour to the development of topic in conversation. As we embark on our exploration of pragmatics, this introduction has two main aims. The first aim is to set out the components of pragmatics that will be examined in separate chapters of the book. For ease of discussion, these components are organized according to eight chapters. Four chapters address pragmatic concepts and four chapters examine applications of pragmatics. The use of separate chapters is not intended to imply that the content of these chapters is mutually exclusive. Pragmatics weaves its way through our most fundamental uses of language and no separation of its elements is possible or desirable. The second aim of this introduction is to characterize the types of children and adults for whom pragmatic difficulties pose a significant barrier to effective communication. Many of these children and adults have conditions like autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia that are widely recognized by the public even if they are not always well understood. If the purpose of this book is to be fulfilled, an examination of these conditions must lead to discussion of how they can throw light on the pragmatic aspects of language that it is our concern to explain. This will also be an integral part of the second aim of this introduction.

1.2  Pragmatics in everyday communication Human communication involves a complex interrelationship between the words and sentences that we utter and the contexts in which these linguistic elements are used. For the most part, speakers and hearers can competently negotiate this interrelationship. Speakers know, for example, the contexts in which a direct speech act (e.g. Open the window!) is warranted over an indirect speech act (e.g. This room needs fresh air), while hearers have little difficulty in establishing when utterances are used non-​literally to humorous effect (e.g. Would you like a size 20 in this dress? Would you like a black eye?). So much of everyday communication involves fine-​grained judgements about the meaning of utterances that it is remarkable that misunderstandings are not the norm rather than the exception. The pragmatic competence that allows us to make these judgements during communication is the focus of this book. It is this competence that is pressed into use every time we try to establish what a speaker meant by an utterance in a specific context. This book examines the following pragmatic concepts: speech acts, implicatures, presupposition, and deixis. Each of these concepts captures an aspect of our pragmatic competence that theorists in pragmatics have considered significant enough to subject to scrutiny and reflection. It was John Austin and latterly John Searle who encouraged us to think about the different ways in which utterances in language can be used to perform actions or speech acts. These philosophers of language observed that while many utterances describe states of affairs in the world, there

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Introduction  3 are many other utterances that do not serve a descriptive purpose. These utterances may be used to threaten and warn, to make promises and apologies, and to extend compliments and congratulations. For a speech act to be used appropriately or felicitously, speakers must fulfil certain conditions –​so-​called felicity conditions –​on the use of the act. We will see in Chapter 1 that these conditions specify who must say and do want, in what circumstances, and with certain mental states and intentions in mind. The concept of implicature was proposed by Herbert Paul Grice, who is widely considered to be the founding father of modern pragmatics. Grice observed that an exchange of utterances is essentially an exchange of intentions between speakers and hearers. We can only truly be said to understand what a speaker meant by an utterance, Grice contended, when we have identified the intention that motivated the speaker to produce the utterance. We will see in Chapter 2 that Grice posited a framework consisting of the cooperative principle and maxims that guides conversational participants as they express and recover the intentions that lie at the heart of all verbal and non-​verbal communication. We will also see the different types of implied meaning that can arise when maxims are violated, not observed or flouted (overtly breached for a communicative purpose), and how some forms of implied meaning are dependent on context while others arise from the use of certain words. Implied meanings or implicatures of utterances are also a source of some of our most creative uses of language, including metaphor, irony, and understatement. Presuppositions are shared knowledge between speakers and hearers that is assumed in the act of speaking. When a speaker utters The house on the hill is on sale again, he presupposes not only that there is a house on the hill but also that it has been on sale before. Both presuppositions are part of the shared knowledge and beliefs that exist between the speaker and hearer. In Chapter 3, we will see that presuppositions can be triggered by certain syntactic constructions and words. In the utterance above, for example, a definite noun phrase (the house on the hill) and an iterative expression (again) are triggers for the two presuppositions in this utterance. We will also see that presuppositions serve an important role in communication in that they reduce the amount of information that must be explicitly communicated to a hearer. Presuppositions can also be exploited by speakers who can use them to trap hearers into making unwelcome commitments. For example, the questions Have you stopped cheating on your wife? and Are you a racist or a misogynist? force a hearer to admit that he did at one time cheat on his wife and that he is either a racist or a misogynist. Language is situated in a multifaceted context that has spatial, temporal and social dimensions. Naturally, speakers need to ‘point’ to these aspects of context in order to convey messages to hearers. This pointing function is called deixis and is a key pragmatic feature of language. Speakers can use words of different grammatical categories to

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4 Introduction achieve deixis. The temporal context of an utterance can be identified using demonstrative determiners (I will visit Paris this month), adjectives (Mike lost his car keys last week) and adverbs (Molly was ill yesterday). Some grammatical parts can perform more than one deictic function. As well as pointing to the temporal context of an utterance, demonstrative determiners may also be used by speakers to locate an utterance in its spatial context (I will walk home this way). In Chapter 4, we will see that in some languages, aspects of the social context of an utterance are encoded in the pronoun system of a language, such as when French speakers use vous and tu to refer to speakers of higher and lower social standing, respectively (also, Sie and du in German). We will also see in this chapter how English speakers can encode social deixis, and how writers can use deixis to point to parts of a written text (discourse deixis). Other pragmatic concepts that do not have a dedicated chapter will also be addressed. We have already seen how speakers can use deictic expressions to refer to features in the extra-​ linguistic context of an utterance. Within language, certain linguistic expressions can also be used to refer. Speakers can use pronouns such as she to refer to an antecedent in an earlier spoken and written utterance (Mary loved the dress. She decided to buy it). So-​called anaphoric reference is vital in achieving cohesion across extended spoken and written utterances. The same is true of cataphoric reference where a hearer must look ahead in spoken and written discourse to identify the referent of a pronominal expression (Although we all hate them, taxes are an essential part of life). The ways in which speakers may use linguistic expressions to refer to parts of language is also examined in Chapter 4. The first four chapters in the book address the main concepts of pragmatics. There then follows three chapters that examine applications of these concepts and other pragmatic features of language in conversation and discourse. Figurative language is a feature of everyday communication between speakers and hearers and is not the preserve of authors of literary works. Chapter 5 will examine the use of non-​literal language in several figurative forms including metaphor, irony, hyperbole, understatement, and idioms. One of the most challenging judgements that speakers must make is how to negotiate the face needs (need for respect, approval, etc.) of different hearers. In Chapter 6, we examine the face work that is the basis of politeness in conversation and the difficulties that can arise when speakers misjudge a hearer’s face needs. Topic management draws on a wide range of pragmatic language skills such as the ability to make relevant, informative contributions to the development of a topic. In Chapter 7, we consider how speakers and hearers jointly develop topics in conversation and terminate topics that no longer serve the interests of participants. This chapter also addresses information management, repair of conversational breakdowns, and cohesion and coherence in discourse. Finally, Chapter 8 uses the concept of a communication cycle to understand how pragmatic disorders can arise at any point in communication.

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Introduction  5 This includes at the very outset of communication when a speaker forms a communicative intention. It also includes pragmatic enrichments of the logical form of an utterance during language decoding and the use of this enriched logical form to recover the implicature of an utterance. The pragmatics of language may also be impaired on account of motor and sensory processes that compromise the production and reception, respectively, of the speech signal. Chapter 8 takes a cognitive approach to pragmatic disorders by relating these disorders to cognitive skills such as theory of mind (ToM) and executive functions. These cognitive skills underpin communication, and their impairment disrupts pragmatic aspects of language. This chapter concludes by examining experimental studies that demonstrate a relationship between ToM and executive function performance, and pragmatic language skills in children and adults with clinical conditions.

1.3  Pragmatic language disorders Most speakers and hearers have little difficulty negotiating the pragmatics of verbal and non-​ verbal communication. Misunderstandings, miscommunications and other communicative breakdowns can, and do, occur. However, they are normally quickly resolved with no detrimental effects for speakers and hearers. But imagine a scenario in which almost every communicative attempt leads to failure, with neither speakers or hearers achieving their communicative goals. This is exactly the situation that confronts children and adults with pragmatic language disorders. Individuals with pragmatic impairment present with complex language disorders that are assessed and treated by speech and language therapists (or speech-​language pathologists in the US). While some of these disorders can be remediated or at least successfully managed, all pose significant obstacles to communication for the children and adults who have them. In this section, some introductory remarks are made about pragmatic language disorders in preparation for the discussion in section 1.4 of how these disorders may be used to shed light on the pragmatic concepts and principles that are central to this book. When speech and language therapists discuss pragmatic language disorders, they generally recognize three important distinctions. The first distinction is between a developmental and an acquired pragmatic language disorder. When a child fails to acquire knowledge of the pragmatics of language during the developmental period, a developmental pragmatic disorder is the result. Children with genetic syndromes like Down syndrome have an intellectual disability that compromises their ability to learn pragmatic aspects of language. Intellectual disability may also be found in children with ASD, a neurodevelopmental disorder. But even in the absence of intellectual disability, ASD adversely affects children’s acquisition of pragmatic language skills. Both types of children have a developmental pragmatic disorder. But the nature and extent of that

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6 Introduction disorder can vary considerably, even among children with the same medical condition. While a restricted range of speech acts may be the most significant pragmatic impairment in one child with Down syndrome, in another child with Down syndrome a lack of cohesion in discourse may chiefly compromise communication. For many other individuals, pragmatic language skills are acquired normally in the developmental period only to become impaired in adulthood as a result of injury, illness, or disease. These events can result in an acquired pragmatic disorder. An adult may sustain a traumatic brain injury in a road traffic accident and experience impairment of his or her ability to develop topics of conversation as a result. A brain tumour, a stroke (or cerebrovascular accident), or a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s disease may disrupt an array of pragmatic language skills. Adults who develop these conditions may be unable to interpret non-​literal language, make relevant and informative contributions to conversation, or recognize a hearer’s face needs. Some of these pragmatic difficulties can improve, for example, following recovery from a stroke. Other pragmatic difficulties may worsen with the progression of disease, for example, in a neurodegenerative disorder. The communication difficulties that arise from these pragmatic impairments can lead to social withdrawal and isolation, compromise academic performance, and impact negatively upon an individual’s occupational functioning. The second distinction recognized by speech and language therapists is that between an expressive and a receptive pragmatic disorder. When a speaker is unable to formulate utterances in accordance with the pragmatic requirements of a communicative context, the speaker may be said to have an expressive pragmatic disorder. The speaker who makes irrelevant contributions to a conversation or who cannot represent shared knowledge in the presuppositions of an utterance has an expressive pragmatic disorder. An impairment of expressive pragmatics may occur alone or in combination with a receptive pragmatic disorder. The speaker who has a receptive pragmatic disorder may not be able to establish the speech act performed by an utterance or interpret an utterance that contains a metaphor or an idiom. So, a request of the form Would you mind closing the door? may be treated as a question, while a hearer may understand that Bill physically hit a sack rather than went to bed when they hear the utterance Bill hit the sack early. Expressive and receptive pragmatic deficits can have a significant impact on everyday communication and must be separately assessed and treated by speech and language therapists. The third distinction that speech and language therapists recognize is that between a primary and a secondary pragmatic disorder. A child or adult with a primary pragmatic disorder may be unable to use pragmatic features of language even though they have the syntactic and semantic structures that would permit them to do so. For example, an adult with ASD may be able to use subject pronoun-​auxiliary verb inversion to form a question (e.g. Can you go to Fred’s party?) and yet not be able to

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Introduction  7 use this same syntactic structure to perform a speech act of request (e.g. Can you tell me the time?). Often, however, pragmatic language skills are impaired not because of any deficit in pragmatics per se but because other language and cognitive abilities are compromised. This results in a secondary pragmatic disorder. An adult with aphasia who has a word-​ finding difficulty may be unable to contribute to the development of a topic of conversation because of this language impairment. Also, an adult with a head injury and executive function deficits (a type of cognitive impairment) may be unable to relate events in a story in the correct order or describe stages in performing an everyday task like making a meal. In this case, it is cognitive deficits in planning and organization that result in impaired pragmatics. The three distinctions discussed in this section will appear throughout the book as we examine the difficulties that are experienced by children and adults with pragmatic language disorders. To get us started on this examination, and what it can reveal about the pragmatics of language, we analyse in the next section some language from adults with pragmatic disorders.

1.4  Pragmatic disorders illustrated The argument of this book is that we can gain a unique perspective on the pragmatics of language by examining what happens when pragmatics becomes impaired. This perspective permits us not only to see how disruptive pragmatic disorders are to the communicative efforts of those who have them but also to appreciate the nature and extent of the concepts and principles that constitute the pragmatics of language. To this end, we examine in this section some of the different ways in which pragmatic language skills can break down in the presence of illness, injury and disease. As will be the case throughout the book, only authentic language (not contrived examples) will be used to illustrate pragmatic impairments. The language to be examined in this section was collected in August 2018 as part of the author’s research into language in adults with neurodegenerative disorders. All participants in this study were audio-​recorded in their homes as they engaged in conversation with the author and performed several language tasks. The following extracts were produced by a man of 74;8 years who had motor neurone disease (MND), a terminal neurodegenerative disorder in which there is progressive muscle weakness along with cognitive deficits and other symptoms. In the picture description task, the man was asked to describe the Cookie Theft picture from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass et al., 2001). The picture depicts a mother and her two children, a boy and a girl, in the kitchen of their house. The mother is drying a dish at the sink. However, she is daydreaming and has not realized that she has left the tap of the sink on and that water is overflowing. Behind her back, her two children are engaged in mischief.

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8 Introduction The boy has climbed onto a stool so that he can take cookies from the cookie jar in a high cupboard. The stool is rocking precariously. The girl, presumably his sister, has her arm outstretched to receive cookies from him (see Figure 4.1 in Chapter 4). In response to the instruction ‘Describe what is going on in the picture’, the man with MND produced the following description (the symbol (.) indicates a micro-​pause while (2:08) indicates a timed pause in seconds): Picture description task: ‘well (.) the mother is washing the dishes when she’s forgot to turn off the tap the water’s overflowing on the floor the wee boy is up on a stool (.) trying to get down the biscuits the girl’s reaching up her hand but he’s going to fall (.) off the stool (2:08) what ah that’s about it is it’ In a sentence generation task, participants were given one, two or three words and were asked to put them into a brief sentence. The order of the words was not important. The man with MND produced the following sentence for the words cold and winter: Sentence generation task: ‘when the cold weather comes (.) you know that winter’s approaching birds are needing feeding they’re hopping about more friendly they’re more friendly at the back door’ Participants in the study were also told a 100-​word story about two farmers, Sam and Fred, who had farmed together for 30 years (see Appendix). They were asked to recall the story immediately and then again at the end of the test session (delayed recall). The story related how the farmers, who were brothers, had worked hard on their crops for many days only to have them destroyed in a storm. The storm also ripped open the door of the barn, causing sheep and cows to escape. The animals were returned to the barn by midnight thanks to the efforts of people from the local village. The man with MND recalled the events of the story as follows: Delayed story recall: ‘was it Fred and the brother (.) they were working at hay or something in the in the fields they wanted a bit of good weather but the, the rain came on and (.) put every made everything into a mess when the farmers come then to help them when neighbours come to help them em (4:44) at what was after that (2:89) they lost, they lost a lot of the crop I think they lost a lot of their crops (1:91) not so sure after that’ It is noteworthy that across all three tasks, this participant with MND produced well-​formed, meaningful utterances. Accordingly, his structural

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Introduction  9 language skills (e.g. syntax) are largely intact. His speech production is intelligible and so phonetics (the articulation of speech sounds) is also an area of strength. But where his performance does begin to break down is in pragmatic and discourse aspects of language. If we return to the picture description task, this participant succeeds in describing main actions in the picture –​the mother is drying dishes, the boy is trying to get biscuits, etc. To this extent, he does capture what is ‘going on’ in the picture. But he also omits considerable detail, much of which relates to the mental states of the characters in the scene. For example, although he accurately states that the mother has forgotten to switch off the tap, he fails to account for why this has occurred –​the mother is clearly daydreaming and is thinking about other things. Also, he neglects to attach any significance to the young girl’s gesture to her brother. The girl clearly wants her brother to be as quiet as possible in order that they can avoid detection by their mother. It is these mental states that explain the motivations of characters and allow us to draw the causal and temporal inferences that relate events within the scene. For example, it is because the mother is daydreaming that she has forgotten to switch off the tap, and it is because she has forgotten to switch off the tap that the sink is overflowing with water. This short extract illustrates two concepts that are of considerable importance to pragmatics. The first is ToM, the cognitive ability to attribute mental states to one’s own mind and to the minds of others. Mental states include cognitive mental states (e.g. knowledge and beliefs) and affective mental states (e.g. happiness and anger). ToM is integral to utterance interpretation. It was Grice who stated that we can only truly be said to understand what a speaker means by an utterance when we have established the communicative intention (mental state) that prompted the speaker to produce the utterance. ToM is also important to non-​verbal communication. To understand the gesture of the young girl in the Cookie Theft picture, we must be able to establish the communicative intention that prompted her to produce this gesture. While it may be too strong to claim that this participant with MND has no ToM skills (he clearly does), there can be little doubt that each character’s actions are described in a way that makes little reference to the mental states that motivated them. The result is a factually accurate, but nonetheless superficial, representation of the events in the picture. By way of comparison, consider the following description of the same Cookie Theft picture. It is produced by a 72-​year-​old woman. She is one of 104 healthy adults who participated in the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer and Related Dementias Study (Becker et al., 1994): Picture description task: ‘Um the boy reaching uh standing on a stool which is tipping (.) with one foot over the um edge of the stool (.) and his heel is on the the heel of that foot is on the toe of his other foot (.) um he’s taking

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10 Introduction a cookie out of the cookie jar (.) and has one in his left hand too (.) looks as if he’s going to hand it to his sister who has her arm up (.) she has her finger (.) in front of her face (.) um looks as if she’s laugh saying be quiet (.) and the mother is at the the sister is standing on the floor (.) the mother is at the kitchen sink drying a dish a plate (.) the water is running over eh spilling over from the sink onto the floor (.) It’s running full tilt out of the tap (.) um the mother is not looking (.) she’s facing away from everything (.) um she has a dish cloth in her right hand dish towel in her right hand (.) um you can see outside (.) there’s a cup, two cups and a plate on the counter beside (.) so she’s either I guess she’s finished washing those maybe (.) um she’s standing with one foot flat on the floor (.) and the next foot up as if she’s standing on the toe not resting on her heel’ This description is much richer in terms of the mental states that give purpose to the actions of the characters in the scene. The participant with MND reported that the mother had forgotten to turn off the tap but did not go on to say why this had happened, namely, the mother was distracted. This 72-​year-​old woman, however, succeeds in signalling this mental state by stating that the mother is not looking, and that she is facing away from everything. This woman is also attentive to the mental states of the young girl in the scene. The girl is gesturing to her brother to be quiet because she wants her brother’s theft of the cookies to pass undetected by her mother. This gesture and the mental state that prompts it are noticeably absent from the description produced by the participant with MND. This leads us to the second important concept in pragmatics illustrated by this picture description task. A description of the picture that appeals to the motivations of its characters requires the participant with MND to go beyond information explicitly depicted in the scene and draw a range of inferences. Some of these inferences are causal in nature such as when the participant inferred that the sink was overflowing because the mother had forgotten to turn off the tap. Other inferences are temporal such as the inference that the boy must have climbed onto the stool before it began to rock precariously. Still other inferences concern mental states such as the inference that the mother must be daydreaming based on her absent facial expression and the fact that she has not noticed that the sink is overflowing. The ability to draw inferences lies at the heart of pragmatics and is integral to picture description and other discourse tasks (e.g. story telling). Inferences are also vital to utterance interpretation. This is because communicative intentions are seldom explicitly stated by speakers. Rather, these intentions must be reconstructed through inferences based on the linguistic content of the utterance, the intonation and facial expression of the speaker, and much else besides. This participant with MND draws a mental state inference when he states that the mother has forgotten to turn off the tap. Other inferences, however, are

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Introduction  11 not evident in the description such as the inference that the girl is holding up her hand to get cookies. Their absence contributes to the impression that the speaker has succeeded in capturing events in the scene, albeit rather superficially. So far, an examination of the language used by this participant with MND has provided us with a context in which to discuss ToM and a range of inferences that are used in utterance interpretation and discourse. But we are not done. The sentence generation task provides another context in which to examine this participant’s pragmatic language skills. The task requires respondents to produce a brief sentence that contains target words. The verbal instruction to be brief explicitly signals a pragmatic parameter on the participant’s response, namely, to avoid unnecessary language. Notwithstanding this instruction, the participant with MND produces a sentence that contains 26 words when, in fact, he had fulfilled the requirements of the task after the first 10 words. Grice’s manner maxim is violated by this response. Were it not for this participant’s other pragmatic difficulties, we might be inclined to conclude that he had simply forgotten or misunderstood the verbal instruction that accompanied the task or wanted to impress the examiner by producing a particularly lengthy sentence! Either way, this participant’s use of unnecessary language illustrates how a structurally well-​formed response can nonetheless fall short of pragmatic criteria on the use of language. The final discourse production task presented above is delayed story recall. The participant’s story omits information (sheep and cows escaped), repeats information (lost a lot of the crops), and contains false information (farmers came to help them). Events are also related in the wrong order. We are told, for example, that neighbours came to help the farmers before we are informed that their crops were lost. We described in section 1.2 how information management is a key component of pragmatic competence. But on this occasion at least, it seems clear that this participant’s difficulties with information are not a primary pragmatic deficit but are related to the decay of memory that has occurred between the story being related at the start of the test session and recalled at the end of the session. To this extent, problems with the management of information are a secondary pragmatic deficit that is related to memory loss between story presentation and story recall. If these same difficulties with information were apparent during a story recall task in which pictures served as visual prompts to the participant, we might have to revise our assessment of his pragmatic difficulties and conclude that they are indicative of a primary pragmatic impairment after all. This section has used language from an adult with pragmatic impairment to examine several concepts of importance to pragmatics. We have seen the central role of ToM in establishing the mental states, including communicative intentions, of speakers. The inferences that are needed to recover these intentions are only one type of inference that speakers

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12 Introduction and hearers must be adept at using. To participate in storytelling, conversation and other forms of discourse, speakers and hearers must also be able to use and understand causal and temporal inferences. We have also seen how speakers aim to produce not only well-​formed and meaningful utterances, but also utterances that fulfil discourse expectations relating to the length and informativeness of their contributions. These expectations are captured in Gricean maxims of quality, quantity, relation, and manner, the last of which was violated by the speaker with MND who produced an excessively lengthy utterance during the sentence generation task. Finally, we witnessed how problems with information management can arise when a cognitive function like memory is challenged. In a delayed recall task, the speaker with MND omitted and repeated information, reported inaccurate information, and related information in the wrong order. These informational difficulties illustrated the important contribution of our thinking skills or cognition to pragmatics. In short, a richer account of pragmatic concepts is possible when these concepts are examined in the context of pragmatic impairment than in the standard approach adopted by textbooks. Pragmatic concepts in this novel perspective assume their true cognitive character. The inferences that make speakers’ intentions manifest to hearers, and events in a story meaningful to listeners and readers are not portrayed as formal operations between propositions, but as cognitive processes that can function flexibly in different contexts, even if they do not always do so (neurodegenerative disorders are a case in point). This novel perspective encourages us to interrogate the full range of factors (linguistic, cognitive, social, etc.) that can influence how pragmatic concepts are used. For example, a relevant social explanation of the extended response of the speaker with MND during the sentence generation task may indeed be that he was seeking to impress the examiner by providing the fullest response possible, notwithstanding instructions to provide a brief sentence. Finally, this new perspective allows us to see that knowledge of pragmatics is not an all-​or-​nothing affair. Even a speaker who struggles to be informative or relevant, as the speaker with MND was on occasion, is still exercising pragmatic competence, albeit in non-​normative ways. We can learn a lot about this important rational capacity if we closely examine those ways. This will be the guiding aim of this book.

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1 Speech acts

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: • • • • • •

Understand the central tenets of speech act theory as proposed and developed by John L. Austin and John R. Searle. Appreciate the dominant view of meaning that existed prior to the work of Austin and how speech act theory marked a significant departure from this view. Be able to characterize performative utterances and describe their felicity conditions. Understand what it means for a performative to be happy or felicitous and unhappy or infelicitous. Be familiar with the taxonomy of speech acts proposed by Austin and subsequently developed by Searle. Know what an indirect speech act is, and appreciate the conditions under which speakers produce or use them and hearers understand them.

1.1 Introduction Recently, I had an experience that illustrates perfectly how linguistic utterances may be used by a speaker with a communicative purpose or goal in mind. But on this occasion, that purpose or goal was not successfully established by the hearer. I had completed an audio recording of an elderly gentleman with Parkinson’s disease in his home. It had been a lengthy session and we were both quite fatigued by the end of it. The man had considerable mobility problems. He attempted to get out of his armchair when the recording was concluded. He said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on’. Observing his physical struggle to get up from his chair and hoping to encourage him to remain seated, I said, ‘Oh, it’s fine, I’ve got water here’. I had assumed the man was displaying customary hospitality by offering to make me tea or coffee. I did not want him to risk a fall and so I declined his offer (or, what I thought was an offer) by saying that I had water with me that I could drink. In fact, he was making no such offer at DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-2

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14  Speech acts all and only wanted to make a cup of coffee for himself! The certainty of my initial interpretation of his utterance was quickly replaced by a quiet chuckle when I realized just how wrong I had been. This scenario vividly illustrates how speakers and hearers are doing something quite complex when they exchange linguistic utterances in conversation. They are using these utterances to fulfil a range of purposes or actions. Pragmatists describe these actions as speech acts. Speech acts include making statements and promises, extending condolences and apologies, and issuing threats and warnings. On this occasion, I misunderstood the speech act that the gentleman intended his utterance to perform. I had thought he was extending an offer of tea or coffee to me when, in fact, he was merely committing to putting the kettle on to make some coffee for himself. My misunderstanding of this man’s speech act was simply that, a misunderstanding based on my experience of how many earlier visits to clients in their homes had unfolded. Neither he nor I had used any speech act inappropriately in the exchange. The same is not true, however, of children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Below, a nine-​year-​old boy with Asperger’s syndrome (a form of ASD) is shown a picture of a mother and a girl (Loukusa et al., 2007). The girl is wearing a dress and she is running. There are muddy puddles on the road. The girl has just stepped in a puddle and the picture shows the mud splashing. The following scenario is read aloud to the boy: Scenario: The girl with her best clothes on is running on the dirty road. The mother shouts to the girl: ‘Remember that you have your best clothes on!’ The boy is then asked the question, ‘What does the mother mean?’ He responds, ‘You have your best clothes on.’ Clearly, this boy with Asperger’s syndrome has failed to recognize that the mother’s utterance is issuing a warning to the girl to keep her dress clean. The boy’s repetition of the mother’s utterance indicates that he has failed to grasp the speech act that this utterance was intended to perform. But this is quite a different problem of interpretation to the simple misunderstanding that unfolded between me and the elderly man with Parkinson’s disease. For while I know the conditions (so-​called ‘felicity conditions’) that surround the use of speech acts –​who can say what, when and to whom and under what circumstances –​and was able to use this knowledge to establish that I had misunderstood the speech act that the man with Parkinson’s disease was performing, no such knowledge is misapplied by this boy with Asperger’s syndrome. His pragmatic disorder has prevented him from acquiring knowledge of these conditions in the developmental period, which is a critical time for language acquisition, including the acquisition of pragmatics. In this chapter, we will examine the main tenets of speech act theory. The notion that utterances can perform actions may seem quite mundane from today’s pragmatically informed standpoint. However, it represented

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Speech acts  15 a marked departure from the dominant view of meaning that existed in the 1950s when a group of Oxford philosophers began to challenge the idea that a theory of meaning consists in the conditions that must hold for the sentences of a language to be true. The contributions of two of these philosophers, John L. Austin and John R. Searle, will be examined, although the new view of meaning that began to take shape included other prominent voices as well. But we start this examination by looking at some of the ways in which children and adults with pragmatic disorder achieve a range of speech acts, often in the presence of very limited expressive language. This will facilitate us in moving beyond the linguistic form of an utterance as we begin to think about the concept of a speech act.

1.2  How to realize a speech act As we begin to reflect on the concept of a speech act, it is instructive to look at how children with language delay put speech acts into action. Moseley (1990) examined four children who were diagnosed by speech-​ language pathologists as having language delay. The children were aged between 2;10 and 3;11 years and had inadequate vocabulary and sentence structure in the absence of known anatomical or physiological problems. They were examined in interaction with their mothers during a 15-​minute free-​play situation. The following extract is taken from an exchange between one of the mothers (M) and her child (C) with language delay. The child and mother are putting a cootie bug together. The legs fall off the bug in the child’s hand: T1 M: Uh-​oh his legs are fallin’ out. (mother reaches for a leg) T2 C: Me tell that. T3 C: Me tell that girl that. (child points toward the door) T4 M: You’re gonna tell her what? T5 C: Help me. T6 C: Help me do that. T7 M: To help you do that? T8 C: Yeah. T9 C:  And mommy, no. (child takes the piece apart and puts

the box) T10 M: And I’m not going to? T11 C: Don’t make it. T12 C: Mommy, no. T13 M: You don’t like me to help you? T14 C: (shakes head no)

it in

For children aged 2;10 to 3;11 years with normal language development, their mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm) –​a measure of grammatical complexity –​should be in the range 3.0 to 4.5. This child has an MLUm of 3.0, a figure that places him at the lowest end of this range. Despite his delayed expressive language, he is adept at conveying

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16  Speech acts a range of speech acts. In T2 and T3, he commits to telling the girl that the legs of the cootie bug have fallen out. In T5 and T6, he reports that he will make a request for assistance from the girl. In T8, he confirms his mother’s understanding of what he plans to do. In T9, the child refuses his mother’s assistance. In T11 and T12, he orders the mother not to make the cootie bug. In T14, with a simple shake of the head, he once again refuses the mother’s offer of assistance. In total, this child with language delay conveys no fewer than five different types of speech acts even though he has a limited expressive repertoire consisting mostly of pronouns (me, it), main verbs (tell, make) and the word ‘no’. And we have not mentioned his correct understanding of the speech acts that his mother uses, which include a statement in T1, a question in T4, and a clarification in T13. This child is undoubtedly a skilled communicator even though he is not a skilled linguistic communicator at this point in his language development. What can we learn about speech acts from this short exchange between this child with language delay and his mother? The first lesson is that speech acts are not dependent on the linguistic form of an utterance. In fact, as this child clearly illustrates, it is possible to convey a range of speech acts even when the linguistic form of utterances is quite limited on account of delayed language development. Although it is conventional in English to ask a question using an utterance with subject pronoun-​ auxiliary verb inversion (e.g. Are you coming to the party?), utterances that have other linguistic forms may also be used by speakers to ask questions. In T4 in the above exchange, the mother uses an utterance that has the linguistic form of a statement to ask her child a question. Theorists who examine speech acts must look beyond the linguistic form of utterances to understand the ways in which speakers use utterances to convey meaning. The second lesson is that the knowledge that is needed to use speech acts is quite different from the knowledge that is required to form linguistic utterances. That these different types of knowledge are separate competences –​communicative competence and linguistic competence, respectively –​is amply demonstrated by our child with language delay. This child has good communicative competence even as his linguistic competence is below what might be expected for a child of his chronological age. Theorists who examine speech acts must explore a different type of rational competence from the one that allows us to form linguistic utterances. These two lessons weave their way through speech act theory, to which we now turn.

1.3  A new approach to meaning To understand the new departure in the study of meaning that speech act theory represented, it is important to set the philosophical scene that existed in the early part of the twentieth century. A methodological approach called Ideal Language philosophy dominated philosophy at this time. Ideal Language philosophers believed that ordinary language

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Speech acts  17 was inherently vague and imprecise. Progress could only be made in understanding philosophical problems, they argued, by rendering the expressions of natural, ordinary language in a form that was rigorous and precise. Spurred on by the success of formal symbolic logic in analysing the structure of arguments, and particularly the notion of validity, adherents of Ideal Language philosophy believed that beneath the surface grammar of ordinary language was a precise logical form. If we could unearth this logical form and adequately characterize it, we would be able to explain the concept of meaning, free from all the ambiguous, obscure expressions of natural language. The view that an explicit logical form could be used to analyse meaning gave rise to the truth-​conditional theory of meaning. According to this theory, we know what a sentence means when we know the conditions under which a sentence is true. For the sentence below, we know the conditions that would have to hold for this sentence to be true. Knowing these truth conditions amounts to knowing the meaning of this sentence: Dinosaurs roam the earth. The approach of Ideal Language philosophy was pursued to its fullest extent by the Logical Positivists. The Logical Positivists proposed a principle of verification according to which any statement that could not be directly verified to be true was deemed to be meaningless. Statements that are not verifiable such as ethical statements (e.g. Abortion is an evil act) had to be transformed into statements that were verifiable or they would be judged to be devoid of content. Ordinary Language philosophy was a reaction to the approach taken to philosophical problems by Ideal Language philosophy. Consisting of a group of philosophers at Oxford that included John L. Austin, but also Wittgenstein at Cambridge, Ordinary Language philosophy contended that many so-​called philosophical problems do not require explanation at all. In fact, these problems do not even arise if we attend to the actual use of concepts in language. Many sentences in language are not intended to be true and false and to reduce meaning to truth, as the logical positivists proposed, is to mispresent what these sentences are doing. Such sentences include the following: Kill that annoying fly! Who ate all the biscuits? It seems clear that neither of these sentences is uttered by a speaker with the purpose of conveying or stating what is true. The first sentence is a command for the hearer to eradicate an irksome insect, while the second is a question that is asking the hearer to identify the person who has eaten all the biscuits. The former sentence wants the hearer to undertake an action; the latter sentence wants the hearer to provide information. That

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18  Speech acts conveying truth is not even what speakers have in mind when they produce many declarative sentences is illustrated by the following examples: You do not want to be a witness in this trial. Susie takes up her post next year? The speaker who utters the first of these sentences may be issuing a threat to the hearer with a view to discouraging him from giving evidence in a trail. With appropriate intonation, the second sentence may be used by the speaker to ask the hearer a question about when Susie is taking up her post. (In the earlier exchange, the mother used three similar sentences in T4, T10, and T13 to ask her child with language delay several questions.) None of these sentences is used by the speakers who utter them to talk about what is true or false, even though the consequences of these sentences having been uttered may be true or false. If the consequence of the above threat is that the hearer decides not to be a witness in the trial, then that sentence is something that is true. In How to Do Things with Words, Austin discusses the following sentences: ‘I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)’ –​as uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony. ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ –​as uttered when smashing the bottle against the stern. ‘I give and bequeath my watch to my brother’ –​as occurring in a will. ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.’ (1962 [1975], p.5) Austin argues that by uttering these sentences, we are not describing an act of naming a ship or reporting a bet about the weather. Rather, we are performing the actions of naming and betting by the mere utterance of these sentences: ‘In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentence (in, of course, the appropriate circumstances) is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it. None of the utterances cited is either true or false […] To name the ship is to say (in the appropriate circumstances) the words ‘I name, &c.’.’ (1962 [1975], p.6) Austin distinguishes sentences that report or describe states of affairs (so-​ called constative utterances) from sentences that perform actions such as naming, betting and bequeathing (performative utterances). This is how Austin captures the distinction between constative and performative utterances in How to Do Things with Words:

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Speech acts  19 ‘Utterances can be found […] such that A. they do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything at all, are not ‘true or false’; and B. the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action, which again would not normally be described as, or as ‘just’, saying something.’ (1962 [1975], p.5) Austin went on to reject the distinction between constative and performative utterances: ‘the dichotomy of performatives and constatives […] has to be abandoned in favour of more general families of related and overlapping speech acts’ (1962 [1975], p.149). But he also analysed several other noteworthy aspects of performative utterances, including the conditions under which they may be performed appropriately or ‘felicitously’. It is to these aspects of Austin’s theory that we now turn.

1.4  Happy and unhappy performatives In section 1.2, we examined an exchange between a mother and her child with language delay. Even though this child had limited expressive language skills, he was able to use several speech acts. Moreover, he used these utterances appropriately. In T2 and T3, for example, the child committed to telling the girl that the legs of the cootie bug had fallen out. This utterance was used appropriately to the extent that it refers to a future action –​telling the girl that X –​that the child wants to happen and that it would not otherwise happen. This child had mastered the conditions on the appropriate use of this speech act and other speech acts even as his language skills were delayed. The same cannot be said of Tony, a child of 3;9 years of age who has pragmatic language impairment. Tony was studied by Conti-​Ramsden and Gunn (1986) following his referral to a regional child development centre. He has significant pragmatic language difficulties even as his phonology and syntax are relatively intact. In the following extract, Tony (TO) has just been dropped off at school by a taxi driver. Tony’s teacher (TE) greets the driver: TE:  Hello

everyone     Hi Ken (greeting taxi driver who had brought Tony) TO:  Hi Ken Tony has not satisfied the conditions on the use of a greeting. This speech act can only be performed appropriately if the speaker is meeting the recipient of the greeting for the first time. This condition is not fulfilled in Tony’s case as he has been in the company of the taxi driver for some time already during the journey to school. This example illustrates that a speech act can easily fail if certain conditions on its use are not

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20  Speech acts fulfilled. Austin calls these conditions felicity conditions. This is how he characterizes them: ‘Besides the uttering of the words of the so-​called performative, a good many other things have as a general rule to be right and to go right if we are to be said to have happily brought off our action. What these are we may hope to discover by looking at and classifying types of case in which something goes wrong and the act –​marrying, betting, bequeathing, christening, or what not –​is therefore at least to some extent a failure: the utterance is then, we may say, not indeed false but in general unhappy. And for this reason we call the doctrine of the things that can be and go wrong on the occasion of such utterances, the doctrine of the Infelicities.’ (1962 [1975], p.14) Tony’s greeting to the taxi driver is ‘unhappy’ or infelicitous, according to Austin. But it is important to establish in what way his utterance fails as a greeting to someone. Here Austin distinguishes between misfires and abuses among his infelicities. A speech act misfires if it is uttered by someone in circumstances that are not appropriate for the act in question. Although it is appropriate for Tony to utter a greeting using the linguistic utterance ‘Hi Ken’, it is not appropriate for him to do so long after he first encounters the taxi driver. Tony’s greeting misfires because it fails Austin’s first set of conditions on the ‘happy’ functioning of a performative: ‘There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances’ (1962 [1975], p.14). A speech act is an abuse when it is undertaken by a speaker who does not entertain certain thoughts, intentions, and feelings that we associate with a speech act or does not act on what a speech act entails. A speaker who makes a promise with no intention of keeping it has committed an abuse. For he does not have the thoughts and intentions associated with that speech act and will not undertake the action to which his promise commits him. Austin goes on to capture different types of misfires and abuses. He also considers how widespread infelicity is. Austin acknowledges that although his analysis has focused on acts that involve ‘uttering words’, an infelicity can affect any conventional act: ‘infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts’ (pp.18–​19). This is an important elaboration as it permits Austin’s analysis of infelicities to apply also to non-​verbal acts: ‘The same sorts of rule must be observed in all such conventional procedures –​we have only to omit the special reference to verbal utterance’ (p.19). This allows us to recognize the non-​verbal turn at T14 of the child with language delay in section 1.2 as a speech act that can be infelicitous in the same way as all the child’s verbal speech acts in the same exchange.

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Speech acts  21

1.5  Explicit and implicit performatives Before abandoning the distinction between performative and constative utterances, Austin sets about trying to identify a linguistic criterion that may be used to distinguish performative utterances: ‘we should naturally ask first whether there is some grammatical (or lexicographical) criterion for distinguishing the performative utterance’ (p.55). He examines if the presence of verbs in the first person singular present indicative active would constitute such a criterion. Such verbs are the hallmark of explicit performatives. They include verbs like I baptise, I pronounce, and I promise in the following utterances: I baptise this child Frederick Charles Smith. I pronounce you husband and wife. I promise to be home early. Maybe the mood and tense of verbs might serve as ‘absolute criteria’ for performative utterances. However, we can produce performative utterances –​Austin calls them implicit performatives –​without even using a verb such as when we say ‘Guilty’ to find someone guilty and use ‘Out’ to give someone out in a sports game. If a grammatical criterion does not work, might it be possible to look to vocabulary for a criterion? Might we convey a warning to someone by using the word ‘dangerous’ or a promise to someone by using the word ‘promise’? But words in vocabulary also fail to distinguish performative utterances. For as Austin argues, we may warn someone that a dangerous corner lies ahead by uttering ‘corner’, or we may promise to do something by simply saying ‘I shall’. Austin considers if it might be possible to paraphrase implicit performatives so that they assume the linguistic form of explicit performatives. But after careful analysis, he decides that there is no criterion based on grammar or vocabulary that can be used to identify performatives and that the distinction between constative and performative utterances must be abandoned –​ all utterances, Austin argues, are performative in the sense that he envisages. In working through his argument, Austin had arrived at the same point that we identified as the ‘first lesson’ under section 1.2 above, namely, that performatives are not dependent on the linguistic form of an utterance. In that section, we witnessed a child who used a rich repertoire of performatives (we called them ‘speech acts’) despite having a somewhat limited range of linguistic forms on account of language delay. In fact, children and adults with language disorder perfectly exemplify Austin’s fundamental point –​that it makes no sense to search for a linguistic criterion that all performative utterances must exhibit because there are a multitude of ways in which we may be said to do something by saying something. It turned out that our child in section 1.2 was very good at doing something –​committing to future actions and requesting and refusing help are just three instances of his doing

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22  Speech acts something –​even as he was restricted in the linguistic structures that he was able to produce. We can see this again in the following utterances of three speakers with aphasia (an acquired language disorder) who were studied by Prinz (1980). All three speakers had been handed a sheet of paper without a pen and were asked to sign their name on it. The scenario required each of them to request something to write with: 59-​year-​old male with Broca’s aphasia: (1) Need (gestures writing) 47-​year-​old male with Wernicke’s aphasia: (2) Do you want, do you have something to write. Because I don’t have anything to write (searches pockets) 37-​year-​old male with global aphasia: (3) (points to experimenter, looks in pocket, quizzical look) pencil All three speakers with aphasia succeed in requesting something to write with, notwithstanding their limited expressive language skills, particularly in the case of speakers (1) and (3). Speaker (1) uses a verb and a gesture to make a request, while speaker (3) uses gestures, a facial expression, and a noun to request a pencil. Speaker (2) uses more expressive language than the other two speakers. But even this speaker does not use an explicit performative, preferring instead to request something to write with by stating a precondition on the act of signing his name that he cannot fulfil –​he does not have anything to write with –​and by asking the experimenter if he has something that he can use to write his name. The point that these examples illustrate is the point that Austin was making. There is no linguistic criterion that we can use to distinguish explicit performatives from other types of utterance exactly because the distinction itself makes no sense –​ all utterances are doing something and are performatives in the sense that Austin intends, and not just the class of explicit performatives.

1.6  Saying and doing Having rejected the distinction between performative and constative utterances, Austin believed it was ‘expedient’ to go back to ‘fundamentals’ and ‘consider from the ground up how many senses there are in which to say something is to do something, or in saying something we do something, and even by saying something we do something’ (p.94). Austin distinguished three acts that are performed when someone says something. As a route into these acts, consider the following exchange between a teacher (T) and a child (P) with pragmatic disorder who was studied by McTear (1985): T: take this note to Mr Smith’s room P: obediently goes to Mr Smith’s room and returns still carrying the note

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Speech acts  23 The teacher clearly intends the child to take the note to Mr Smith’s room and leave it with him. However, this interpretation of the utterance does not occur to the child on account of his pragmatic disorder. It is interesting to analyse this failure of interpretation further to understand exactly where the child’s breakdown occurs. The child knows certain things. To have acted as he did, the child knows the meaning of the words ‘note’ and ‘room’. He also knows who the teacher is referring to when she says ‘Mr Smith’ and what action the teacher expects him to undertake through use of the verb ‘take’. Austin used the term locutionary act to capture the sense and reference of the words in the teacher’s utterance: ‘We first distinguished a group of things we do in saying something, which together we summed up by saying we perform a locutionary act, which is roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference, which again is roughly equivalent to ‘meaning’ in the traditional sense.’ (p.108) This child with pragmatic disorder displays intact comprehension of the locutionary act in the teacher’s utterance. But while he understands the sense and reference of the teacher’s words, he does not grasp what the teacher is doing in saying these words. The teacher is ordering the child to take the note to Mr Smith’s room and leave it there. Austin describes this as the illocutionary act of the teacher’s utterance: ‘we said that we also perform illocutionary acts such as informing, ordering, warning, undertaking, &c., i.e. utterances which have a certain (conventional) force’ (p.108). Because the child has failed to grasp the illocutionary act of the teacher’s utterance, he also does not perform the third of Austin’s acts, namely, the perlocutionary act. This is what is achieved or brought about by saying something. The teacher wants her note to be delivered to Mr Smith. The perlocutionary act does not come about because the child returns still carrying the note: ‘we may also perform perlocutionary acts: what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading’ (p.108). In section 1.1, we saw a further example of how children with pragmatic disorder may fail to grasp the illocutionary act of a speaker’s utterance. In that case, a nine-​year-​old boy with Asperger’s syndrome simply repeated the mother’s locutionary act –​you have your best clothes on –​when asked what the mother meant by the utterance Remember you have your best clothes on! Of course, in saying this utterance, the mother was warning the girl to keep her clothes clean. In both cases, the speaker produces an illocutionary act that a child with pragmatic disorder is unable to comprehend. But even apart from children and adults with language disorder, there are occasions when the illocutionary force of a speaker’s utterance may not be immediately apparent to a hearer. If someone approaches me and whispers in my ear Big Jim will be at the party, I may be uncertain as

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24  Speech acts to whether I am being threatened by the speaker or warned to stay away from the party. I may decide that the illocutionary force of the speaker’s utterance is a warning. I may further decide to act on the warning and to give the party a miss. In serving as a deterrent to my attendance at the party, the speaker’s utterance has performed a perlocutionary act as well as an illocutionary act. Alternatively, I may be foolhardy and attend the party notwithstanding the speaker’s warning. In this scenario, the speaker’s utterance has performed an illocutionary act even though it has had no perlocutionary effect on me as the hearer. What these scenarios demonstrate is that the determination of the illocutionary act of any utterance is not a straightforward matter, even for hearers with intact language skills. Yet, as Austin remarks, ‘[i]‌t makes a great difference whether we were advising, or merely suggesting, or actually ordering, whether we were strictly promising or only announcing a vague intention, and so forth’ (p.99). In the remainder of How to Do Things with Words, Austin elaborates his ‘doctrine of illocutionary forces’. He goes on to characterize five classes of utterance according to their illocutionary force: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives. Austin acknowledges that he is ‘far from equally happy about all of them’ (p.150). The class of behabitives is ‘troublesome’ because it seems ‘too miscellaneous’, while expositives appear to be included in the other classes even as they are unique in a way that Austin admits he cannot make clear to himself. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he characterizes these five classes as follows: Verdictives –​the giving of a verdict by a jury, arbitrator, or umpire (e.g., acquitting or convicting someone) Exercitives –​the exercising of powers, rights, or influence (e.g., appointing or voting for someone) Commissives –​promising or committing someone to do something (e.g., undertaking or vowing to do something) Behabitives –​a class of utterances that has to do with attitudes and social behaviour (e.g., apologizing to or congratulating someone) Expositives –​a class of utterances that involves the expounding of views, and the clarifying of usages and references (e.g., denying or reporting something) Despite what even Austin would concede are the shortcomings of his classification of utterances, it can be readily applied to many of the utterances of children and adults with language disorder examined in this chapter. In section 1.1, we encountered a boy with Asperger’s syndrome who did not recognize that the mother of a girl was using a warning, an exercitive in Austin’s classification. In section 1.2, we witnessed a boy with expressive language delay using a commissive when he undertook to tell the girl that the legs had fallen out of his cootie bug. We saw Tony make infelicitous use of one of Austin’s behabitives in section 1.4 when he greeted the taxi driver who brought him to school. Austin’s classification of illocutionary

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Speech acts  25 forces of utterances was later reworked by John Searle, a student of Austin’s at Oxford. But there can be no doubt that Austin’s work had a transformative impact on how philosophers viewed meaning, an impact that is still felt to the present day.

1.7  Searle on speech acts That Searle intended to develop further Austin’s emphasis on speech acts is evident early in the opening lines of his book Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language: ‘I shall approach the study of some of these problems in the philosophy of language through the study of what I shall call speech acts or linguistic acts or language acts’ (1969, p.4) Searle proposes a set of conditions that are necessary and sufficient for the ‘successful and non-​defective performance’ of illocutionary acts. In formulating these conditions, we are capturing the rules that all speakers acquire when they learn how to play ‘the game of illocutionary acts’. Searle’s illocutionary act of choice is promising. The speaker who makes a sincere and non-​defective promise in the presence of a hearer must know the language in which the promise is made (the hearer also) and have no physical impediment to communication such as aphasia (condition 1). The speaker must express a proposition that p that predicates a future action of the speaker (conditions 2 and 3 are so-​called propositional content conditions). The hearer prefers the speaker’s undertaking the action to his not undertaking the action, and the speaker believes the hearer would prefer his undertaking the action to his not undertaking the action (condition 4). It is not obvious to both the speaker and the hearer that the speaker will undertake the promised action in the normal course of events (condition 5). If the speaker is bound by his role as a church warden to ring the bells for 30 minutes every Sunday morning, he makes a defective promise if he then utters I promise to ring the church bells for 30 minutes on Sunday. Searle describes conditions 4 and 5 as preparatory conditions. A further condition on happy promising is that the speaker intends to undertake the promised action (condition 6). In recognition of the fact that speakers can partake in insincere promises, that is, that speakers do not always intend to undertake actions that they promise, Searle recommends revising this condition to require only that the speaker take responsibility for having the intention. Searle calls condition 6 the sincerity condition. But it is not enough that the speaker intends to undertake a promised action. He must also intend that his utterance of a promise places him under an obligation to perform the promised action. This is the key feature of promising and similar illocutionary acts like vowing to do something. For this reason, Searle calls condition 7 the essential condition of the illocutionary act. Condition 8 involves two further intentions on the part of the speaker, while condition 9 stipulates that the semantical rules of the speaker’s and hearer’s language are such that the sentence is correctly and sincerely uttered by the speaker if and only if the preceding

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26  Speech acts eight conditions obtain. Searle (1969, p.63) distils these conditions into five rules for the illocutionary force indicator Pr for promising: Rule 1. Pr is to be uttered only in the context of a sentence (or larger stretch of discourse) T, the utterance of which predicates some future act A of the speaker S. I call this the propositional content rule. It is derived from the propositional content conditions 2 and 3. Rule 2. Pr is to be uttered only if the hearer H would prefer S’s doing A to his not doing A, and S believes H would prefer S’s doing A to his not doing A. Rule 3. Pr is to be uttered only if it is not obvious to both S and H that S will do A in the normal course of events. I call rules 2 and 3 preparatory rules, and they are derived from the preparatory conditions 4 and 5. Rule 4. Pr is to be uttered only if S intends to do A. I call this the sincerity rule, and it is derived from the sincerity condition 6. Rule 5. The utterance of Pr counts as the undertaking of an obligation to do A. I call this the essential rule. In section 1.4, we encountered a boy called Tony who has pragmatic language impairment. Tony used a greeting which had misfired. We can now use Searle’s analysis to establish the exact way in which Tony’s greeting misfired. In greeting his taxi driver Ken after Ken had already delivered him to school, Tony had not observed a preparatory rule on the speech act of greeting. That rule may be stated as follows: Preparatory rule for ‘greeting’: A greeting is to be uttered only if the speaker S is at the start of a new encounter with the hearer H. In initiating his greeting some time into his encounter with Ken, Tony had not observed this preparatory rule for the illocutionary force indicator for greeting, to use Searle’s terminology. Of course, Tony lacks knowledge of this preparatory rule due to his pragmatic language impairment. But he is not alone. I previously worked with an adult with intellectual disability who liked to spring bets on unsuspecting visitors to the adult training centre that he attended. He would approach visitors and ask them to place a bet on something that had already taken place and where the outcome was known. His speech act misfired because he did not observe a propositional content rule for the speech act of betting. That rule may be stated as follows: Propositional content rule for ‘betting’: A bet is to be uttered only in the context of a sentence or larger stretch of discourse that describes an event that has not yet taken place and where the outcome is unknown.

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Speech acts  27 Of course, it can be disputed that the adult who used bets in this way did so without knowing this propositional content rule. It is equally likely that he knew this rule very well indeed and was manipulating it with a view to extracting some gain from visitors to the centre! But this case illustrates once again just how central these rules are to the appropriate use of illocutionary acts or speech acts in language. Having outlined the structure of illocutionary acts, Searle turns his attention to developing a taxonomy of acts. He is concerned to explore different dimensions or continua along which acts may vary. In Expression and Meaning, Searle (1979) outlines 12 significant dimensions of variation according to which illocutionary acts differ from one another. They can differ with respect to the point or purpose of the act. The point or purpose of an order is to get the hearer to do something, while for a description it is to represent how something is. The point or purpose of illocutionary acts corresponds to the essential condition of acts and is, Searle argues, the best basis for a taxonomy of illocutionary acts. Illocutionary acts can also differ in their direction of fit between words and the world. The illocutionary point of an assertion is to get the words of this illocution to match the world, while for promises and requests the point of the illocutionary act is to get the world to match the words. A third difference in illocutionary acts is in expressed psychological states. The speaker who promises or vows to do A expresses an intention to do A. The speaker who requests or orders the hearer to do A expresses a desire that the hearer do A. The psychological state expressed by an illocutionary act corresponds to the sincerity condition of the act. Although Searle goes on to discuss nine further dimensions, the three just outlined are the most important ones for his taxonomy of speech acts. Searle sets out on his own taxonomy of illocutionary acts by acknowledging weaknesses in Austin’s five-​part classification. Austin assumes, incorrectly Searle argues, that a classification of English illocutionary verbs is a classification of illocutionary acts. The error in this identification can be illustrated as follows. The verb promise performs an illocutionary act of promising in the utterance I promise to arrive on time. However, in the utterance I promise to make your life hell, the same verb may be performing an illocutionary act of threatening the hearer. Other weaknesses identified by Searle were either alluded to by Austin –​there is too much overlap of the categories –​or represent new charges (e.g. there is no consistent principle of classification). After examining these weaknesses, Searle constructs his taxonomy based on the principles of the illocutionary point of an act, direction of fit, and expressed sincerity conditions. He arrives at the following categories of illocutionary acts: Assertives –​members of this class commit the speaker to something’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition (e.g. state, predict). The direction of fit is words to the world and the psychological state expressed is belief.

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28  Speech acts Directives –​members of this class are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something (e.g. order, request). The direction of fit is world to words and the sincerity condition is want (or wish or desire). Commissives –​members of this class commit the speaker to some future course of action (e.g. promise, vow). The direction of fit is world to word and the sincerity condition is intention. Expressives –​members of this class express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about the state of affairs specified in the propositional content (e.g. congratulate, apologize). There is no direction of fit between words and the world because the truth of the proposition expressed in an expressive is presupposed. If I apologize for driving into your car, then my apology presupposes that I have driven into your car. There are many different psychological states expressed by the illocutionary acts in this class. Declarations –​for members of this class, the mere uttering of the propositional content is the illocutionary force of the utterance (e.g. christen, appoint). If someone with religious authority utters, I christen this child Mary Baker, then that is an act of christening. Declarations have word-​ to-​world and world-​to-​word fit. Declarations are, according to Searle, a ‘very special category of speech acts’. This is because they require an extra-​linguistic institution to be successfully performed. To ‘excommunicate, appoint, give and bequeath one’s possessions or declare war’ (1979, p.18), the speaker and hearer must occupy special places within these institutions. Not just anyone can christen a child, for example. It is because of these institutions that declarations have both word-​to-​world and world-​to-​word fit. We can ask if a certain female child really was christened Mary Baker (word-​to-​world fit). But in uttering I christen this child Mary Baker, a person with religious authority is making it so (world-​to-​word fit).

1.8  Indirect speech acts In section 1.1, we encountered a nine-​ year-​ old boy with Asperger’s syndrome who failed to comprehend the illocutionary act in the utterance Remember that you have your best clothes on! The mother who produced this utterance intended it to serve as a warning to the girl in the picture to keep her clothes clean. When asked what the mother meant by this utterance, the boy simply repeated what the mother had said: You have your best clothes on. In the following exchange, an adult (A) is talking to a ten-​year-​old boy (C) with pragmatic impairment (McTear, 1985). The adult asks the child to describe a TV programme and receives the reply ‘yes’: A:  can C: yes

you tell me about it (‘it’ refers to a TV programme)

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Speech acts  29    (1.0) A:  well tell me about it     what’s it like? C:  the man always fights the bad men … In both cases, a speaker has used an indirect speech act. This is an utterance that has a linguistic form that differs from the speaker’s intended meaning. In the first case, the mother produced an utterance with the linguistic form of an imperative that has the illocutionary force of a warning (not a command). In the second case, the adult produced an utterance with the linguistic form of an interrogative that has the illocutionary force of a request (not a question). Neither boy was able to understand the speaker’s indirect speech act on account of his pragmatic impairment. In this section, we examine what Searle had to say about indirect speech acts and reflect on why they pose such a challenge to children and adults with pragmatic impairment. In Expression and Meaning, Searle (1979) describes indirect speech acts as cases in which ‘one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another’ (p.31). As Searle sees it, the problem that indirect speech acts pose is how it is possible for a speaker to say one thing and mean that but also mean something else, and how a hearer can understand an indirect speech act when the sentence he hears and understands means something else. (As we saw above, there are hearers with pragmatic impairments where this understanding does not occur; but Searle is, of course, talking about a normal language scenario.) The answer lies, according to Searle, in a theory of speech acts, general principles of cooperative conversation as envisaged by Grice (see Chapter 2), mutually shared factual background information of the speaker and hearer, and an ability on the part of the hearer to make inferences. To illustrate how these components come together in the interpretation of a speaker’s illocutionary act, consider the following exchange between Bill and Mary: BILL:  Would you like to stay in our penthouse this MARY:  Mike has used all his leave for the year.

summer?

Bill is using an interrogative to extend a proposal to Mary –​he is suggesting to her that she may use his penthouse in the summer. For her part, Mary rejects Bill’s proposal by means of uttering a statement about her husband Mike’s leave. How can Bill tell that Mary’s statement amounts to the rejection of the proposal that he has put to her? According to Searle, Bill undertakes the following stepwise process in his reasoning, even though he does not do so consciously as such in normal conversation: Step 1. I have made a proposal to Mary about using our penthouse in the summer. Mary has responded with a statement about Mike’s leave (facts about the conversation)

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30  Speech acts Step 2. I assume that Mary is being cooperative in the exchange and that her response is therefore relevant (principles of conversational cooperation) Step 3. A relevant response to my proposal would be acceptance, rejection, counterproposal, further discussion, and so on (theory of speech acts) Step 4. Mary’s utterance is not one of these responses and is not relevant (inference from Steps 1 and 3) Step 5. It is therefore concluded that Mary means more than she says. Her primary illocutionary point differs from her literal statement (inference from Steps 2 and 4) Step 6. I know that staying in my penthouse in the summer will require Mary and Mike to take leave from work and I know that Mike does not have leave that he can take (factual background information) Step 7. Therefore, Mike cannot both attend work and stay in my penthouse in the summer (inference from Step 6) Step 8. A preparatory condition on the acceptance of a proposal is the ability to perform the act predicated in the propositional content condition (theory of speech acts) Step 9. I know that Mary has said something that has the consequence that she probably cannot consistently accept the proposal (inference from Steps 1, 7 and 8) Step 10. Therefore, Mary’s primary illocutionary point is probably to reject the proposal (inference from Steps 5 and 9) Searle emphasizes the probabilistic nature of the conclusion in step 10. This is because Mary may not reject Bill’s proposal if she goes on to say Mike has used all his leave for the year, but he will take some unpaid leave. Searle’s stepwise process of reasoning also allows us to understand why indirect speech acts pose such a challenge for children and adults with conditions like autism spectrum disorders and pragmatic impairment. The inferences that lead Bill to conclude that Mary is rejecting his proposal are known to be impaired in children and adults with these disorders (Cummings, 2009). But from Searle’s point of view, he wants to capture how Mary can reject Bill’s proposal by way of her making a statement about Mike’s leave. And from this point of view, the key steps are steps 8 and 9 when Bill establishes that Mary cannot satisfy a preparatory condition on the acceptance of the proposal. Indirect speech acts arise when a speaker either states a condition on the performance of an illocutionary act or asks whether such a condition obtains. Consider the following indirect ways of getting someone to close the window (a directive): (1) Can you close that window? (2) I would like you to close the window. (3) Would you be willing to close the window?

13

Speech acts  31 The speaker of (1) indirectly requests that the hearer close the window by asking whether the hearer can close (is able to close) the window (a preparatory condition on the directive). The speaker of (2) performs the same indirect request by stating his desire (a sincerity condition on the directive). The speaker of (3) is asking whether the hearer is willing to close the window. This constitutes a reason for doing the act, according to Searle, and is another way in which indirect speech acts can be carried out.

Summary • • •

•

•

•

The Ordinary Language philosophy of Austin and others marked a significant department from Ideal Language philosophy that was dominant in the early part of the twentieth century. In How to Do Things with Words, Austin argued that most sentences in language do not describe or report anything; rather, in uttering these sentences, we are performing actions or acts. These so-​called illocutionary acts include promises, warnings, threats, apologies, and congratulations. These acts are performed felicitously when a speaker performs them according to felicity conditions. When the speaker or wider context do not satisfy one or more felicity conditions, these acts are performed infelicitously. Austin undertook a categorisation of illocutionary acts: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives. Not even Austin was fully satisfied with this classification. He described the class of behabitives as a ‘shocker’, for example. Searle attempted to remedy the weaknesses in Austin’s classification by developing his own taxonomy of illocutionary acts: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. Searle also developed an account of indirect speech acts based on the theory of speech acts, principles of conversational cooperation, mutually shared factual background information, and the hearer’s ability to draw inferences.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Grundy, P. (2020) Doing Pragmatics. Fourth edition. New York: Taylor and Francis. In ­chapter 2 ‘Utterance and intentions’, Grundy provides an overview of speech acts. Introductory-​level readers can use this chapter to consolidate their learning about speech acts.

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32  Speech acts (2) Green, M. (2020) ‘Speech acts’, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2020 Edition. Online: https://​ plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​spe​ech-​acts/​ Green’s discussion of speech acts is higher level and more comprehensive than the current chapter and Grundy’s treatment. It is ideal for the reader who wants to extend their knowledge of speech act theory. (3) Fogel, D., Harris, D.W. and Moss, M. (eds) (2018) New Work on Speech Acts, New York: Oxford University Press. This edited volume brings together work on speech acts across several disciplines. The topics are wide ranging and include the application of speech acts to the analysis of slurs, dogwhistles, and hate speech as well as work on the semantics and pragmatics of imperatives and the nature of the force/​content distinction.

Questions (1) In a clinical context, speech acts can sometimes be used by the spouses of people with communication disorders to direct conversation. This can lead to frustration and withdrawal in the person with a communication disorder and is a behaviour that may be addressed through conversational partner training. The following data was taken from a conversation between the author (AUT) and a 72-​year-​old man (PAR) with a neurodegenerative disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy (Cummings, 2020, 2021). The man, a retired computer manager, had adopted a largely passive role in conversation because his wife (WIF) displayed excessive control of his contributions during conversation. For each extract below, identify the type of speech act the man’s wife uses to direct his contributions to conversation. Extract A: AUT:  so,

you’ve been at universities, you’ve been at the education board, you’ve been in private companies like Ulsterbus, you’ve worked … . WIF:  tell Louise about the library at Queens PAR:  yes, in Queens library, there was a computer system … . Extract B: PAR:  this is our first river cruise which is very good, very enjoyable AUT:  so that’s made a, that’s made a positive impression on you PAR:  it has yes WIF:  what did I do last night, what did I look up last night? PAR:  oh yes, another (unintelligible) river cruise

3

Speech acts  33 Extract C: PAR:  from there I went to the education WIF:  no, you went to Queens first PAR:  went to Queens first did I, yes

and library board

(2) The following data is a conversation between an interviewer (INT) and HW, a 41-​ year-​ old Dutch speaker who has Broca’s aphasia (Bastiaanse, 1995). The topic of conversation is HW’s language problems since having a left-​hemisphere stroke 15 months earlier. Examine the data in detail and then answer the questions below: T1 INT:  Can you tell me what are your problems? T2 HW:  Er talking problem yes but forming difficult

sentences easy when no easy when first not er difficult words er to think yes doesn’t soon occur to me T3 INT:  You have problems finding the words? T4 HW:  Yes yes T5 INT:  But, as I understand, you also encounter problems when making a sentence? T6 HW: Yes it doesn’t come at moment when I write er goes that er slow er no T7 INT:  When you are writing? T8 HW: Yes before the time I did know writing down er I write down nothing remembers me T9 INT: Yes, but when you really want to, can you speak in correct sentences? T10 HW: Yes T11 INT:  Why don’t you do that? T12 HW:  Er too fast to talk T13 INT:  What do you mean, too fast? T14 HW:  Er I too fast to talk er I cannot er search for words T15 INT:  Yes, when you talk in sentences, you can’t look for words? T16 HW: No T17 INT:  And looking for words, is that difficult too? T18 HW: Yes T19 INT:  That’s why you talk in short sentences? T20 HW:  Yes the a and I leave out I just leave er T21 INT:  Do you do that on purpose? T22 HW:  No on God no T23 INT:  That happens automatically? T24 HW:  Yes I hear always what I says sentences quick I hear er and the I hear er always er what I says wrongly T25 INT:  You do hear that T26 HW:  Yes yes

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34  Speech acts (a) How would you characterize the grammatical form of the following utterances produced by the interviewer? What type of illocutionary act do these utterances perform? T1:  Can you tell me what are your problems? T9:  Can you speak in correct sentences? T11:  Why don’t you do that?

(b) Does HW comprehend the illocutionary acts that the interviewer is performing by means of these utterances? (c) What illocutionary acts do the following utterances of the interviewer perform? Does HW comprehend these illocutionary acts? T3:  You T5:  You

have problems finding the words? also encounter problems when making a sentence?

(d) The interviewer is asking whether HW can satisfy a certain condition on the performance of a directive to produce the illocutionary act in T1. What condition is this? Why might the satisfaction of this condition not be guaranteed in this case? (e) Which of Searle’s classes of illocutionary acts is HW performing by way of the utterance below? This illocutionary act is performed consistently by HW throughout the exchange. Why is this the case? T14  Er

I too fast to talk er I cannot er search for words

(3) In section 1.8, we encountered the following exchange between an adult (A) and a 10-​year-​old child (C) with pragmatic impairment. In that section, we described how the child failed to comprehend the adult’s indirect speech act in T1 in the exchange. Describe how the adult revises his utterance to address the child’s lack of comprehension: T1 A:  can T2 C: yes

you tell me about it (‘it’ refers to a TV programme)

   (1.0) T3 A:  well tell me about it     what’s it like? T4 C:  the man always fights the bad men …

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2 Implicatures

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: • •

• • • •

Understand the central tenets of implicature theory as proposed by H.P. Grice and its subsequent development in relevance theory Appreciate Grice’s Cooperative Principle and maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner, and the role that they are expected to perform in explaining rational, cooperative behaviour. Understand what it means to observe, violate, opt out of, and flout or exploit one of the maxims and how in fulfilling one maxim we may clash with another maxim. Be able to distinguish different types of implicature (generalized versus particularized) and how figures of speech like metaphor and hyperbole arise from the flouting of certain maxims. Be able to characterize properties of implicatures such as their cancellability and non-​detachability. Understand the central tenets of Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory and how the theory has empirical validity in healthy individuals and children and adults with clinical conditions.

2.1 Introduction In the last chapter, we saw how Searle appealed to principles of conversational cooperation to explain how it is that an utterance can have the form of a question or a statement and yet be used to make a request. Searle argued that so-​called indirect speech acts depend on these principles in the sense that we cannot work out the primary illocutionary point of indirect speech acts if these principles cannot be assumed to hold. In illustration of this process, let us consider the following exchange: GIRL:  Did you go to the gym? BOY:  I haven’t felt so tired for

so long! DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-3

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36 Implicatures What may the girl in this exchange understand the boy’s utterance to mean? In most contexts, we may take the boy’s utterance to mean that he went to the gym. In other words, the boy is using his utterance to answer the girl’s question in the affirmative–​yes, he did go to the gym. But how can the girl possibly arrive at this understanding of the boy’s utterance when his explicit utterance says nothing whatsoever about the gym and only states that the boy has been feeling tired? We must fall back upon a sequence of steps in the girl’s reasoning that unfolds along the following lines: (1) I have asked the boy a question about whether he attended the gym and the boy has produced a response that says only that he has been tired (facts about the conversation). (2) I assume that the boy is being cooperative in the exchange and that his response is therefore relevant (principles of conversational cooperation). (3) A relevant response to my question would be to answer it affirmatively or negatively (theory of speech acts). (4) The boy’s utterance is not one of these responses and is not relevant (inference from Steps 1 and 3). (5) It is therefore concluded that the boy means more than he says. His primary illocutionary point differs from his literal statement (inference from Steps 2 and 4). (6) I know that fatigue is one consequence of working out at the gym and that the boy is reporting that he has been fatigued (factual background information). (7) Therefore, the boy has probably been working out at the gym (inference from Step 6). (8) A preparatory condition on answering a question affirmatively is that the hearer must know that the propositional content of the question corresponds to a state or event in the world (theory of speech acts). (9) I know that the boy has said something that has the consequence that he can probably answer the question affirmatively (inference from Steps 1, 7 and 8). (10) Therefore, the boy’s primary illocutionary point is probably to produce an affirmative response to the question (inference from Steps 5 and 9). This chapter will examine the principles of conversational cooperation in step (2) of this girl’s reasoning. These principles were proposed by Herbert Paul Grice, a figure widely credited with being the founding father of the modern linguistic discipline of pragmatics. But before we examine Grice’s ideas, it is important to appreciate just how central these principles, and particularly the emphasis on relevance, are to the girl’s recovery of the boy’s intended meaning in the above exchange. This exchange appeared

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Implicatures  37 as a test item in a study of pragmatic functioning in adults with schizophrenia that was conducted by Colle et al. (2013). These investigators presented adults in the study with a videotaped scenario in which a girl asks a boy ‘Did you go to the gym?’ The boy replies ‘I haven’t felt so tired for so long!’ Each adult was then asked three follow-​up questions. Here are the responses of one adult to these questions: Test questions and subject’s responses: (1) What did the boy say? He was tired. (2) What did he mean by that? He had been working really hard. (3) Did the boy go to the gym? Yes. Clearly, the adult in this case had no difficulty in working out the boy’s explicit utterance meaning in (1). The adult’s response to the question in (3) suggests that the primary illocutionary point of the boy’s utterance was also understood. However, the response to the question in (2) suggests that on some level this adult with schizophrenia does not fully understand the relevance of the boy’s explicit utterance meaning to the primary illocutionary point of the utterance. It is this relevance, and how speakers and hearers establish it, that will be the focus of the current chapter.

2.2  Grice and the cooperative principle The exchange between the girl and boy in section 2.1 illustrates a type of rationality at work between speakers and hearers. We will call it conversational rationality, although as we will see subsequently, it does not just apply to conversation. It is a commitment to this rationality that allows the girl to view the boy’s utterance as relevant to her question about the gym and to begin a search for the relevance of his utterance. The boy in the exchange is committed to the same rational enterprise as the girl. He fulfils this commitment by only contributing utterances to the exchange that have relevance to her question. In his William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University, Grice captures these mutual commitments to conversational rationality in terms of a Cooperative Principle: ‘Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. […] We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected (ceteris paribus) to observe, namely: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the

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38 Implicatures talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this the Cooperative Principle.’ (1989, p.26) Speakers and hearers take the Cooperative Principle for granted, so much so in fact that its regulatory role in conversation and other forms of rational cooperative behaviour is most vividly illustrated when it breaks down in children and adults with language disorder. This is what happens in the following exchange between a doctor and an adult with schizophrenia. The doctor in this exchange has asked the adult how he came to be living in a particular city in the USA. This is the patient’s response: ‘Then I left San Francisco and moved to … where did you get that tie? It looks like it’s left over from the 1950s. I like the warm weather in San Diego. Is that a conch shell on your desk? Have you ever gone scuba diving?’ (Thomas, 1997, p.41) After beginning ‘on topic’, the adult with schizophrenia starts to digress. His subsequent utterances are very much the ‘succession of disconnected remarks’ described by Grice above. The speaker is not guided by a common purpose or a mutually accepted direction. In fact, he appears wholly unaware of any conversational expectation that the doctor might hold of him. This extract illustrates clearly what can happen in conversation when a speaker is not guided by the type of rational expectations that Grice captures in his Cooperative Principle. Grice fleshes out his Cooperative Principle in the form of four categories: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner (1989, pp.26–​ 27). Quantity relates to the quantity of information to be provided, and has two maxims: 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Quality is expressed in a supermaxim –​‘Try to make your contribution one that is true’ –​and has two more specific maxims: 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relation is expressed by the maxim ‘Be relevant’. Manner is the only one of the four maxims that relates to how a speaker says something and not what is said. It is expressed by the injunction ‘Be perspicuous’ and has four maxims:

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Implicatures  39 1. 2. 3. 4.

Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly.

Grice acknowledges that further maxims may be required to address aesthetic and social considerations. One such maxim is ‘Be polite’. This maxim could be applied to the response of the adult with schizophrenia above. In a professional encounter between a doctor and a patient, this adult has not observed the injunction ‘Be polite’ when he produces unflattering remarks about the doctor’s attire. It is not difficult to demonstrate that for the purpose for which Grice envisaged these maxims –​the ‘maximally effective exchange of information’ –​speakers and hearers do attempt to adhere to them. We can illustrate this by examining the use of hedges. The speaker who utters: ‘To cut a long story short, Jack left his wife’ reveals his commitment to Quantity through use of the hedge to cut a long story short. The speaker is effectively saying ‘I could give you, the hearer, much more information about Jack’s separation from his wife, but I doubt that you need or even want this additional information’. Similarly, the speaker who utters: ‘As far as I know, Sally taught the course last year’ indicates his adherence to Quality through use of the hedge as far as I know. The speaker is letting the hearer know ‘I may not be in possession of the full facts and my memory may be inaccurate, but on the basis of what I truly believe to be the case, Sally taught the course last year.’ But we should not stop at conversation if we are to get a sense of the reach of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and maxims. For conversation is just a ‘special case or variety’ of rational, cooperative behaviour, according to Grice. We might expect to find the same principle and maxims operating in non-​verbal behaviour. If I am mending a car, Grice argues, and I need four screws at a certain point in the process, I may justifiably consider it a breakdown of Quantity if you hand me two screws or six screws. Likewise, I will consider it a violation of Relation to be handed a good book to read while I am mixing ingredients for a cake. Grice’s rational framework extends beyond conversation, even though conversation is where it is given its fullest expression.

2.3  The cooperative principle and implicature In section 2.2, we described how Grice’s Cooperative Principle and maxims provide a rational framework in which speakers, hearers, and other actors can satisfy mutual expectations in conversation and cooperative behaviour more generally. We also saw one of several ways in which this principle and maxims may lapse in an interaction. The adult with schizophrenia violated the cooperative principle and maxims, specifically Relation and Quantity, when he produced an irrelevant,

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40 Implicatures over-​ informative response to the doctor’s question. Of course, this speaker’s deviation from the principle and maxims can be explained in terms of his psychiatric condition. But it is simply a more exaggerated form of behaviours that we have all encountered in our interactions with others. How many times have we had conversations with people who make irrelevant remarks or who talk at length when asked a question that could be satisfactorily answered in fewer than ten words? These deviations, in which a speaker unostentatiously violates the Cooperative Principle and maxims, are not uncommon even in individuals with intact language skills. This is how a healthy spouse of a man with Parkinson’s disease responded to the question: When was X’s last appointment with the neurologist? ‘The neurology service at the XX [name of hospital] is not um working well since it was announced XX [name of neurologist] was being investigated. We always liked him, and um thought he had a good way about him. We know others who said the same. The PD nurse is our main contact person and has been very good with me and XX [name of patient].’ This speaker has violated maxims relating to Quantity and Relation. Her response does not contain the information the speaker wants to be given, namely, the date of the last neurology appointment. Meanwhile, it conveys a considerable amount of irrelevant information. But violation of the Cooperative Principle and maxims is only one of the ways in which speakers may deviate from Grice’s rational framework. Speakers may also opt out of the principle and maxims such as when a politician utters No comment in response to the probing questions of a journalist or a speaker says My lips are sealed when encouraged to divulge information about a close friend’s extra-​marital affair. Speakers who opt out of the framework know that it applies to the interaction of which they are a part but are nonetheless signalling that they intend it to be suspended temporarily. Of course, this behaviour may communicate a message to hearers and observers –​that the speaker is trying to avoid scrutiny or the possibility of legal action if information is judged to be defamatory. A third way in which a speaker may deviate from Grice’s framework involves a clash of maxims. This is where to fulfil one maxim a speaker is not able to satisfy another maxim. In the exchange below, Pete is attempting to be as informative as possible in providing a response to Mark’s question: MARK:  When did Rosie leave PETE:  I think it was 7am.

this morning?

However, in fulfilling maxims relating to Quantity, Pete may place Quality in jeopardy, especially if he has the most tenuous evidence to support his

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Implicatures  41 statement about Rosie’s departure time (e.g. he heard the front gate close at around 7am). A speaker may not violate, opt out of, or engage in a clash of maxims and yet still not adhere to one or more of Grice’s maxims. This final category involves the exploitation or flouting of maxims and is the route by means of which a speaker can use an utterance to generate implicatures. To illustrate how a speaker may ostentatiously flout a maxim to produce an implicature, imagine a scenario in which Mark asks the same question as that shown above but receives a very different reply from Pete: MARK:  When did Rosie leave this morning? PETE:  The dog next door started barking at 7am.

Pete is implicating that Rosie left at 7am. How can Mark establish this implicature of Pete’s utterance when his only evidence is a statement about the barking of the dog next door? Pete appears to have produced an irrelevant response to Mark’s question. But in producing this response, Pete is setting in motion a process of reasoning that will lead Mark to establish the relevance of his statement. This process only works on the assumption that Pete is still committed to the Cooperative Principle notwithstanding the apparent irrelevance of his response to Mark’s question. By openly exploiting or flouting a maxim, a speaker may implicate more than he says. These implicated meanings are implicatures. This is how Grice captures implicature in relation to one of his own examples. A asks B how C is getting on in his job, to which B replies: ‘Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet’: ‘In a suitable setting A might reason as follows: ‘(1) B has apparently violated the maxim “Be relevant” and so may be regarded as having flouted one of the maxims conjoining perspicuity, yet I have no reason to suppose that he is opting out from the operation of the Cooperative Principle; (2) given the circumstances, I can regard his irrelevance as only apparent if, and only if, I suppose him to think that C is potentially dishonest; (3) B knows that I am capable of working out step (2). So B implicates that C is potentially dishonest.’’ (1989, p.31) Grice states that an argument (effectively, a process of reasoning) must lie at the heart of any conversational implicature. Indeed, if an argument cannot be identified or reconstructed, then the implicature is not a conversational implicature but a conventional implicature –​that is, an implicature that attaches by convention to words or sentences. Grice further states that the Cooperative Principle must operate alongside other considerations if a hearer is to derive a speaker’s implicature. Mark must know the conventional meaning of words like dog and barking if he is to establish the implicature of Pete’s utterance. Mark must also be attentive to

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42 Implicatures the linguistic context of Pete’s utterance, namely, that Pete advances his utterance as a response to Mark’s question. Other items of background knowledge are also relevant to Mark’s calculation of Pete’s implicature. Mark must know, for example, that dogs have sensitive hearing and can respond to the movement of people by barking. Finally, Mark must know that each of these items is also available to Pete, such that Pete knows the behaviour of dogs, knows that his utterance is a response to Mark’s question, and so on. That the absence of any one of these considerations results in a failed implicature can be readily illustrated by returning to the study of adults with schizophrenia conducted by Colle et al. (2013). Subjects in this study were shown a videotaped scenario in which a boy and a girl are eating a disgusting soup. The boy smacks his lips with a gesture meaning It’s very good! When asked what the boy meant by this gesture, one adult with schizophrenia responded that He meant to say that she cooked a delicious soup. Of course, the boy’s gesture was ironic and implicated that the soup was disgusting. The reason that this adult with schizophrenia did not recover this implicature from the boy’s gesture is that he overlooked a vital part of context –​namely, that the videotaped scenario conveyed that the soup was disgusting. The boy’s implicature failed in this case because the adult with schizophrenia did not attend adequately to context.

2.4  Types of implicature In the examples of implicature considered so far, there is some deviation from the maxims. A speaker has violated one or more maxims, opted out of maxims, flouted maxims, or engaged in a clash of maxims. But some implicatures may arise from the simple observance of maxims. Consider the speaker who produces the following utterance: ‘I washed the tables and stacked the chairs.’ By simply observing the maxim to be orderly, and report events in the order in which they occurred, this speaker may be taken to implicate that he washed the tables first and then stacked the chairs. Similarly, Fran’s response to Jack in the exchange below generates the implicature that Suffolk Road is open and is passable: JACK:  How do I get to Willow FRAN:  You head along Suffolk

Farm? Road.

Once again, Fran produces this implicature by merely observing the maxim to be relevant. If it were discovered, for example, that Suffolk Road is closed because of roadworks, it could be argued that Fran had not been relevant in failing to convey this information to Jack –​the fact that Suffolk Road is temporarily impassable is relevant to Jack, and Fran had not been fully relevant in her exchange with him in failing to mention it.

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Implicatures  43 When certain maxims are exploited or flouted, the implicatures that are generated are so common in language that they have their own designation. So-​called ‘figures of speech’ include irony, metaphor, hyperbole, and understatement. In section 2.3, we encountered an adult with schizophrenia who did not grasp the irony of the boy who produced a gesture meaning the soup was very good when he believed that the soup was disgusting. The boy in this scenario exploited or flouted the first maxim of Quality –​Do not say what you believe to be false –​with a view to being ironic. The speaker who utters What a delightful child! in the presence of a disruptive five-​year-​old boy also produces irony by exploiting the first Quality maxim. This same maxim is also exploited by the speaker who uses metaphor. The speaker who utters The lawyers were sharks in court or The players were lions on the field is saying something which overtly flouts the first Quality maxim –​the speaker is saying something which he believes to be false in that the lawyers and the players are not literally sharks or lions, respectively. But by ostentatiously flouting the first Quality maxim, the speaker succeeds in conveying that the lawyers and the players shared certain attributes with sharks and lions –​the lawyers, for example, were vicious and attacking while the players were brave and fearless. Other figures of speech arise when the first and second Quantity maxims are flouted. The speaker who utters We had to read millions of books for that course is clearly flouting the second Quantity maxim to produce hyperbole. The speaker may have had to read many books for the course. But to represent this as millions of books is clearly to provide more information than the actual situation warrants. The speaker who remarks of his professor that He was a little disorganized when he forgot the room number of the class, mixed up the order of his lecture slides, and provided the wrong readings is producing an understatement. The implicature that is the basis of the speaker’s understatement arises because the first Quantity maxim has been ostentatiously flouted –​the professor is clearly more than just a little disorganized and the speaker has not been as informative as the situation demands. A tautology involves the repetition of information and is, by definition, uninformative. The speaker who utters a tautology like Boys will be boys is flouting the first Quantity maxim –​the speaker has not made his utterance as informative as required. And yet the exploitation of this maxim allows the speaker to implicate that there are certain behaviours of boys that are simply part of their nature and that we must excuse as a result. The ostentatious flouting of Quality and Quantity maxims to produce figures of speech are some of the more obvious communicative uses of implicature. But Relation and Manner maxims can also be flouted to achieve communicative effects. An exchange between the author and a man with Parkinson’s disease illustrates how Relation may be flouted by a speaker to communicate more than what is said in a particular context.

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44 Implicatures The author had asked the man what impact Parkinson’s disease had on his daily life. The man began to respond along predictable lines –​his sleep, movement, and memory were all affected by the condition. Then he uttered: ‘The libido’s gone sky high but I’m not with anybody so that’s probably one of the problems.’ At that point, the man’s daughter said, ‘The kettle has boiled’ and left the room to make coffee for us. Through her ostentatious flouting of the Relation maxim, she was communicating that her father had made a social gaffe which had left those in the room feeling somewhat uncomfortable. The Manner maxims may also be ostentatiously flouted. The following exchange arose between a man (PAR) with progressive supranuclear palsy and his wife (WIF), both of whom were previously examined in Chapter 1. In T3, the man’s wife flouts the maxim ‘Avoid obscurity of expression’ when she utters Begins with an R: T1 WIF:  What did I look up last night? T2 PAR:  Oh yes, another river cruise. T3 WIF:  Where? Begins with an R. The

Rhine.

Clearly, a less obscure form of expression would be to say The Rhine outright, as the man’s wife goes on to utter. By flouting this Manner maxim, the wife is implicating that she believes her husband knows the destination of the river cruise and that she wants him to produce the name of the destination for the author rather than say it herself. Each of the above types of implicature involves a particular context in the absence of which the implicature does not arise. The daughter who uttered ‘The kettle has boiled’ cannot implicate anything at all about her father’s social gaffe if the context were not a formal one in which it is not appropriate to discuss one’s libido. Grice called implicatures that depend on a particular context particularized conversational implicatures. But he also recognized another type of implicature called generalized conversational implicatures. This category of implicatures is associated with the use of a ‘certain form of words in an utterance’ but is distinct from conventional implicatures in its reliance on the Cooperative Principle and maxims. Grice used the example of X is meeting a woman this evening, where the speaker may be taken to implicate that the woman whom X is meeting is not ‘X’s wife, mother, sister, or perhaps even close platonic friend’ (1989, p.37). If it were discovered that X was meeting his sister, for example, a hearer could reasonably object that the speaker had not been as informative as is required (the first Quantity maxim) by using a woman. Another generalized conversational implicature with widespread currency is the implicature from some to not all (a so-​called scalar implicature). If a speaker utters Jill gets on well with some of her siblings, a hearer is entitled to infer that Jill does not get on with all her siblings. Once again, this implicature requires no special context and arises through the observance of the Cooperative Principle and maxims. If Jill does, in fact, get on with all her siblings, the speaker may rightly be

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Implicatures  45 judged to be misleading by using the less informative word some (a violation of the first Quantity maxim again). That generalized conversational implicatures generate default interpretations –​interpretations that are automatic on the assumption that the speaker is observing the Cooperative Principle and maxims –​can be illustrated by the following extract. It appeared at the beginning of a narrative produced by a girl of 7;4 years who had sustained a traumatic brain injury (Biddle et al., 1996). The girl had been asked to recount an occasion on which she had been stung by a bee. This is how she begins her narrative: ‘Ummm, I, once, there was a, we went. There was a fort. There was this umm fort. A tree fell down. And there was dirt, all kinds of stuff there. It was our fort.’ When the girl utters There was a fort, it generates the implicature that the fort did not belong to the girl and her friends. This inference is generated automatically based on the assumption that the girl is observing the Cooperative Principle and the first Quantity maxim to make her contribution as informative as is required. That this inference is already in place for the hearer is demonstrated by the sense of dissonance that the hearer experiences when the narrator goes on to say It was our fort. For this assertion directly contradicts the generalized conversational implicature raised by the narrator’s use of the words a fort. Grice characterized one final category of implicatures that he called conventional implicatures. This type of implicature is attached by convention to certain lexical items and constructions and does not depend on the Cooperative Principle and maxims. Standard examples are utterances like Even John passed the grammar test where the word even raises the implicature that it was not expected that John would pass the grammar test, and Paul is overweight but healthy where the word but generates the implicature that there is a contrast between Paul’s state of good health and the fact that he is overweight. The implicatures of and attached to the words even and but, respectively, are not derived by means of an argument (are not calculable) as they are for conversational implicatures. Because these implicatures are given by convention, they are an arbitrary part of meaning and must be learned in much the same way that we learn the meanings of words like dog and airplane. This category of implicature was difficult even for Grice. He remarked that ‘the nature of conventional implicature needs to be examined before any free use of it, for explanatory purposes, can be indulged in’ (1989, p.46). We will have more to say about conventional implicature in section 2.5.

2.5  Properties of implicatures To embark on our discussion of the properties of implicatures, we return to the study by Colle et al. (2013) of pragmatic functioning in adults with

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46 Implicatures schizophrenia. The adults in this study were presented with the following scenario: The boy performs a gesture to ask the girl: ‘Do you want some coffee?’ The girl looks at her watch with a gesture meaning ‘It’s late.’ The adults were asked ‘What did the girl say?’ One adult in the study replied, ‘She refused the offer.’ The adult’s interpretation of the girl’s non-​ verbal implicature seems entirely appropriate given what we know about coffee, namely, that coffee contains caffeine, which is a stimulant, and people are unlikely to want to consume a stimulant late at night when they may wish to sleep. But the girl can quickly overturn this implicature of her gesture without any contradiction. Assuming she reverts to verbal communication, she can go on to say the following: ‘It’s late, but I’d like some coffee as I need to stay up late and revise for my exam tomorrow’ This example illustrates the first property of conversational implicatures. That property is their defeasibility or cancellability. What cancelled the implicature in this case was the addition of information to the context of the original implicature. The new context includes the information that the speaker needs to revise for an exam and that the stimulant effects of caffeine in coffee will allow her to sit up late and study. Against this new context, the adult’s original implicature no longer looks plausible and must be overturned. Through their reliance on context, all conversational implicatures exhibit the same defeasibility as this ‘coffee’ implicature. Let us return to an example discussed in section 2.4: JACK:  How do I get to Willow FRAN:  You head along Suffolk

Farm? Road.

In section 2.4, it was described how by observing the Relation maxim, the speaker generates the implicature that Suffolk Road is open and passable. However, this implicature is cancelled if Fran goes on to say: ‘You head along Suffolk Road, but it is temporarily closed, so use Wilby Lane instead.’ A second property of conversational implicatures is their non-​ detachability. Because implicatures are related to the semantic content, and not the linguistic form, of what is said, any linguistic expression with the same semantic content will generate the same implicature. In the following exchange, Patsy may be taken to implicate that she will not be going abroad this summer: TOMMY:  Are you going abroad this summer? PATSY:  My father is having an operation.

But the very same implicature would be generated if Patsy had uttered My male parent is having a surgical procedure.

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Implicatures  47 A third property of conversational implicatures is their calculability. It is possible to derive an implicature from the Cooperative Principle and maxims by means of an argument, according to Grice. One such argument is presented in section 2.1. A fourth property of conversational implicatures is non-​conventionality. A conversational implicature is non-​coded and is not part of what is said. Rather, it only arises by the saying of what is said. That Patsy will not be going abroad this summer is not coded in her utterance in the above exchange. This implicature only comes about through Patsy’s saying this utterance. A fifth property of conversational implicatures is their reinforceability. This means that an implicature can be made explicit without creating any semantic redundancy. In the utterance below, Bill is implicating that the country’s economic recovery has not been very strong: BILL:  The

country’s economic recovery has been moderately strong.

There is no semantic redundancy in adding the implicature of Bill’s utterance to what he has said: The country’s economic recovery has been moderately strong, but not very strong. A sixth property of conversational implicatures is their universality. Implicatures are universal because they are rationally motivated –​derivable from the Cooperative Principle and maxims – r​ather than arbitrary. The utterance Jill gets on with some of her siblings in section 2.4 implicated that Jill does not get on with all her siblings. This implicature arises for the same utterance in French: Jill s’entend bien avec quelques-​uns de ses frères et soeurs. A seventh property of conversational implicatures is their indeterminacy. It is often not possible to be certain about what an utterance may be taken to implicate. In the exchange below, Mary may be taken to implicate any of the statements in (a) to (e): JACK:  What do you think of this MARY:  The frame is very ornate.

painting?

(a) Mary would not hang this painting in her living room. (b) Mary thinks the painting is the work of an amateur. (c) Mary would like to buy the frame but not the painting. (d) Mary thinks the painting lacks perspective. (e) Mary wants Jack to show her a better painting. Grice states that because the list of explanations that can be supposed to preserve the supposition that the Cooperative Principle is being

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48 Implicatures observed is open, a conversational implicatum is a disjunction of the type of explanations given in (a) to (e) above, e.g. Mary implicates that she thinks the painting lacks perspective OR that the painting is the work of an amateur OR that she wants Jack to show her a better painting, etc. The indeterminacy of conversational implicatures is particularly challenging for children and adults with pragmatic problems. The open-​ended nature of the implicatures that an utterance may generate is believed to play a role in paranoid delusions. Cram and Hedley (2005) state that ‘subjects with paranoid delusion have pragmatic over-​shoot in the sense that they do not stop the search for intended meaning when they reach the locally optimal interpretation of an utterance, but recursively pursue an ulterior intention and meaning’ (p.180). An individual with paranoid delusions may initially interpret Mary’s utterance in the exchange above to mean that she thinks the painting is the work of an amateur. However, the interpretive process may not stop there. The paranoid individual may go on to interpret Mary’s utterance as meaning that she also thinks that the hearer is an amateur and that Mary is trying to destroy the hearer’s professional reputation. The same indeterminacy of implicatures is challenging for children and adults with autism spectrum disorder. Loukusa et al. (2007) found that children with Asperger syndrome (a form of autism spectrum disorder, ASD) established a plausible implicature of an utterance initially but continued processing utterances for their implicatures, leading to greater and greater irrelevance. Children in this study were shown a picture in which a man is mowing the lawn with a lawn mower. A woman is standing on the lawn holding a rake. There is a flowerbed in the middle of the lawn. The researcher read the following verbal scenario aloud and then asks a question: The man is mowing the grass with a lawn mower. The woman says to the man: There are flowers growing in the middle of the grass so remember to be careful. Why does the woman say this? A nine-​year-​old boy with Asperger syndrome answers correctly (underlined). But when presented with the follow-​up question –​How do you know that? –​the boy’s response becomes increasingly problematic: ‘Because women usually like flowers and they don’t want to destroy them. Does he destroy his feelings though he is mowing the lawn? He runs over every dandelion there is.’ How this indeterminacy of implicatures is addressed in one theoretical account since Grice’s classic work on implicatures is examined in the next section. The account in question is relevance theory. While it is only one of several neo- and post-Gricean theories of implicature (see ­chapter 2 in Huang (2014) for discussion), it is the theory that has received most empirical support from studies of normally developing children and children and adults with clinical disorders. It is also the theoretical approach that Cram and Hedley and Loukusa et al. use to explain the processing

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Implicatures  49 of implicatures in people with paranoid delusions and autism spectrum disorder.

2.6  Relevance theory Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) rests on several assumptions that were also central to the work of Grice. Like Grice, Sperber and Wilson emphasize the role of intentions in communication. An exchange of utterances in conversation involves an exchange of intentions between speakers and hearers. What a speaker may be said to mean by an utterance is only established when the hearer succeeds in identifying the intention that motivated the speaker to produce the utterance. A further assumption that Sperber and Wilson share with Grice is that we must infer speaker meaning based on a speaker’s behaviour (verbal and otherwise) alongside background knowledge. And like Grice, Sperber and Wilson believe that hearers are guided in the inferences they draw about speaker meaning by certain standards that utterances are expected to meet. For Grice, those standards take the form of the Cooperative Principle and maxims. We will see subsequently that they involve a principle of optimal relevance for Sperber and Wilson. Where Sperber and Wilson diverge from Grice is on the purpose of their respective enterprises. Grice was concerned to address philosophical and semantic issues such as the nature of sentence meaning (‘what is said’). Grice was also interested in what a rational reconstruction of the process by means of which a hearer establishes the implicature of a speaker’s utterance might look like. Sperber and Wilson have a quite different aim. It is to develop a psychologically plausible theory of communication. This theory generates hypotheses that can be tested empirically by examining how children and adults with clinical conditions and intact language actually process utterances. These empirical investigations have given rise to a substantial literature (see Van der Henst and Sperber (2004) for discussion). The challenge for Sperber and Wilson is to develop an account of utterance interpretation that is grounded in cognitive psychological processes. These processes incur costs for speakers and hearers in terms of the allocation of resources such as attention and memory. But they can also accrue benefits for speakers and hearers when their mental representations assume a better fit with the world around them. A trade-​ off between processing costs and improved cognitive fit with the world is integral to relevance theory. It is the reason why hearers do not continue to process an utterance indefinitely for its implicatures –​it is simply too costly to do so for the minimal gain in terms of improved relevance that such processing can deliver. It is also the reason why we attend to relevant information in our environment and prioritize relevant information in communication. Relevant information comes with an implicit guarantee that for the expenditure of cognitive effort required to process it, we can

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50 Implicatures extract maximal gain in terms of our improved fit with the world. Sperber and Wilson call this guarantee the presumption of optimal relevance: (a) The ostensive stimulus is relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee’s effort to process it. (b) The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator’s abilities and preferences. This says that the addressee is entitled to expect a level of relevance high enough to warrant his attending to the stimulus, and which is, moreover, the highest level of relevance that the communicator was capable of achieving given her means and goals (Sperber and Wilson, 1995, pp. 270–​271). To understand how a relevance-​theoretic approach to utterance interpretation works, let us consider the following exchange between Martha and Jimmy: MARTHA:  Did Paul and JIMMY:  Paul attended.

Sam attend the lecture at 10am?

Martha is entitled to expect that Jimmy’s utterance is relevant enough to be worth her effort to process it. She is also entitled to believe that Jimmy has produced the most relevant utterance compatible with his abilities and preferences. This much is guaranteed by the presumption of optimal relevance. And so, Martha begins a search to establish the relevance of Jimmy’s utterance. She knows the following facts about the conversation: (1) I have asked Jimmy a question about Paul and Sam. (2) Jimmy has given me a response that mentions Paul only. Martha also has certain background knowledge that she brings to her interpretation of Jimmy’s utterance. This knowledge includes: (3) Paul and Sam are studying medicine at university like Martha and Jimmy. (4) The lecture at 10am is on anatomy and physiology. (5) Students often skip the anatomy and physiology lecture at 10am. (6) Martha and Sam often miss 10am classes if they have been out the previous evening. Alongside facts about the conversation and background knowledge, Martha has certain expectations of Jimmy as her interlocutor. These expectations are derived from the presumption of optimal relevance: (7) Jimmy is telling Martha something that it is worth her effort to process.

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Implicatures  51 (8) Jimmy is conveying the most relevant information he has at his disposal. Based on (1) to (8), no one would be surprised to discover that Martha takes Jimmy’s utterance to implicate that Sam did not attend the lecture at 10am. Even though this implicature requires Martha to hold eight propositions in memory, it is the least effortful route that she can take to establish the relevance of Jimmy’s response to her question. At this point, relevance processing stops as the search for further implicatures of Jimmy’s utterance will only incur costs without any additional gain for Martha. But let us imagine that Martha sets about deriving a very different implicature from Jimmy’s utterance, namely, that Jimmy has not mentioned Sam’s name because he believes Rosie, a woman who has been stalking Sam, has just come within earshot of their conversation. On this alternative interpretation of Jimmy’s utterance, he is not implicating anything about Sam’s attendance at the lecture. Rather, Jimmy is implicating that he does not wish to continue talking about Sam in view of a perceived risk from Rosie. What information does Martha need to derive this alternative implicature from Jimmy’s utterance? The facts about the conversation, as represented by the propositions in (1) and (2) above, remain unchanged. The expectations that Martha has of Jimmy, namely, that he is a relevant, cooperative communicator as stated in propositions (7) and (8), also remain unchanged. What does change is the background knowledge that Martha must process to arrive at this alternative implicature. The four propositions represented by (3) to (6) above are replaced by the following ten propositions: (3) Paul and Sam are studying medicine at university like Martha and Jimmy. (4) The lecture at 10am is on anatomy and physiology. (5) As a medical student, Sam should attend the lecture at 10am. (6) Rosie, a history student on campus, has been stalking Sam for several months. (7) Sam has reported Rosie to the university and police for stalking him. (8) Rosie constantly wants to learn of Sam’s whereabouts. (9) Jimmy is aware of Rosie’s stalking behaviour. (10) Jimmy has just seen Rosie come into view. (11) Jimmy believes Rosie is within earshot of his conversation with Martha. (12) Jimmy does not want to mention Sam’s name in the presence of Rosie. Given this background knowledge, Martha could legitimately derive the implicature that Jimmy wants to stop talking about Sam. The reason why Martha is less likely to derive this implicature over her earlier implicature

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52 Implicatures is that she must expend considerably more cognitive effort in establishing the relevance of Jimmy’s utterance. Martha must now hold ten propositions in memory as background knowledge in place of the earlier four propositions. The additional costs of holding this information in memory while she establishes the implicature of Jimmy’s utterance is what leads her to opt for the first implicature over this second implicature. The former implicature leads Martha to the relevance of Jimmy’s utterance through a quick and inexpensive processing route; the latter implicature commits her to additional processing costs with no additional gain in relevance. One of the reasons why relevance theory has achieved popularity in the decades since Grice’s work on implicatures is that relevance-​theoretic proposals are highly explicit in nature. This has allowed the framework to be tested in a range of children and adults and, in turn, to be used to explain the pragmatic performance of individuals with clinical conditions. Relevance theory has been used to explain the pragmatic performance of children with autism spectrum disorder (Happé, 1993; Loukusa et al., 2007), pragmatic impairment (Leinonen and Kerbel, 1999), and specific language impairment (Schelletter and Leinonen, 2003), as well as adults with right-​hemisphere damage (Dipper et al., 1997) and schizophrenia (Cram and Hedley, 2005). Leinonen and Kerbel (1999) use relevance theory to account for the pragmatic difficulties of three children. Relevance theory proposes a level of utterance meaning which is distinct from an implicature. Known as an explicature, this level of meaning is the explicit content of the utterance which is arrived at by means of the pragmatic processes of disambiguation, reference assignment, enrichment, and loosening (e.g. ‘flat’ used to mean relatively flat). Leinonen and Kerbel demonstrate the different ways in which the children in this study fail to achieve the explicature of an utterance. For example, the pragmatic difficulties of a girl called Sarah (9;8–​10;3 years at the time of study) can be traced in part to her problems with enrichment. Specifically, Sarah fails to enrich an instruction to continue telling a story which the researcher has started and ends up repeating what the researcher has said instead. With the explicature of the utterance in place, further relevance processing is required for hearers to derive the implicature of an utterance. Here, again, Sarah displays problems when she fails to recover an implicature of remarks made by the researcher during a conversation about holidays. The researcher utters ‘It’ll be a bit cold in January, after Christmas, won’t it?‘ with the intention of implicating that Sarah’s holiday cannot be a beach holiday. Sarah does not recover this implicature. Leinonen and Kerbel (1999) summarize the contribution of relevance theory to the analysis of these children’s pragmatic difficulties in the following terms: ‘[R]‌elevance theory offers a way of explaining why, in a given context, a particular expression is problematic. The theory thus moves us away from mere description of surface behaviours to an understanding of how the communication difficulty came about’ (1999, p.388).

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Implicatures  53

Summary •

•

•

•

•

•

In his William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1967, Herbert Paul Grice developed a view of human communication as a rational cooperative activity that was driven by mutual expectations. These expectations are embodied, Grice argued, in a Cooperative Principle and four maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. Grice drew a distinction between what is said in an utterance and the implicatures of an utterance. On the assumption that a speaker is observing the Cooperative Principle, a hearer can draw inferences about what a speaker is implicating based on what is said, background knowledge and context. This implicated meaning is the implicature of the utterance. A speaker may produce an utterance that observes, violates, opts out of, or flouts a maxim. A speaker may also engage in a clash of maxims. When some maxims are flouted, figures of speech like metaphor and hyperbole can be generated. Some conversational implicatures require a specific context (particularized conversational implicatures) while others are associated with certain words and phrases (generalized conversational implicatures). Other implicatures do not depend on the Cooperative Principle and maxims at all and are attached by convention to particular words (conventional implicatures). Conversational implicatures share certain properties such as their cancellability. An implicature can be cancelled or defeated without inconsistency by the addition of further information. A speaker may reply I have an essay to write when asked Do you want to go to the cinema? The implicature that the speaker does not want to go to the cinema is overturned if the speaker then says I’ll leave my essay until next week. In relevance theory, Sperber and Wilson argue that Grice’s four maxims can be replaced by a single principle of relevance. Hearers search for the most relevant interpretation of a speaker’s utterance and cease processing of an utterance when relevance is established. We also attend to relevant information in our environment as this information achieves the greatest improvement of our mental representation of the world for the least cognitive processing effort.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Davis, W. (2019) ‘Implicature’, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2019 Edition. Online: https://​plato. stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​fall2​019/​entr​ies/​impl​icat​ure/​

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54 Implicatures This is a comprehensive treatment of implicature which addresses different types of implicature, Gricean theory, neo-​Gricean pragmatics (Horn and Levinson) and relevance theory. It is an accessible overview of the concept and its main theoretical contributors. (2) Huang, Y. (2014) Pragmatics. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Implicature is examined in Chapter 2 of this book. Huang examines classical Gricean theory, neo-​Gricean pragmatic theories, current debates about conversational implicature, and conventional implicature. (3) Zufferey, S., Moeschler, J. and Reboul, A. (2019) Implicatures. New York: Cambridge University Press. This book-​length treatment of implicatures addresses the same areas as (1) and (2) above. Additionally, however, the authors examine empirical domains in which implicature has been investigated including language processing, first language development, and second language acquisition.

Questions (1) In section 2.6, we described how Leinonen and Kerbel (1999) found that children with pragmatic difficulties were unable to undertake pragmatic enrichment of a speaker’s utterance. Enrichment is the process by means of which the content that is conveyed by an utterance comes to include elements that are contextually implied without being part of what the utterance literally means. It includes processes such as reference assignment and disambiguation. As well as being unable to undertake enrichment of the utterances of others, children with pragmatic problems are often also unable to produce utterances that their hearers can enrich. A study by De Villiers et al. (2012) reported several instances of language use by subjects with ASD where an utterance would not have permitted a hearer to undertake a (correct) pragmatic enrichment. Two conversational extracts involving these children are shown below. For each extract, indicate if the utterances in bold produced by the children (P) with ASD are an adequate basis upon which the researcher (R) can undertake enrichment: Extract 1: R:  so you’re staying with some friends here while you’re P: yes R: mmhm? R:  that must be nice not to have to stay in a hotel.

in Toronto eh?

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Implicatures  55 P:  I I I want to. P:  but it seems that they R:  who didn’t agree? P:  mom and dad.

did they didn’t agree.

Extract 2: R:  you were showing me your iguanas. R:  c what can you tell me about them? P:  one escaped for two day–​:. P:  and one # and uh he started [?]‌. P:  but he n not very much. R:  where did you find him? P:  behind the piano. R:  and was he difficult to catch again? P: mmhm. P:  but uh I wasn’t. P:  and uh my mom she hired somebody to help her

do some stuff around the house. P:  and uh they had to do it. P:  and one was holdin(g) it like like this. P:  and uh the person that was holdin(g) it was terrified of them. (2) Children and adults with a range of clinical conditions can use Grice’s maxims in non-​normative ways during conversation. The following extracts exemplify some of these ways. For each extract, identify the maxim that is problematic for the child or adult. In what way is the maxim not appropriately applied? Extract 1: This utterance is taken from a conversation between a teacher and a child called Adam. Adam has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He was studied by Peets (2009). ADAM: 

I went to my cousin’s house and when I went to my cousin’s house that was later when I when I we went back home for um from snow tubing.

The following interactions are taken from a study of adults with intellectual disability conducted by Brinton and Fujiki (1994). The adults (S) were posed simple and complex questions by the investigator (I) in the context of a job interview: Extract 2: I:  What do S: Work.

you do at work?

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56 Implicatures Extract 3: I:  How do you spend S:  I like to go fishing.

your free time? I like to catch lot of fish and take them back to the cottage. I scare all the girls. I put fish in their shoes. Mary really hates it when I do that to her.

Extract 4: I:  What are some chores you have to do where you live? S:  Well, uhm, at Ellenbrook we clean up the cottage. I:  Uh-​huh. S:  Clean it nice and clean. Not the whole mess, clean up

again. We take shower over there every night. I:  Uh-​huh. S:  So I take a shower and clean myself up. Get my deodorant on every morning. So I don’t smell bad. I:  Uh-​huh. Oh, put your deodorant on every morning? S:  Every night I do. I:  Oh, every night. S:  I don’t wanna get smelly like god bad. You know Frances don’t like me smelling. So I just clean up. (3) Mancini and Rogers (2007) studied a white female in her fifties named Nancy who has bipolar disorder. Nancy spoke at length about different aspects of her condition. The three utterances shown below are taken from an extract where Nancy is attributing her recovery to finding the right medication. What expressions in these utterances indicate that Nancy is aware of the need to observe the second Quantity maxim and not make her contribution more informative than is required? ‘My recovery, in a nutshell, to me was, in the dictionary sense, recovering from extremely beyond anything dysfunctional and what I call crazy phase that lasted, that would not respond to any medication.’ ‘So very briefly, all recovery means to me is not the kind of journey and, you know, back and forth, one step forward, two steps kind of experience that so many people I know describe and that I know, and that I have seen and that I know very well.’ ‘And my experience there, to make a long story short, I would say due to that experience, that a cocktail finally got developed that worked for the first time in 12 or 13 years.’

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3 Presuppositions

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: • • • •

• •

Be able to define the concept of presupposition and characterize its use in communication by speakers and hearers. Understand the efficiencies that presupposition confers on communication in terms of reduced information transfer between speakers and hearers. Be able to characterize different types of presupposition trigger and identify the presuppositions that are triggered by these lexical items and constructions. Understand the difference between presuppositions and entailments and be able to apply tests (e.g. constancy under negation) and recognize contexts (e.g. antecedent of conditionals) in which entailments are cancelled and presuppositions survive. Be able to identify contexts in which presuppositions are defeated such as conflict with background knowledge and the implicatures of an utterance. Understand the projection problem in the presuppositions of complex sentences and what is involved in accommodation of presuppositions by hearers.

3.1 Introduction Consider the following interaction between a ten-​year-​old boy (C) with pragmatic disability and an adult (A). The boy was studied by McTear (1985). In this exchange, the adult is introducing a communication task to the child: T1 A:  now do you want to see if you can T2 C: yes T3 A:  they’re very easy games um (1.0) T4 C:  they are indeed T5 A:  well we’ll see

play some games with me?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-4

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58 Presuppositions A 75-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease is describing the Cookie Theft picture from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass et al., 2001). As part of his description of the scene, he says: ‘the boy is falling off the stool again.’ A 58-​ year-​ old woman with Huntington’s disease is describing her swallowing problems for the author. Her carer Marie has ensured she does not choke on food by sitting with her during mealtimes. At one point in the conversation, the woman remarks: ‘It’s reassuring that Marie sits with me during meals.’ These scenarios appear unremarkable. They contain well-​ formed, meaningful utterances that do not seem to be in any way dissimilar from the many utterances that we exchange every day with other people. But let us look more closely at the wider contexts in which they occur. In the exchange between the adult and the child with pragmatic disability, the adult is introducing novel or unfamiliar games to the child. Yet, the child’s utterance at T4 suggests that he is both familiar with the games and knows that they are easy. The adult who describes the boy in the Cooke Theft picture as falling off the stool again appears to indicate that the boy has fallen off the stool before. But this is a single scene description task that does not support this representation of events. Finally, the woman with Huntington’s disease appears to suggest that Marie is currently sitting with her during mealtimes when, in fact, Marie left her job as a carer two months earlier. In each of the above cases, a child or adult has exhibited difficulty in the use of presupposition. A presupposition is a proposition whose truth is taken for granted in an utterance. It is assumed to be part of the shared background knowledge of a speaker and hearer in conversation and as such is not stated explicitly in the propositional content of an utterance. This characterization allows us to see how the use of presupposition has gone awry for each of the speakers in the above scenarios. The child with pragmatic disability is unfamiliar with the games and does not share the adult’s knowledge of the games even though his utterance would lead us to believe otherwise. It is not true that Marie sits with the woman with Huntington’s disease during mealtimes when she has left her job as a carer. In this chapter, we will explore the concept of presupposition as it is used in everyday communicative contexts. This includes certain features of presupposition such as its constancy under negation. We will also examine words and constructions that act as triggers for presuppositions. But first, we begin by considering what communicative purposes are served by presuppositions in language.

3.2  The economic rationale for presupposition Communication is a highly complex process that requires the integration of a wide range of skills. Muscles in the oral cavity and chest must contract to produce the noises that we recognize as speech sounds. Our

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Presuppositions  59 brains must process vast amounts of incoming information from our eyes and ears and coordinate the planning of linguistic utterances with the physical processes through which these utterances are produced. Each of these steps consumes energy in the same way that riding a bike or walking up and down stairs consume energy. Humans do not for the most part expend their resources on tasks and activities that do not result in gain for them. This includes the energy that is needed to move muscles in our bodies and generate nervous signals between these muscles and the brain. Applied to communication, this economic approach to the expenditure of energy demands that we try to be as efficient as possible during spoken and other forms of communication. We only use energy to produce speech or written language when we believe some purpose is served in doing so. This may be to make our needs known to others or to obtain information that might improve our physical and social wellbeing. If no such purpose can be identified, we tend to conserve our energy for a time when the need to communicate is more likely to result in benefits for us. When communication is necessary, the same economic principle comes into play. Speakers try to be as succinct as possible when they communicate in the knowledge that every syllable uttered involves the expenditure of energy. If they can omit parts of an utterance without compromising the message they are attempting to convey, then they will do so. We can see this in the use of ellipsis where a speaker will omit part of an utterance in the knowledge that the hearer can supply it. Tom avoids the need to produce five words –​like ketchup on my burger –​and conserves vital energy in doing so through his use of ellipsis in his response to Pam’s question below: PAM:  Who would TOM:  I would.

like ketchup on their burger?

Presupposition is motivated by a similar economic principle. Because it allows speakers to leave considerable information in the background of an utterance, presupposition achieves a marked reduction in the amount of language that a speaker must explicitly communicate to a hearer. Let us assume that Sam is talking to Fred about thefts that have been taking place in the vicinity of their workplace. They both use motorbikes to get to work and Sam’s bike was recently stolen. Sam reports to Fred: SAM:  It

was the West Gang who stole my motorbike.

Sam’s utterance presupposes that someone stole his motorbike. This information is part of the background knowledge that he shares with Fred. Accordingly, Sam does not need to expend energy relating this fact to Fred. Sam’s utterance contains two further presuppositions, namely, that there is a group of motorbike thieves who go by the name of the West Gang and that Sam owns a motorbike. Let us consider what Sam’s

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60 Presuppositions utterance would look like if none of these presuppositions were possible. Sam would have to produce the much longer utterance: SAM:  I

own a motorbike. Someone stole my motorbike. There is a group of motorbike thieves known as the West Gang. It was the West Gang who stole my motorbike.

An utterance of nine words is replaced by an utterance consisting of 29 words. There is a threefold increase in the amount of explicit language that Sam would need to produce if none of the presuppositions of his original utterance were possible. Sam must expend additional energy to process this explicit language. And he is not alone. For Fred must also expend energy to decode the increased amount of explicit language that Sam produces. In the absence of presupposition, both the speaker and the hearer must process and store more explicit language and incur additional costs in terms of the expenditure of energy. It emerges that presupposition is an important linguistic tool that achieves a certain economy during human verbal communication.

3.3  Presupposition triggers The three presuppositions of Sam’s utterance were triggered by specific words and constructions in the utterance. The definite description the West Gang triggers the presupposition that there is a group called the West Gang. The cleft construction It was … . triggers the presupposition that someone stole Sam’s motorbike. And the possessive noun phrase my motorbike presupposes that Sam owns a motorbike. Other presupposition triggers include the following words and constructions, where ‘​↔’ means ‘presupposes’: Counterfactual conditional: If I were the US president, I would end world poverty ↔ ​ I am not the US president Iteratives: Bill broke his leg again ↔ ​ Bill broke his leg before Factive verbs: The rescuers realized the situation was hopeless ↔ ​ The situation was hopeless Comparatives: Mike is a faster athlete than Henry ↔ ​ Henry is an athlete

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Presuppositions  61 Change-​of-​state verbs: Mike has stopped snoring ↔ ​ Mike used to snore Implicative verbs: Sally managed to leave her abusive husband ​↔ Sally tried to leave her abusive husband Temporal clauses: Before the crowd dispersed, there was considerable public disorder ↔ ​ The crowd dispersed The presuppositions triggered by these expressions require speakers to be adept at managing different background assumptions. This can be seen in the following extract from a conversation between the author and a 57-​ year-​old woman with Huntington’s disease. The woman was describing how her occupational performance came under scrutiny for the first time when a new managing editor joined her workplace: ‘this new erm managing editor come into the building, XXX her name was, um but she started interviewing me and she used to interview me about why my stories weren’t long enough’ The woman with Huntington’s disease operates with two different temporal frames in this utterance. She uses a change-​of-​state verb started. This presupposes that she was not interviewed about her work performance prior to the arrival of the new managing editor, or at least not by the new managing editor (she could have been interviewed by someone else). This is the first temporal frame in the utterance, covering the time prior to the arrival of the new managing editor. The speaker must then switch to a second temporal frame which covers the period from the time the new editor arrived, to a point prior to the saying of the above utterance. This second temporal frame is needed to make sense of the underlined verb phrase in ‘she used to interview me’. We must posit a second temporal frame that occurs after the first temporal frame to avoid an inconsistency between this verb phrase and the presupposition of the change-​of-​state verb. This woman with Huntington’s disease manages these temporal frames with considerable skill, thus avoiding any inconsistency between the assumptions that they contain. The background assumptions to which presuppositions commit us are not always so skilfully managed by people with clinical conditions. Below, a 57-​year-​old woman with schizophrenia is responding to the question Do you use platforms like Facebook to keep in touch with people?

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62 Presuppositions ‘I never used to, I just rejoined to connect with long-​ haul Covid sufferers, it’s been a lifeline, like research studies into psychosis and Covid.’ The presupposition of the iterative verb rejoined is that this woman joined (and presumably used) platforms like Facebook before. However, this presupposition is inconsistent with ‘I never used to’ which explicitly contradicts an assumption to the effect that the speaker used platforms like Facebook before. Not all presuppositions are triggered by certain words and constructions. At the beginning of section 3.1, we encountered a boy with pragmatic disability who presupposed that he had knowledge of the games mentioned by the adult when this was not the case. This presupposition was not related to any word or construction in the boy’s utterance They are indeed. Rather, his presupposition is related to the fact that to assert that the games are easy, the boy must first know what the games are. The boy who produces this utterance must take certain other things for granted or assume certain things to be true. He must assume that the adult speaks the same language as he does and that the adult’s knowledge of this language will enable him to identify the games as the referent of the pronoun ‘they’. This presupposition of the boy’s utterance does not arise from a specific word or construction within the utterance but from the background beliefs which speakers and hearers must share before they embark on any spoken interaction with each other. Even though this shared belief is a more peripheral assumption to the assumption that the boy knows the games, it must still be true for the boy to use this utterance appropriately in his exchange with the adult.

3.4  Properties of presuppositions Presuppositions can often be confused with the entailments of a sentence or utterance. Accordingly, linguists have established tests to distinguish presuppositions from these other inferences of a sentence. Consider the utterance below: The doctors managed to save the baby’s life. Entails … The doctors saved the baby’s life. Presupposes … The doctors tried to save the baby’s life. This utterance entails that the doctors saved the baby’s life but presupposes that the doctors tried to save the baby’s life. The first test of a presupposition is that it survives negation of the original utterance while entailments are cancelled by negation. An entailment is only true when the original utterance is true: The doctors did not manage to save the baby’s life. Does not entail … The doctors saved the baby’s life. Still presupposes … The doctors tried to save the baby’s life.

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Presuppositions  63 That entailments follow the truth-​value of a sentence is the basis of the second test of presupposition. Because they are not descriptions of states and events in the world, questions are not truth-​conditional in nature. We might, therefore, expect the entailments of a sentence to be cancelled when it takes the form of a question but the presuppositions to survive. Let us change our original utterance The doctors managed to save the baby’s life into a question, and see what it entails and presupposes: Did the doctors manage to save the baby’s life? Does not entail … The doctors saved the baby’s life. Still presupposes … The doctors tried to save the baby’s life. As predicted, the entailment of the sentence does not hold when it takes the form of a question. The presupposition, however, remains in place because it is still a background assumption of the question. The presupposition is not interrogated by the question in the way that the entailment is. If we attempt to interrogate the presupposition –​that is, it is no longer a background assumption of the question –​then it too disappears: Did the doctors try to save the baby’s life? Does not entail … The doctors saved the baby’s life. Does not presuppose … The doctors tried to save the baby’s life. So, while entailments follow the truth-​value of a sentence –​if a sentence is true, its entailments will also be true –​presuppositions only hold if they are background assumptions of a sentence. They disappear as soon as they are directly interrogated in a question. A further context in which a presupposition can remain as a background assumption, and therefore survive where an entailment does not, is in the antecedent of a conditional (i.e. the if-​clause). Let us convert the original sentence The doctors managed to save the baby’s life into a conditional: If the doctors managed to save the baby’s life, then the parents would be overjoyed. Does not entail … The doctors saved the baby’s life. Still presupposes … The doctors tried to save the baby’s life. The doctors’ saving the baby’s life is a condition on the parents being overjoyed rather than a statement which is true. So, the entailment is cancelled. Meanwhile, the presupposition is still a background assumption of the antecedent in the conditional and so the presupposition survives. These three tests of presupposition –​that presuppositions survive negation and can arise in questions and the antecedent of conditionals where entailments do not –​are not just interesting linguistic features of these different inferences of a sentence but aspects of language that its users routinely put into practice. As any probing journalist or shrewd

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64 Presuppositions lawyer knows, a question can ensnare an unsuspecting respondent in its presuppositions (Hickey, 1993; Ehrlich and Sidnell, 2006): Journalist: Has your extra-​marital affair ended? Presupposes … The respondent has had/​is having an extra-​marital affair. Lawyer: Did you use a middleman to embezzle the funds? Presupposes … The respondent has embezzled the funds. The presuppositions of questions can also be used by speakers to cause offence, and produce verbal humour and banter, as in the following examples: Do you want to spend the rest of your life a womanizing alcoholic? Presupposes … The respondent is a womanizing alcoholic. Can you imagine what life would be like if you were attractive and successful? Presupposes … The respondent is not attractive and successful. So far, we have described various contexts in which presuppositions survive or exist where entailments do not. But presuppositions can also be defeated or cancelled under certain circumstances. Presuppositions are cancelled when background knowledge blocks their generation. In the utterance below, the temporal clause before he started the marathon would normally generate the presupposition that Hector started the marathon. However, this presupposition is blocked by the first clause in the utterance. Our background knowledge tells us that if someone has a fatal heart attack, they cannot run a marathon: Hector had a fatal heart attack before he started the marathon. Does not presuppose … Hector started the marathon. A further context in which a presupposition may be blocked or cancelled is when it is inconsistent with the implicature of an utterance. In the example below, the implicature of the if-​clause is that Sue has maybe not stolen the money. But this is inconsistent with the presupposition that is generated by the factive verb realized, namely, that Sue has stolen the money. In this case, the presupposition is blocked: If Sue has stolen the money, her boss will realize that she has stolen it. Does not presuppose … Sue has stolen the money. In some intra-​sentential contexts, a presupposition may also be cancelled. It is a presupposition of the factive verb regret in the first clause below

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Presuppositions  65 that Polly took the pragmatics course. But this presupposition is immediately cancelled by the content of the second clause in the utterance: Polly didn’t regret taking the pragmatics course, because in fact she did not take it. This example illustrates that the presuppositions of a complex utterance cannot be determined compositionally from the presuppositions of its parts. If this were the case, there would be a contradiction between the first clause which presupposes that Polly took the pragmatics course and the second clause which explicitly states that she did not take the course. Complex sentences are the basis of the projection problem in presuppositions. Presupposition projection was a significant area of work in formal pragmatics during the 1970s, with several theorists attempting to develop rules that can be used to determine which clauses and their presuppositions contribute to the presuppositions of an utterance (e.g. Stalnaker, 1973; Karttunen, 1974). These rules are intended to explain how the following utterance presupposes that there is a managing director –​this is a presupposition of the definite description in both clauses –​ even as the utterance does not presuppose that the managing director has a plan (a presupposition of the second clause only): If the managing director has a plan, then the managing director’s plan will be feasible. Karttunen proposed a filtering satisfaction analysis in which presuppositions are satisfied in a local context which is dynamic and develops online, with unwanted presuppositions filtered out during the derivation of an utterance. Three types of presuppositional context exist: (i) plugs, in which the presuppositions of lower clauses in the sentence are blocked; (ii) holes, in which the presupposition of a clause in a sentence can become the presupposition of the whole sentence; and (iii) filters, in which some of the presuppositions of a clause are prevented from becoming presuppositions of the full sentence. Other theoretical proposals also exist (see ­chapter 3 in Huang [2014] for discussion). But the projection problem is yet another illustration of the context sensitivity of presuppositions, with any presupposition of an utterance defeasible under certain conditions.

3.5  Presuppositions in the real world An understanding of the logical properties of presuppositions is clearly important for pragmatists. But equally important is an understanding of how speakers and hearers employ this type of proposition in real-​ world interactions. To appreciate this real-​world use, we need to conceive of presuppositions not as propositions that have a truth-​value,

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66 Presuppositions but as commitments in a belief set that that must be stored, updated, and overturned throughout a verbal interaction. For this to occur, we must countenance a range of cognitive processes and skills that can seem very far removed from the logical properties that we have discussed to this point in the chapter. In this section, we consider what those processes and skills are before examining how they can break down and lead to a failure to use presuppositions appropriately in verbal interactions. Imagine a scenario in which a young girl called Pippa is telling her teacher a story about a trip to the seaside. Before Pippa can embark on her story, she must make several decisions. She must decide what to tell her teacher and what she can assume her teacher already knows and does not need to be explicitly told. Clearly, the teacher needs to be told who undertook the trip to the seaside with Pippa and when the trip occurred. The teacher also needs to be told how Pippa travelled to the seaside and what she did while she was there (e.g. building sandcastles, eating ice-​cream). The teacher does not need to know what type of car Pippa travelled in or that she had to pay money for the ice-​creams that she ate. This information is either insignificant in the story (the car type) or can be filled in by the teacher based on background knowledge (purchases generally involve some type of financial transaction). If two of Pippa’s companions on the trip are also her classmates and are known to her teacher, then she does not need to convey certain information about them. In arriving at these decisions about what to make explicit in her narrative and what to leave implicit as presuppositions of her utterances, Pippa must embark on an exercise in mind-​reading. It is through reading her teacher’s mental states (a cognitive ability known as theory of mind) that Pippa can determine what is already part of the teacher’s knowledge and what needs to be added to the teacher’s knowledge for comprehension of her narrative to occur. So, Pippa must work out what the teacher knows and what she needs to know before she begins to construct her narrative. But this is still not sufficient for the satisfactory construction of Pippa’s narrative. Pippa must also make decisions about the order in which she presents information to her teacher. She must introduce characters early in her narrative for her later use of pronouns to refer to these characters to make sense. If Pippa were to say She bought me a mint ice-​cream without first introducing a referent for the pronoun she (e.g. her mother, her friend Susie), then Pippa has assumed too much knowledge on the part of the teacher. Similarly, if Pippa uses a definite description such as in the utterance The black donkey refused to carry me without first specifying that there was a black donkey, Pippa has once again assumed too much knowledge on the part of the teacher. Pippa must build the teacher’s knowledge incrementally, putting each key piece of information in place within the teacher’s mental representation of the story before packaging this knowledge in the presuppositions of her utterances. Pippa must undertake considerable planning to convey an informative, coherent narrative for the teacher. We have already seen that she must

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Presuppositions  67 be adept at reading the mental states, particularly knowledge and belief states, of the teacher, a skill that we have described as mind-​reading or theory of mind. But Pippa must also employ a range of other cognitive skills. She must be able to store her interlocutor’s knowledge and belief states in memory so that she can encode her utterances with these states in mind. If Pippa’s working memory contains the proposition There was a black donkey on the beach as one of the teacher’s belief states, then Pippa can afford to couch the existence of the donkey within a presupposition of an utterance in her narrative, e.g. The black donkey refused to carry me. So, memory provides a vital storage capacity for the planning of Pippa’s narrative. But linguistic skills in phonology, syntax, and semantics are also needed to construct Pippa’s utterances. Pippa cannot presuppose that someone saved the drowning boy in the sea if she cannot form the cleft construction in the utterance It was the lifeguard who saved the drowning boy in the sea. Also, she cannot presuppose that a crab was in her mother’s shoe if she cannot use factive verbs like realized in the utterance Mum realized that there was a crab in her shoe. Expressive language skills are as essential to the construction of Pippa’s narrative as are skills in cognitive domains like theory of mind and memory. With so many cognitive and linguistic skills converging on the construction of narratives, it is not surprising that narrative production can often go awry in children and adults with cognitive and language disorders. To understand the type of impairments that can arise, especially as they relate to the use of presuppositions, we turn to a study of narrative production in 20 children with language disorder that was conducted by Liles (1987). These children were aged between 7;6 and 10;6 years at the time of the study. A group of 20 age- and sex-matched children with no language disorder or other impairment served as control subjects. These children’s language problems were mild enough that they could produce grammatically adequate sentences and could generate sufficient sentences to produce a usable sample of a narrative. All children were within normal range of intelligence. They watched a 45-​minute film after which they were required to retell the story to two adult listeners. The story is about two boys, Freddie and Louie, and a comic strip hero called Super Duper. One of the boys, Freddie, believes that Super Duper is more than a comic strip hero and is a superman in real life. The narrations of the first episode of the story produced by a child with language disorder and a child with normal language are shown below: Extract 1: Child aged ten years with no language disorder: (1) Well, from the beginning, there’s this person called Homer. (2) There were three people in the movie. (3) The main people are Homer, Louie, and Freddie. (4) And Louie and Freddie were over at Homer’s house. (5) And they were watching a football game. (6) And they got bored and went downstairs to get something to eat.

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68 Presuppositions (7) And Freddie wanted to read the comics called Super Duper. (8) So they all read it. (9) And they got into a conversation about it. (10) But then Louie and Freddie had to go home. Extract 2: Child aged 10;2 years with language disorder and good comprehension: (1) It was about the kids who liked Homer. (2) I mean who liked Super Duper man except for one. (3) And he liked reading them from the comic books. (4) And he has a lot of comics. (5) And then he uh, he brought him over to his house. (6) And they read it. (7) But he keeps on saying, ‘It’s all the same thing.’ (8) He’s always smashing spaceships, picking them up and all that. There are marked differences in the ability of these children to tailor their narratives to the knowledge states of their listeners. The listeners need to be told who the characters in the story are. But only the child with no language disorder succeeds in conveying this information. This child introduces the characters in the story in utterances (1) to (3). By setting up these characters in the mind of his listener, the boy is then able to use the pronoun they to refer to them in utterances (5) and (6). The child can take it for granted or presuppose that the listener knows the referent of this pronoun because he has introduced it into the background knowledge that he shares with the listener. Further presuppositions arise in extract 1 by the child’s use of Homer’s house (Homer owns a house) and the comics called Super Duper (there are comics called Super Duper). The listener must integrate the propositions in parentheses into his or her developing representation of the narrative, a process called accommodation.1 This can be done relatively easily given that Homer has been explicitly introduced as a character in the story, with the presupposition then telling the listener something about Homer, namely, that he owns a house. Also, that there are comics called Super Duper is an effortless presupposition for the listener to arrive at given that Freddie had to read something. So, even when the child in extract 1 assumes propositions that are not part of the listener’s knowledge, these propositions can be readily assimilated into the listener’s representation of the narrative given other things that the listener already knows. The child with a language disorder is altogether less adept at tailoring his utterances with the listener’s state of knowledge in mind. In utterance (1) he presupposes that there are kids who like Homer. He initiates a repair of this utterance in (2) so that he presupposes that there are kids who like Super Duper. But because the child does not tell his listener who the kids are, it is not possible for his listener to tell which kid does and does not like Super Duper (except for one). There then follows a succession of pronouns for which the child has failed to establish any

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Presuppositions  69 referent. In utterances (3) and (4), there is no referent for the pronoun he in he liked reading and he has a lot of comics. In he brought him over to his house in utterance (5), there is no referent for the subject pronoun (he), the object pronoun (him), or the possessive determiner (his). In utterance (6), the listener can supply the only contextually salient referent of the pronoun they, which is the kids, while background knowledge of the kinds of things that people read will lead the listener to supply the comic as the referent of the pronoun it. There is a further lapse in pronominal reference in utterance (7), while in utterance (8), Super Duper is the only plausible referent of he –​no other contextually identifiable referent is likely to smash spaceships. This child with a language disorder assumes too much knowledge on the part of his listener. It leads him to presuppose that the referents of his pronouns can be readily identified by the listener when this is not the case. The careful introduction of the kids in the story that was undertaken by the child in extract 1 is evidently lacking in the child with language disorder. This left the listener in extract 2 unable to follow the events in the story, with each pronoun used by the child exceeding the listener’s state of knowledge. It is interesting to consider the basis of this child’s presuppositional difficulties. Clearly, he has the expressive language skills needed to use presuppositions. The child with language disorder can use an array of pronouns, definite descriptions, verb phrases, and other grammatical structures. His difficulties lie not in the absence of grammatical structures but in the use of these structures to achieve reference. He appears unable to establish what his listener needs to know to track his use of pronouns in the narrative and to put that knowledge in place through the incremental provision of information to his listener. The result is a narrative that cannot be easily followed, even as the listener is able to comprehend the content of each of the child’s utterances. The analysis in this section illustrates the complex interplay between linguistic utterances, background knowledge, and speakers’ and hearers’ mental representations that is integral to the use of presupposition in real-​ world contexts. The dynamic revision of beliefs and knowledge entertained by speakers and hearers during the use of presuppositions in communication is a far cry from the view of presuppositions as truth-​ conditional propositions that can survive negation or be cancelled in certain contexts. By situating presuppositions among the cognitive processes in terms of which they are ultimately transacted, we glean a better appreciation of this concept and its role in everyday communication. This appreciation is greater still when we examine how children and adults with a range of cognitive and language disorders struggle to meet the presuppositional demands of actual communicative contexts such as narrating an unfamiliar story to a listener. It is in contexts where speakers and hearers must exercise judgements in real time about how much information should be made explicit in utterances and how much can be taken for granted or assumed in the utterances we produce, that presuppositions find their natural home.

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70 Presuppositions

Summary •

•

•

•

•

•

The chapter described how presuppositions are variously characterized as information that is taken for granted or assumed to be true by the speaker of an utterance, or as information that is part of the shared background knowledge of the speaker and hearer. When information is presupposed by an utterance, it reduces the amount of explicit language that a speaker must convey to a hearer. Presuppositions are triggered by certain lexical items and constructions such as factive verbs (e.g. Jack realized his health was in decline →Jack’s health was in decline) and cleft constructions (e.g. It was Marjorie who baked the cake →Someone baked the cake). The chapter examined tests that can be used to distinguish the presuppositions of an utterance from its entailments. Presuppositions can survive the negation of an utterance and can persist in conditional clauses and questions that cancel entailments. There are, however, contexts in which presuppositions are also defeasible. Presuppositions can be defeated in the presence of background knowledge, if they are inconsistent with the implicatures of an utterance, and in certain intra-​ sentential contexts (e.g. complex sentences). In complex sentences, the presuppositions of each clause do not necessarily become the presuppositions of the whole sentence or utterance. The presuppositions of some clauses in complex sentences are blocked. This is called the projection problem. In everyday communication, it is commonplace for hearers to extend the conversational context to accommodate certain presuppositions of a speaker’s utterance. This process is called accommodation.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Beaver, D.I., Geurts, B. and Denlinger, K. (2021) ‘Presupposition’, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2021 Edition. Online: https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​spr2​021/​entr​ies/​ pre​supp​osit​ion/​ This article examines presupposition triggers, properties of presuppositions such as projection and cancellability, and the tests used to identify them. Major models of presupposition are examined: semantic models; pragmatic models; and dynamic models. The article also

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Presuppositions  71 discusses accommodation, presupposition failure, the interaction between presuppositions and attitudes, and variability in the behaviour of triggers and their presuppositions. (2) Schwarz, F. (2019) ‘Presuppositions, projection, and accommodation’, in C. Cummins and N. Katsos (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. This chapter reviews experimental work on presuppositions. It examines methodological developments in the study of presupposition and the theoretical implications of experimental results. Presuppositions are examined in embedded and unembedded environments as well as in relation to discourse context. (3) Huang, Y. (2014) Pragmatics. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 3 in Huang’s book gives an accessible overview of presupposition, including properties such as constancy under negation, defeasibility and the projection problem, and analyses: filtering-​satisfaction analysis; cancellation analysis; and accommodation analysis.

Questions (1) Presuppositions are propositions that are taken for granted or assumed to be true in the saying of an utterance. Children and adults with language disorders can often take too much for granted when they produce utterances. This can lead to a breakdown in communication when the hearer does not have the information that is required to understand what the speaker is saying. In the following extracts, two adults with neurodegenerative disorders take too much for granted when speaking and assume that the hearer has knowledge at her disposal when this is in fact not the case. For each extract, characterize the breakdown in communication in terms of a failure of presupposition: Extract 1: Conversation between the author (INV) and a 69-​year-​old man (PAR) with Parkinson’s disease: T1 INV:  can

you tell me what type of work you were doing before you retired? T2 PAR:  van driving T3 INV:  ok would you say a bit more about that? T4 PAR:  it is it was carrying parcels T5 INV:  um hum T6 PAR:  eh, h, h, h into hospitals mostly

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72 Presuppositions T7 INV: right T8 PAR:  he’d a contract with the hospitals T9 INV:  right who, who had a contract? T10 PAR: Trimprint

Extract 2: Conversation between the author (INV) and a 72-​year-​old man (PAR) with progressive supranuclear palsy: T1 INV:  can you tell me what type of work you did before you retired? T2 PAR:  before I retired, I was a computer manager, I was managing

computer system that was being run by the five boards T3 INV: ok T4 PAR:  em (.) it was interesting T5 INV: yes T6 PAR: (2:89) T7 INV:  is this, is this the health boards? T8 PAR:  no, it’s the education boards

a

(2) Part A: The following extract is a sample of expressive language produced by the 57-​ year-​ old woman with schizophrenia who appeared in section 3.3. She is describing the symptoms that first alerted her to the possibility that she may have Covid-​19 infection. The woman uses a range of presupposition triggers, several of which are underlined. Identify each type of presupposition trigger and state what it presupposes: ‘I didn’t know, I thought I had gone crazy, my cat got sick early Oct I think (memory!) I started getting weird about Sep 20, thought my family was out to get me, then I forgot things completely, then I got confused, stupid, couldn’t do the simplest thing or make decisions, I was terrified and isolated, always hearing these voices from the apartment above me, though everyone assures me, it’s all in my head. I was horrible, I accused my sister publicly of terrible things, I trashed them on twitter and posted a will that forgot to mention my best friend of 30 years and cut them right out. I gave my power of attorney to someone who I hardly know but trusted more than my family.’ Part B: In response to the question ‘How would you describe your recovery to date from Covid-​19?’, this same woman with schizophrenia responded, ‘What recovery?’. How would you characterize this woman’s response? (3) Accommodation is the process by means of which a hearer can extend a conversational context to include propositions that are presupposed by a speaker’s utterances. The author uses the following

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Presuppositions  73 short narrative in her research to assess immediate and delayed recall of verbal material in adults with cognitive and language disorders. Identify five occasions where the hearer must engage in accommodation during the construction of a mental representation of the events in the narrative: ‘Sam and Fred were brothers who had farmed the same land for thirty years. They had been closely following weather forecasts and knew that the weather was about to change. They had been working frantically in the fields when suddenly the skies opened. Several days of hard labour were disappearing before their eyes as crops were washed away. To add to their difficulties, the storm ripped open the door of the barn. Many sheep and cows escaped. People from the local village arrived to help the two distressed farmers. It was nearly nightfall by the time all the animals were returned to the barn.’

Note 1 Although accommodation was first discussed by Karttunen (1974) and Stalnaker (1974), the term was first used by Lewis (1979). This is how Karttunen characterizes accommodation: ‘Ordinary conversation does not always proceed in the ideal orderly fashion described earlier. People do make leaps and shortcuts by using sentences whose presuppositions are not satisfied in the conversational context. This is the rule rather than the exception […] I think we can maintain that a sentence is always taken to be an increment to a context that satisfies its presuppositions. If the current conversational context does not suffice, the listener is entitled and expected to extend it as required’ (1974, p.191). The listener of the child’s Super Duper story is ‘entitled and expected’ to extend the narrative context to include the propositions Homer owns a house and There are comics called Super Duper.

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4 Deixis

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: •

• • • • •

Understand how certain linguistic expressions can be used to ‘point to’ or ‘pick out’ entities in the context of an utterance. The lexical items that encode context in this way are indexical and their function is one of deixis. Appreciate that a wide range of words are indexical in this way, including demonstratives (e.g. that), adverbs (e.g. there), adjectives (e.g. last week), and pronouns (e.g. you). Reliably identify five categories of deixis: person deixis, social deixis, time deixis, place deixis, and discourse deixis. Understand that some expressions can function as more than one form of deixis such as the demonstrative in I walk home this way (place deixis) and I fly to Rome this week (time deixis). Be aware that while deictic expressions look to context for reference, anaphoric expressions look to an antecedent within the utterance for reference. Appreciate that it can be difficult to establish in specific cases if an expression has a deictic function or an anaphoric function.

4.1 Introduction You are walking through a market in town, and you overhear a stall owner saying to a customer What did you think of that? You continue walking through the market, and you pass two friends who are taking leave of each other. One says to the other I will meet you there tomorrow. As you wait at the bus stop, an elderly woman asks you What time is the next bus to the city centre? These utterances are representative of the hundreds that we use and hear every day that contain ‘pointing’ words. These are expressions like I, you, there, tomorrow, and that where we must look to the extralinguistic context of the utterance to establish the referents of these terms –​semantic elements alone will not suffice to DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-5

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Deixis  75 ‘pick out’ the referents. Because you are physically present when these utterances are spoken, you know the referents of the expressions you, I, tomorrow, and next bus. Your presence at each of these speech events allows you to determine that the pronoun you refers to the customer, and I refers to one of the two friends who are saying goodbye to each other. Meanwhile, tomorrow refers to an upcoming 24-​hour period, and next bus refers to the bus for the city centre that will arrive after a particular point in time. But even from your unique vantage point, you are still not able to determine what the stall owner is referring to when he uses the demonstrative pronoun that, or the location that the friend refers to by means of the adverb there. For you to determine the referents of these terms, you need access to even more of the extralinguistic context of these utterances than your physical presence alone can provide. These pointing functions of words like you and there are referred to as deixis. They are so embedded in our use of language that we often only become aware of them when they go wrong. This occurs in the following exchange between a young girl called Naima and her mother. Naima was studied by Evans and Demuth (2012). She is just over two years old and has normal language development. Naima displays pronoun reversal, a phenomenon that is also observed in children with autism spectrum disorder: Naima: I think you [=​I] peed in your [=​my] diaper Mother: Just now? Naima: I think you [=​I] did (Evans and Demuth, 2012, p.14) In the above exchange, Naima uses the second-​ person pronoun you to refer to herself. This is an anomalous use of person deixis, the linguistic system by means of which we refer to people who are present when an utterance is spoken. At this early stage in her language development, Naima has not yet established that the pronoun ‘you’ refers to the addressee of an utterance, while the first-​person pronoun ‘I’ refers to the speaker of the utterance. Because Naima is acquiring language along normal lines, her use of pronoun reversal is little more than a linguistic immaturity that will resolve over time. The same cannot be said of children with autism spectrum disorder who continue to use pronoun reversal long after it has disappeared from the expressive language of a normally developing child such as Naima. In the first clinical description of autism, Kanner (1943) remarked how a five-​year-​old boy called Donald would say ‘Pull off your shoes’ when he wanted his mother to pull off his shoes, and ‘Do you want a bath?’ when he wanted a bath. Donald reversed not only the personal pronoun ‘you’ but also the possessive determiner ‘my’. Many other children with developmental compromise make effective use of deixis. Below, a girl of 7;4 years who sustained a traumatic brain injury is recounting an occasion on which she was stung by bees (Biddle et al.,

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76 Deixis 1996). Not only does she make appropriate use of first-​person deixis in her use of I, us, and my cousin, but she uses place deixis skilfully in the form of the adverbs here and there, while simultaneously pointing to parts of her body: ‘I stepped on a bee’s nest. And they chased us all the way back. And I got stung and my cousin Matt got stung in one of the private parts. And umm I had a bite right here (points), right here (points), right there (points), and umm one on my cheek. And right here.’ (Biddle et al., 1996, p.461) Fillmore (1971) calls this child’s use of physical pointing the gestural usage of deixis. He contrasts it with the symbolic usage of deixis, which requires knowledge of the spatiotemporal context and other parameters of a speech event to establish the reference of terms like here and there. In this chapter, we will examine different types of deixis. In addition to person and place deixis, the discussion will include three other forms of deixis: time deixis, social deixis, and discourse deixis. It is important to remark from the outset that words which have a deictic function in one context can be used non-​deictically in other contexts. In the utterance ‘Please stand there!’ the word there is a form of place deixis. But in the utterance ‘John moved to Paris in the spring, and now lives there permanently’, the word there is used anaphorically to refer to Paris earlier in the utterance. In the utterance ‘There is a terrible smell in this room’, the word there is a dummy subject of the verb is and is used to introduce the presence of the smell (i.e. there has no deictic or anaphoric function). On some occasions, it is difficult to determine if a word is used deictically or anaphorically. In the utterance ‘We have a chalet in France, and we live there in the summer’, the word there may be used anaphorically to refer to the chalet in France. But it may also function deictically if the speaker intends the country to be the referent of there. In what follows, we discuss only the deictic function of such words.

4.2  Person and social deixis The deictic words in a language are organized around the origo, a term used by Karl Bühler to describe the HERE, the NOW, and the ME of the speech situation (Bühler, 1934). When linguistic expressions are used to refer to people present at a speech event, these terms are organized relative to the speaker. The speaker is at the centre of the origo and is the referent of the pronoun I. The speaker may be a person who is taking part in a spoken conversation, the character in a story, or a politician who is delivering a speech. The role of speaker may be fulfilled by the same person throughout a speech event or may be fulfilled by different people as when several individuals in conversation take turns to talk. Apart from

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Deixis  77 the speaker, the most important ‘other’ person at a speech event is the addressee. The addressee may be a person present in a conversation, an audience in a theatre, or voters during a political campaign speech. The addressee is the referent of the pronoun you. It should be noted, however, that not every use of this pronoun is a form of deixis. Consider the following exchange between Sue and Jim: SUE:  When did you submit your complaint? JIM: It was six weeks ago. You do not expect

to wait THAT long for a reply. SUE:  With these companies, you never quite know what to expect. When Sue uses you in her first turn, she uses the pronoun deictically to refer to Jim who is physically present in the speech event. But this is the only deictic use of this pronoun in the exchange. When Jim uses you in his response to Sue’s question, it is clear he is not referring to Sue. Rather, the pronoun has a more general reference that includes any person who might submit a complaint to the company in question. The pronoun you in this case is equivalent to one does not expect to wait that long. In Sue’s follow-​up utterance, she too uses you with a more general reference. This simple example illustrates that many uses of the pronoun you are not used to refer to a person who is present at the time a speaker produces an utterance. But even within deictic uses of you, the range of social contexts in which this pronoun can be used is noteworthy. We can impose all sorts of social relationships on Sue and Jim. They could be husband and wife, neighbours, or best friends at school. Jim could be Sue’s boss at work or Sue could be Jim’s lawyer in a legal dispute. Across all these contexts with their different social relationships, the same pronoun you would be used by Sue to refer to Jim in the exchange. English is unlike other languages in this regard, with many languages using different pronouns to encode particular social relationships between the speaker and addressee. Let us imagine that Sue is multilingual, and she can also speak fluent French and German. If Jim were a friend, family member, or a close neighbour, Sue would use the pronouns tu (French) and du (German) to pose the same question to him: Quand as-​tu déposé ta réclamation? Wann hast du deine Beschwerde eingereicht? But if Sue and Jim were on less familiar terms with each other –​let us imagine that Jim is Sue’s new line manager –​then she will adopt a different pronoun, vous (French) and Sie (German), to refer to him in her question: Quand avez-​vous déposé votre réclamation? Wann haben Sie Ihre Beschwerde eingereicht?

87

78 Deixis This honorific function of the second-​person plural pronoun vous in French and the third-​person plural pronoun Sie in German is realized very differently in other languages, and in some languages not at all. In Japanese, for example, there are no second-​person honorifics as there are in French and German. Using pronouns to refer to a person to whom deference is due in their presence is considered impolite in Japanese. Meanwhile, there is an honorific form of the first-​ person pronoun (watakusi) in Japanese as well as two plain forms, one for women’s speech (watasi) and one for men’s speech (boku) (Ide and Yoshida, 1999). It should also be noted that languages such as French and German use different possessive determiners to encode formality in social relationships between speakers and addressees –​ta/​votre in French and deine/​Ihre in German. Again, this is quite unlike English where the single possessive determiner your is used regardless of the formality of the speaker’s social relationship to the addressee. Speakers of English do have other linguistic devices apart from pronouns at their disposal to signal social relationships between the speaker and addressee. A noun phrase and third-​person possessive are used to indicate speaker deference to the addressee in the utterance below: Would Lord Fitzroy like his port in the drawing room? while in the following utterance, the speaker indicates her more powerful role in the caregiver-​child relationship by addressing her daughter with the proper noun Amy rather than the pronoun you. Also, the noun phrase mummy in this case refers to the speaker: Is Amy going to be a good girl for mummy? It is worth mentioning that both Lord Fitzroy and Amy may also be used as vocatives. Vocatives are used to directly address or summon a person and, as such, have a deictic function. When these noun phrases are used as vocatives, the pronoun you must be used in the utterance: Lord Fitzroy, would you like your port in the drawing room? Amy, are you going to be a good girl for mummy? The pronoun you can be variously realized to encode features of the addressee that speakers consider to be significant. To refer to more than one addressee in a speech event, a speaker may say you all, you lot, or even you ones (expressed in some dialects as youse-​uns). This illustrates that speakers are prepared to modify the English pronoun you to meet their communicative needs. A speaker may also include or exclude an addressee through his or her use of pronouns. In the utterance Why don’t we clean the kitchen?, the speaker includes the addressee in the use of the first-​person pronoun we, while in the utterance We are lodging a

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Deixis  79 complaint with your superiors, the pronoun we excludes the addressee. The same pronoun may even be used to exclude the speaker of the utterance and include only the addressee as the referent. This occurs in the utterance We are going to eat all those peas, where the speaker (presumably, a mother of a child) is excluded as the referent of the pronoun we which refers only to the addressee. Speakers may also make deictic use of third-​person pronouns, although this is less common than the deictic use of first-​person and second-​person pronouns. We can imagine a scenario where a ballet judge may say She has all the grace and poise of a rampaging elephant to fellow judges as they watch a performance, or a friend may whisper in my ear Look at how unfriendly he is during a social event. When speakers use the first-​ person and second-​person pronouns I and you, they are typically referring to someone outside of discourse. This is called exophoric reference. Third-​person pronouns may also display exophoric reference as in the utterances above. But third-​person pronouns are much more likely to refer to a person, thing, or place within discourse. This is called endophoric reference. It is most clearly seen in the following examples of anaphoric and cataphoric reference, where third-​person pronouns refer to a person and thing in preceding and upcoming discourse, respectively: The soprano raised the roof. She was the star of the show. (anaphoric reference) Although we all hate them, taxes are a fact of life. (cataphoric reference) Because the referent in each case is located within discourse, there is overlap between person deixis and discourse deixis in these examples of third-​person pronoun reference. We will say more about discourse deixis in section 4.5. Person deixis can be challenging for children and adults with language disorders. We have already seen how children with autism spectrum disorder can engage in reversal of first-​person and second-​person pronouns, so that the pronoun I refers to the addressee and you refers to the speaker. But the deictic use of pronouns can also be disrupted in other ways. In the following extract of conversation, a boy (C) with pragmatic disorder is describing for an adult (A) a series of pictures in which a child (a boy) is getting up in the morning. The boy in the picture is getting dressed, eating his breakfast, and so on. The interaction takes the form of a lesson in which the adult instructs the boy with pragmatic disorder in the correct deictic use of the third-​person pronouns he and she: C:  the boy is getting out of the bed and his mummy is opening the curtains A: mm C:  now she is drying herself and she’s got the soap A:  ah, now you said ‘she’, but it’s a boy, isn’t it?

08

80 Deixis C: yes A:  ah ha,

so what do we say here?     not she is drying herself but … C:  that’s a boy A:  yes, but you said ‘she’ C:  here’s a boy drying himself and he has soap in his hand (McTear, 1985) This child with pragmatic disorder has at least grasped the pointing function of words like he and she to refer to the characters in the pictures, even as he uses the incorrect linguistic symbol to perform this function. However, in other children and adults with pragmatic difficulties, the problem appears to lie in the pointing function itself, with the speaker unable to establish a unique referent of a deictic pronoun. During a description of the Cookie Theft picture (see Figure 4.1) from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass et al., 2001), a 69-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease produces the utterances She is casually dressed and She does not know what to do. Clearly, the pronoun she in each case is intended to point to one of the two female characters in the scene. But in the absence of any pointing gesture from the man, it is unclear if the referent of she is intended to be the young girl or the woman in the picture:

Figure 4.1 Cookie Theft picture (reproduced from H. Goodglass, E. Kaplan and B. Barresi (2001) Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination Third Edition (BDAE-​3), Austin, TX: PRO-​ED; Used with permission of PRO-​ED, Inc.).

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Deixis  81 The use of person deixis in this case leads to a description of the picture that fails to identify the who in this man’s statements –​Who is casually dressed? Who does not know what to do?

4.3  Place deixis Speakers also use language to point to people and objects in a range of locations. Some of these locations are proximal to the speaker and are indicated by adverbs like here and demonstrative noun phrases such as this desk. Other locations are distal to the speaker and are encoded in adverbs like there and phrases such as that tree. The reference point for the use of each of these examples of place deixis is once again the speaker who produces an utterance in a certain physical location. If the speaker’s location changes, so too must the use of a deictic referring expression. Imagine that I am standing at the bottom of the garden, and I say That tree looks diseased, pointing to one of the trees at the other end of the garden. I then walk towards the tree in question to examine it. When I get to the tree and conduct my examination, I say This tree is diseased. The location of the tree referred to in these utterances remains unchanged. What has changed is my position relative to it, and I must reflect that change of position by using this tree instead of that tree. Instead of walking the length of the garden to perform the tree examination for myself, I may say to my friend beside me Please go and examine it! The verb go indicates direction of movement away from the speaker towards a distal location, in this case, the opposite end of the garden. When my friend gets to the tree, I can see her scratching her head and looking very puzzled. She then shouts to me I am not sure, come and check it for yourself! The verb come also indicates direction of movement, by a person who is moving towards my friend from a point that is distal to her. Skilled use of place deixis requires that speakers know not only their location, but also the position of everything and everyone that they may want to talk about relative to their location. For the most part, speakers can manage the spatial positioning and movement that accurate use of place deixis requires. But this is not the case for every speaker. In the following extract, a 41-​year-​old woman with traumatic brain injury who was studied by Biddle et al. (1996) is asked to recount an occasion on which she got lost: ‘Well, I’ve gotten lost even coming here. It was probably the second time I came here. I, uh, went down, uh, 27, no 96, I think. And I came up … I remember they said 14 mile. I thought ended. Well, anyways, I just went around and around in circles. And uh … so I got lost there. And it doesn’t seem … I do drive myself when I come here but I still get confused. I don’t get lost but I get scared. I see Southfield Road and then I just … Southfield and Greenfield. And still, after coming since February, I’m still not sure whether for a few minutes,

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82 Deixis a few seconds there if I’m supposed to take Greenfield or Southfield, you know. And then I don’t know Southfield, you know. And, uh … I did get lost the second time I came here.’ This woman makes extensive use of place deixis in her account of getting lost: coming here; went down; came up; and I got lost there. But in only one of these expressions can a hearer reliably identify the referent of the speaker’s deictic place term. In coming here, the adverb here refers to the healthcare facility within which the speaker is located. The verb coming indicates movement of the speaker from a point distal to the facility and towards the facility where the speaker is located. When the speaker utters, I got lost there, we know the speaker is referring to some distal location. But beyond this vague reference, it is not possible for the hearer to assign a referent to there. The same is true of went down and came up. The adverbs down and up suggest movement of the speaker through space. But we cannot provide a more specific referent of either of these terms also, based on how this speaker with traumatic brain injury is using these deictic expressions. It is important to be clear about what we cannot follow or understand when this woman produces the utterance I got lost there. We understand perfectly well that the woman is saying she got lost in a location or area that is distal from her current location. This invariant meaning of there is understood even as we are unable to identify the location in this context that satisfies the variable reference of the adverb. The same is true of went down and came up. We are not struggling to understand this woman’s use of these verbs because we do not know their semantic or propositional meaning. Rather, our struggle in this case is related to the fact that in the context of this woman’s account, we cannot identify the specific movements through space that constitute the referents of these deictic expressions. Yet again, the invariant meaning of went down and came up is understood even as we cannot identify a referent in this context that satisfies the variable reference of these deictic expressions. In extended discourse, deixis can be challenging for speakers and hearers as there is the need to update the deictic centre from which utterances are produced. In the following extract of conversation, the author (INV) is talking to a 72-​year-​old man (PAR) with progressive supranuclear palsy about a recent holiday. (It should be noted that the word recent is an instance of temporal deixis as the referent depends on when the conversation took place.) Although the man has evident difficulty producing the names of the cities on his river cruise, resulting in the participation of his wife (WIF) in the conversation, he is clearly able to update the deictic centre of his contribution as the conversation proceeds. This is evident when the man first uses there to refer to Munich. He then updates the deictic centre and uses there a second time to refer to Passau.

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Deixis  83 This allows his hearer, the author, to interpret each event in relation to the speaker’s new deictic centre: INV:  can you tell me a PAR: was a (.) river

(.) am (2:00)

bit about that [your holiday]? cruise on the Danube (.) we went initially to

WIF:  mu, mu, Germany Munich PAR:  Munich yes Munich (.) and

then we (2:00) sus [xxx (unintelligible)] travelled from there WIF:  you know from past went from Munich to Passau PAR:  to Passau and joined the boat there (2:25) and just cruised everyday Different deictic centres between speakers and hearers can cause considerable confusion. This was evident recently in an email correspondence I had with a woman who wanted to participate in a study of the effects of Covid-​19 on language. I was trying to agree a date and time to meet her online. We decided on a particular day, 1 July 2021, and agreed to meet at midday (her time in the UK) and 7pm (my time in Hong Kong). In her final email to me before the meeting, she wrote ‘Thursday 1st at 7pm is ok’. On receiving this email, I was naturally concerned that there had been some misunderstanding on her part. Whose deictic centre was she adopting when she made this statement? Was she trying to align with my deictic centre by expressing the time of day when we would meet in my time zone? Or had she misunderstood my message and believed that 7pm referred to the time of day we would meet in her geographical location and not the time of day in my location? The meeting went ahead successfully and so I assumed it must have been the former scenario –​the woman was attempting to align with my deictic centre. But it illustrated very clearly how important it is for a hearer (or reader in this case) to understand utterances from the deictic centre within which a speaker (or writer) produces them.

4.4  Time deixis Speakers also use language to point to temporal aspects of context. Consider the following utterances produced by a 57-​year-​old woman with schizophrenia: ‘I used to walk up to 6 km per day with a break, with aid of my forearm crutches. Now, could hardly make it around the block 2 days ago.’ ‘Late September through to now, January 5, 2021, but I feel somewhat better.’

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84 Deixis To establish the referent of now in each of these utterances, we need to know something about the contexts in which these utterances were produced. In the first utterance, the woman is comparing her current level of physical activity to her level of physical activity before contracting Covid-​19. In this context, now refers to a span of time that started with her Covid infection and extends up to, and includes, her speaking time. In the second utterance, the woman uses now to refer to a much shorter time span, namely, the 24-​hour period denoted by the date 5 January 2021. The word ago in the first utterance is also a form of time deixis. This is because the referent of 2 days ago varies with the speaking time of this utterance. To the extent that the woman produced this utterance on 5 January 2021, the referent of 2 days ago is the 3 January 2021. If she had produced this utterance on 9 January 2021, the same expression 2 days ago would have 7 January 2021 as its referent. This woman’s use of time deixis does not end here because she also uses late September. We need to know when this utterance was produced to determine the referent of September. In this case, it is September 2020. But if the same utterance had been uttered in November 2021, the word September would then refer to September 2021. Alongside expressions like now and ago, speakers use a wide range of other words to relate their utterances to time. Calendrical terms like yesterday, today, and tomorrow refer to the 24-​hour period before and after speaking time or concomitant with speaking time. These terms take priority over the days of the week to refer to time. We say I visited my sister yesterday and not I visited my sister on Monday if the Monday in question is the immediately preceding 24-​ hour period. Periods of time that are further removed from speaking time are indexed through expressions like last week and next year.1 The phrase at the weekend can refer to the weekend just lapsed in I washed my car at the weekend or to the weekend that lies ahead in I will wash my car at the weekend. These examples also illustrate the important role that tense plays in time deixis. If speakers want to refer to a weekend that is more remote in time, they can use the deictic form in I washed my car the weekend before last or an utterance with a non-​deictic expression like I washed my car the third weekend in June. Speakers and hearers must sometimes look beyond the actual temporal context to establish the referent of terms used to index time. One such occasion is during the use of direct reported speech. In the exchange below between the author (INV) and a 56-​year-​old woman (PAR) with multiple sclerosis, the woman uses time deixis when she says this morning. But the referent of this expression is not to be found in the reporting context –​the context in which the woman is talking to the author –​but the reported context, namely, the days on which the woman exchanges texts with her friends on WhatsApp: INV:  have

you got any interests and hobbies that you enjoy pursuing?

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Deixis  85 PAR:  ah

yeah, I like to I love reading em I love to cook I love to we live near XXX [name of park] you know sort of and I have three or four friends we’re in a wee WhatsApp group an you know ‘anybody free this morning’ and we walk …

A similar use of time deixis occurs in this utterance of a 69-​year-​old woman with Parkinson’s disease. The woman is describing how she would write a letter to someone. The actual temporal context of the conversation between the woman and the author is suspended as the woman reports the content of her imaginary letter. It is to this reported context that we must turn to establish the referent of last week: PAR:  and

then come down a line and then start your letter off then ‘just writing to say em how lovely it was to see you last week happy had a lovely day together’ (.) you got to paragraph it …

The use of time deixis can pose significant challenges for children and adults with a range of clinical conditions. To use time deixis appropriately, speakers must be well oriented to several temporal coordinates. They must remember when events have taken place or will take place. They must also grasp the frequency of events, and whether events are limited in duration or are continuous over time. It is hardly surprising that clients with cognitive difficulties can have difficulty with these various temporal coordinates. This can be seen in the following exchange between the author (INV) and a 68-​year-​old man (PAR) with progressive supranuclear palsy. The man’s use of this year in T13 fails to represent the frequency of his visits to Portugal. It is not until T17, when the man’s wife uses the deictic expression this last four years, that the true frequency of his trips to Portugal becomes apparent: T1 PAR: I went to Portugal T2 INV: good T3 PAR: and ah (.) I enjoyed

that (.) I, I enjoyed it so much (.) I went back to Portugal (.) T4 INV: you went back to Portugal then T5 PAR: yes T6 INV: ah and when did you go back to Portugal T7 PAR: when did I go back T8 INV: when did you go back to Portugal so you had the first holiday in Portugal T9 WIF: um hum T10 INV: and you liked it so much you went back T11 PAR: yes T12 INV: so, when can you remember what year it was that you went back to Portugal T13 PAR: went back this year

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86 Deixis T14 INV: oh, this year T15 WIF: um hum T16 INV: just this year ah ok T17 WIF: we’ve been this last

four years

4.5  Discourse deixis In our discussion of deixis, we have examined different uses of pointing in the context of spoken language. But it is also possible to point to parts of written language. So-​called discourse deixis will be very familiar to readers of this volume, most of whom are students with many years of experience of reading the comments of teachers and lecturers in the margins of their written work. Comments like this point is excellent and the last paragraph was irrelevant allow teachers to direct evaluative remarks to specific parts of written language. As these examples illustrate, discourse deixis uses many of the same words that perform space and time deixis. The demonstrative this in this tree is diseased and this point is illuminating performs space and discourse deixis, respectively. The adjective last performs time deixis in I flew to Paris last week and discourse deixis in the last section should be deleted. Other terms can only be used for discourse deixis. In the utterance Moreover, the policy was not cost effective, the adverb moreover points to an earlier segment of written text in which some other negative attribute of the policy was discussed. Adverbs such as furthermore and besides also only have a discourse deictic function. It is sometimes difficult to determine the referent of words like here and there in written discourse. In the utterance You make a strong point here, the writer is pointing to a specific part of a written text and so is using here as a form of discourse deixis. Imagine the following utterance in a letter between friends, with one friend (the writer) located in Stuttgart: My wife and I loved Stuttgart so much that we moved here in 2010. The word here may refer to Stuttgart earlier in the utterance in which case it is used anaphorically and is not a form of deixis. But is here really used anaphorically in this context? After all, the word here reflects the writer’s deictic centre. This becomes evident as soon as the writer’s deictic centre shifts. If the writer were composing his letter from a different location such as Berlin or England, this utterance would read as follows: My wife and I loved Stuttgart so much that we moved there in 2010. The fact that the adverbs here and there vary with the speaker’s deictic centre suggest that here in the original utterance has a deictic and not an anaphoric function.

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Deixis  87 In the above example, the utterances have a writer-​oriented deictic centre. But utterances may also be written with a reader-​oriented deictic centre. While on a holiday, I may write in an email I am available to see students this week. From my deictic centre I am not available to see students as I am on holiday. But the message is written with the deictic centre of my students in mind as they will be sent the email and will read it at the start of my first week back at work after my holiday. In my apartment block in Hong Kong, there was confusion among residents when a sign was erected next to the outdoor pool. The sign read: The pool is closed this weekend for disinfection and repair. It was written on a Wednesday by hotel staff who understood the sign would be displayed on the Friday morning ten days later. Confusion arose because it was displayed on the Friday morning just three days later. The result was that residents thought they were prohibited from using the pool when this was in fact not the case. Hotel staff had prepared the sign, not from their deictic centre but from the deictic centre of residents who would read the sign ten days later, as was the original plan. Writers do not always use discourse deixis in ways that are readily understood by readers. While writing this book, I was also conducting a study of language skills in adults with Long Covid, a condition in which symptoms of Covid-​19 persist for many months after acute infection. Participants in my study of long Covid were asked to complete a written questionnaire. The questionnaire contained questions about participants’ Covid illnesses, including its onset, progression, and impact on their ability to undertake a range of daily activities. In response to questions, participants quite often wrote same as above or see above. I was not particularly struck by the frequency of this response, which I took to be a shortcut by Covid respondents, many of whom were severely fatigued due to their illnesses. But what did surprise me was the lack of referential precision with which these deictic expressions were used. On more than a few occasions, I could not tell if same as above or see above referred to the immediately preceding response or to an earlier part of the text. If it did refer to an earlier part of the text, it was unclear exactly which part of text the writer was attempting to identify. Here is an example of this type of response. A 48-​year-​old female participant in the study responded to the question as follows: ‘It had mostly recovered following a previous long-​term illness, as mentioned above.’ To establish the identity of the previous long-​term illness, the reader is directed by the deictic expression above to examine the participant’s responses to earlier questions. An earlier question asked participants if they had any chronic health problems prior to contracting Covid-​19. The participant’s response to this question identified three such conditions,

8

88 Deixis a chronic back condition, laryngitis, and (undiagnosed) chronic fatigue syndrome. Which of these three illnesses is the writer’s use of above directing the reader to identify as the previous long-​term illness? It is not possible to say. The participant’s use of above points the reader towards earlier text without identifying the specific long-​term illness in question.

4.6 Anaphora So far, we have examined deictic expressions that rely on extralinguistic context for reference. Some of these same expressions do not rely on entities outside the utterance for reference, but rather look to words and phrases within the utterance for reference. So-​called anaphoric expressions or anaphors refer to a textual antecedent that appears earlier in the utterance or text (spoken or written). Anaphors can take several linguistic forms, including third-​person pronouns (e.g. he, it), adverbs (e.g. there), and demonstratives (e.g. that). A gap in the syntax of an utterance (e.g. She praised his fortitude and he [praised] her commitment) can also function anaphorically. The antecedent to which an anaphor refers can take the form of a single word or a longer stretch of spoken or written text. In the utterances below, the pronoun it refers to the Aeneid in the first utterance and Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy in the second utterance: Max studied the Aeneid and loved it. Max studied Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy and loved it. There can also be reference to an upcoming word or stretch of text, as in the following utterance where the pronoun them refers ahead to the word taxes. This is known as cataphoric reference: Although we all hate them, taxes are a fact of life. It is important to distinguish not only anaphoric from deictic uses of the same word but also anaphoric uses from other uses that have neither an anaphoric nor a deictic function. While it is used anaphorically in (a) and deictically in (b), the same pronoun in (c) does not have a textual antecedent and does not refer to context. Instead, the pronoun it in (c) is a dummy subject: (a) Bill dismantled the engine and later rebuilt it. (b) Look at it go! (c) It was raining yesterday. Children and adults with language difficulties can struggle to use anaphors. To illustrate these problems, we examine below the use of third-​person pronouns like he and it as anaphors. On some occasions, a pronoun may

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Deixis  89 be used in the absence of the antecedent to which it refers. This can be observed in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). In the following extract, a boy of 7;4 years with specific language impairment (an earlier label for DLD) used the pronoun he without first introducing the antecedent dad to which it refers. At least on this occasion the child recognizes his error and moves to correct it by reformulating his utterance to include explicit mention of dad: ‘We went to a hotel … umm. A girl … ’n.n he, he gave … ’n dad gave the keys to … to the girl’ (Bliss et al., 1998) On other occasions, the reference of an anaphoric pronoun shifts without the speaker explicitly signalling this shift. This occurred during the Cinderella narrative of a 68-​year-​old woman with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), a type of frontotemporal dementia. During her narration, the woman with svPPA introduced Cinderella as the antecedent of the pronoun she in line 2 –​the speaker is saying that Cinderella has two stepsisters (‘the other two of them’). In line 3, the same pronoun she refers not to Cinderella but to the wicked stepmother (‘not nice person’). However, in the absence of the speaker introducing a new antecedent into the discourse after line 2, a hearer will naturally assume that Cinderella is also the antecedent of she in line 3 (Cummings, 2020). 1 PAR: Cinderella 2 PAR:  and then she’s uh the other two of them 3 PAR:  and the and this she’s not nice person

In the above case, the discourse context in which the hearer is expected to establish the reference of the pronoun she contains a single character (Cinderella) rather than two characters (Cinderella and the stepmother). The converse type of case also exists where the discourse context contains two or more characters, and it is unclear which of them is the referent of a pronoun. The following extract is taken from the Little Red Riding Hood story that was narrated by a 58-​year-​old woman with Long Covid. This woman experienced cognitive-​linguistic difficulties (so-​called ‘brain fog’) after her acute Covid-​19 infection. When she produced her narrative, she was 674 days or 22.4 months post Covid onset: went to a hotel Little Red Riding Hood and her mum were baking a cake to take to granny (1.33) um (1.14) Little Red Riding Hood was wearing her red cape (.) with a hood on it that her granny had made for her (3.69) so when the cake was made she put it in the basket (1.94) and asked Little Red Riding Hood to take it to granny went to a hotel

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90 Deixis At the point at which the narrator uses the pronoun she, there are three female characters in the discourse context –​Little Red Riding Hood, her mother, and her grandmother. Of these three characters, Little Red Riding Hood is most salient in the context because she is the character that the narrator mentions prior to the use of the pronoun. As such, Little Red Riding Hood appears to be the most plausible referent of the pronoun she. However, it is only as the narration proceeds that we realize that she refers to the mother. In this case, there are several potential referents of she in the discourse context and the narrator fails to make the intended referent more salient than the others. What each of these problems with the use of anaphoric pronouns reveals is that establishing the antecedent of an anaphor requires a complex interplay of cognitive and language skills. If a character is not introduced in a narrative, or is introduced late, the antecedent will not be available to a hearer who is trying to establish the reference of an anaphoric pronoun. Similarly, if there are several potential antecedents of an anaphoric pronoun, and one does not appear more salient than the others, it may not be possible for the hearer to establish the reference of an anaphoric pronoun. The ability to use anaphors requires skills in a range of cognitive-​linguistic domains including memory, theory of mind, and sentence encoding. If any of these domains are compromised, as is often the case in children and adults with pragmatic language difficulties, the use of anaphors will also be affected.

Summary •

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Language may be used to ‘point’ to people in the context of an utterance. So-​called person deixis often overlaps with social relationships between speakers and hearers. In some languages (e.g. French), these relationships are encoded in the pronoun system. The pronoun system of English does not inflect for social relationships between speakers and hearers; English uses other linguistic devices to achieve social deixis. Place deixis can be used to point to aspects of the spatial context in which an utterance is produced. People and objects may be proximal to the speaker (I like this dress) or distal to the speaker (I want that pair of shoes). Place deixis varies with the deictic centre of the speaker –​if I set the dress down and walk to the opposite side of the shop, I must say I like that dress to refer to the same garment as previously. Some temporal expressions have absolute reference such as 5th March 1972. But in temporal deixis, the reference of an expression is relative to when it was uttered (e.g. I fly to Rome tomorrow). Temporal deixis can refer to the time of utterance

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Deixis  91

•

•

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through use of now, the 24-​hour period before the utterance was produced in yesterday, and points of time that are further away still from when the utterance occurred as in last week, last month, or last year. Writers can point to parts of written text through use of discourse deixis. Many of the same terms that are used for place deixis (I live here) and time deixis (She departed last week) are also used for discourse deixis (You make a strong point here but your last paragraph was incoherent). While deictic expressions look outside the utterance for reference, anaphoric expressions or anaphors look inside the utterance. An anaphor refers to an earlier word or phrase called the antecedent. In the utterance Bob sold the boat and was glad to get rid of it, the pronoun it is an anaphor while the noun phrase the boat is its antecedent. It is sometimes difficult to establish if a referring expression is a form of deixis or if it is an anaphor. If a speaker says ‘Try this chocolate, it is delicious!’, the pronoun it has a deictic function if it refers to the bar of chocolate in the hand of the speaker; but it can also refer anaphorically to the preceding noun phrase this chocolate.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Culpeper, J. and Haugh, M. (2014) Pragmatics and the English Language, Basingstoke: Red Globe Press (see Deixis on pages 21–​30). Culpeper and Haugh provide a comprehensive discussion of deixis in Chapter 2 ‘Referential Pragmatics’ of this volume. Examples drawn from a wide range of contexts, including the history of English, provide an illuminating overview of deixis in English and beyond. (2) Sidnell, J. and Enfield, N.J. (2017) ‘Deixis and the interactional foundations of reference’, in Y. Huang (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 217–​239. For readers who want to extend their knowledge of deixis beyond an introductory level, this chapter is a good starting point. The authors examine what is special about deixis as a form of reference, how deixis differs from non-​deictic reference, and what consequence this difference has for the use of deixis in actual situations of social interaction. (3) Marmaridou, S. (2010) ‘Deixis’, in L. Cummings (ed.), The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 101–​105.

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92 Deixis This encyclopaedia entry provides an excellent orientation to person, place, time, social and discourse deixis, with references given to other sources. It provides a useful introduction for readers who are coming to the topic for the first time, and who require a concise overview of this pragmatic concept.

Questions (1) Part A: The following exchange occurred between a teacher and a boy of 6;2 years called Tony. Tony was studied by Conti-​Ramsden and Gunn (1986) following his referral to a Regional Child Development Centre when he was 3;4 years old. He was diagnosed with pragmatic language impairment. The context in which the exchange unfolds is that Tony (TO) is feeling sick, and he wants his teacher (TE) Judy to ring home and speak to his mother. Examine the exchange and then describe Tony’s use of person deixis: TO: Judy talk mummy. TE: How? TO: Orange (referring to

orange drink that may have made him feel sick)   Tony is sick   Can I talk to mummy? TE: What do I do to talk to mummy?   What shall I do to talk to mummy? TO: Because I am sick. Part B: Tony’s use of proper nouns in the exchange in Part A to refer to the speaker and the addressee is non-​normative in nature and occurs on account of his pragmatic language impairment. However, there are also some contexts in which speakers can use proper nouns appropriately to refer to an addressee in the context of an utterance. Give one example of this deictic use of proper nouns. Is there more than one form of deixis at work in the example that you have identified? (2) Part A: In the following exchange, a boy called Abraham is explaining to his teacher what is involved in snow tubing. Abraham is one of two boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who were studied by Peets (2009). Part of Abraham’s explanation can be readily understood. We know, for example, that you need to have tickets to take part in snow tubing, that a machine is used, and that snow tubing can involve a spinning action. But there is still a significant part of Abraham’s

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Deixis  93 explanation which is difficult to follow. Using your knowledge of deixis, explain why this is the case: T:  Can you tell us about snow tubing? A:  Snow tubing is is freaky. T:  Freaky. Tell us what it’s like. What do A:  They uh they have a machine that will

you do? they have a hooks that will pull you back up and then you have eight tickets you give one of them to (th)em then you got hold onto a rope they have like a little round thing and then you go they put the put the hook inside and then and then it pulls you back up and then you slide down they put they maybe the if you want to stay straight you tell my parents from up there if you want a spin they he spins you.

Part B: During his explanation of snow tubing, Abraham makes repeated use of the pronoun you. This pronoun can be used deictically when it refers to the addressee in a speech event, or it can have more general reference when it is used non-​deictically. Is Abraham making deictic or non-​deictic use of you in the above exchange? (3) Children and adults with language disorder can struggle to make context-​ appropriate use of deictic expressions. In the following extract, a child aged 10;2 years with language disorder who was studied by Liles (1987) is retelling a story about a comic hero called Super Duper. In this episode of the story, two boys are arranging to see a movie about Super Duper. Explain why the use of the verb come is problematic in this narrative retelling. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

So that kid called him up. And he said, ‘There’s going to be a movie on Super Duper man, Would you like to come and see it?’ And he goes, ‘Sure, sure thing’. He goes, uh, and they picked him up And they met him then. They shook hands. Then they went and saw the movie.

Note 1 Dialectal variations of these expressions are also possible. In Northern Irish English, speakers often substitute last with past, as in this utterance of a 35-​year-​ old male speaker with Huntington’s disease: ‘I’ve been tired this past couple of weeks, I dunno whether it’s the stress of moving or it the hemochromatosis’.

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5 Figurative language

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: • • •

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Be able to identify and characterize five types of figurative language: idioms, metaphors, irony, hyperbole, and proverbs. Understand the functions of figurative language which include the expression of emotion, humour, and politeness, but also the direct communication of literal meaning. Appreciate that figurative language is studied by a range of disciplines including pragmatics and psycholinguistics; the results of psycholinguistic experiments contribute to theoretical accounts of figurative language (e.g. relevance theory). Understand the type of interpretive difficulties that children and adults with clinical conditions encounter during the comprehension of figurative language and be able to characterize those difficulties; among these conditions are autism, schizophrenia, and right-​hemisphere damage. Be aware of different theoretical approaches to the study of figurative language, ranging from contextualist accounts like relevance theory that treat figurative language as part of the explicature of an utterance to accounts where it is part of implicated meaning.

5.1 Introduction A man with right-​hemisphere damage (RHD) is assessed on the Metaphors sub-​test of the RICE-​3 (Harper et al., 2010). During this test, a speech-​ language pathologist reads aloud 14 metaphors to the man (we will see below that the term ‘metaphor’ is used rather loosely in this assessment), and the man is required to explain what each metaphor means. He performs relatively well, accurately capturing the meaning of 12 of the 14 metaphors presented to him. The two metaphors that pose difficulties for him are shown below, along with the man’s responses: DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-6

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Figurative language  95 A stitch in time saves nine: ‘If you have a hole in your sock, sew it up before it gets to be a great big sock and one stitch will fix it early on but later it will take nine stitches’ It takes two to tango: ‘It takes two to dance, it’s not much fun if you’re just dancing by yourself, so it takes two to tango’ The man’s responses to both ‘metaphors’ reveals a tendency to interpret figurative language in a literal manner. The first figurative expression, a widely used proverb in English, conveys a certain lesson or moral –​that if you do not address problems early on when they are small and manageable, they will escalate into larger problems that will be more difficult to address. The reader will notice that sewing plays no part in the proverbial meaning of this expression. The second figurative expression, a common idiom in English, conveys an insight into human behaviour –​that when an acrimonious situation arises, there is rarely one guilty party, with both parties often sharing responsibility for the events that have transpired. The reader will again notice that a South American dance called the tango plays no part in the meaning of this idiomatic expression. This man with damage to his right cerebral hemisphere is unable to move beyond the literal meanings of the words that make up these expressions to access the proverbial and idiomatic meanings in each case. We will see subsequently that this tendency for literal interpretation of figurative language is a feature of clinical populations beyond people with right-​hemisphere damage (see section 5.3 in Cummings (2014) for review of RHD). This chapter will examine the many expressions in English where meaning is not a function of the meaning of their parts. These expressions, which include proverbs and idioms alongside other forms of figurative language, have a fixed or non-​compositional meaning. Young children and second language learners must accordingly acquire or learn the meanings of these expressions in much the same way that they would learn the meanings of individual words. This can make them challenging expressions for both groups of learners as they must acquire a meaning in many cases that bears little or no relation to the words in the expressions. But it can also make figurative expressions an interesting class of linguistic expressions for psycholinguists to investigate as their meaning is not derivable from generative rules of language. The label ‘figurative’ can also be somewhat misleading as it suggests these expressions contain abstract language that is typical of literary works. In fact, the different types of expressions that make up figurative language are quite mundane and occur in everyday talk. The following utterances were used during spontaneous conversation with some of the adults that the author studies in her clinical work. Figurative language was commonplace as these adults talked about their families, work, holidays, hobbies and interests, and the

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96  Figurative language impact of illness and disability on their lives. Each figurative expression is indicated in bold: (a) ‘Ella would give me a bit of a hand putting socks on for example’ (75-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (b) ‘there’s nothing you can’t ask me, my life is literally an open book’ (56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease). (c) ‘I retired through ill health through the MS, like ah like the spirit was willing but the flesh unfortunately was weak’ (56-​year-​old woman with multiple sclerosis). (d) ‘what else have I read oh miles and miles of stuff’ (75-​year-​old man with motor neurone disease). The speaker in (a) is not stating that Ella (his wife) is physically giving part of her hand to him. The idiom in this case conveys the physical assistance that the speaker receives from his wife with one of the challenges caused by his Parkinson’s disease, namely, putting on his socks. The speaker in (b) is of course not suggesting that his life is an open book. He uses this metaphor to convey that his life has certain characteristics of an open book –​that it can be opened at any page and scrutinized at length by an observer. The figurative expression in (c) is a proverb of biblical origin. The speaker who uses it is giving the hearer some insight into the impact of her condition on her ability to continue working –​as much as she wanted to continue working, the physical limitations caused by her multiple sclerosis made this impossible. The speaker in (d) cannot possibly have read miles and miles of ‘stuff’. This would be impossible for even the most avid reader. Rather, the speaker is using hyperbole to emphasize to his listener the sheer volume of material that he has read. To these four figurative forms we might add irony such as when a TV weather presenter says ‘It is another glorious day’ after delivering a forecast of non-​stop rain.

5.2 Idioms This class of figurative expressions requires us to think more closely about what it means for an expression to have a fixed or non-​compositional meaning. Clearly, there are idioms that conform to this characterization quite well. There is no relation, for example, between marbles and a person’s cognitive faculties or between losing one’s marbles and experiencing a loss of memory and other cognitive skills. This idiom does indeed appear to be non-​decomposable in that its meaning does not readily yield to an analysis of its component parts: ‘if Rose is with me, she’d um very good like that, she can give me those directions, and ah you know always dubious in a way to mention that because I’m, I’m not losing me marbles’ (70-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease)

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Figurative language  97 But even in this case, there is some degree of compositionality in that something once possessed –​marbles and cognitive faculties –​is lost. In other idioms, the compositionality of meaning is more obvious. The idiom soften one’s cough means to undermine or negate someone’s argument or position on a topic: ‘[…] opens the door and happens to have a bone in her hand to give to his dog to try and soften his cough’ (70-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease) The meaning of this idiom is partially derivable from its component parts. The same mechanism –​the vocal tract –​is used to produce speech in an argument and for coughing. Also, an argument that is negated or undermined loses its force –​its hard impact is softened. The fact that most idioms are decomposable or analysable to some degree also explains why these expressions exhibit lexical variation. Language users know, for example, that they can substitute the word jump in the idiom jump through hoops with a verb like go, but not with a verb like walk, without altering the idiom’s meaning. Substitutions of this nature suggest that speakers are treating idiomatic meaning as in part compositional: ‘the last few years the bureaucracy surrounding financial services became a, a chore em I had to go through a lot of hoops’ (75-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease) Beyond lexical substitutions, variations in the syntax of idioms also suggest that speakers are treating these expressions as consisting of decomposable units that can be rearranged. The idiom open the door in an utterance like ‘Her appearance in the TV show opened the door to an acting career’ means to make something (in this case an acting career) more likely to happen. The noun door is the object of the transitive verb opened in this utterance. But in the following utterance, the noun door is the subject of open, used this time as an intransitive verb. Furthermore, the speaker is inflecting the noun to become plural and pre-​modifying the noun with the adjective right: ‘he says if the right doors open he says you could ah been there …’ (54-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease) Speakers use idioms for a wide range of reasons. Many idioms create vivid mental imagery that non-​ idiomatic language lacks. The idiom soften one’s cough in the above utterance is a particularly apt illustration of this function of idioms when one considers the context in which this utterance appeared. The man with Parkinson’s disease is describing a scene in which a flowerpot falls on an elderly gentleman’s head. He proceeds to remonstrate with the woman who owns the apartment from

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98  Figurative language which the flowerpot fell. To placate him, the woman offers a bone to his dog. Set against this context, the idiom soften one’s cough encourages us to think of the bone as a large throat lozenge that soothes the anger of the man in much the same way that a lozenge might soothe a person’s painful throat. Idioms can also be used for reasons of politeness. There are many potentially sensitive issues (e.g. sexuality, death) where the use of an idiom allows the speaker to avoid directly talking about them. The idiom in the first utterance below can be used to describe Jack as homosexual. In the second utterance, the idiom has a euphemistic function in that it allows the speaker to say Sue has died without directly mentioning death: Jack bats for the other team. Sue has gone to meet her maker. An adult with schizophrenia used the idiom a roll in the hay in the following utterances. The idiom typically means to have sexual intercourse. Its use is interesting in this context as it is unlikely to mean anything whatsoever to do with sexual activity. Rather, the idiom is part of a behaviour called glossomania, in which the speaker with schizophrenia develops sound and meaning associations between words: ‘Looks like clay. Sounds like gray. Take you for a roll in the hay. Hay-​day. Mayday. Help. I need help’ (Cohen, 1978, p.29) Idioms can also express complex ideas that are more difficult to capture using literal language. During a conversation between the author and a woman with Long Covid, the woman expressed her dismay at the early handling of the Covid pandemic by authorities in the US. She believed that the response was poor and had placed many people at unnecessary risk. However, she was also a physician and did not want to be seen to make a lazy attribution of blame to others when there were many challenges to contend with early in the pandemic. Her complex sentiments are expressed in the utterance below through use of the idiom throw anyone under the bus –​while she did not want to make accusations that might harm others, she nevertheless judged the official response to the pandemic to be seriously inadequate: ‘I mean not that I want to throw anyone under the bus but it is just wu you know astounding what has happened’ (41-​year-​old woman with Long Covid) The use and understanding of idioms can be problematic for children and adults with a range of clinical conditions. Children with autism spectrum disorder and social communication disorder are two such clinical groups.

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Figurative language  99 In both conditions there is a tendency to engage in literal interpretation of idioms, even when such an interpretation is implausible in context, or the correct idiomatic meaning is explicitly presented. The following data is a transcription of a video scenario that accompanies the Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics (Lavi, 2019). In this scenario, a girl is seen writing in a notebook when a boy called Tom enters the room. The scenario begins with a statement of context before the exchange between Tom and the girl unfolds: Context: Tom is coming back from taking a math exam. Girl: Hey, so how was your exam? Tom: It was a piece of cake. Girl: What, not your lunch, the exam! Tom: I said it was easy, it was a piece of cake. Girl: But I didn’t ask about your lunch. Four children were then asked the question ‘Did anything go wrong in this video?’ The children who responded had either typical development, social communication disorder, or autism spectrum disorder. Their responses are shown in turn below: Girl with typical development: ‘So, the girl didn’t understand the boy’s idiom when he was saying that the test was easy, it was a piece of cake. Instead, she thought he was referencing towards his lunch. So, she wasn’t able to understand his figurative language.’ Girl with social communication disorder: ‘She asked him how was his math test, I think, and he was talking about his her his lunch instead of his math test math test.’ Girl with social communication disorder: ‘I guess he wasn’t very specific about what he was talking about.’ Boy with autism spectrum disorder: ‘She just said it was a piece of cake.’ While all four children correctly answered the question that something had gone wrong in the video, it was only the child with typical development who was able to explain exactly what had gone wrong –​that Tom was using piece of cake as an idiom to indicate that the math test was easy. The first child with social communication disorder did not move beyond a literal interpretation of the idiom even though the boy Tom in the video explicitly stated the idiomatic meaning of his utterance. The second girl with social communication disorder did not even address the literal meaning of the idiom, describing Tom instead as being not ‘very specific’. The boy with autism spectrum disorder was only able to repeat Tom’s idiomatic expression, with no development of its non-​literal meaning whatsoever.

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100  Figurative language

5.3 Metaphors Metaphors are another type of figurative language that is widely used by speakers. The essence of any metaphor can be characterized as follows: attributes or properties of the ‘source’ are transferred onto the ‘target’. Because the source is typically something concrete and the target is an abstract entity, metaphors provide speakers with a way of thinking and talking about experiences that are not readily captured using literal language. This can be seen in the following utterance, where a 56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease is describing the stress that he experienced in work roles before the diagnosis of his condition. He uses the metaphor of a roller coaster to chart this difficult period in his life: ‘it was just a roller coaster from there to where I am today’ By its nature, stress is a difficult concept to characterize. This man was under considerable stress as he struggled to complete large construction projects and was responsible for a sizeable team of employees. But the stress that he was experiencing was also a sign that he was securing lucrative construction projects and was enjoying a successful career. This stressful period in his life elicited positive and negative emotions that resembled feelings of exhilaration and fear during a roller coaster ride. Beyond the transference of properties from a concrete source (roller coaster) to an abstract target (stressful career), there are several other observations that we can make about this metaphor, and metaphors in general. First, there is more than one comparison between the source and target. For the roller coaster metaphor, we can systematically relate the source and target domains along the following dimensions: Source: roller coaster Target: work and career Speed of roller coaster → Work projects completed by deadlines Feelings of exhilaration → Securing lucrative projects Feelings of trepidation → Anxiety about completion of projects Lack of control of ride → Projects at risk from factors outside of one’s control Second, these comparisons operate in one direction only. It is their asymmetric nature that permits speakers to produce the first utterance in the following pair of utterances, but not the second utterance, which is somewhat peculiar (*): Approaching the project deadline was a roller coaster. *Sitting on the roller coaster’s steep ascent was a challenging project.

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Figurative language  101 Third, metaphors are not conventional in that they express a meaning that goes beyond the conventional meaning of their component words. The speaker who describes his stressful work life as a roller coaster is not telling us anything about a fairground ride. But it is nonetheless the case that this metaphor can only be used by a speaker and understood by a hearer who know what a roller coaster is and are acquainted with the conventional meaning of this term. We will return to this point below when we consider different theoretical proposals for how speakers and hearers process the metaphorical meanings of utterances. At the start of the chapter, we examined the responses of a man with right-​hemisphere damage (RHD) to test items on the Metaphors sub-​test of the RICE-​3. The man in question provided a concrete, literal interpretation of 2 of 14 items in this test. The items in question were a proverb and an idiom. But RHD can also compromise the use and understanding of metaphors. By way of illustration, consider the following extract from Abusamra et al. (2009). It is a dialogue between an examiner (E) and a male patient (P) with RHD. The patient has been asked to explain the meaning of one of the metaphors from the MEC protocol (Joanette et al., 2004). The metaphor is X is a witch: 1 E:  What does this phrase mean: My friend’s mother-​ in-​ law is a witch? 2 P: Let’s change also one word: My son-​in-​law’s mother-​in-​law is a witch? 3 E: And so what does it mean? 4 P:  I know she is a person who hasn’t had a pleasant life, throughout her marriage. That … that 5 P: she’s about to be separated from her husband; I’m referring to the mother-​in-​law of my 6 P: son-​in-​law (ha, ha, ha) 7 E: OK it’s not important–​it’s the same. 8 P: Certainly! The mother-​in-​law of my son-​in-​law. The mother-​ in-​law of my son-​in-​law is a 9 P: witch! 10 E: What does being a witch mean? 11 P: Because the woman is separated, because all her life she has criticized her husband for 12 P: the way he is; only seen in his defects, who has kept his daughter all her life under a 13 P: glass bell and she’s now a poor lady because she can’t find the fiancé her mother would 14 P: like. 15 E: So what does witch mean, then? 16 P: What does it specifically mean? It means being tied down to religious sects, to religions, 17 P: to Umbanda…who knows, there are so many.

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102  Figurative language 18 E: So therefore, ‘The mother-​in-​law of my son-​in-​law is a witch’. Does it mean the mother-​ 19 E: in-​law of my friend practises black magic? And the mother-​in-​ law of my friend has many 20 E: brooms and she is also a bad person an rude? 21 P:  It’s absolutely clear. My friend’s mother-​ in-​ law has many brooms…no! My friend’s 22 P: mother-​in-​law practices black magic. (pp. 77–​78) The examiner works hard in this exchange to press P to explain the meaning of X is a witch. The exposition between lines 1 to 15 leads nowhere, however, with P partaking in increasingly verbose and irrelevant contributions (verbose, tangential discourse is a feature of language in RHD). In line 16, the examiner succeeds for the first time in getting P to address the meaning of the metaphor. The features mentioned by P at this point –​religious sects, religions, Umbanda –​are not part of the conventional meaning of witch, although some religions do embrace the practice of black magic. In lines 19 and 20, the examiner provides P with a choice between the conventional meaning of witch (she practises black magic and has many brooms) and the metaphorical meaning (she is a bad and rude person). Initially, it looks as if P might reject the conventional meaning of witch in favour of its metaphorical meaning when, in line 21, he outright denies that X is a witch means that she has many brooms. But the metaphorical meaning of this expression continues to evade P when he accepts the practice of black magic as part of the metaphor’s meaning in line 22. This speaker with RHD never gets close to the metaphorical meaning of this expression and is even ambivalent about its conventional meaning. So far, we have examined how one concept (e.g. a person’s career) may be metaphorically structured in terms of another (e.g. a roller coaster). But a whole system of concepts may also be organized with respect to each other. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argued that ‘[m]‌ost of our fundamental concepts are organized in terms of one or more spatialization metaphors’ (p.17). One such metaphor uses an UP-​DOWN orientation to talk about many different concepts including health, happiness, consciousness, and power: Her condition picked up overnight (health) He is on top of the world these days (happiness) He fell into a coma during the operation (consciousness) She is the top chief executive in British retail (power) As he reflected on his career in construction, the 56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease who used the ‘roller coaster’ metaphor produced the following utterances:

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Figurative language  103 ‘I suppose the high point of construction would be project manager of an apartment block in Five Dock in Sydney’ ‘when I was at the height of my career we’ll say building and that working for myself, I’d forty-​five guys working under me’ An UP-​DOWN orientation (e.g. at the height of my career) is used metaphorically in these utterances to describe the type of work that is the pinnacle of construction. The resulting spatial metaphors capture two concepts, namely, SENIORITY in a profession or field of work and SUCCESS in one’s career. In the second utterance, the UP-​DOWN orientation is the basis of another metaphor when the speaker describes having forty-​five men working under him. The more junior rank of these workers is represented by the opposite end of the vertical axis (viz., DOWN) in this spatial metaphor. This man with Lewy body disease used the same UP-​DOWN orientation in a further spatial metaphor: ‘we often said in the height of my stress and before I was hospitalized with blood pressure (.) God we need to go away for a week again’ What is interesting about this spatial metaphor is that where the top of the vertical axis represented positive attributes in the previous utterances–​ SENIORITY in one’s field of work and SUCCESS in one’s career –​the top of the vertical axis in this case represents a large quantity of a negative attribute, namely, MENTAL DISTRESS. A spatial metaphor with an UP-​ DOWN orientation is also evident in the following utterance of a 54-​ year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease: ‘he says if this putter takes off he says you can run the business from here and I’ll run the (.) the other golfin’ business’ The speaker is describing a joint business venture with a friend where they planned to develop and market a new golfing putter. The metaphor takes off represents elevation on the vertical axis in UP-​DOWN and captures the SUCCESS that both men hoped their new putter would bring them. For further discussion of metaphor in cognitive linguistics, the reader is referred to ­chapter 9 in Evans and Green (2006). Metaphors are an interesting phenomenon for pragmatists and psycholinguists. Pragmatists are interested in whether metaphorical meaning is a form of direct and explicit meaning (part of ‘what is said’) or whether metaphorical meaning is implicated by an utterance. Psycholinguists use timed experiments to establish if language users process metaphors literally before rejecting this meaning and arriving at a metaphorical interpretation of an utterance or whether they bypass the literal meaning of these expressions and process their metaphorical meaning directly. Both interests

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104  Figurative language are related, with the results of psycholinguistic experiments informing pragmatists’ deliberations about whether metaphorical meaning is part of direct, explicit meaning or is implicated by an utterance. Gibbs (1990, 1994) found no difference in processing time for literal and metaphorical language. There is also evidence that subjects take longer to process the literal meaning of expressions that have a plausible metaphorical interpretation, even when they are told to consider only literal meaning (Glucksberg et al., 1982). These findings give support to contextualist accounts of meaning like relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, [1986] 1995). According to relevance theory, metaphor is not part of implicated meaning; rather, metaphor contributes to the explicature of an utterance (an explicature is a pragmatically enriched form of explicit meaning). There is also evidence, however, that novel and unfamiliar metaphors do take longer to process than literal utterances and familiar metaphors (Noveck et al. 2001). The issues are complex and still contentious. For a recent contribution to the debate, the reader is referred to Genovesi (2020).

5.4 Irony Another prominent type of figurative language is irony. To begin our discussion of this concept, let us return to a test item from the Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics (Lavi, 2019). A video is shown separately to two children, a boy with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a girl with social communication disorder (SCD). The video shows an interaction between a boy and two girls, Cindy and Jane. The context is presented followed by a short exchange between Cindy and the boy: Context: Cindy and Jane are outside. Another person (a boy) is walking by. Cindy begins to talk to the boy. Cindy: That is such a cool shirt. Boy: Really, you like it? Cindy and Jane start laughing. An examiner asks the children ‘Did anything go wrong in this video?’ The responses of the boy with ASD and the girl with SCD are shown below: Boy with autism spectrum disorder: ‘No, they liked the shirt’ Girl with social communication disorder: ‘They said em that’s a cool shirt but then they started and then the boy said ‘Really?’ and then they started laughing. [Examiner: But did anything go wrong?] No’ It is clear from the responses of these children that their interpretation of the irony in Cindy’s utterance has not been successful. But before

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Figurative language  105 we consider where the responses of these children have gone wrong, let us think about how someone viewing this scenario might establish that Cindy is being ironic in her interaction with the boy in the video. Normally when a speaker produces an ironic utterance, it is apparent at the point of utterance that the literal meaning of the utterance is ‘at odds’ with some aspect of context. When I say ‘We’re having beautiful weather’ in the middle of a thunderstorm, the evidently poor weather conditions reveal my ironic intent. If there is a boisterous five-​year-​old boy in my company when I say ‘What a delightful child!’, then the chaos that is unfolding around me when I produce my utterance is all that my hearer needs to work out that I am not expressing my true feelings about the boy. These cases of irony are somewhat easier to interpret than the scenario in the video because context immediately reveals the speaker’s ironic intent. It is only after Cindy produces her utterance, and the boy rather naively tries to confirm that she likes his shirt, that context starts to play its full hand in the irony of this exchange. For it is the laughing girls at the very end of the interaction that reveal the true nature of the encounter and expose Cindy’s use of irony with the boy. We can learn a lot about irony from this simple scenario. An ironic utterance expresses the opposite of what a speaker thinks or believes is the case. The task for the hearer is then to use what the speaker says, in the context in which he says it, to reconstruct the speaker’s communicative intention, and in so doing establish the ironic purpose of his utterance. This is the challenge of all utterance interpretation –​the reconstruction of the communicative intention that motivated a speaker to produce an utterance. And yet irony works quite differently from that other behaviour where people say the opposite of what they believe is the case, namely, lying. For while the speaker who is lying hides his actual belief from the hearer, the ironic speaker makes his belief manifest to the hearer. How does he achieve this? In the video, Cindy makes her ironic intent manifest to the boy by laughing at the end of the exchange. But she could also have achieved the same effect through producing a smirk or using a certain type of intonation when she said ‘That is such a cool shirt’. Any of these behaviours would have served as cues to her actual belief about the boy’s shirt. And in identifying Cindy’s actual belief, the hearer has revealed her intention to be ironic. With this basic overview of irony in place, it is possible to understand why the boy with autism spectrum disorder and the girl with social communication disorder fail to establish the irony of Cindy’s utterance in the scenario in the video. ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that compromises not only the ability to process pragmatic aspects of language but also the ability to make sense of the many social cues that regulate human interaction. These cues include facial expressions, body postures and hand gestures, intonation, and vocal behaviours such as laughter. The boy with ASD treats Cindy’s utterance as a literal statement–​Cindy likes the boy’s shirt and expresses this by saying it is cool (it is worth

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106  Figurative language noting that this boy with ASD succeeds in understanding cool figuratively to mean trendy even as he fails to understand irony). But where this literal interpretation may be registered by a speaker without ASD and then rejected –​we will say more about this subsequently –​this boy with ASD is unable to use Cindy’s laughter to overturn this literal interpretation and establish the irony of her utterance. The girl with social communication disorder goes a step further in her interpretation of Cindy’s utterance than the boy with ASD. Unlike the boy with ASD, she succeeds in detecting Cindy and Jane’s laughter –​she states that ‘they started laughing’. But she is unable to derive the significance of this behaviour for her interpretation of Cindy’s utterance. So, although she comes tantalizingly close, or at least closer, to interpreting Cindy’s irony than the boy with ASD, she nonetheless fails to establish Cindy’s ironic intent. Like metaphor processing, pragmatists and psycholinguists are interested in how hearers process utterances for irony. It was suggested above that a literal interpretation of an utterance is first established and then rejected in favour of an ironic meaning. This is the essence of Grice’s (1975) standard pragmatic model (see section 2.4). This would predict that ironic utterances take longer to process than either metaphoric or literal utterances, a prediction that is borne out by reading times in experiments (Colston and Gibbs, 2002; Deliens et al. 2017). Other experimental findings indicate that ironic meaning can be processed as quickly as literal meaning (Gibbs, 1986). On the direct access model (Gibbs, 1986), the ironic meaning of an utterance is processed directly without first accessing the literal meaning of an utterance. On an alternative model, the constraints satisfaction model (Pexman, 2008), when hearers process an ironic utterance, they integrate information from various sources (e.g. facial expressions, speaker intonation) rapidly and in parallel to arrive at an interpretation that is most coherent with the available information. On this probabilistic model, while no information is necessary for the ironic interpretation of an utterance, constraints or a set of constraints are sufficient for such interpretation. The emphasis of this approach is then to establish what these constraints are, and to quantify their relative significance within different situational contexts. This model has generated a substantial program of research that has examined contextual factors (e.g. allusion to a failed expectancy) and sociocultural factors (e.g. level of education) as possible constraints in the perception of irony. For further discussion of this work, the reader is referred to Rivière and Champagne-​Lavau (2020).

5.5 Hyperbole Consider the following utterances that are taken from conversations between the author and some of her research participants:

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Figurative language  107 (a) ‘I’ve a little bit of a runny nose and I’m terrified I, I, like I wash my hands ten (.) a hundred times a day’ (56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease). (b) ‘you wouldn’t think of that in a million years’ (50-​year-​old woman with multiple sclerosis). (c) ‘I was not able to sell my own home despite being a realtor. I went bankrupt, lost everything’ (57-​year-​old woman with schizophrenia). Each of these utterances contains overstatement or hyperbole. To appreciate the exaggeration involved in each utterance, we need to consider the wider contexts in which they were produced. The utterance in (a) occurred during a conversation at the beginning of the Covid-​19 pandemic. This was a time when little was known about the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-​19 and government health advice encouraged people to maintain 2-​metre social distance and engage in frequent hand washing. The speaker who produced (a) was clinically vulnerable on account of his Lewy body disease and was particularly anxious not to contract novel coronavirus. The use of hyperbole to describe the number of times the speaker washed his hands each day captures this state of heightened anxiety. In (b), the speaker with multiple sclerosis is describing an experience where she undertook voluntary work in a construction project in Tanzania. This episode was a particularly rewarding experience for her even though the conditions in which the work was undertaken were physically challenging. The speaker is expressing her surprise that such a physically difficult project was so rewarding by using hyperbole in the form of the phrase in a million years. Although it is less immediately apparent, the speaker of the utterance in (c) is also using exaggeration or overstatement. Of course the speaker did not lose everything –​even in the worst possible catastrophes, we are always left with something, should it just be the clothes on our backs and a few basic possessions. Rather, the speaker is using overstatement on this occasion to capture the enormity of her losses and to convey the distress and hardship that this caused her. These utterances contain the hallmarks of all overstatements. The first hallmark is that there is an exaggerated claim that is semantically higher (or lower) on some scale than is warranted. The overstatement in (a) relates to the frequency of an activity (in this case, hand washing) in a day. On hearing this statement, we know it cannot be intended literally as it far exceeds the dozen or so times that most people wash their hands in a 24-​hour period. The overstatement in (b) cannot be literally true as it captures a period –​a million years –​which far exceeds the 70 or 80 years of life that most of us can reasonably hope to enjoy. The second hallmark is that the exaggeration in each utterance amplifies an emotion that the speaker experienced and considers it sufficiently noteworthy to convey to his or her hearer. The speaker in (a) wants to convey his heightened state of anxiety; the speakers in (b) and (c) want to express their emotional

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108  Figurative language states of surprise and distress, respectively, through use of overstatement. It is difficult to envisage how any literal utterance could convey these same intense emotions. For example, the following statement is emotionally flat relative to the utterance in (a): I was worried about catching coronavirus and so I washed my hands several times a day. Some indication that a statement such as that above would not have succeeded in adequately conveying the speaker’s heightened emotional state is that the speaker started out to say ten times a day but quickly revised this upwards to become a hundred times a day. The utterances in (a) to (c) contain another important feature of hyperbole or overstatement. While the utterances in (a) and (b) contain expressions that are semantically higher on a scale than is warranted, the utterance in (c) contains the word everything. This is at the end point of the scale and is called an Extreme Case Formulation (ECF). As well as all-​quantifiers and related nouns (e.g. everything, all), ECFs include words from other grammatical categories such as adjectives (e.g. total) and adverbs (e.g. never). Constructions that use superlative adjectives are also ECFs such as this utterance produced by the speaker with Lewy body disease: I’m probably the unluckiest man on the planet. In the following utterance, this man is describing the vivid and terrifying nightmares he has had since the diagnosis of his condition. He uses two ECFs no such thing and never wake. The hearer knows that these expressions are intended nonliterally because very clearly there is such a thing as a nice dream, even if the speaker does not currently experience them. Also, the speaker has at some point woken in the morning and thought it is a great day, even if he has not done so since the diagnosis of his Lewy body disease: ‘there’s no such thing as a nice a nice dream there’s no such thing as I never wake in the morning and go ahhh thank god there awh yeah, it’s a great day and all that I don’t I just I’ll wake in a panic’ Relevance theorists do not treat expressions like no such thing and never wake as nonliteral meaning. Rather, these expressions are underspecified and must undergo narrowing to obtain the explicature of an utterance. An explicature is a type of pragmatically enriched meaning that is derived from encoded meaning and contextual assumptions in a process constrained by expectations of relevance. This process of narrowing restricts the scope of the quantifier no in the phrase no such thing to mean no such thing since the diagnosis of my illness. Similarly, pragmatic narrowing of never in the phrase never wake places a time restriction on this adverb to mean not since the diagnosis of my illness. The narrowing of these concepts requires a hearer who knows that the speaker has had a medical diagnosis

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Figurative language  109 of Lewy body disease and that vivid, terrifying nightmares are a symptom of this neurodegenerative disorder. These contextual assumptions lead the hearer to search for the most relevant interpretation of these expressions that fits with these background assumptions. The most relevant interpretation is that the speaker has had no such thing as a nice dream and has never woken with positive thoughts about the day ahead since the onset of his disease. Overstatement often interacts with other forms of nonliteral meaning. Many proverbs contain ECFs such as the underlined words in the following expressions (see section 5.6): Lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Every man has his price. Overstatement can be introduced into an utterance through metaphor. In the following utterance, a 75-​year-​old man with motor neuron disease is describing how his sister believed his illness was caused by a period of severe work-​related stress. The trigger of his illness is characterized metaphorically as an electrical spark or spark of fire. The content of this metaphor is hyperbolic as it conjures up an image of extreme danger that could threaten or even terminate one’s life: ‘One of my sisters thought that it may even have sparked off the illness that I suffer from.’ The hyperbole is most apparent when the metaphor in sparked off is compared to the more neutral word caused in the utterance One of my sisters thought that stress may even have caused the illness I suffer from. The speaker’s health is naturally of concern to his sister. Her high level of emotional involvement in his wellbeing is indicated through use of hyperbole in the above utterance.

5.6 Proverbs One final type of figurative language is the class of proverbs. Proverbs are pithy, formulaic statements that form discrete, recognizable units. Unlike other figurative expressions, proverbs form a complete utterance. They often express an age-​old wisdom or contain some profound insight about life and human behaviour. As such, they may be all that a speaker needs to say to convey an observation or make a particularly apt remark in conversation. Below, a 56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease used a proverb to impress on the author the extent to which his son shares his father’s enjoyment of, and commitment to, his work. It is difficult to think of a literal statement that could reflect the shared interests of two people joined by a genetic relationship as clearly as the image of an apple falling directly under the tree that produced it:

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110  Figurative language ‘the job moves him around the country, he’s never in the one place too long and he just loves it. The apple does not fall far from the tree’ There is considerable linguistic heterogeneity in the class of proverbs. Some proverbs are grammatical like the proverb in the above utterance, while others are ungrammatical. In the proverb No gain without pain, a verb is omitted, while Slow and steady wins the race lacks nouns after the adjectives. Some proverbs contain repetition like We shall see what we shall see; others use archaic words such as thrice in Measure thrice and cut once. Many proverbs have the grammatical form of imperatives and conditionals: Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself. (Imperative) Make hay while the sun shines. (Imperative) If you play with fire, you’ll get burned. (Conditional) Other proverbs open with quantified noun phrases beginning with the terms none, all or every: Every dog has its day. All good things come to an end. No man is an island. Some proverbs are linguistically salient because they contain words that rhyme (e.g. An apple a day keeps the doctor away) or they have words with similar morphological structure (e.g., Cleanliness is next to Godliness). Also noteworthy is the fact that many proverbs are based on biblical scripture. The proverb Pride comes before a fall is based on this verse from Proverbs 16:18: ‘Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall’. Finally, some proverbs are carried over into English from other languages. The expression Che sarà, sarà, meaning ‘what will be, will be’, is often used by English speakers and is Italian in origin. For decades, psychiatrists have used proverb interpretation as part of the mental status exam for psychosis, although the diagnostic significance of its findings is disputed (Sponheim et al., 2003). When adults with schizophrenia are asked to explain the meaning of proverbs, their responses reveal some interesting patterns. An explanation may be developed around the non-​dominant meaning of a word in the proverb. In the following example, a speaker with schizophrenia interprets swallow to mean the ingestion of food rather than a species of bird (Harrow and Quinlan, 1985): One swallow doesn’t make a summer: ‘When you swallow something, it could be all right, but the next minute you could be coughing, and dreariness and all kinds of miserable things coming out of your throat’

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Figurative language  111 The speaker is unable to use the wider linguistic context in which the word swallow appears to suppress the non-​dominant meaning of this word, which then comes to dominate his explanation of the proverb’s meaning. A more common problem of interpretation arises when the speaker accesses the correct dominant meanings of the words in a proverb but is unable to move beyond this meaning. The result is a literal interpretation of the proverb that fails to engage with the moral or insight that the proverb conveys. This occurs in the following example where the speaker talks about horses running courses and racetracks rather than the actual wisdom conveyed by the proverb, namely, that you should not change your plan or course of action in the middle of a project: Don’t swap horses when crossing a stream: ‘Horses run courses, there are racetracks all over the country’ A similar tendency to engage in literal interpretation occurs in the following proverbs. The first proverb has nothing to do with flooding and sand; rather, it means that people who do not consider things deeply often talk too much. The second proverb means we should not make plans based on the hope that something will come about because we may end up disappointed. Actual chickens with one or more ‘going bad’ plays no part in the proverb’s meaning: Shallow brooks are noisy: Because they flood or make a sand Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched: One chicken might go bad, and if it had 12, but then only 11, so don’t count on it As we inch our way closer to the intended meaning of proverbial expressions, we encounter several other anomalies produced by adults with schizophrenia. The following proverb means that someone who appears menacing or threatening is often quite reasonable. On this occasion, the speaker with schizophrenia attempts to explain the meaning of the proverb in terms of a related idiom, namely, his bark is worse than his bite: Barking dogs seldom bite: ‘A dog with a bark normally, his bark is worse than his bite, is badder, is better’ In the following example, the speaker with schizophrenia sets out with a literal interpretation of the proverb. When he is pressed by the examiner to expand his answer, his frame of interpretation shifts to religion

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112  Figurative language and Christianity. This interpretive shift may reflect the biblical origin of many proverbs. Alternatively, it may be taken to reflect the dominance of religious discourse in the psychotic experience of people with schizophrenia: A drowning man will clutch at a straw: ‘Duh. Help! Is anyone going to save him? [Q: Could you say some more?] I could say I’m a drowning man right now. Anyone who asks for help. Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. It all has to do with Christ’ Finally, we arrive at the most accurate expression of proverbial meaning that these speakers with schizophrenia were able to achieve. But even here, the full proverbial meaning remains somewhat elusive. In the following proverb, the first half of the speaker’s explanation captures quite well the proverbial insight that when those with authority are not present, the people who are under their supervision will begin to take liberties and not fulfil a task or duty. However, as the speaker continues to talk, the explanation digresses from the proverb’s meaning: When the cat’s away, the mice will play: ‘When law and order is out, the group under will slack off and tend to go away, instead of a set law that is restricting them will think more of them’ The proverb One swallow doesn’t make a summer means that just because one good thing has happened, it does not mean that a situation is going to improve. The speaker vaguely grasps the idea that a solitary positive instance (a bird says it is summer) cannot be used to claim that a situation is going to get better (it is summer). However, the speaker’s explanation is still largely rooted in the literal or conventional meaning of the words in the proverb: One swallow doesn’t make a summer: ‘Just because a bird says it’s summer and acts like it’s summer, it really isn’t’ Lastly, the following speaker touches on the proverbial meaning of the expression in the first clause of his explanation. He then veers off topic before finally returning to the meaning of the proverb in the final clause. But while the speaker succeeds in conveying the idea that changing a decision or course of action should be avoided, he makes no reference to the context in which this change should be avoided. This context is a complex project or other venture –​that part of the proverb’s meaning that is conveyed by the words in the middle of the stream:

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Figurative language  113 Don’t swap horses in the middle of the stream: ‘You shouldn’t switch decisions or switch friendships with another just because he seems friendly–​ he might not be. May only be pretending. Stand your ground’ What these examples of proverb interpretation illustrate is that a proverb’s conventional meaning guides a hearer towards its figurative meaning but does not determine it. The hearer must take additional inferential steps. For speakers with schizophrenia, they appear unable to take these steps, or at least not in a consistent way. Accordingly, their comprehension of proverbs is largely confined to the conventional meaning of these expressions, with only glimpses of figurative meaning on display. We can see how conventional meaning guides the figurative interpretation of the above proverbs. In the proverb Don’t swap horses in the middle of the stream, the act of swapping horses is analogous to changing one’s course of action or decisions. The middle of a stream is a place that poses risk of harm if a significant change of behaviour occurs. This is analogous to the harm that might arise if someone changes course in the middle of a task or other activity. The conventional meaning of this expression establishes a schema or framework from which the task of constructing the proverb’s figurative meaning can begin. Two theoretical explanations of how this is achieved have been proposed. The Great Chain Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Turner, 1989) uses the term ‘specific-​level schema’ to capture this first stage en route to figurative meaning. A different mechanism is proposed by the Extended Conceptual Base Theory (Honeck et al., 1980; Honeck et al., 1987), one based on a problem-​solving framework. Neither theory can be succinctly addressed in the present context. The reader is referred to Honeck and Temple (1994) for further discussion.

Summary •

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Figurative language is everyday language; it may contribute rhetorical effects in communication but is not confined to literary works. Its main manifestations are idioms, metaphors, irony, hyperbole, and proverbs, although other forms such as understatement, metonymy, and similes also exist. The meaning of an idiom cannot be derived from the meanings of its component words (idioms have a fixed or non-​ compositional meaning); but while the meaning of an idiom is not derivable from its component words, some idioms have a more transparent connection to conventional meaning than others. In metaphors, the properties of a source are transferred onto a target. This allows speakers to describe something that is abstract in terms of something concrete, e.g. when we say LIFE IS A JOURNEY.

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114  Figurative language •

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In irony, a speaker expresses an utterance that is manifestly opposite to that which the speaker believes. A wide range of cues including facial expressions and tone of voice indicate the ironic intent of the speaker’s utterance for those hearers who can process these cues. In hyperbole, a speaker produces an overstatement often for affective and humorous reasons. These are claims that are semantically higher or lower on a semantic scale than is warranted. Claims that are at the extreme end of the scale (e.g. I’m the unluckiest man on the planet) are called extreme case formulations. Proverbs embody age-​old wisdom or morals in pithy, formulaic utterances. Unlike other types of figurative language, proverbs can form a complete utterance in a conversation. Many proverbs originate from biblical scripture, have distinctive linguistic features (e.g. archaic words), and omit grammatical structures (e.g. slow and steady wins the race). Figurative language holds interest for pragmatists who want to know where it fits into a theory of meaning. Is figurative language part of implicated meaning as Grice believed was the case? Is figurative language part of the explicature of an utterance –​pragmatically enriched explicit meaning –​as relevance theorists would have it? Figurative language also holds interest for psycholinguists who want to establish through timed experiments if hearers access the figurative meaning of these expressions directly, or if they first access literal meaning, before rejecting this meaning as implausible in context and only then accessing the figurative meaning.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Colston, H.L. and Gibbs, R.W. (2021) ‘Figurative language communicates directly because it precisely demonstrates what we mean’, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75 (2): 228–​233. In this article, two prominent theorists argue against assumptions that have dominated research into figurative language like idioms, metaphor, and irony. One such assumption is that speakers can communicate in literal language the meaning expressed by these forms but that they choose not to so as to convey humour or express emotional involvement in a topic. These theorists argue that this assumption is mistaken and that speakers are communicating directly when they use figurative forms of language.

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Figurative language  115 (2) Thoma, P. and Daum, I. (2006) ‘Neurocognitive mechanisms of figurative language processing –​Evidence from clinical dysfunctions’, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 30: 1182–​1205. This review article examines the results of behavioural, lesion and imaging studies that provide evidence of impaired processing of figurative language in several clinical populations. Although the emphasis of the review is on schizophrenia, evidence from neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders is also considered: agenesis of the corpus callosum; autism; neurodegenerative diseases involving subcortical structures; and Alzheimer’s disease. (3) Semino, E. and Demjen, Z. (Eds) (2017) The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language. London and New York: Routledge. An edited collection of 36 chapters, this volume includes contributions on different theoretical approaches to the study of metaphor (e.g. relevance theory) and applications of metaphor analysis in a range of contexts (e.g. politics, advertising).

Questions (1) Everyday language contains many different figurative expressions, not all of which conform to the standard or ‘correct’ form of these expressions. Some variations may be accounted for by learning in that language users may have learned or acquired a form other than the standard figurative expression. Other variations may arise as language users adapt a figurative expression to a particular context of use. Still other variations are little more than paraphrases that alter the form of the expression while retaining its meaning. The utterances below are produced by speakers of English as a first language. Although these speakers have conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, their non-​standard use of figurative expressions is not a consequence of impairment but is related to one of the above factors. For each utterance: (i) state the actual figurative expression that the speaker used; (ii) indicate the standard form of the figurative expression; and (iii) suggest why this variation in figurative expression use has arisen. (a) ‘I met a big farmer one time Davey (.) Davey carries the world on his shoulders’ (54-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (b) ‘when I was diagnosed eh had two choices either to lie down under it or get up and fight it, and I look on it as em a game an at the minute I’m playing against the wind’ (56-​year-​old woman with multiple sclerosis).

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116  Figurative language (c) ‘whenever the opportunity came up to take a handshake out, I took it out and cause I’d another job to walk into’ (54-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (d) ‘initially I had the blinkers on I thought well it’s not a great position at senior management level that I need’ (75-​year-​old man with motor neurone disease). (e) ‘that’s a two-​edged thing because depending on where you are and, on the nature, if you took very seriously ill you might have to be airlifted’ (75-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (2) The following utterances contain idioms. Examine each utterance and then answer the questions below: (a) ‘my son like never wants to do Spanish so like like he hit the jackpot you know um with this (laughter)’ (41-​year-​old woman with Long Covid). (b) ‘it wasn’t doing so had to pull the plug on it’ (54-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (c) ‘I says well least you went an sort of done that got the T-​shirt’ (54-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (d) ‘never thought twice about it or anybody with it until it comes to your own door’ (54-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (e) ‘this idea that people had you know if you were a freemason and you were stopped for speeding if the policeman happened to be a freemason he’d let you off that’s nonsense none of those things happen em you, you know this idea if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, no there’s no, no benefit’ (70-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (f) ‘I am sus when I go out I am scared stiff of falling’ (70-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (g) ‘it’s a very nice programme yeah now I do really like it but I wouldn’t break my heart if I missed it’ (56-​year-​old woman with multiple sclerosis). (h) ‘it was stress that led me to my first health problems and that was blood pressure, and it was just a roller coaster from there to where I am today but that (.) oh ah (.) when you push the boat out too far, you can’t get back’ (56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease). (i) ‘consultant neurologist got me to do things like this out of the blue’ (70-​year-​old woman with Parkinson’s disease) (j) ‘the suggestion was made why don’t you follow my course and ah and eh you know try your hand at doing something on your own’ (75-​year-​old man with motor neurone disease). (k) ‘she doesn’t eh miss the mark, does she?’ (75-​year-​old man with motor neurone disease). (l) INV: you don’t want to take a risk just to get exercise. PAR: scare the wits out of me (64-​year-​old woman with Parkinson’s disease (PAR) talking to author (INV)).

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Figurative language  117 (m) ‘I seen all the people going past all dressed to kill’ (80-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (n) INV: have you always been a Man United fan? PAR: oh, for donkey’s years (80-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease (PAR) talking to author (INV)). (o) ‘it didn’t even cross my mind that much, relapses didn’t happen that often’ (50-​year-​old woman with multiple sclerosis). Questions: (i) Many idioms use parts of the body to convey meaning. Identify four instances where this occurs in the above utterances. (ii) Explain the meaning of the idiom push the boat out in utterance (h). This same idiom has quite a different meaning for many English speakers. What is this alternative meaning? (iii) Idioms are often used to capture people’s emotional states. Which two utterances contain idioms that serve this purpose? What emotion is captured by these idioms? (iv) Idioms are common in everyday language use because they can express a wide array of meanings. They can capture when something or someone experiences success or failure. They can express the immediacy of an event or a state of extended duration. Identify idioms in the above utterances that express these four meanings. (v) The idiom in utterance (c) got the T-​shirt is a shortened form of the expression been there, done that, got the T-​shirt. What does this use of the idiom tell us about how speakers are processing idioms? (3) Each of the following utterances contains a metaphor. For each utterance (i) identify the metaphor the speaker is using, and (ii) suggest one comparison between the source and target domains: (a) ‘it was enjoyable you know as I say everything was always a challenge in just it was good like you know you’d ah got something fallin’ apart and it was a jigsaw to put back together’ (54-​ year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease). (b) ‘it’s as if I’ve set a clock and then once a clock stops well then the body just stops’ (56-​year-​old woman with multiple sclerosis). (c) ‘I have it directed towards anyone that had any kind of disease that you know it might take you off the road you’re on but there is another road there and better not give up’ (56-​year-​old man with Lewy body disease).

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6 Politeness

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: •

•

• • •

Be aware that speakers and hearers attend to their own and others’ face needs in everyday interactions in a way that extends well beyond what is commonly understood as polite language and behaviour. Understand the key tenets of Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness, including the concept of face, face-​ threatening acts, and use of positive and negative politeness as mitigation strategies. Be able to analyse facework in conversational exchanges using Brown and Levinson’s theory and recognize the explanatory limits of their theory. Understand the unique face challenges that are encountered in clinical settings and recognize the different ways in which clinicians, spouses, and clients address them. Understand some of the ways in which Brown and Levinson’s theory has been criticized by other politeness researchers and how these researchers have characterized concepts such as face within their own analyses.

6.1 Introduction In Chapter 2, we encountered a couple of behaviours which may be taken to fall within the broad topic of this chapter. First, there was the speaker with schizophrenia who, when he was asked by a doctor how he came to be living in a certain US city, responded as follows: ‘Then I left San Francisco and moved to … where did you get that tie? It looks like it’s left over from the 1950s. I like the warm weather in San Diego. Is that a conch shell on your desk? Have you ever gone scuba diving?’ (Thomas, 1997, p.41) DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-7

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Politeness  119 It was suggested that the comment about the doctor’s tie would be judged by most people to be inappropriate, probably even impolite, in the context of a professional interaction between a doctor and his or her patient. Second, there was the case of a man with Parkinson’s disease who was asked by the author to describe some of the symptoms of his condition. At the end of a list of typical Parkinson’s disease symptoms (e.g. mobility problems), he suddenly stated: ‘The libido’s gone sky high but I’m not with anybody so that’s probably one of the problems’ I judged this man’s statement to be inappropriate, and more inappropriate than the example before it, probably on account of its sexual content. However, I did not treat it as particularly impolite. But I know others, including my transcriber, did view this utterance as impolite. Third, some years ago I was working in a clinic with a child with speech sound disorder who had difficulty producing the /​sp/​consonant cluster at the beginning of words (e.g. spot). The child displayed the common simplification process called consonant cluster reduction in which he omitted the /​s/​consonant at the start of the word (e.g. spot → pot). After many unsuccessful attempts to get the child to articulate the word ‘spot’ with the correct sounds, he produced the following utterance with some frustration: You’ve got spots! The child’s mother moved quickly to apologize –​she clearly found her son’s behaviour to be rude and impolite and believed that an apology was necessary. I had mixed emotions, ranging from delight that the young boy had finally managed to produce the target sounds after much modelling and encouragement, to a degree of embarrassment that the spots on my face had been so brutally exposed in a clinical setting. But given the child’s young age and his lack of awareness of his social gaffe, I did not register this as an impolite encounter. These scenarios reveal the complex nature of (im)politeness in language and communication. We can draw some general observations from them to begin our discussion of this linguistic phenomenon. The first observation is that when discussing these cases, the concept of politeness was addressed alongside the notion of appropriate behaviour. According to Grundy (2008), ‘[p]‌oliteness phenomena are one manifestation of the wider concept of etiquette, or appropriate behaviour’ (p.187). That appears to be true of the above cases –​the comment about the doctor’s tie, the speaker’s remark about his libido, and the child’s utterance about spots are simply not appropriate in the contexts in which they are produced. But the more interesting question is whether they are not appropriate because they are not polite. To answer this question, we

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120 Politeness come to our second observation. In each of these scenarios, someone’s desire to be well regarded and not to be humiliated has been threatened. The doctor may feel negatively not only about his tie but also about himself after his encounter with the patient. I felt somewhat embarrassed following the libido remark and I have never forgotten the child’s remark about my spots –​a sure sign that it left a negative impression on me, notwithstanding its humorous content. The second observation about these scenarios is that we each have a right not to have our self-​esteem damaged during our interactions with others –​our face should be protected, as the mother of the young boy who uttered ‘You’ve got spots!’ effectively acknowledged by way of her apology. To the extent that in each of the above scenarios we can identify someone for whom this was not the case, these scenarios are instances of (im)politeness. The third observation we can make is that when a speaker produces a statement that threatens our face, he or she normally does so in relation to certain topics. These topics often concern someone’s attire (the doctor’s tie) or some aspect of their physical appearance (the author’s spots). Attire and physical appearance are integral to our identity and are two of the topics that are most likely to pose a threat to our face. But there are many others. My face will also be threatened if a speaker says something disparaging about the way I talk, expresses an unpleasant remark about my newly decorated living room, or criticizes my choice of commodities ranging from cars to food products. This is because we not only want others to like us as individuals but also to like things that are associated with us, including the houses we live in, the cars we drive, and the food products we buy. These are features of a speaker’s positive face. But we also do not want others to impose on us or to impede and limit our actions. Accordingly, we try to avoid threats to a person’s negative face. Speakers can undertake considerable linguistic work to avoid such threats. The following utterance is from an interaction between the author and a 61-​year-​old man with Long Covid. During an interview, I asked this man, who is a genetic pathologist, to tell me more about his work on cancer. Aware that he had Long Covid fatigue and that multiple information-​seeking questions would be a considerable imposition on him, I recognized that my utterance posed a threat to his negative face. I immediately undertook additional linguistic work to mitigate this threat. This work took the form of me structuring my utterance to include an indirect request (Can I ask …?) followed by the minimizing expression a bit: ‘Well yeah, you’re still very busy. Can I ask a bit further about your cancer work? So, are you looking at the genetics of a specific type of cancer? Is it breast cancer, bowel cancer, or just cancers?’ A fourth observation about these scenarios concerns the different reactions and judgements of those who were present. I recounted that

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Politeness  121 I found the man’s utterance about his libido and the boy’s comment about my spots to be inappropriate, while others judged these statements to be rude or impolite. How can we explain the difference? The answer lies in how different people view the social relationship between me –​the recipient of the inappropriate or impolite utterance –​and the speaker who produced the utterance. For people who treat these remarks as impolite, their understanding of the relationship between me and the speaker can be characterized as follows: it is a professional encounter between a patient–​client and a clinician–​researcher in which there is social distance between the parties. Moreover, there is a significant power differential in the interaction on account of my professional standing. Assessed against this social relationship, the utterances could legitimately be viewed as impolite. But I take a more nuanced approach to what unfolded in these scenarios, based upon my knowledge of these clients and their difficulties. It is not unusual for adults with neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease to exhibit diminished impulse control. A speaker with reduced control of impulsive behaviour may very easily talk about his libido –​the cognitive mechanisms that suppress this type of language use are not functioning as they normally would. A young boy who is receiving speech therapy for speech sound disorder is likely to be around four to six years of age. At this age, the linguistic judgements that are required to use language appropriately are not fully acquired. The situation is made more difficult still by the fact that this boy is receiving speech therapy, a sign that his language acquisition is not proceeding along normal lines. This will further delay his development of the judgements that are required to use language appropriately. It is unsurprising, therefore, that this young boy should produce an inappropriate remark about the author’s spots –​ he lacks the linguistic maturity needed to avoid utterances of this type. With these types of considerations in mind, I take a different view of the social relationship between me and these clients to the one described above. While acknowledging that the relationship is still a professional encounter between clients and a clinician, I modify my expectations of how the clients in these interactions are likely to behave. I regard each of them as having cognitive and linguistic challenges that compromise their ability to assess the social relationship between us in the same way that I assess it. As such, I accept some slippage in how they judge factors such as the social distance and power of our relationship. When these erroneous judgements result in impolite and inappropriate remarks, as they inevitably do, I treat them as less of a challenge to my face than I might do if these same remarks were produced by speakers without these challenges. I may be slightly embarrassed or uncomfortable on hearing these statements, but I do not view them as a threat to my self-​esteem. My face survives the encounter. These reflections demonstrate that what constitutes a polite or an impolite encounter depends ultimately on how speakers and hearers

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122 Politeness perceive the social relationship that exists between them. If both parties have a similar view of the relationship in terms of its social distance and power, then we might expect a speaker to use an utterance that is not a threat to a hearer’s face. In such a case, even an utterance like ‘Hey, fatso, get your ass off the sofa!’ may pose no face threat when expressed under certain circumstances, e.g. in an interaction between teenage siblings. If the speaker’s and hearer’s expectations of the social relationship are not well aligned, however, then some threat to the hearer’s face may arise. But even in the latter case, we may need to reflect more deeply on the source of the misalignment. Scenarios that appear to pose a significant threat to a hearer’s face may not do so if the hearer is aware of circumstances that attenuate the threat or at least make it explicable, as we saw above. We will have more to say about these issues in the rest of the chapter.

6.2  Brown and Levinson on politeness Many of the concepts already introduced were given their fullest expression in Brown and Levinson’s 1978 work ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena’ which was reissued some years later as Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (1987). Brown and Levinson’s concept of face is derived from Goffman (1967) and the English folk term ‘which ties face up with notions of being embarrassed or humiliated, or “losing face” ’ (1987, p.61). We must attend to face in every interaction. The maintenance of face is an interactional goal that we work cooperatively with others to achieve. This is because the maintenance of my face rests ultimately on the maintenance of your face: In general, people cooperate (and assume each other’s cooperation) in maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face. That is, normally everyone’s face depends on everyone else’s being maintained, and since people can be expected to defend their faces if threatened, and in defending their own to threaten others’ faces, it is in general in every participant’s best interest to maintain each other’s face, that is to act in ways that assure the other participants that the agent is heedful of the assumptions concerning face. (Brown and Levinson, 1987, p.61) We are so sensitive to the maintenance of face that it affects the linguistic choices we make in almost every utterance we use. I was reminded of just how true this is when earlier today I sent an email to a neuropathologist in Canada. I wrote to him because I wanted to ask him if he could provide images for a manuscript I was preparing. After explaining what my manuscript was about, I went on to set out the specific images that I needed. This is how this section of the email unfolded:

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Politeness  123 If you could provide me with images of the following, I would be very grateful: variant CJD; sporadic CJD; BSE; scrapie; Gerstmann-​Sträussler-​ Scheinker syndrome I did think kuru would be difficult and so it has been proven to be the case. But if I can include images of the above, I think these will be more than adequate. If you could provide a small amount of text describing the main pathological features, that would be most helpful also. I can pick out many of the features, but I am no neuropathologist! I am grateful to you for your assistance. I know you will have many other demands on your time, and I thank you for helping me. Even as I was writing this email, it became apparent to me just how much work I was undertaking to avoid any threat to my correspondent’s face. I indicated that I did not assume that he would agree to my request –​even though one of his colleagues had introduced me to him for this express purpose –​by using conditional expressions such as if you could provide me with images. I expressed my gratitude on two occasions and explicitly thanked him on a further occasion. I emphasized twice how helpful it would be to receive his assistance and I acknowledged that he would have many other demands on his time. I tried to minimize my imposition on him by stating that I needed only a small amount of text and I let him see that I deferred to his expertise by describing myself as no neuropathologist. The exclamation mark indicated that although we had no prior social relationship, I was trying to reduce the distance between us and align myself with him as a fellow academic. The result was an email with multiple forms of redressive language, the aim of which was to avoid any threat to my recipient’s face. In my email, I undertook considerable work to ensure that my utterances were oriented to the positive face and the negative face of my addressee. For Brown and Levinson, the face needs of participants in an interaction consist in a set of ‘wants’: negative face: the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions be unimpeded by others. positive face: the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others. (1987, p.62) In my email, I was at pains to let my addressee see that I was aware of his wants and did not wish to deny them or diminish them in any way. In terms of positive face, I reasoned that my addressee would want to portray an image of himself as a helpful individual who would assist a fellow

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124 Politeness academic. I indicated my approval of that want by stating that if he could provide me with images, I would judge that to be ‘helpful’ behaviour. I also believed that competence and expertise would be values that he held in high esteem. And so, I explicitly acknowledged his expertise in neuropathology and indicated by way of my request for annotation that I hoped to benefit from his specialist knowledge. As well as acknowledging the positive face of my addressee, I made several overtures towards his negative face. There was considerable imposition in what I was requesting from my correspondent –​sourcing images and annotating them would require a significant amount of time and effort on his part. And so I did not ask him directly for images. Instead, I couched my request for images in terms of a conditional (If you could provide me …) from which he could quite easily escape. I acknowledged that there would be many other demands on his time apart from the one that I was now placing on him. Finally, I tried to minimize the extent of my imposition by describing the amount of annotation that I needed as a small amount of text. These face wants are brought sharply into focus when we perform an act that threatens them. So-​called face-​threatening acts (FTAs) require a set of calculations to be performed by a rational agent, what Brown and Levinson call a ‘model person’. We can decide to express an FTA in an explicit way and without any attention to the face needs of our addressee. A bald on-​record strategy contains no redressive language (it is bald) and expresses the speaker’s wants directly (it is on-​record). Applied to my email to the neuropathologist, a bald on-​record strategy would look like the following: Give me images of brain pathology in these conditions: variant CJD; sporadic CJD; BSE; scrapie; Gerstmann-​Sträussler-​Scheinker syndrome. This utterance would succeed in making my communicative intention known to my correspondent. But the resulting damage to his face needs would be so great that I should not expect to receive images from him any time soon! Brown and Levinson contend that I could also decide to take my request off-​record. In the context of my email correspondence, an off-​record utterance might look like the following: It always helps readers understand these diseases if they can see images of the pathological changes that occur in the brain. In acting in this off-​record way, I am effectively hinting to my correspondent that I would like him to provide images. If questioned about my intent, I can respond that I am merely remarking on the conditions under which readers can best achieve comprehension of a text. I can decide not to perform the FTA when the face threat is simply too great and no amount of redressive language can lessen it. Finally, I can take the course

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Politeness  125 of action that I actually employed and make my request for images on-​ record using positive and negative politeness as forms of redress. This leaves a speaker with five possible strategies when contemplating use of an FTA in Brown and Levinson’s framework: (1) Don’t do the FTA. (2) Do the FTA off-​record. (3) Do the FTA on-​record and baldly (without redress). (4) Do the FTA on-​record with redress (positive politeness). (5) Do the FTA on-​record with redress (negative politeness). As a rational agent, or model person, I reason from the ‘end’ that I want to achieve to the ‘means’ that is best placed to achieve that end. In the case of my email correspondence, I want my addressee to provide me with certain images (the end). We have already seen one means that is almost guaranteed not to achieve that end, namely, the use of a bald on-​record strategy. So, I am likely to reject option (3) above. The type of indirectness that an off-​record strategy would require might also not achieve my end, as my correspondent may not appreciate being left to guess what my communicative intention is –​a task that is made all the more difficult when he does not know me and we are communicating through a written medium. Accordingly, I am also likely to reject the off-​record strategy in option (2) above. I would not send my email in the first place if I did not believe that I could undertake the FTA without causing serious and irreparable damage to my addressee’s face. So, option (1) can also be set aside. This leaves me with options (4) and (5), namely, to undertake the FTA using various forms of positive and negative politeness to minimize the threat to my recipient’s face. Having decided that I should use an on-​record strategy and minimize the threat to my addressee’s face, I then need to undertake a further rational calculation of what type of redressive language to use. This depends on where I judge the threat to my addressee’s face to be greatest. If I think it is a priority to convey that his wants are my wants or that my addressee and I are members of an in-​group (e.g. a community of academics), then I will employ a set of politeness strategies that emphasize his positive face. So, I may seek agreement with him or presuppose common ground between us. I may joke with my addressee or use in-​group identity markers (see Table 6.1). However, if I judge that my imposition to his routine or time is considerable, then I may need to reduce the threat to his negative face. In this case, I may employ a different set of politeness strategies such as showing deference to my addressee and minimizing the imposition. I may also use apologies, indicate that I have incurred a debt to him, or use indirect language (see Table 6.1). In the end, I employed both sets of politeness strategies during my correspondence with the neuropathologist. By balancing positive politeness strategies (e.g. joking about my lack of expertise in neuropathology) with negative politeness strategies (e.g.

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126 Politeness Table 6.1 Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies Positive politeness

Negative politeness

1. Notice, attend to H (his interests, 1. Be conventionally indirect wants, needs, goods) 2. Question, hedge 2. Exaggerate (interest, approval, 3. Be pessimistic sympathy with H) 4. Minimize the imposition 3. Intensify interest to H 5. Give deference 4. Use in-​group identity markers 6. Apologize 5. Seek agreement 7. Impersonalize S and H: Avoid the 6. Avoid disagreement pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’ 7. Presuppose/​raise/​assert 8. State the FTA as a general rule common ground 9. Nominalize 8. Joke 10. Go on record as incurring a debt, 9. Assert or presuppose S’s knowledge or as not indebting H of and concern for H’s wants 10. Offer, promise 11. Be optimistic 12. Include both S and H in the activity 13. Give (or ask for) reasons 14. Assume or assert reciprocity 15. Give gifts to H (goods, sympathy, understanding, cooperation)

minimizing the amount of annotation required), I managed to avoid any significant threat to my addressee’s face. Given the complex calculations that are involved in managing face needs, it is not surprising that many children and adults with pragmatic disorders struggle with politeness. In section 6.1, we saw an adult with schizophrenia who made disparaging remarks about his doctor’s tie: ‘Where did you get that tie? It looks like it’s left over from the 1950s.’ This adult was not attentive to his interlocutor’s face wants. In fact, he took no action at all to reduce the threat of his remarks to his hearer’s face. A more skilled communicator might have couched these ‘tie’ remarks in the following language: Please forgive me for asking but where did you get that tie? I’m intrigued because it looks like it’s left over from the 1950s. The explicit appeal for forgiveness followed by ‘but’ serve to prepare the hearer that an FTA is about to be made. The reason for the FTA is presented –​the speaker is intrigued by the tie and wants to know its origin. If this redressive language had been used, it would have substantially reduced the threat to the psychiatrist’s face. The omission of this language is explained by the fact that the speaker has a mental health

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Politeness  127 condition that compromises his ability to attend to the face needs of his addressee. It is interesting to contrast this example with another interaction between a doctor and a patient. Below, a psychiatrist (DR) and a woman (PT) with schizophrenia are discussing the auditory hallucinations that are a feature of the condition. A slight tension surrounds the exchange on account of their different views of what causes these hallucinations. For the psychiatrist, hallucinations are a consequence of electrical activity in certain language areas of the brain (e.g. the temporal lobe). The woman with schizophrenia appears to take issue with the psychiatrist’s use of the word ‘experience’ –​people with schizophrenia, she states, are not simply having the experience of hearing things, they are actually hearing things. She initiates an FTA to express her difference of opinion. The psychiatrist’s face is threatened when the woman does not wait for him to complete his turn –​her interjection communicates to the psychiatrist that she believes that what he is saying is less important than what she wants to say. Also, the woman uses repetition (they are hearing things) and places stress on the word ‘are’ to emphasize her point that this is not just an experience, as she believes the psychiatrist is suggesting. A further threat to the psychiatrist’s face occurs through her use of the word ‘expect’. The suggestion is that the psychiatrist’s view is not particularly perceptive or revealing; rather, it is what we would naturally expect to be the case. Detecting the woman’s divergence from his view, the psychiatrist avoids any threat to the woman’s positive face by expressing agreement with her (Well exactly, good). The careful face work of the psychiatrist is in stark contrast to the lack of redressive language used by the woman with schizophrenia: DR: 

This bit and this bit are the temporal hearing parts of the brain which seem to be much more active when people are having the experience of hearing things so for you […] PT:  Well they are hearing things, so you would expect the temporal lobe to be active, they are hearing them DR:  Well exactly, good. A similar pattern arises later in the same exchange. The issue is still the nature of the auditory hallucinations that occur in schizophrenia. The psychiatrist is continuing to explain what his MRI studies have revealed about brain activity in people with schizophrenia who have auditory hallucinations. The woman is again not fully aligned with the psychiatrist’s view. She moves to summarize what he is saying. By stressing the pronoun you, she personalizes her remarks to the psychiatrist. The expression generating it in the head is a rather crude summarization of the psychiatrist’s view that risks equating it with popular and often derogatory beliefs about people with mental health conditions –​it is all just ‘in their heads’.

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128 Politeness As before, the psychiatrist is sensitive to the woman’s lack of alignment with his view and uses redressive language to avoid any threat to her face. He begins by minimizing his claim, representing it as merely one theory that might explain what is happening during auditory hallucinations. The use of the generic personal pronoun you (=​one) and the modal verb could, both of which are stressed, serve to distance the psychiatrist from the claim that the woman is attributing to him –​he is not directly claiming this but is merely suggesting that this could be one of the ways that we might think about auditory hallucinations. To distance himself further from the claim and avoid any direct threat to the woman’s face, the psychiatrist poses the contentious point as a question. When the claim is framed as a question, this leaves open the possibility that it can be refuted –​auditory hallucinations may not be generated by patients with schizophrenia. Like the earlier part of the conversation, the psychiatrist is sensitive to the woman’s face and tries to avoid disagreeing with her. Meanwhile, the woman with schizophrenia uses no redressive language to reduce the face threat of her remarks to the psychiatrist: DR:  And

so when people are hearing something, having those auditory hallucinations what happens is that the speech generation parts of their brain also seem to be much more active PT:  Oh, so you’re saying that we’re generating it in the head DR:  I’m saying that one of the theories that you could look at would be, is this experience something that you are generating yourself? What explains the disparity in the face work that is undertaken by the psychiatrist and the woman in this interaction? An explanation lies in the wider context in which the exchange unfolds. For the psychiatrist’s part, he is aware that there is some difference of opinion between him and the woman about the nature of the schizophrenic experience of hearing things (auditory hallucinations). His overriding goal in the exchange is to avoid escalating disagreement between them. And so he downplays any difference between their views by explicitly agreeing with the woman (Well exactly, good) and by rowing back from asserting a claim that did not sit comfortably with her, framing it instead as a question. The aim of minimizing disagreement between them leads him to subordinate his own face needs to the face wants of the woman. This is a wise communicative strategy for the psychiatrist to adopt because as the medical professional in the encounter, he wants to maintain a positive professional relationship with his patient. For the woman’s part, her face needs are also met. Through his careful face work, the psychiatrist affirms that he values the woman as someone who has unique insights into the nature of auditory hallucinations. The woman’s special perspective increases her power in the exchange so much so that she feels able to interrupt the psychiatrist and undertake other threats to his face without redressive action. In the end, both participants emerge from the encounter with some of their face

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Politeness  129 wants addressed and their professional relationship intact, a successful outcome for each of them.

6.3  Politeness and face in clinical settings Although we all want our face needs to be met, there are many occasions when this does not happen. We have already seen two occasions in which psychiatrists’ face needs were threatened, in one of them (the ‘tie’ interaction) grievously so. My face needs were not a priority for the child with speech sound disorder who stated You’ve got spots! or for the adult with Parkinson’s disease who decided to talk about his libido. Clinicians probably have more than their fair share of difficult face encounters with people. This is because they are working with clients who have various challenges that often make it difficult for them to attend to the face needs of other people. But even in these circumstances, there is often an awareness of a person’s face and the need to maintain it. In the following exchanges, the author made requests of two adults with Long Covid. Both requests were challenging for these adults to satisfy because they had limited recall of verbal information following their Covid infections. Notwithstanding their difficulties, they recognized the author’s face in these requests and sought to maintain it in different ways. The man with Long Covid stated that he would try to recall as much information as possible after ‘levelling’ with the author (I’ll be honest with you) that he had forgotten about half of the story. His use of ‘but’ indicated that he knew his response would fall far short of what was requested but that he would do his best to maintain the author’s face by providing as much information as possible: 24-​year-​old man with Long Covid: ‘(laughs) erm (.) that’s e e err that was a lot oh I I I’ll be honest with you I I already forgotten about half of that but I’ll I’ll try’ Below, a 55-​year-​old woman with Long Covid states that she did not understand the first part of the story because of the author’s accent (the woman’s verbal recall was weak and the author’s accent may simply have been a convenient way for her to excuse her poor performance and protect her own face). From the ‘accent’ statement, the author is expected to infer that the woman will not be able to recall the first part of the story. This woman also uses ‘but’ to signal that even though she will not be able to satisfy fully the author’s request to recall the story, she will do what she can in the circumstances to recall the story and maintain the author’s face. Her use of the hedge expression ‘sounded like’ reinforces that her recall of the events in the story is unclear and may fall some way short of what might normally be expected: 55-​year-​old woman with Long Covid: ‘the first part I didn’t understand from your accent but it sounded like there was a fair’

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130 Politeness In the following exchange, a 66-​year-​old man (PAR) with corticobasal degeneration is asked by the author (INV) to re-​tell a story that has just been read aloud to him. This is evidently difficult for him given his cognitive problems. But he tries to maintain the author’s face by saying that he will provide a short version of the story. By presenting this as something he intends to do (I’ll make it short) rather than is forced to do on account of his difficulties, the man also succeeds in protecting his own face: INV:  Okay, so can you try telling PAR:  Ah, ah, I’ll make it short

me that story back again?

In all three exchanges, these adults maintained the author’s face even as they were unable to comply fully with what she was requesting them to do. In two of the interactions, there was also evidence that the speakers were trying to protect their own face against the admission that they were unable to recall a relatively short, simple story. This same face-​saving strategy is particularly evident in the following interaction between the author (INV) and a 51-​year-​old man (PAR) with alcohol-​related brain damage and moderate cognitive impairment. The man struggled to recall a 100-​word story that had just been read aloud to him. He made an earnest attempt to fulfil the author’s request by recalling as much of the story as possible. But when it became apparent to him that his recall was very limited, he protected his face by saying that you would need to be some cookie to recall the story and finally that the story is not a good story to remember. This removed any threat to his face by suggesting that the problem lay not with his recall but in the story itself: INV:  Can you recall any of it? PAR:  Yeah, well Sam and Fred

were brothers in a farm the weather … if you, if you remembered all that in your head you’d be some cookie! INV:  Okay, well just try, try, try telling me it as completely as you can PAR:  Right, Sam and Fred were brothers who farmed their own land INV:  Um hum PAR:  Now (1.30) they had bad weather they had to bring in the, the xxx (unintelligible) it’s basically not a good story to remember (laughter) But even this man’s good-​natured efforts to fulfil the author’s requests while protecting his face had their limits. When he was pressed later in the interaction for further information during a recall task, he began to challenge the author’s face wants. First, he uttered gimme a clue. He was saying, in effect, that if the author wanted him to remember more of the story, then she needed to assist him by giving him a clue: INV: Okay,

is there anything else you want to try to and remember from it? PAR:  Gimme a clue

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Politeness  131 Eventually, he got to the point where he directly challenged the face wants of the author by asking Do I have to do this again? This question implied that he had had enough of the task and did not want to undertake it again. But even on this occasion he tried to maintain the author’s face by expressing his opposition indirectly as a question. He could have simply stated I’m not doing this again!: INV: Okay,

so just whatever you remember from that if you can tell it back to me PAR: (laughter) the last bit (laughter) right Sam and Fred were brothers (01:73) then it rained a bit did it (1:00) and then I sort of lost concentration for a bit (laughter) INV: Do you want me to read it to you for a second time? PAR: Do I have to do this again? In each of the above exchanges, adults with a range of clinical conditions had the language skills needed to protect their own face. But when cognitive and language impairments are severe, it is often a spouse or carer who intervenes to protect the face of the client in response to a perceived threat. The threat may take the form of poor performance on a test or exercise. This occurred during an interaction between the author and a 72-​year-​old man with progressive supranuclear palsy. The man’s wife was present during the interaction. On several occasions, she made remarks that were protective of her husband’s face. Here is one such remark that occurred at the end of a sentence generation task: ‘Are those [sentences] sort of different from what you would normally get? To me they were much more imaginative than I would have given you’ Below, the author (INV) and the wife (WIF) of a 68-​year-​old man (PAR) with progressive supranuclear palsy jointly worked to protect the man’s face after he performed poorly on a timed task that required him to produce the names of animals. The threat to the man’s face is lessened by the author pointing out that the task is inherently difficult –​everybody struggles with it and the tasks are tricky. His wife states that the timed nature of the task –​you’re put on the spot –​also makes it difficult. That the man accepts these efforts to minimize the threat to his face is indicated by his use of ‘Right’ at the end of the exchange: WIF:  It’s hard when you’re put on the spot INV:  It is actually these those two tasks are tricky WIF:  Um hum INV:  Bob, everybody has difficulty with those PAR: Right

tasks

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132 Politeness Occasionally, the author found herself trying to protect the face of a client against the remarks of a spouse. Below, the wife of a 75-​year-​old man with motor neurone disease admonished him slightly at the end of a task that required him to produce as many words as possible that begin with the letter F. She remarked how he did not produce the obvious words and the names of things in the room. On this occasion, it was the author who moved to protect the man’s face by stating that he actually produced quite a large number of words and that even obvious words evade you when you are under pressure with the stopwatch: INV:  You got a lot there actually that was good WIF:  He didn’t do the obvious ones like ‘farm’ INV:  But you never do when you’re under WIF:  And things around the room like ‘fire’ and ah INV:  When you’re under pressure with the WIF:  I know INV:  Stopwatch the, the obvious ones don’t come to you they come to you

once the stopwatch is switched off actually you know no you did you actually got a large quite a large number there

Occasionally, the face of a client can come under sustained challenge from a spouse or partner. A clinician can undertake considerable work in these circumstances to protect a client’s face. In the following exchange, the author (INV) asked a 62-​year-​old man (PAR) with Huntington’s disease to produce words beginning with the letter F. The man’s partner (WIF) had repeatedly interrupted him during the session despite being encouraged not to do so. This task was no exception. When it became evident that the man was struggling to generate words, his partner pointed to the table in front of him, intending her gesture to elicit the word ‘furniture’. When he uttered ‘table’, she laughed at his response. At this point, the author perceived some threat to the man’s face and took action to lessen that threat. To commend the man, the author used intensifiers like absolutely fine and very well to describe his performance on the task. She assured him that he had produced quite a number of words, adding you really did to emphasize the point. At one stage, the author even said ‘no’ to indicate that she did not agree with the partner’s gentle mockery of the man during the task: INV:  Anything beginning with F PAR:  (6:17) F yeah WIF:  What’s that (points to table) PAR: Table WIF:  Furniture, you (laughter) PAR:  Furniture, only trying to INV:  You’re all right, you’ve done your minute, you’re fine, you’re, you’re

absolutely fine, that was good, you got, you got quite a number there actually, you really did

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Politeness  133 WIF:  As try to say tapping that table INV:  No, you did you did very well WIF:  Furniture, tried to help

So far, the focus has been on the client in clinical settings and different ways in which the client’s face may be protected. We have also seen occasions where clients have successfully addressed the face needs of the author, who has a dual role of researcher and clinician. But what happens when impairments of language and cognition mean that clients are unable to satisfy the face wants of others in clinical settings? Below, the author is talking to a 45-​year-​old man with traumatic brain injury and cognitive difficulties. The man was slightly agitated and restless throughout much of the session. The exchange begins with the author about to undertake a final task with him: INV:  This is the last task, Sam PAR:  Thank God, this is so boring INV:  It will be a very quick one, I promise PAR:  Huh, it will still be boring INV: If you want entertainment, Sam, you

(laughter) PAR:  Okay, I will (points to the door)

need to go to the cinema

The man with TBI makes it clear that he believes the author has created an imposition for him by asking him to undertake a set of tasks that he considers to be boring. The author tries to minimize this imposition by saying that the last task will be a very quick one. She gives him an assurance that the task will be short by adding I promise. Sam is not convinced and continues to state that the task will be boring. The author then appeals to Sam’s positive face by trying to engage him in humour –​if he wants entertainment, the cinema is the place he should visit. But even this fails to keep him engaged in the session. Sam states he will go to the cinema and points to the door with the intention of leaving. In the above exchange, the author continues to treat Sam as a rational agent even as he shows a blatant disregard for her face wants. On the assumption that Sam is a rational person, the author employs the type of politeness strategies that would normally be used in these circumstances. She appeals to Sam’s negative face by trying to minimize any imposition on him. She also appeals to his positive face by trying to engage him in some humour –​a more affirming social relationship might succeed in keeping Sam interested in the session. Neither strategy is effective and the exchange concludes with Sam indicating that he wants to leave the room. At no point, however, did the author abandon her rational expectations about face in relation to Sam. Instead, she infers that these expectations still hold even if Sam is unable to comply fully with them on account of his cognitive difficulties.

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134 Politeness These scenarios illustrate that the concept of face has added salience in a clinical context where language disorder and cognitive impairment can make clients less attentive to the face needs of others and more likely to have their own face needs threatened. We have seen how clients can sometimes protect their own face and, when this is not possible, how spouses and clinicians can jointly work to minimize a threat to a client’s face. Perhaps reflecting their primary duty of care to clients, we have also seen how clinicians sometimes need to protect a client’s face against threats from a spouse. In each of these scenarios, politeness strategies are carefully selected for the face work that speakers want to perform. It is clear that participants in clinical settings act in ways that are consonant with the rational expectations in Brown and Levinson’s framework, with each seeking to address in others the same face wants that they claim for themselves.

6.4  Criticisms of Brown and Levinson While Brown and Levinson’s framework has had a significant and enduring influence on the study of politeness, it has by no means gone unchallenged. This section briefly states some of the criticisms of their theory, with references provided for readers who wish to examine them in more detail. One challenge concerns the universalistic character of Brown and Levinson’s framework, a point emphasized in the subtitle –​Some Universals of Language Usage –​of their 1987 volume. In the foreword to Brown and Levinson (1987), Gumperz states ‘politeness principles are reflected in linguistic universals which are in many ways equivalent to those discovered by grammarians’ (1987, p. xiii). These so-​called universals, it is argued, do not reflect politeness phenomena in languages such as Japanese (Matsumoto, 1988; Ide, 1989), while the concept of face does not accommodate culture-​specific understandings of this notion in languages like Chinese (Gu, 1990; Mao, 1994). Gu (1990) remarks of Brown and Levinson’s work as follows: [T]‌he Chinese notion of negative face seems to differ from that defined by Brown and Levinson. For example, offering, inviting, and promising in Chinese, under ordinary circumstances, will not be considered as threatening H’s negative face, i.e., impeding H’s freedom. (1990, pp.241–​242) While some of these criticisms have displayed their own universalizing assumptions –​for example, equating a particular language or culture with a specific conceptualization of politeness –​the arguments are worth examination. The reader is referred to Sifianou and Blitvich (2017) for further discussion of universality and inter-​and intracultural variation in politeness research.

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Politeness  135 Another criticism of Brown and Levinson, and universalistic theories more generally, is that they use invented utterances in their analysis of politeness. This criticism is levelled by second-​ wave researchers who make up the ‘discursive turn’ in politeness research (e.g. Watts, 2003; Mills, 2003). The use of invented utterances assumes that politeness has predictable effects on the hearer when, in fact, politeness unfolds in a co-​ constructed way across longer stretches of discourse. We saw this clearly when we examined interactions between the author, clients with cognitive and language difficulties, and their spouses, during which politeness strategies were highly dynamic and were negotiated over several conversational turns. It is therefore necessary, these theorists argue, to examine naturally occurring data. Also, with hearers as well as speakers participating in the co-​construction of politeness, it is argued that Brown and Levinson’s emphasis on the speaker’s productive intention is not sufficient. Against this criticism of universalistic theories, it is claimed that second wave researchers have no macro-​level framework to suggest in replacement of these theories. According to Kádár (2017), politeness ends up treated as ‘a punctuated phenomenon –​a form of behaviour without long-​term interactional trajectories and constraints, which is co-​ constructed in a relatively free-​flowing way’. For further discussion of this issue, the reader is referred to Locher (2006) and Locher and Watts (2005). A third criticism of Brown and Levinson’s work is that its emphasis on strategies that mitigate face-​threatening acts is much narrower than the concept of face that Goffman had in mind. Locher and Watts (2005) express this criticism as follows: Following Goffman we argue that any interpersonal interaction involves the participants in the negotiation of face. The term ‘facework’, therefore, should also span the entire breadth of interpersonal meaning. This, however, is rarely the case in the literature. Especially in accordance with Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory, ‘facework’ has been largely reserved to describe only appropriate and polite behavior with a focus on face-​threat mitigation, at the exclusion of rude, impolite and inappropriate behavior. (p.11) Second-​wave politeness researchers go a step further. For not only is Brown and Levinson’s notion of facework much narrower than Goffman’s concept, but their equation of face with politeness is also problematic. While no one would deny that face and politeness are interrelated concepts, there are many interactions which involve face that are not in any sense forms of politeness. In fact, as some researchers have shown, it is possible to conduct research on face without even addressing politeness (e.g. Bargiela-​Chiappini and Haugh, 2010). This criticism has some empirical validity. When we examined how the author and spouses acted to

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136 Politeness protect the face of clients in the exchanges in section 6.3, this behaviour seemed more oriented to the face of these clients than it had anything to do with politeness. The author who protected the face of the man with Huntington’s disease when his partner gently mocked him was not motivated to do so on account of politeness; she was attentive to the man’s face without being polite. And so it is for many everyday interactions where face is negotiated in the absence of politeness: ‘politeness is only a relatively small part of relational work and must be seen in relation to other types of interpersonal meaning’ (Locher and Watts, 2005, p.10).

Summary •

•

•

•

•

The concept of face has been central to discussions of politeness. But when we think about our own face and the face of others, it is clear that the need to maintain and protect face goes well beyond the type of linguistic behaviours that we typically characterize as politeness. In 1987, Brown and Levinson proposed a theory of politeness that has remained influential to the present day. They used Goffman’s concept of face within a framework that assumes speakers and hearers act as a rational agent or ‘model person’. On this framework, the reason that we attend to the face needs of others is because these are the same face needs that we claim for ourselves. When speakers perceive a threat to the face of their hearer, they undertake various mitigation strategies to reduce that threat. They may try to lessen social distance with the hearer by using an in-​group identity marker (Got the time, mate?). They may express regret at the imposition on the hearer by including an apology and may use a conventionally indirect expression (I’m sorry to bother you, but could you give me the time?). According to Brown and Levinson, speakers operate with means-​ end rationality. They will select a particular mitigation strategy based on the amount of threat they perceive to a hearer’s face and the extent to which they want to mitigate that threat. If no amount of mitigation can reduce the threat to the hearer’s face, then the rational course of action for the speaker may be not to use the face-​threatening act at all. In clinical settings, clients with cognitive and language difficulties are often less sensitive to the face needs of their interlocutors. They are also more likely to have their own face threatened on account of their failure to perform well on tasks or due to unhelpful reactions to their difficulties by other people such as spouses.

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Politeness  137 •

Brown and Levinson’s theory has been highly influential in politeness research. But it has also been widely criticized. One criticism is that it is a universalistic theory that cannot explain politeness phenomena in non-​Western cultures and languages like Japanese and Chinese. Another criticism is that the use of invented examples misrepresents the way in which speakers and hearers jointly undertake facework across longer stretches of discourse.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Kádár, D.Z. (2017) Politeness in Pragmatics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics. https://​oxfor​dre.com/​ling​uist​ics/​view/​ 10.1093/​acref​ore/​978019​9384​655.001.0001/​acref​ore-​978019​9384​ 655-​e-​218?mediaT​ype=​Arti​cle This article provides a wide-​ranging discussion of the development of politeness research. It examines three ‘waves’ of politeness research, beginning with Brown and Levinson’s universalistic framework. Key topics (e.g. face) and areas (e.g. historical politeness) are addressed, along with issues relating to methodology and data that are central to the field. This article provides an excellent orientation to this large and growing area of research in pragmatics. (2) Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D.Z. (eds) (2017) The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (im)politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillan. This edited volume contains 30 chapters written by notable scholars across all areas of politeness research. Its four-​part structure examines foundations, developments, (im)politeness and variation, and (im) politeness in specific contexts. Chapters on prominent topics in politeness research such as gender and cultural variation are complemented by contributions on less well researched areas (e.g. politeness in health settings). This volume is suitable for readers who want an in-​ depth treatment of specific topics in politeness. (3) Leech, G. (2014) The Pragmatics of Politeness. New York: Oxford University Press. In the 11 chapters of this volume, Leech sets out his view that politeness is ‘communicative altruism’. He examines a range of speech acts that are positively or negatively associated with politeness, including apologies, requests, offers, and condolences. Sarcasm (‘mock politeness’) and banter (‘mock impoliteness’) are examined in a chapter on the ‘opposites’

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138 Politeness of politeness. In the final chapter, Leech examines the history of politeness in the English language.

Questions (1) In section 6.1, the concept of negative face was introduced. An utterance from an exchange between the author and a 61-​ year-​ old man with Long Covid was used to illustrate the concept. The following utterances are taken from the same exchange. In (A), the author is redirecting this man away from a topic about which he communicated with ease and enthusiasm –​his work on cancer –​ towards the topic of holidays. In (B), the author has asked the man to name black-​and-​white line drawings of objects and animals. The drawings were of acceptable, but not excellent, quality and came at the end of a long session of testing. For both (A) and (B), explain what the threat to the man’s negative face is, and the linguistic strategies that the author uses to mitigate the threat in each case: (A) ‘Yeah well as a slightly different track now [participant’s name] for you, I’m gonna ask you about any holidays that you’ve had that you’ve really enjoyed’ (B) ‘Yeah, I mean, I apologize the pictures are not great. They could be a bit better but you know this is the, this is the available artwork, unfortunately’ (2) In section 6.2, we examined an exchange between a psychiatrist and a woman with schizophrenia. They discussed what may cause auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, a topic that resulted in some misalignment of their views. Examine that exchange and then answer the following questions: (a) Which of the following positive politeness strategies did the psychiatrist use to avoid threat to his interlocutor’s face? Be optimistic–​joke–​avoid disagreement–​intensify interest (b) How did the psychiatrist attempt to minimize his view when he saw the woman was not fully in agreement with it? (c) What three linguistic strategies does the woman use to let the psychiatrist see that she does not fully subscribe to his view that auditory hallucinations are an experience related to the activation of certain brain areas? (d) Both the psychiatrist and the woman use the pronoun you in the later part of the exchange. But these uses differ significantly. Explain how they differ. (e) What speech act does the psychiatrist resort to using to reduce the face threat of his key claim, namely, that auditory hallucinations are the consequence of activity in the brain of the person with schizophrenia? (3) Speakers work hard to address the face needs of their interlocutors. But they are also eager to protect their own face from humiliation,

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Politeness  139 embarrassment, and failure. Below, the author (INV) is asking a man (PAR) with alcohol-​related brain damage to recall a short story. Whose face does the man’s response protect? INV: Okay, so just whatever you can remember PAR: (laughter) I don’t think if you recorded that you couldn’t ra, ra,

ra, ra, recklin, recording machine couldn’t remember that!

(4) In the following exchange, a 68-​year-​old man (PAR) with progressive supranuclear palsy is struggling to name a picture of a spanner for the author (INV). At the end of a sequence in which the author provides the man with both a semantic cue (this is something you use …) and a phonemic cue (spa, span) to facilitate his naming, the man’s wife (WIF) remarks that he’s not a DIY man. What face work does this utterance perform for the participants in the exchange? INV: This

is something you use if you’re trying to tighten up nuts or take them off something PAR: Screwdriver (.) INV: Screwdriver or a spa PAR: (4:01) INV: Span, spanner PAR: Spa, spanner absolutely WIF: He’s not a DIY man

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7 Topic management

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: • •

•

• •

Understand the difference between pragmatic and discourse topic and syntactic topic and be able to distinguish reliably between them. Be able to characterize different stages or processes in topic management –​from topic selection to termination –​and recognize some of the ways in which these stages may not be fulfilled by children and adults with cognitive and language disorders Be familiar with the analysis of topic within Conversation Analysis (CA) and the emphasis of CA on the sequential organization of turns; understand how the identification of trouble sources by speakers and hearers and ensuing repair work can allow on-​topic talk to continue. Understand how topic is managed in narration and appreciate the different components –​information management; cohesion; coherence –​that contribute to the topic of discourse. Be adept at analysing topic in conversation and other forms of discourse (e.g. narrative) among different speakers/​narrators and hearers/​readers.

7.1 Introduction You open this book and quickly scan down its table of contents to see if there is a chapter on politeness. You discover that Chapter 6 examines politeness. So, you turn to Chapter 6 and begin reading about a topic that you have found both interesting and puzzling. After reading the chapter, you decide that you want to explore the concept of face in more detail. So, you check the suggestions for further reading at the end of the chapter and find an entry that allows you to extend your knowledge of this topic. Having read about face at some length, you decide that you now have enough information to tackle your term paper. It is an assignment that DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-8

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Topic management  141 asks you to present a critical overview of one of six topics that you have studied in pragmatics during the semester. In this short scenario, we have used the word ‘topic’ to refer to the title of a chapter in a book, a concept (face) in politeness theory, and the components of a pragmatics course. In each case, the word ‘topic’ captures what the chapter, concept, and pragmatics course is about. Topic is more than just a convenient label for describing things; it is a powerful construct in our daily lives. We search out topics as much as possible and try to impose them when they do not exist. When we read stories, watch movies, and listen to news headlines, we are continually seeking to answer the question: what are they about? If I pick up a newspaper, and read the headline Lost at sea, I ask who has been lost at sea (e.g. migrants, holiday makers) or what has been lost at sea (e.g. a naval ship, cruise liner). This is because I know that this elliptical headline is obscuring a topic that, once identified, will facilitate my comprehension of events. Topics provide an overarching structure through which we can make sense of the world around us. Their function is like a frame or a script in this regard. Before embarking on a discussion of topic, it is important to distinguish between two different types of topic that can cause confusion. A topic may be examined as a syntactic concept where it is often, but not always, identified with the grammatical subject of a sentence. In the sentence The ship listed in the strong winds, the syntactic topic of the sentence is the grammatical subject the ship. From the perspective of pragmatics, topic is quite a different notion. It addresses what a conversation or discourse is about. The emphasis of pragmatic or discourse topic is on the speaker and hearer in a conversation, as Erdmann (1990) remarks: ‘‘Topic’ will be understood to be a narrative, rather than a grammatical notion –​topic in the sense of the subject-​matter of a conversation, or what a discourse is about. What the theme […] or subject-​matter of a conversation is can usually be determined by the interplay of speaker and hearer.’ (1990, p.8) Of course, syntactic topic and pragmatic topic may coincide on some occasions. We can imagine a story about the perilous voyage of a ship in which the sentence The ship listed in the strong winds appears alongside sentences such as The ship shed its cargo and The ship sent a distress signal. The ship is both the pragmatic topic of the story and the syntactic topics of each of these sentences. Of course, the story might also be expected to contain sentences with a syntactic topic that is unrelated to the pragmatic topic, e.g. The storm caused large waves. In what follows, we are interested in pragmatic or discourse topic and ask readers who want to learn about syntactic topic to consult other sources.

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142  Topic management

7.2  Topic management in clinical settings We have all had the experience of communicating with people who struggle with the management of topic. We can think about an occasion when we have had a conversation with someone who talks about a topic that does not interest others. We remember conversations when speakers have abruptly shifted topics. And no one ever really forgets a time when an offensive or inappropriate topic was raised. These interactions can leave us feeling bored, uncomfortable and even embarrassed, and we often go to considerable lengths to make sure that we do not repeat them. If these are the topic difficulties that we can experience in our interactions with healthy individuals, then it is not at all surprising that topic management should prove even more challenging for people who have cognitive and language problems. To illustrate some of these topic difficulties, this section examines how topic management breaks down in children and adults with a range of clinical conditions. But first, we outline a four-​step model of topic management to help us think about the different ways in which topic can break down in conversation and other forms of discourse. Among the many complex judgements that speakers and hearers must exercise in their communicative interactions with each other are those relating to topic management. There are an infinite number of things that we can talk about in conversation but a much smaller number of things that we should talk about. By and large, speakers tend to avoid topics that they know will be judged to be offensive or inappropriate by their hearer. They also avoid topics that are not relevant to the interests and goals of their interlocutors or that contribute no new information or insights. As a first step in topic management, speakers must select certain topics for discussion while leaving other topics as unexpressed thoughts. Having decided what to talk about, speakers must then introduce a topic into a conversation. If this is not skilfully achieved, an introduced topic can appear disjointed or mark an abrupt shift of topic. When a topic is launched into conversation, it must be developed through the actions of all participants. If only the proponent of the topic works at sustaining it, a topic will quickly fail and will be dropped from further discussion. On the assumption that participants view the topic as worthy of their conversational efforts and topic development takes place, it then becomes necessary at some later point in time to terminate the topic. Subtle cues such as facial expressions, intonation, and body language can signal to others that a topic has run its course and should be replaced by another topic, or that the entire conversation is at an end. 7.2.1  Topic selection Topic selection, introduction, development, and termination come with considerable pitfalls for speakers with clinical conditions. Topic selection

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Topic management  143 does not go well for this pupil (P) with semantic-​pragmatic disorder, an earlier label for what clinicians today call social (pragmatic) communication disorder (SPCD). The pupil is meeting the author (A) David Crystal for the first time. After an introduction that proceeds smoothly, he decides to ask Crystal if he likes being married. The pupil selects this topic because he has failed to make an accurate assessment of the social relationship between the speaker and hearer. In raising the topic of marriage, the pupil has treated the author as a close acquaintance rather than the unfamiliar adult that he actually is. This is consistent with the language profile of SPCD, a communication disorder in which children and adults often make linguistic selections that are not appropriate in a given social context: P:

[meeting the first author as he arrives at P’s school]   Hello. Are you Professor Crystal? A: Yes P: My name is JK. I have to take you to see the headmaster. A: Thank you. Which way is it? P: Down here [they begin to walk]   Do you like being married? (Crystal and Vardy, 1993, pp.179) Below, a 57-​year-​old woman with schizophrenia fails to inhibit several potentially inappropriate topics. These topics are a lawsuit against a hospital, incarceration, and illegal drug use. They were disclosed during a first encounter with the author. That this woman so readily disclosed these sensitive topics to an unfamiliar person revealed something about her inability to judge topics for their context appropriateness: ‘my life was my still active 6.5 million dollar lawsuit against the hospital in Barrie. PTSD. Tried treating it early last year, may have caused or contributed to hallucinations that got me locked up six days in May 2020, micro dosing magic mushrooms.’ The complex judgements that lead speakers to suppress some topics and select others for discussion rest on moral and societal norms and perceptions of what interlocutors want and need to know. For this woman with schizophrenia, who had a long history of drug use and detention, topics such as those raised may not carry the same taboo as they do for other people. But where they do fail is in the woman’s misreading of the communicative context and particularly her assessment of the author who was trying to establish if the woman had a network of friends. Topic selection in this case fails ultimately for its lack of relevance to the interlocutor’s communicative goals.

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144  Topic management 7.2.2  Topic introduction Topic introduction also exposes difficulties in children and adults with clinical disorders. When speakers introduce topics into a conversation, they normally aim for a seamless transition between the current topic and the new topic. This is more easily achieved if the new topic is a sub-​ topic of the one that is still active. In a conversation about movies, I may preface my question about the new James Bond film with an explicit reference to the current topic: Talking of movies, what did you think of the new James Bond film? But even an entirely new topic can be seamlessly introduced into a conversation with a bit of extra linguistic work. Imagine a conversation between two office workers, Bob and Sue, about a colleague called Jim who is about to take retirement. How might Sue introduce the topic of the new James Bond film in such a scenario? In the exchange below, three possibilities are offered at T4 as a means by which Sue can introduce this topic into the conversation. On each occasion, Sue identifies some aspect of Bob’s last utterance(s) that she can use as a springboard from which to launch her new topic. In (T41), Sue suggests that Jim can start to rest and enjoy himself by watching the new James Bond film. In (T42), Sue remarks that she will not recommend the Bond movie to Jim, a film that she did not like and which she does not believe will give him any enjoyment. In (T43), Sue states that she might get Jim tickets for the Bond movie. She maybe has them in mind as a retirement gift. In each case, Sue undertakes more linguistic work than the speaker who utters Talking of movies. But it is linguistic work that is rewarded in each case with the seamless introduction of a new topic. T1 BOB: I will miss T2 SUE:  So will I.

Jim. He has been a great colleague to work with. I remember how welcome he made me feel when I joined two years ago. T3 BOB:  Exactly. But his health is not great and he needs to rest and enjoy himself. T 4 1 SUE:  Maybe he can start with the new James Bond film. What did you think of it? T 4 2 SUE:  I won’t recommend the new James Bond film. It was awful. What did you think of it? T 4 3 SUE: I might get him tickets for the new James Bond film. What did you think of it? T5 BOB: I thought it was superb! T6 SUE: It was Daniel Craig’s last appearance as Bond. How many times has he played Bond?

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Topic management  145 There are many ways in which this process of topic introduction can break down in individuals with clinical disorders. Below, a nine-​year-​ old boy (R) with specific language impairment is talking to an examiner (E) about a time when he had an accident on his bike. At the start of his extended turn at T3, the boy abruptly introduces the topic of his grandmother’s death and funeral. The boy makes no attempt to relate this new topic to what he and the examiner were previously discussing. As quickly as the boy introduced this topic, he then drops it and returns to the earlier topic of his bike: T1 R: 

I uh I just broke my leg and I just fall down on my bike because I got hurt and my Band-​Aids on me … put their off and I jumped out of my bike and I … I flied and then I jumped down. T2 E:  You jumped down? T3 R:  Uhuh, on the grass … and I um our grandma um she died. She um she was getting older. Our grandma and she died and the uh funeral … My ma and dad went to the funeral and then Aunt Cindy was there too and we uh they um uh everybody was sad that um uh that died … and on my birthday I went on my bike and I uh um … I just jump on my bike and I just balance on my … .and I did it with uh I did do it with only my hands. I didn’t do it without my hands and I uh um one hand too. Warren, a 36-​year-​old man with AIDS dementia complex studied by McCabe et al. (2008), displays the same abrupt topic introduction on two occasions in the exchange below. After confirming that he was 22 when he had the cleaning business, he started to talk about someone who had ‘total faith’ in him. There was no attempt to relate these comments to the preceding part of the exchange which had developed along unremarkable lines. But then within Warren’s extended turn at T6, he introduced another new topic, his great grandmother. Here also, the introduction was abruptly executed, with Warren failing to relate the topic in any way to his earlier remarks: T1 E:  What would be the longest job you had? T2 W:  Oh, when I had the business, cleaning the building T3 E:  mm and that was for how many years? T4 W:  8 years, like I said I was spoiled T5 E:  And that was when you were in your twenties? T6 W: Twenty two. (Name) was the only person who

had total faith in me. There was an intelligent person in there that, um, he said I’ve got more common sense. I like that idea ‘cause there’s nothing common about this little black duck and if I am on my way to prove that I’m not. My great grandmother was born into a family that

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146  Topic management was indentured to a castle near Salisbury, Newcastle. Well she was supposed to be a house servant. She sort of looked at then at the age of 17 and said ‘Do I look like a peasant girl to you? I don’t think so, I’m jumping on a boat and going to Australia …’ (continued in same vein for six more utterances). Below, a 28-​year-​old woman with autism called Mary (M) is talking about her participation in the mini-​ Olympics with a researcher (R). The Olympics are discussed between T1 and T10. Then in T11, Mary introduces a new topic, the speak up advocacy group. This topic introduction would not appear so abrupt if Mary’s use of the pronoun they had some identifiable referent in the preceding discourse. If that had been the case, the topics of the mini-​Olympics and the advocacy group could have been related by virtue of the fact that the same individuals participated in both events. But in the absence of such a referent, there is not a seamless transition between these topics: T1 R: what happens at ↑tho::se↑ then. T2 R: what will happen at them? (.) T3 M: we-​well (.) you choose the:: errr (3.66) T4 M: you choose the:: errr (.) the event that you want to go in (1.87) T5 M: the eve- it depe- pending on what you’re good enough (.) T6 M: but I want t- to learn how .hhh to get better at badminton so I can play with Amy (.) T7 R: ↑aaa::h↑ does Amy play badminton. =​ T8 M: =​yes she does (1.23) T9 R: is she good at it. (.) T10 M: .hh yes but I’ve got to get a lot a got to (.) get a lot better (.) a lot better .hhh T11 M:  and last night they went to the er speak up advocacy group .hhh T12 M: and err (3.28) we signed (.) a birthday card f for Amy from the speak up .hhh T13 M: advocacy speak up grou::p […… .] (Dobbinson et al., 1998) 7.2.3  Topic development Topics can be introduced into a conversation. But if they are not actively developed by the participants in an exchange, they will quickly be dropped again. For topic development to occur, speakers must contribute new information. This requirement is not met if speakers repeat what has already been said, albeit in a different form. Below, Tom and Pam are discussing an assignment that they have just completed. At T5, Tom paraphrases the statement that he made at T3. With no new information

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Topic management  147 contributed, Tom’s utterance at T5 fails to develop the topic. His utterance maintains the topic rather than extends it: T1 Tom: Did you get your assignment submitted? T2 Pam: Only just. It was tight going. What did you think of the four questions? T3 Tom: The last two were most difficult. T4 Pam: I agree, really tough. T5 Tom: Questions 3 and 4 were the hardest. T6 Pam: For sure. Speakers must also contribute relevant information. If Tom had produced the following utterance at T5 above, he would have succeeded in conveying new information to Pam. But the utterance’s lack of relevance to the preceding discourse meant it did not contribute to topic development: T5 Tom: My brother studied physics at university When we undertake topic development in conversation, we are not merely trying to contribute new and relevant information. We also want to contribute information that is of interest to others. If we think about the exchange between Tom and Pam again, the utterance at T3 certainly states something new and relevant in response to Pam’s question. But just think what a different trajectory the conversation might have taken if Tom had piqued Pam’s interest by producing the following utterance at T3: T3 Tom: Never mind what I thought! I heard several students thought the questions were unfair and are appealing against them. Contributing information that is of interest to the hearer is not a conversational frill. It encourages the hearer to commit to topic development. For if the hearer makes such a commitment, they will receive not only new and relevant information but also information that has a high interest value. These aspects of topic development can be problematic for children and adults with clinical disorders. Below, a 66-​ year-​old right-​handed man (AC) is responding to a question from a therapist (T) about his earlier work as an engineer (Van Lancker Sidtis, 2004). AC suffered a left frontoparietal stroke that resulted in transcortical sensory aphasia. He was able to confirm for the therapist that he had been an engineer. However, his response does not succeed in developing this topic on account of its highly repetitive content; the greetings good morning and how are you? are stated on multiple occasions. As well as contributing no new information to the topic of this man’s work as an engineer, these greetings are also of questionable relevance to this topic:

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148  Topic management AC: I came, I saw, I conquered. T: What else did you used to do? … Were you an engineer? AC: Yes, I was an engineer. It’s more important. It’s that I …

I said good morning. I said good morning. And … or … I didn’t even say good morning. I just said Hi, how are you? How are you? And we … we … Hi, good morning. How are you. It was 9, 8:30, 9:00. I decided to . I did very, very well, and then, all of a sudden. It’s a long story. But I think I know what I’m talking about. I hope so. I hope so, too.

Topic development is also compromised by repetition in this response of an adult with traumatic brain injury to a question about what they like about the singer Janis Joplin (Dardier et al., 2011). The adult repeats on several occasions that they listened to Joplin’s music while doing some drawings. On this occasion, the repeated information is at least relevant to the speaker’s question: ‘I remember how I had made some drawings when I was in art school –​while listening to the music I had made some drawings while listening to the music –​I had made some drawings you know some little sketches as I listened –​you listen to music and you draw at the same time about Janis Joplin –​I had made a –​I had made a stain –​ I had made the drawings while sketching very fast like crazy and all along you reduce it to a plane –​you condense a little piece of time you know into a two-​dimensional picture –​it’s about how to transfer a universe of time onto a two-​dimensional plane.’ The contribution of irrelevant information compromises topic development in the following narrative produced by a seven-​year-​old girl who has traumatic brain injury (Biddle et al., 1996). The girl was asked to recount a time when she was stung by a bee. Towards the start of her narrative, she veers off topic when she talks about the cat of her friend Jude. Jude’s cat has no relevance to the event the girl is recounting and her mention of it does not contribute to topic development: ‘Ummm, I, once, there was a, we went. There was a for. There was this umm fort. A tree fell down. And there was dirt, all kinds of stuff there. It was our fort. And one day, I have a friend named Jude. She’s umm grown up. She has a kid. She has a cat named Gus, a kitten. It’s so cute. But once, when she didn’t have that kitten, one day, me, my brother, my cousin Matt, and her, and my dad, and one of his friends, went into the woods […]’ 7.2.4  Topic termination All topics eventually run their course and must be brought to an end by those who introduced and developed them. Termination may come about if the topic has been exhausted and participants have nothing new

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Topic management  149 to contribute on the topic. Topics may also be terminated before they have run their course if they are judged to be inappropriate by one or more participants. Conversational participants can signal topic termination through a range of behaviours. They may drop their eye gaze, alter their body posture, and use stress and intonation to indicate that topic termination is imminent. They may also use more or less direct linguistic strategies to mark topic termination. A speaker may directly terminate a topic by uttering: Let’s leave this for now. I think we’ve said everything we can about this. Less direct strategies might include the suggestion to return to the topic at a later point in time (Let’s discuss this further tomorrow), a statement to the effect that the current topic needs to give way to another topic (The hiring policy is important but we must talk about our financial difficulties), and an explanation why further discussion of a topic is not possible (This is a matter for the human resources department to discuss). I employed the first of these strategies when I interviewed a 72-​year-​old man with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). This man had performed poorly on a letter fluency task. His wife (WIF) was present during the task and wanted to establish if it was taken from an assessment called the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination. Not wanting to pursue this topic with her while I still had further tasks to undertake with her husband, I responded as follows: WIF: That’s, that’s one, this isn’t the Addenbrookes test is it, no? INV: I’ll talk to you in a minute when we, we have the break. Can, can we do one more of the ones on the stopwatch? Typically, speakers use indirect topic-​termination strategies first, with more direct strategies employed if indirect strategies do not succeed in bringing a topic to an end. To illustrate, let us examine another exchange between the author and the wife of the man with PSP. This exchange takes place after the man has performed relatively well on an immediate verbal recall task. This prompts the man’s wife in T1 to remark that she wishes their friends could see this good performance because they will not believe that ‘he hasn’t dementia’. The author does not want to discuss the man’s cognitive status in front of him and so remarks in T2 that this topic will be addressed later. However, the man’s wife continues to talk about his cognitive abilities in T3. This prompts the author in T4 to terminate the topic by using a more direct strategy in the form of a first-​person plural imperative let’s leave this: T1 WIF: I wish you could do this test in front of our friend Ken, these are our friends who will not, do not seem to be able to accept that the cognitive, that he hasn’t dementia

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150  Topic management T2 INV: We’ll talk about this a bit later T3 WIF: They need to see what he was able to do just there T4 INV: Okay, let’s leave this and look at a few pictures As with other stages in topic management, topic termination can be fraught with difficulties for children and adults with clinical conditions. Below, a woman (PAR) with Huntington’s disease appears not to recognize that the author (INV) is terminating the topic of a trip to Australia in T2. The woman contributes an utterance in T3 that reopens the topic at the point when the author has moved on to talk about the woman’s interests and hobbies: T1 PAR: We were going to go last November but then she lost the baby T2 INV: So a future trip to Australia is on the cards there, I can see absolutely. Okay [woman’s name], can you tell me a bit about your interests and hobbies? T3 PAR: It will be my third trip to Australia. In another part of the exchange, the woman again does not acknowledge the author’s termination of a topic. At T6, she returns to the topic of her job as a reporter even though the author has already moved on to a new topic –​summer holidays –​in T5: T1 INV: You’ve actually covered a huge range of different types of reporting and writing there T2 PAR: That’s right, that’s right T3 INV: You know the court cases, the fashion and beauty stuff T4 PAR: That’s right T5 INV: Right okay well we’ve all it’s summertime we’re all having holidays. Can you tell me about a holiday that you’ve particularly enjoyed? T6 PAR: It was a great job, I loved reporting Other topic termination difficulties include the abrupt termination of a topic. Sometimes, this is coincident with the end of a conversation or other form of discourse (e.g. storytelling). Below, two children with Down’s syndrome first watch a short video called the Pear film (Chafe, 1980). They are then asked to tell an adult who has not seen the film what it is about (Boudreau and Chapman, 2000). In both cases, the children’s narratives are abruptly terminated with phrases such as that’s all and that’s it. This occurs well before the full events in the film are narrated: Narrative 1: That boy steal apples. Yeah, and the boys help him put those apples in.

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Topic management  151 He gives him three apples. And that’s all. It’s a short one. Narrative 2: One kid stole the basket of pears. A kid (uh) stole the basket (away from hi*) away from him. So he will shared a pears with the (B*)> He shared the pears with the boys. A girl got (a) pears too. She take the pears away. That’s it. That children and adults with a range of clinical conditions can experience topic management problems is amply demonstrated by these different scenarios. But we have yet to say why these difficulties arise and how they may be analysed. In the next section, some of the ways in which topic management problems are analysed by investigators are outlined. We begin with Conversation Analysis.

7.3  Analysing topic management in conversation Conversation Analysis (CA) has been a particularly influential approach in the study of topic management. There have been numerous CA studies of topic initiations (Greer, 2019), topic shifts and digressions (Morris-​ Adams, 2014), and topic terminations (Holt, 2010) in conversation. CA has been used to examine topic management in a wide range of contexts, including language learning, clinical settings, and service encounters (Barnes et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2018; Hellermann and Lee, 2021). CA researchers of topic subscribe to the view that ‘when sequences of talk are investigated in detail, we see that although ‘topic’ is not so easily defined by the analyst, participants in interaction connect their turns and content (including introducing, changing, and closing topics) in orderly ways’ (Hellermann and Lee, 2021, p.90). By analysing the turn-​taking structure of conversation, we can understand how topics are developed over extended sequences of turns. We can also understand how topic management may break down in clients with clinical conditions. By way of illustration, let us consider how topic management difficulties in a patient with dementia are analysed using CA. Below, an 86-​year-​old woman (KL) with moderate cognitive impairment is talking to her son (IJ) about how certain foods are prepared (Hall et al., 2018, p.571). At T21 and T24, KL produces two utterances that impair her production of on-​ topic talk. Her utterance at T21 is semantically empty while at T24, she uses talk that indicates she is having memory difficulties. To try and keep KL on-​topic, her son IJ responds in T26 and T28 with polar questions and uses topic shading whereby he moves the topic from KL making roast beef

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152  Topic management to KL’s mother making roast beef and KL’s mother preparing Yorkshire pudding. KL’s ‘yes’ responses in T27 and T29 are topic-​maintaining. But she is also able to produce topic-​extending talk in T29 when she gives an account of how to make a Yorkshire pudding. Jefferson transcription conventions are used in the exchange below (Hutchby and Woofitt, 2008): T1 IJ: and what are we having for main course↑ T2–​17 (16 lines omitted) T18 KL: and you cooked (0.6) the roast beef (0.3) with (.) par snip (.) carrot (1.7) onion pieces T19 IJ: mmm T20 IJ: (0.7) T21 KL: something like that T22 KL: (0.4) T23 IJ: mmm T24 KL: can’t remember T25 KL: (0.6) T26 IJ: → your mother used to do that roast beef didn’t she↑ T27 KL: yes =​ T28 IJ: → =​and the Yorkshire pudding T29 KL: y- oh yes she she did the Yorkshire pudding (0.6) and that (.) that (.) really is a tricky thing to do because you (.) you rip it (0.5) you rip it up and it’s: (0.3) it’s gotta get out at the right heat at the right time (Symbols: ‘=​’ no discernible pause between two speakers’ turns; ‘→’ turns in which IJ uses facilitative behaviour; ‘(.)’ just noticeable pause; ‘↑’ onset of noticeable pitch rise; ‘:’ indicates a stretched sound; ‘_​_​_​’ underlined sounds are louder) A sequential analysis of the turns in this exchange allows us to see how a familiar communication partner (KL’s son in this case) can help keep a speaker with cognitive difficulties stay on-​topic and go on to make a topic-​extending contribution to the exchange. The partner’s contribution averted a topic breakdown and allowed KL to remain active in the development of topic. For KL, it was her memory impairment that threatened to disrupt topic management. For other speakers, an inability to read the mental states of interlocutors (i.e. poor theory of mind skills) can disrupt topic management. Below, a boy (P) with autism spectrum disorder and a researcher (R) are discussing where P is staying during a visit to Toronto. P contributes an utterance at T6 which he thinks is topic-​ extending because he knows who he is talking about. But the boy has failed to take the researcher’s knowledge state into account when he formulates this utterance. The boy’s use of they assumes that the researcher will know the referent of this pronoun. The researcher’s question at T7 indicates that this is not the case and that the boy must clarify the referent of this

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Topic management  153 pronoun if his utterance in T6 is to be a topic-​extending turn. With the referent of they confirmed in T8 to be the boy’s parents, the topic disruption posed by the utterance at T6 is resolved, and the discussion can continue: T1 R: so you’re staying with some friends here while you’re in Toronto eh? T2 P: yes T3 R: mmhm? T4 R: that must be nice not to have to stay in a hotel. T5 P: I I I want to. T6 P: but it seems that they did they didn’t agree. T7 R: who didn’t agree? T8 P: mom and dad. This boy with autism spectrum disorder was able to repair the trouble source identified by the researcher and resume on-​topic talk. Below, a 66-​ year-​old man (PAR) with corticobasal degeneration and significant cognitive and language difficulties needed considerable input from his wife (WIF) to correct the trouble source in his talk that was identified by the author (INV). At T3, the author asks the man what it was that nearly killed him. His answer in T4 indicates a lack of comprehension of the author’s question, which is consistent with the man’s language problems. At T5, the man’s wife joins in the repair activity by saying that it was playing with the wee boys (the man’s grandsons) that nearly killed him. At T6, the author starts to repeat what the man’s wife has just said when the man says golf and ball presumably in an effort to extend the topic by indicating what he was playing with his grandsons. But this utterance is also unclear, prompting the author to seek clarification in T8. The man responds with ball in T9. Recognizing that this response is not sufficiently specific, the man’s wife in T10 asks what kind of ball? She already knows the answer and could simply have said football. But she wants him to contribute directly to topic development by providing an answer to her question. The man’s language difficulties prevent him from producing the target word without further assistance from his wife. She cues his production of football by giving him the first syllable of the word in T13. At T15 and T17, the author seeks confirmation that it was football that nearly killed the man, and he provides this confirmation in T16 and T18: T1 INV: but can you tell me about a holiday that you’ve taken that you’ve really enjoyed? T2 PAR: aye (.) I’d a great time in Donedal [Donegal] and tried well (.) was with the wee boys (.) and and nearly killed me (laughter) T3 INV: so what was it that nearly killed you? T4 PAR: eh (1:39) yes it did T5 WIF: playing with them

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154  Topic management T6 INV: playing T7 PAR: golf (.) ball (.) T8 INV: golf no T9 PAR: ball T10 WIF: what kind of ball? T11 PAR: (4:27) what ah (.) T12 INV: um hum T13 WIF: foot T14 PAR: football (.) T15 INV: football okay T16 PAR: aye T17 INV: it nearly killed you T18 PAR: aye It took 15 turns in total to correct the trouble source identified by the author in T3. During these turns, the author sought clarification from the man on what nearly killed him. This clarification came in two stages. First, the man’s wife stated that it was playing with his grandsons that nearly killed him. Second, she used a cue to elicit the man’s production of the word football, the particular game that he was playing with his grandsons. The man’s impaired language skills limited his ability to repair the trouble source identified by the author. But with his wife’s support, he was able to repair the utterance that disrupted topic development in the exchange. Conversation analysis of the sequential organization of the turns between the author, man and wife in the above exchange revealed several important phenomena. First, it showed that all participants were oriented to topic management. When the man’s utterance at the start of the exchange disrupted topic management, all participants took action to repair the utterance and allow on-​topic talk to continue. Second, the analysis revealed the specific language problems of the man that contributed to his topic management difficulties. These problems included language comprehension breakdown –​the man did not understand the author’s question at T3 –​and the man’s failure to access his mental lexicon and retrieve the target word football (a word-​finding difficulty). Third, the analysis showed that notwithstanding his language difficulties, the man continued to contribute topic-​ extending turns in the exchange. This occurred at T7 when the man attempted to indicate the game he was playing even though his utterance was not sufficiently specific. Fourth, the repair work that was needed to allow on-​topic talk to continue could have been performed more efficiently (in just a couple of turns) if it had been undertaken by the man’s wife. But this increased efficiency would have been achieved at the expense of disempowering the man from contributing to topic management. This section has shown that CA is a powerful tool that allows analysts to uncover how participants manage topic over consecutive turns in

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Topic management  155 conversation. But topic management is also a feature of non-​dialogical forms of discourse (e.g. narration). This issue is addressed in the next section.

7.4  Analysing topic management in narration Imagine a scenario in which you are telling your friends a story about the theft of your handbag during a recent holiday to Spain. As the narrator, there are several decisions that you must make in order to tell your story. First, you must decide what are the main points that you need to convey to your listeners. They will need to be told where the theft of your handbag occurred –​at your hotel, in a local restaurant, and so on. They will also need to be told the time of day when your handbag was stolen and if you were alone or with other people when the theft occurred. It will be a very different type of theft –​and, hence, a very different type of story –​if your handbag was stolen during the day when you were in the company of friends or at night as you walked alone along a city street. You will also need to decide what information to leave implicit in your story because your listeners can be expected to ‘fill it in’ based on their background knowledge or world knowledge. You do not need to tell your listeners, for example, what a handbag is and that it normally contains valuables such as money and credit cards. You also do not need to tell your listeners that Spain is a country in Europe and that it is a popular holiday destination. This first group of decisions concerns choice of information –​information to be explicitly narrated and information to be left implicit in a story on the assumption that listeners will be able to infer it based on their background knowledge. Second, you must make decisions about how you are going to present the information that you have deemed it important to communicate. To assist your listeners in developing a mental representation of the story, you will want to relate events in the order in which they occurred. To this end, you will want to tell your listeners the circumstances of the theft before you tell them that you called the police to report the robbery and phoned your bank to cancel your credit cards. Aside from the sequencing of information, you will need to think about how you present new information to your listeners. Generally, the first mention of a character in a story is achieved through use of an indefinite noun phrase, with definite noun phrases used for subsequent mentions: I was walking along the street when a man approached me from behind. He grabbed my handbag and ran away. Later, a witness spotted the man in a local park. You may decide that certain information should be given prominence. This can be achieved by placing it at the beginning of a sentence or utterance (e.g. The thief ran through the streets) or through use of

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156  Topic management particular syntactic structures such as a cleft construction (e.g. It was the thief who grabbed the handbag). Decisions must also be made about how to represent information that is implicit in the discourse context. Implicit information can be packaged in the presuppositions of an utterance, as in these examples of utterances that contain presupposition triggers: I realised my handbag was missing → My handbag was missing (factive verb) The thief attacked me again → The thief attacked me before (iterative expression) My friend was as scared as me → I was scared (comparison of equality) Third, you must also decide how to relate individual utterances to each other in a process called cohesion. Listeners can only follow stories when they can see how each utterance relates to those that come before it and to those that follow it. Below, referential cohesion links the two utterances when the pronoun she in the second utterance is used to refer anaphorically to Betty in the first utterance: Betty was very shaken by the incident. She was unable to sleep that night. In the examples below, cohesion between utterances is achieved through lexical substitution, cataphoric reference, and ellipsis: I was so upset at losing my Burberry handbag that Betty said she would buy me a new one (lexical substitution) Although it upset me terribly, I did not allow the theft to destroy my holiday (cataphoric reference) Betty said she would not return to Spain for a holiday, but I said I would (ellipsis) Sometimes, it is inferences based on world knowledge rather than cohesive devices that link utterances together in a story. In the first example below, a bridging inference links the two clauses in this utterance, namely, that the handbag contained the keys to the apartment. Keys are one of the items that handbags typically contain, so this is a warranted inference based on world knowledge. In the second example, an inference to the effect that the taser caused the suspect to fall to the ground links the two clauses. Again, this inference is based on our knowledge of what tasers are and that they are used to incapacitate suspects during police arrests: With my handbag stolen, I didn’t even have keys to get into my holiday apartment.

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Topic management  157 The police officer discharged his taser and the suspect fell to the ground. But even highly cohesive utterances can fail to relate in a meaningful way to the theme or topic or a story (global coherence). The following utterances exhibit a high degree of cohesion on account of the use of anaphoric reference (e.g. Burberry handbag … it) and lexical reiteration and substitution (e.g. gift … gifts … one). Notwithstanding the evident cohesion of these utterances, they make little contribution to the theme or topic of the narrator’s story: I brought my Burberry handbag on holiday with me. It was a gift from my husband for my 40th birthday. He always chooses lovely gifts for me. The last one was a full-​body massage and spa treatment. The limited global coherence of these utterances relates to the fact that with the exception of the first utterance, they fail to relate in any significant way to the narrator’s story about the theft of her handbag while on holiday. These utterances tell us nothing about when and where the theft occurred, the actions of the narrator, or if and how the perpetrator was apprehended. Cohesion is a necessary condition for global coherence, but it is not a sufficient condition, with even highly cohesive texts lacking in coherence. It emerges that topic management during narration is every bit as complex as topic management during conversation. The narrator must attend to information management, cohesion, inference, and coherence. Within each of these elements, there are presuppositions to be managed, new information to be foregrounded, and utterances to be linked using cohesive devices ranging from anaphoric reference to ellipsis. Given the wide array of concepts and linguistic skills involved in topic management during narration, it is not surprising that many children and adults with cognitive and language disorders should display problems with this aspect of discourse production. Below, a 42-​year-​old woman with cognitive-​linguistic difficulties following Covid-​19 is attempting to tell the story of Cinderella (Cummings, 2023). The Cinderella story is a well-​ known fictional narrative. But imagine you had never heard the story before and you were trying to piece together what it was about based on the narrative presented below: ‘Cinderella’s (1.77) mother dies and her father (1.74) marries (2.22) a lady with two (.) step dau [daughters] so two daughters (1.14) and (16.49) and (1.62) her father I think is the king (1.71) and his son is looking for a prince (2.00) princess sorry, sorry princess and she so they have (1.77) a (.) ball arranged and (4.04) Cinderella wants to go but the stepsisters won’t let her go and she has to stay behind so the fairy godmother (1.35) cast a spell and she had a beautiful dress and

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158  Topic management carriage (1.88) and went to the ball where she (4.09) danced with a prince and (1.15) at midnight she had to be home so she ran and to left one of her glass slippers behind and he found the slipper and wanted to find (2.30) who is the woman was that owned the slipper and (1.56) thee stepmother had a locked (.) her in her room but they managed to get her out and the prince (1.59) she tried the shoe on and it fit and a prince married her’ We are certainly given the main theme of the story –​a young woman meets a prince at a ball and later marries him. But the Cinderella story is about so much more than this one-​line synopsis conveys. The narrator omits considerable information. We are not told that Cinderella’s father dies, that Cinderella is maltreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, and that a search of the kingdom is conducted to find who owned the shoe. Alongside the omission of these key events, there is omission of information within events. So, we are told that a ball was arranged but not that it was held at the palace. We are also told that Cinderella was given a beautiful dress and carriage but not that the carriage was made from a pumpkin. When Cinderella ran away, we are not told where she ran from or where she ran to, or why she had to be home by midnight. Other information is incorrect (e.g. Cinderella’s father is the king). Apart from missing and incorrect information, information is not always correctly introduced into the narrative. The fairy godmother is introduced into the narrative in a definite noun phrase when there is no prior mention of her in the discourse context. The prince is mentioned twice before the last line in the narrative. And yet, the narrator uses an indefinite noun phrase –​a construction used for the first mention of a character –​to talk about him at the very end of the narrative. Let us think about how cohesion is achieved in the narrative. The narrator uses lexical reiteration to good effect when she uses slipper and shoe to link information across clauses, e.g. the woman was that owned the slipper … she tried the shoe on. For the most part, there is also effective use of referential cohesion such as when Cinderella, her and she are used to link information across three clauses in, e.g. Cinderella wants to go but the stepsisters won’t let her go and she has to stay behind. Other instances of anaphoric reference do not proceed so smoothly, however. Towards the end of the story, the narrator uses the pronoun they in the absence of a preceding referent, e.g. they managed to get her out. The pronoun refers to Cinderella’s mice friends but they are not mentioned at any point in the story. In the absence of this referent, listeners are unable to integrate the information in this clause within a mental representation of the story. In terms of global coherence, it is true that each of the narrator’s utterances relates in one way or another to the overriding theme of the narrative –​a story about how a young woman came to meet a prince and went on to marry him. But it is important to recognize that as expressed

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Topic management  159 in the above narrative, this coherence relation is rather superficial in nature and does not address the motivations and goals of the characters in the story. So, we are told that the stepmother locked Cinderella in her room without any mention of her motivation for this action –​the stepmother wanted to prevent Cinderella from trying on the shoe and going on to marry the prince. On other occasions, a character’s motivation is laid bare but it is not connected with any action or behaviour in the story. We are told, for example, that the prince wanted to find the woman who owned the shoe. But we are not told that this led the prince’s aides to conduct a search of all women in the kingdom who attended the ball. On still other occasions, no purpose or reason for an action is given. We are told that the king’s son is looking for someone to marry; but we also need to be told that this is because he must provide an heir to the throne. What each of these points illustrates is that the global coherence of a narrative requires that actions and events in a story are set against a complex network of motivations, intentions, goals, and purposes. When these concepts are not expressed or at least activated in the mind of the listener, a narrative can look as if it is connected with the global theme of a story without actually being so. In thinking about topic management in narration, we have described the work that the narrator or the producer of a narrative must undertake to convey what a story is about to listeners. So, a narrator must introduce characters in a certain way, give prominence to some information while leaving other information in the background of a story, and so on. But we have also thought about the work that a listener or the receiver of a narrative must undertake to understand what a story is about. We have described, for example, how listeners will attempt to integrate events within a mental representation based on the order in which they are presented. Similarly, listeners must be able to identify a person or thing to which new information relates if they are to assimilate this information into their representation of a story. Models of these productive and receptive processes have been proposed by different theorists. In his ‘blueprint of the speaker’, Levelt (1989) sets out stages in the production of a message, from its conceptual preparation to its articulation by the speaker. We must first decide the message to be communicated. In devising our message, we are mindful of factors we considered earlier such as knowledge that we share with our interlocutor, the information that is new and relevant to them, and so on. The conceptual structure that results from this stage contains lexical concepts for which there are words in language. These lexical concepts activate syntactic words in the mental lexicon. This provides a syntactic frame that corresponds to the semantic functions and arguments of the message. During grammatical encoding, this lexical-​syntactic information is used to build up the syntactic pattern that will become the surface structure of the utterance. Eventually, after additional stages of linguistic encoding, the point is reached where articulators produce overt speech.

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160  Topic management On hearing a narrative, a listener must attempt to integrate information in real time into a text representation of the story. A text representation corresponds to the gist of a story. It is a set of propositions that are linked to each other and that form a coherent whole. One of the most prominent models of text representation is that proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978). According to these theorists, the semantic structure of texts can be described at a local microlevel and at a global macrolevel. Coherent semantic text bases are constructed by a process that operates in cycles and is constrained by limitations of working memory. Macro-​operators in the model reduce the information in a text base to its gist through deletion and various types of inference. These operations are under the control of a schema which is a theoretical construct representing the goals of the comprehender. Macroprocesses are predictable only if the controlling schema can be made explicit (Kintsch and van Dijk, 1978, p.389). Other models of text representation can be found in Gernsbacher (1990), Kintsch (1988), Reinhart (1981), and Vallduví (1992). For further discussion of theoretical models of how speakers produce and listeners comprehend discourse, the reader is referred to van Dijk (1997).

Summary •

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This chapter has examined pragmatic or discourse topic. This is what a conversation, narrative or other type of discourse is about. Pragmatic topic must be distinguished from syntactic topic. The syntactic topic of a sentence is often the grammatical subject. The predicate of the sentence tells us something about the subject. In Jack is bald, the predicate ‘is bald’ tells us something about the subject ‘Jack’, namely, that he has a lack of hair. The management of pragmatic or discourse topic can be usefully conceptualized in terms of stages or processes. Speakers must first select appropriate topics and then skilfully introduce them into conversation. Speakers and hearers must jointly develop topics. All topics run their course in conversation and must eventually be terminated to make way for new topics. Each of these stages can be disrupted in children and adults with cognitive and language disorders. The adult with schizophrenia may select an inappropriate topic. The child with autism spectrum disorder may abruptly introduce a topic into conversation. A child with developmental language disorder may not have adequate language skills to develop a topic, while an adult with traumatic brain injury may unexpectedly terminate a topic. From the perspective of Conversation Analysis, topic can be analysed by examining the sequential organization of turns. Topics are developed over a sequence of turns in conversation;

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Topic management  161

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when one of these turns is not on-​topic, speakers and hearers often work together to address the trouble source. The dynamic in this repair work shifts when one of the speakers has cognitive and language problems. In this case, the speaker with no impairment must play the major role in this repair work. Topic management in narration involves many similarities to topic management in conversation. Like the speaker in conversation, the narrator must foreground new information, couch shared or background information in the presuppositions of utterances and establish cohesive links between utterances. But even highly cohesive utterances may not be coherent if we cannot see how they relate to the topic of a story or the narrator’s goals and purpose in producing a story. Theoretical models of these discourse processes have been proposed. These models address processes that contribute directly or indirectly to topic management among other aspects of discourse production and comprehension.

Suggestions for further reading (1) Tomlin, R.S., Forrest, L., Pu, M.M. and Kim, M.H. (1997) ‘Discourse semantics’, in T.A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Structure and Process: Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, London: SAGE, 63–​111. This reading is a comprehensive treatment of the various discourse processes that have been discussed in the chapter. Information ­management is addressed under ‘four central threads’: rhetorical management (goals and intentions of the discourse); referential management (participants must keep track of referents and propositions in common); thematic management (central elements around which the discourse is developed); and focus management (participants must keep track of which referents they are dealing with at any given moment). (2) Schegloff, E.A. (2017) ‘Generic problems for talk-​ in-​ interaction and practised solutions for them’, in Y. Huang (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 440–​449. This chapter addresses several issues examined in section 7.3, including doing topic-​talk, analysing the sequential organization of turns, and how to deal with trouble in speaking, hearing and/​or understanding talk. It provides a succinct discussion of concepts that investigators have applied to an analysis of talk-​in-​interaction in a range of contexts, including clinical studies such as that in (3) below.

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162  Topic management (3) Stribling, P., Rae, J. and Dickerson, P. (2009) ‘Using conversation analysis to explore the recurrence of a topic in the talk of a boy with an autism spectrum disorder’, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 23 (8): 555–​582. This paper uses Conversation Analysis to examine topic perseveration by a boy with autism spectrum disorder in interaction with a researcher and a mobile robot platform. The paper shows that when a sequential analysis of the boy’s talk and non-​spoken activities is performed, his perseverative turns are actually interactionally embedded.

Questions (1) Adults with neurodegenerative disorders often experience topic management difficulties on account cognitive and language problems. In each of the following exchanges, an adult (PAR) with a neurodegenerative disorder is talking to the author (INV) in the presence of a spouse (WIF). Using CA, describe how the spouse in each exchange assists the adult in producing on-​topic talk when cognitive and language problems threaten to disrupt topic management: Exchange A: 61-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease T1 INV: right

so what sort of programmes on the Discovery channel do you like T2 PAR: (2:68) T3 INV: um hum T4 PAR: (.) what do you call (.) Discovery (.) T5 WIF: Quest T6 PAR: Quest T7 WIF: you, you like anything to do with big machines in (4:11) well (3:23) tell Louise what you served your time as and then why, what your interests in those machines T8 PAR: served my time as a fitter T9 INV: um hum T10 PAR: mechanical fitter T11 INV: um hum T12 PAR: making parts for turbines Exchange B: 68-​year-​old man with progressive supranuclear palsy T1 INV: can you tell me what T2 PAR: before (.) I retired T3 INV: um hum T4 PAR: I was a policeman T5 INV: um hum

type of work you did before you retired

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Topic management  163 T6 PAR: I (.) joined (.) in T7 WIF: nineteen sixty-​eight T8 PAR: nineteen sixty-​eight T9 INV: um hum T10 PAR: and (.) I (.) re, te [retired] T11 WIF: two thousand and one T12 PAR: two thousand and one

gave it up (.) in nineteen

Exchange C: 77-​year-​old man with Parkinson’s disease T1 INV:  okay

can you tell me a bit about what that work involved I don’t really know much about engineering T2 PAR: (1.21) well cutting metal and folding it making it into cabinets or T3 INV: okay T4 PAR: used to make handrails as well for the disabled people T5 INV: handrails okay T6 WIF: bank T7 PAR: (1.23) bank tills (1.04) T8 INV: okay um hum T9 WIF: hydraulic tanks T10 PAR: un T11 WIF: hydraulic tanks T12 PAR: hydraulic tanks (2) The following Cinderella story is narrated by a 72-​year-​old man with progressive supranuclear palsy. Examine the narrative in detail and then answer the questions below: ‘Cinderella was (2:20) ah (.) the daughter of a house (.) that their mother had died and she had a wicked stepmother take over (.) and her two (.) ugly sisters as well (2:69) ah am ah (13:58) Cinderella had to do all the dishes an things in the house (.) and was kept more as a skivvy rather than as a (3:25) a ah as (.) su, su, su, su, su, sister (2:71) and then em (2:96) she met the there was a fairy godmother arrived in the house (.) and (.) dressed her up for the (.) visit to the ball where the prince was (.) and (4:70) she (3:00) went to the ball with her ugly sisters who were (.) cast out to one side (.) and she went (.) um (.) when the su, clock struck 12 she had to run (.) to get home before she cha, cha, changed ba [back] into her own clo [clothes] (.) and she dropped her slipper (.) and the prince (3:67) wanted to meet this girl again (.) so he took the slipper and went round the countryside (.) until he found (2:00) someone it fitted (2:17) when he went to Cinderella’s house the, the sisters fought over who (.) who, who (2:05) who, who would fe [fit] (2:18) but em (.) Cinderella (2:67) eventually (2:76) got back with the prince and lived happily ever after’

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164  Topic management (a) This man omits significant events that are central to the theme or topic of the story. On two instances, this omission is so marked that it appears as if the narrator has ‘leapt’ over an episode and progressed to a later episode. Identify where these two instances arise in the narrative. (b) Notwithstanding the omission of information, the narrator is able to undertake other aspects of information management. Two such aspects are the introduction of new characters into the story and the use of presupposition to represent background information. Give one example of each of these features. (c) Compare the above narrative to the Cinderella narrative that was examined in section 7.4. There is a significant difference in how the two narrators characterize two events –​the need for Cinderella to depart the ball by midnight and the attempt to identify the owner of the lost slipper. Explain the difference in the characterization of these two events by the narrators. (d) Does this narrator sequence the events in the story correctly? (e) A fictional narrative usually has a conventional opening and closing sequence as part of its discourse structure. Are these sequences evident in this narrative?

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8 Clinical pragmatics

Learning objectives: By the end of this chapter, you will: • •

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Appreciate the scope of study of clinical pragmatics as a specialized sub-​discipline of pragmatics that examines pragmatic disorders. Understand that pragmatic disorders can arise at any point in the communication cycle, from the formation of a communicative intention in the mind of the speaker to the recovery of the intention in the mind of the hearer during utterance interpretation. Be able to characterize the cognitive skills that speakers and hearers use during the production and comprehension of utterances as well as the pragmatic difficulties that arise when these skills are impaired. Be able to define theory of mind (ToM) and understand the difference between cognitive and affective domains of ToM, and first-​order ToM reasoning and second-​order ToM reasoning; understand the role of ToM in utterance interpretation. Be able to define executive functioning and appreciate the full range of cognitive abilities (e.g. flexibility, inhibition, planning) that fall within the executive functions; understand the role of executive functions in utterance interpretation.

8.1 Introduction As the discipline of pragmatics has developed over time, the field has spawned several sub-​ disciplines. Accordingly, there are pragmatists who work in historical pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, and cognitive pragmatics. Readers will also encounter references to developmental pragmatics, societal pragmatics, and neuro-​pragmatics in books and other sources. Each of these labels represents a field of work that specializes on one particular area in pragmatics, often to the exclusion of DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-9

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166  Clinical pragmatics topics and questions addressed by other areas. The same is true of clinical pragmatics. Although the term ‘clinical pragmatics’ is a relatively recent development, clinical studies of pragmatics have been undertaken for several decades. In this chapter, we will not examine these studies and their findings; the interested reader is referred to Cummings (2009) for discussion of some of this work. Rather, we will draw on clinical pragmatics to help us understand how and why children and adults with a range of clinical conditions struggle with pragmatic aspects of language. When we described instances of pragmatic breakdown in earlier chapters, we did so without considering why these impairments arise or how they may disrupt communication. To have a proper understanding of these impairments, it is now important that we address these why and how questions. Why does the child with ASD fail to establish the illocutionary force of a speech act, for example, and how does this impairment disrupt the wider process of communication between speaker and hearer? In section 8.2, we address the ‘how’ question by setting pragmatic impairments within a wider cycle of communication. This cycle reflects the Gricean insight that an exchange of utterances between speakers and hearers is primarily an exchange of communicative intentions. Accordingly, it sets out from a communicative intention, the transmission of which is the speaker’s purpose in communicating; the cycle terminates when the hearer recovers the speaker’s communicative intention. In section 8.3, we answer the ‘why’ question by considering the wider cognitive processes that attend pragmatic aspects of language. These processes include non-​linguistic aspects of cognition such as memory, reasoning and attention. These processes are frequently subordinated to language in accounts of pragmatics when they often hold the answer to the question of why pragmatics breaks down. One aspect of cognition has special relevance to pragmatics: theory of mind. Theory of mind (ToM) describes the ability to attribute mental states both to one’s own mind and to the minds of others. Mental states include cognitive mental states such as belief and knowledge, and affective mental states such as anger and happiness. The reason ToM has special relevance to pragmatics is because a particular mental state, namely, a communicative intention, lies at the heart of utterance interpretation. In fact, we can only be said to understand what an utterance means when we can attribute the communicative intention that motivated the speaker to produce the utterance to the mind of the speaker. Given this complex interaction between ToM and pragmatic understanding, we should not be surprised to discover that many children and adults with ToM deficits also have pragmatic impairments. These issues are explored further in section 8.4. Continuing the emphasis on cognition, all utterance interpretation involves the use of general cognitive processes, including memory, attention, and reasoning. We could not assign referents to pronouns, derive the implicatures of an utterance, and represent background knowledge in the presuppositions of an utterance without storing

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Clinical pragmatics  167 information in memory, for example. These wider cognitive operations have been treated –​incorrectly, in my view –​as if they have a rather minor role in utterance interpretation. We examine the important role that these so-​called executive functions play in utterance interpretation in section 8.5.

8.2  The communication cycle In earlier chapters, we saw that communication is an essentially cooperative endeavour between a message producer and a message receiver. Most often, the producer and receiver are a speaker and a hearer, respectively. But they may also be a writer and a reader, or a user of one of the many sign languages that exist. This is because the process of communication extends beyond the particular mode in which a message is communicated, should that be through speech, writing, or signing. When we think of communication in this broad sense, we begin to see that pragmatic concepts permeate every aspect of message formulation and reception. In the following discussion, we highlight those concepts and relate them to specific stages in the communication cycle. These stages are then used to integrate the different types of pragmatic difficulties that we observed in children and adults in earlier chapters. It was described above how speakers and hearers are jointly oriented to a special type of mental state called a communicative intention during communication. This mental state is special for a couple of reasons. First, its transmission between speaker and hearer is the very purpose of communication. The exchange of communicative intentions is so central to communication that for Grice we can only be said to know what a speaker means by an utterance when we have established the communicative intention that motivated the speaker to produce it. Second, communicative intentions are unlike other mental states in an important respect. Simply knowing the content of a mental state –​that X is the case –​is not enough for a communicative intention; the hearer must arrive at the belief that X is the case by means of the recognition of the speaker’s intention. Given their central role in communication, communicative intentions are the starting point of the communication cycle shown in Figure 8.1. Communicative intentions may well lie at the heart of communication. But forming such intentions is anything but straightforward. This is because not every thought that we can entertain should be the basis of a communicative intention. Some thoughts transgress social and moral norms; others are insensitive and inappropriate in other ways. The selection of what should be communicated to a hearer and what should be left unexpressed involves a complex set of judgements that is not always successfully navigated by children and adults with clinical conditions. We saw in Chapter 6, for example, how an adult with schizophrenia made inappropriate remarks about a doctor’s tie and an adult with Parkinson’s disease produced a sexually inappropriate remark. A less

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168  Clinical pragmatics Communicative intentions Language encoding

Motor programming

Speech perception

Sensory processing

Speaker

Hearer

Language decoding

Motor execution Speech

Figure 8.1 The communication cycle.

marked violation of social appropriacy occurred in Chapter 7 when a child with social communication disorder asked an unfamiliar adult if he liked being married. In each of these scenarios, judgements that ensure that language is used appropriately and that only certain messages are communicated were less than optimal. These judgements involve the exercise of a speaker’s pragmatic or communicative competence; they are the first point of breakdown in the communication cycle for children and adults with language and cognitive disorders. Let us assume that a speaker is able to form a communicative intention that is consistent with prevailing social and moral norms in a particular context. At this stage in the communication cycle, we have an abstract mental construct that must be converted into a concrete code for the purpose of communication. This conversion takes place during language encoding. Words are selected from the mental lexicon and are arranged within the deep structure of a sentence (à la Chomsky) according to grammatical properties and semantic constraints. Although this process involves grammatical and lexical-​semantic rules, it is by no means a purely linguistic operation. Speakers can decide to place emphasis on information by foregrounding it in an utterance; they can indicate the difference between a statement and an indirect request (e.g. It is very warm in this room) by marking the deep structure with the speech act that the utterance will perform. These processes are pragmatic in nature. So, too, are the processes that lead a speaker to use a personal pronoun instead of a noun, or a deictic expression like there, on the understanding that the hearer will be able to retrieve a referent of both expressions from

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Clinical pragmatics  169 the discourse context. In converting an abstract communicative intention into a concrete linguistic code, language encoding involves pragmatic processes through and through. Language encoding poses a considerable challenge to children and adults with a range of disorders. A speaker with aphasia may have the pragmatic competence needed to distinguish speech acts and to understand different conditions on their use in communication. But if he lacks the ability to undertake syntactic inversion of a subject pronoun and auxiliary verb, then he will be unable to produce the conventional structure of an indirect request (e.g. Can you pass the salt?) and other speech acts. A child with developmental language disorder may have grammatical impairment that prevents him using a cleft construction such as It was the teenagers who vandalized the bus shelter. This is an important linguistic structure in which the presuppositions of an utterance (e.g. someone vandalized the bus shelter) may be represented. In both cases, impairments in language encoding (specifically, grammatical encoding) give rise to pragmatic difficulties. This is a secondary pragmatic disorder –​ a pragmatic disorder that is a consequence of a language deficit. But primary pragmatic disorders can also occur during language encoding. If a speaker does not know what information to treat as new versus given or is not aware that in order to use a deictic expression, there should be an identifiable referent in the discourse context, then an appropriate utterance will also not be produced. But on this occasion, the difficulty arises because there is a primary impairment in the speaker’s pragmatic competence. It might be supposed that with the production of an abstract linguistic code, the role of pragmatics in the communication cycle comes to an end. But this is not the case. The linguistic code contains information about the syllables and words in an utterance that should be stressed in order to achieve a particular pragmatic effect. But this information may not achieve its intended pragmatic effect if a speaker has difficulties in motor programming and execution during communication. Motor problems do not just affect speech; they can also compromise the movements of the hands, arms and face that are required to produce gestures and facial expressions. These non-​ verbal communicative behaviours are loaded with meaning and can transform an utterance from a neutral statement or a comment to an expression that is uttered with sarcastic intent. In speakers with motor impairments, the production of speech, gestures and facial expressions may be disrupted. So, although a speaker may be able to assign primary stress to syllables and words during language encoding or know what gestures and facial expressions should accompany a spoken utterance, these aspects of message production may not be successfully realized. If these aspects are vital to a hearer’s disambiguation of an utterance or understanding of its illocutionary force, then pragmatic difficulties may also arise during the spoken production of an utterance.

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170  Clinical pragmatics In earlier chapters, we encountered children and adults with disorders that compromised their use of gestures and facial expressions alongside speech production problems. Motor impairments are common in neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy; they can restrict the use of facial expressions and manual gestures as well as reduce speech intelligibility. Adults with Parkinson’s disease, for example, exhibit reduced vocal intensity (a condition called ‘hypophonia’). During communication, speakers are often required to modulate their vocal loudness in order to express disagreement, engage in humour, and emphasize new information in an utterance. These modulations in vocal loudness are difficult for speakers with Parkinson’s disease and hypophonia to undertake. Children with ASD can have significant difficulty using gestures and facial expressions. These non-​verbal behaviours can give rise to problems of utterance interpretation if they are not consistent with the content of spoken utterances –​a child’s utterance may request that he is given a particular toy when his eye gaze and facial expression indicate that he wants a different object. Gestures and facial expressions may also not be well synchronized with a child’s spoken utterances so that they are interpreted alongside an utterance to which they do not relate. The adult with Parkinson’s disease and the child with ASD have difficulty conveying their communicative intention to the hearer. But the source of their pragmatic difficulties lies in motor impairments (adult) and poor coordination of gesture with speech production (child), and not in pragmatic processes during language encoding. The communication cycle in Figure 8.1 has a series of receptive stages that correspond to the expressive stages that we have just described. Pragmatic difficulties may also occur if there are impairments in the receptive stages of the cycle. Sensory processing disorders such as hearing loss and visual impairment can reduce the information that a hearer is able to glean from the speech signal, gestures, and facial expressions and subsequently use to guide the interpretation of an utterance. If a hearer cannot hear and perceive different patterns of intonation, he or she may struggle to determine if a speaker is using an utterance (e.g. A category 8 typhoon is on its way) as a statement, a warning, or a question. Visual impairment might lead a hearer to misinterpret teasing remarks as hostile or impolite behaviour when the speaker’s facial expressions cannot be processed alongside the linguistic content of the speaker’s utterance. These pragmatic difficulties are related to impaired sensory and perceptual processes, and are equivalent to the pragmatic deficits that were caused by motor impairments in the expressive half of the communication cycle. The effect of sensory-​perceptual impairments on communication is to degrade the information that goes forward as input to language decoding, making it more difficult for the hearer to recover the speaker’s communicative intention.

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Clinical pragmatics  171 The penultimate stage in the recovery of a speaker’s communicative intention is language decoding. In this stage, the content or logical form of an utterance is generated through the application of rules that operate on phonological, syntactic and semantic structures in an utterance. But pragmatic processes also play an important role in specifying an utterance’s logical form. When a speaker utters Jack had three drinks at the party, hearers typically understand that Jack had three alcoholic drinks at the party. Hearers undertake lexical narrowing of the word drink based on context and their background knowledge. Upon returning from a cruise, a speaker reports that Everyone was unwell; hearers know, however, that the quantifier everyone does not mean everyone in the world, but only those people who were on the cruise ship. This restriction on the domain of quantification is also achieved based on the context in which the utterance is used and the hearer’s background knowledge. Similar pragmatic processes allow hearers to specify referents of pronouns in the logical form of an utterance. What these examples illustrate is that before hearers establish the conversational implicatures of an utterance, they are already supplementing the logical form of an utterance with a range of contextually determined meanings (we saw in section 2.6 that this enriched logical form is called an explicature in relevance theory). Language decoding involves the application of linguistic rules and pragmatic processes. During language decoding, pragmatic processes do not always proceed smoothly for children and adults with clinical conditions. Like lexical narrowing, metaphorical extension is a pragmatic process that operates on the logical form of an utterance. It allows words to assume metaphorical meanings in certain contexts of use. In Chapter 5, we encountered a man with right-​hemisphere damage who struggled with this pragmatic process; he was unable to settle on the metaphorical meaning of the word witch in X is a witch, namely, that X is a nasty and evil person. The speaker could not extend or modify the ‘literal’ or linguistically specified meaning of the word to reflect the metaphorical context in which it was used. Sahlén and Nettelbladt (1993) examined a girl called Lena who has semantic-​pragmatic disorder, an earlier diagnostic label for social communication disorder. Lena was asked the question ‘What season comes after autumn?’ to which she replied: ‘Winter and then spring then autumn and then spring’ The start of Lena’s answer was correct –​winter is the season that follows autumn. However, her further listing of seasons suggests that she has not narrowed the meaning of after in the speaker’s question to mean immediately after, as the speaker clearly intended this word to be understood. Lena failed to undertake lexical narrowing of the meaning of this word based on the context in which is used, namely, a question that required

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172  Clinical pragmatics the identification of one specific season, as indicated by the use of what season at the beginning of the question. On some occasions, a fully specified logical form is the meaning of the utterance that a speaker intended. But more often than not, a hearer must undertake further processing of an utterance to establish the speaker’s communicative intention. This is where Grice’s rational cooperative framework with its emphasis on maxims and conversational implicatures comes into effect. There is a mutual expectation on the speaker and the hearer in an exchange –​the speaker contributes truthful, relevant utterances, or at least has the intention to be cooperative in the exchange, while the hearer interprets the speaker’s utterances in such a way as to maintain this assumption of cooperation. Accordingly, when a speaker’s utterance does not appear to be relevant or uses a marked linguistic form (e.g. We’re taking the dog to the V-​E-​T), the hearer interprets this apparent violation of relevance and manner, respectively, as the starting point for further processing of an utterance for its conversational implicatures. It is only when the hearer derives an implicature that provides the best explanation of the speaker’s apparent violation of relevance, manner, or Grice’s other maxims in a particular context that the speaker’s communicative intention may be said to be finally established. In the case of the V-​E-​T utterance, that implicature is that the speaker is trying to avoid distress to a dog that can both hear and recognize the word ‘vet’. A small but growing literature exists on the use of conversational implicatures by children and adults with clinical disorders (see, e.g. Wilson and Bishop [2021] for ASD and Tényi et al. [2002] for schizophrenia). These experimental studies confirm that conversational implicatures are an area of pragmatic impairment for children and adults with these disorders, with both verbal and non-​ verbal implicatures difficult for hearers to recover from a speaker’s utterances. We saw in Chapter 2, for example, how an adult with schizophrenia could not recover the implicature of a speaker’s gesture –​an accentuated smacking of his lips while eating soup. The gesture implicated that the person who was eating the soup thought it was disgusting, even though he said it was delicious. The adult with schizophrenia was unable to recover the non-​ verbal implicature of this gesture, namely, that the speaker was being ironic. Also in Chapter 2, we observed a girl with traumatic brain injury who used an expression that gave rise to a generalized conversational implicature (There was a fort → the fort did not belong to the speaker) only to overturn the implicature in a later utterance (It was our fort). Although this example involved a speaker generating an implicature, rather than a hearer recovering an implicature, it nonetheless illustrates how compromised the use and understanding of implicatures is in individuals with clinical disorders. In this section, we have followed the journey taken by a communicative intention, from its origin in the mind of the speaker to its recovery in the mind of the hearer. Each of the pragmatic difficulties examined in

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Clinical pragmatics  173 earlier chapters was identified with a particular stage on the communication cycle. But in assigning a pragmatic impairment to a stage in the cycle, no mention was made of the cognitive processes through which pragmatic processes are realized. If we are to understand pragmatic difficulties, we must adopt a cognitive approach to how we think about and describe pragmatic phenomena. We embark on that cognitive approach in the next section when we examine the cognitive processes that play an important role in the communication cycle in Figure 8.1.

8.3  Cognition and the communication cycle When we examined the communication cycle, we talked about a wide range of pragmatic processes without thought for the cognitive processes that made these processes possible. But clearly a hearer cannot recover an implicature without resort to the ability to think about the mental states of a speaker; a presupposition depends ultimately on a mental store of background knowledge that the speaker shares with the hearer. From reasoning about mental states, to attending selectively to context –​not everything that we can see and hear should be brought to bear upon the interpretation of an utterance –​cognition weaves its way through pragmatic processes in the communication cycle. To begin to think about the contribution of cognition to these processes, let us imagine a typical exchange between a speaker and hearer, Bill and Fred: Bill: What did you think of that lecture? Fred: I went asleep after 10 minutes. Clearly, Fred’s utterance may be taken to implicate that he thought the lecture was very boring (Fred’s utterance contains a particularized conversational implicature, to use Grice’s terminology). We know from the last section the steps that must be taken by Bill and Fred to produce and recover this implicature. But what we now need to consider are the different cognitive abilities that a typical speaker and hearer must exercise in the type of exchange shown above. Even as he is weighing up what to ask Fred, Bill is already attributing knowledge and beliefs to Fred’s mind. Bill knows that Fred knows what a lecture is (world knowledge). He also knows that Fred knows what the words you and think mean in English (linguistic knowledge); further, Bill knows that Fred knows that Bill’s utterance is a certain type of speech act, namely, a question (pragmatic knowledge). The attribution of these different types of knowledge to Fred’s mind is possible because the speaker and hearer are members of the same cultural and linguistic community. But Bill also attributes a range of other mental states to Fred. Bill believes that Fred has certain thoughts or beliefs about the lecture and that Fred will want to express those beliefs in as truthful and relevant a manner as possible. Indeed, if Bill could not attribute these mental states to Fred, there would be

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174  Clinical pragmatics little point in his asking Fred his question. These latter mental states are inferred by Bill on the basis of certain assumptions he holds about Fred’s role as a rational, cooperative actor in the exchange. Bill is not alone in attributing mental states to his partner in the exchange. Fred is also actively engaged in mental state attribution. He, too, attributes beliefs and knowledge to Bill –​for example, that Bill knows what the words asleep and minutes mean in English (linguistic knowledge) and that Bill believes that Fred’s utterance is intended as a response to Bill’s question (pragmatic knowledge). Fred also expects Bill to be a rational, cooperative actor in the exchange. Certain beliefs follow from this expectation for Fred such as the belief that Bill will interpret Fred’s statement about falling asleep as somehow relevant to Bill’s question about the lecture. If Fred could not attribute this interpretive intention to Bill’s mind, he could not use his utterance to implicate that the lecture was boring. What we have described above is a mutual process of mental state attribution or ToM reasoning between Bill and Fred. But let us think further about this process. There are two important distinctions in the mental states that Bill and Fred attribute to each other’s mind. First, we saw how Bill and Fred attributed mental states such as knowledge and belief to each other’s mind. These are cognitive mental states. But Fred could also have produced an audible sigh before he responded to Bill’s question. This non-​verbal behaviour suggests that Fred may have been exasperated or dismayed by the lecture. These are affective mental states that Bill may attribute to Fred’s mind; they also play a role in the interpretation of Fred’s utterance. Second, some of the mental states that Bill and Fred attribute to each other’s mind are beliefs and knowledge about the world, e.g. a lecture is an activity of a defined period during which students are taught by a lecturer. This type of mental state attribution is first-​order ToM reasoning. But attributing beliefs and knowledge about the world to a speaker’s mind is not enough to recover the implicature of an utterance. For the latter to occur, Bill and Fred must also attribute beliefs and knowledge about other minds to each other, e.g., Fred believes that Bill knows that people fall asleep when they are tired or bored. This is second-​order ToM reasoning. We will examine both distinctions in more detail in section 8.4. We have still only discussed one cognitive capacity –​mental state attribution or ToM –​that plays an important role in the communication cycle. There are a wide range of other cognitive abilities at work during communication. To unpack the linguistic structures in an utterance during language decoding, Bill and Fred must be able to hold linguistic representations in working memory. Memory is also vital during the grammatical encoding of an utterance and the pragmatic enrichment of the logical form of an utterance. Bill and Fred must also undertake planning of their utterances. Planning may occur at an abstract level when a speaker is planning what message to communicate or at a more

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Clinical pragmatics  175 concrete level when there is planning of the movements that are needed to produce speech (or writing and signing). Each of us is exposed to many more stimuli in our environment than we can ever actually process. Bill and Fred must be able to attend to each other’s speech signal, gestures, and facial expressions while suppressing distracting stimuli such as a barking dog or background noise in a restaurant. Rather than attending to everything in their environment, Bill and Fred must display selective attention during the above exchange. Finally, Fred may have some colourful language that he would like to use to describe the lecture in Bill’s question. But he inhibits this language and expresses his negative opinion about the lecture indirectly through the use of implicature. Memory, planning, attention, and inhibition are important cognitive processes known as executive functions. We examine executive functions in more detail in section 8.5.

8.4  Theory of mind So far, we have established that speakers and hearers attribute a range of mental states to each other during communication. These states include cognitive mental states like belief and knowledge and affective mental states like anger and happiness. The content of these mental states can be about the world (a first-​order belief) or about another person’s mind (a second-​order belief). When we examined mental state attribution or ToM in the last section, we did so in the context of implicature –​Bill used ToM to recover the implicature of Fred’s utterance. But in reality, ToM plays an important role in many other aspects of pragmatics, including use of presuppositions, deixis, and disambiguation. In this section, we examine some of these aspects. We also consider the findings of experimental studies that report a relationship between ToM skills and pragmatic behaviours in children and adults with a range of clinical conditions. In Chapter 3, we examined an exchange between an adult (A) and a ten-​year-​old boy (C) with pragmatic disability who was studied by McTear (1985). The exchange is repeated below: T1 A: now do you want to see if you can play some games with me? T2 C: yes T3 A: they’re very easy games um (1.0) T4 C: they are indeed T5 A: well we’ll see We described how the boy’s utterance at T4 presupposed that he knew the games and that he believed they were easy. However, it was argued this presupposition was not warranted given that the boy had not encountered the games before. The boy’s misuse of presupposition was related to the fact that he attributed to his own mind a mental state –​knowledge –​that he could not possibly have in this case. A presupposition only works to

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176  Clinical pragmatics the extent that the speaker and hearer have the same background knowledge and beliefs. If only one party has the mental state in question, as in the above example, then the presupposition simply does not work. The conditions on its use have not been met. The above example demonstrates that ToM is integral to the use of presupposition in language. The speaker who embarks on the use of presupposition must know his hearer’s mental states and his own mental states. For this to occur, he must have intact ToM skills. In the absence of these skills, it is not possible to achieve alignment between the speaker’s belief that X and the hearer’s belief that X and to represent that alignment of beliefs within the presupposition of an utterance. But ToM is also pressed into action during other pragmatic aspects of language. To use deixis appropriately, a speaker and hearer must be able to identify the referent of expressions like there and this in the discourse context. Let us imagine what happens if a speaker fails to introduce such a referent. The speaker presumably knows what he takes the referent of these expressions to be. But he has failed to read the mental states of his hearer and, specifically, his hearer’s lack of knowledge of the referent of these expressions (ignorance is also a mental state). So, the use of deixis fails, not because the speaker does not know the referent of a deictic expression (he does), but because he has failed to detect this lack of knowledge on the part of his hearer and to take the necessary action to correct it –​namely, to introduce a referent into the discourse context. We saw a pragmatic failure of this type in Chapter 4 when we examined a narrative extract produced by a 41-​year-​old woman with traumatic brain injury (Biddle et al., 1996). She was asked to recount an occasion on which she got lost: ‘Well, I’ve gotten lost even coming here. It was probably the second time I came here. I, uh, went down, uh, 27, no 96, I think. And I came up … I remember they said 14 mile. I thought ended. Well, anyways, I just went around and around in circles. And uh … so I got lost there […]’ While the hearer can readily identify the referent of here –​presumably, it is the medical facility where the woman and the examiner are both situated –​the referent of the other instance of spatial deixis in the narrative, the term there, is less easily identified. With a closer reading of the hearer’s mental states –​or better use of ToM –​the speaker could have identified that the referent of this expression was not part of the hearer’s knowledge and that it needed to be introduced into the discourse context. A further pragmatic aspect of language that is dependent on ToM is disambiguation. We produce and comprehend potentially ambiguous language quite often during communication. Words like bank, ball, and chest have more than one sense, and yet utterances that contain these words rarely cause comprehension difficulties. The same is true of syntactically

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Clinical pragmatics  177 ambiguous sentences such as I saw the Eiffel Tower flying over Paris. With so much potentially ambiguous language in use, the question naturally arises of why we are not more often thrown off course by it. The answer lies in ToM. The reason I can hear the sentence about the Eiffel Tower and have no difficulty interpreting it –​it is the speaker that flew over Paris and not the Eiffel Tower –​is that I know that the speaker knows that the Eiffel Tower is a fixed structure and as such it cannot fly. My knowledge of the speaker’s mental states –​ToM in effect –​leads me towards one interpretation of this utterance and away from the other interpretation, even though each is grammatically possible. The same is true of an utterance that contains lexical ambiguity such as The body was found next to the bank. How can I hear the speaker produce this utterance and know that he means the riverbank? Effortless disambiguation is achieved through ToM. I know that the speaker is talking about a story he has just read on the front of the newspaper in his hand; the story carries a photograph of the crime scene at the local river. It is this knowledge of the speaker’s knowledge, or ToM, that helps me establish the speaker’s intended meaning of bank. The clinical literature on ToM is extensive. Studies report ToM impairments in individuals with schizophrenia, ASD, and neurodegenerative disorders, among other conditions. Deficits are found in cognitive and affective domains of ToM. First-​order ToM and second-​ order ToM are both reported to be impaired. Moreover, these ToM deficits remain even when investigators control for IQ and executive functions (see Sprong et al. 2007; Happé and Conway 2016; Poletti et al. 2012 for comprehensive reviews). With ToM so integral to pragmatic aspects of language, it is not surprising that studies should find in addition that clinical populations with ToM deficits also exhibit significant pragmatic impairments (Cummings, 2013). We briefly mention three such studies by way of illustration. Cardillo et al. (2021) examined ToM and two aspects of pragmatic language –​the comprehension of nonliteral language and the ability to make inferences –​in children with ASD and their typically developing peers. Both ToM and pragmatic language were impaired in the children with ASD, with ToM performance significantly related to pragmatic language in these children. Brüne and Bodenstein (2005) studied ToM and proverb comprehension in 31 patients with schizophrenia. ToM performance predicted about 39 per cent of the variance in proverb comprehension in these patients. Monetta et al. (2009) examined first-​and second-​order mental states (ToM) and the ability to interpret communicative intentions underlying verbal irony and lies in 11 patients with Parkinson’s disease without dementia. These patients were significantly less accurate than healthy controls in assigning second-​order beliefs during a story comprehension task. They also had problems with pragmatic interpretation in that they were less able than healthy controls in the study to determine if the final statement in a story should be interpreted as a joke or a lie.

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178  Clinical pragmatics For further discussion of the relationship between ToM deficits and pragmatic impairment, the reader is referred to Cummings (2017).

8.5  Executive functions Communication enlists a range of cognitive skills beyond ToM. Speakers and hearers must plan their utterances, store and process information, and adapt to changes in context. They must be able to initiate utterances, inhibit or suppress utterances, and revise utterances based on self-​ monitoring and feedback. Each of these communicative abilities is only possible through the use of executive functions, a set of cognitive skills that underpin goal-​directed behaviour. Definitions of executive function typically include a list of cognitive skills: The key elements of executive function include (a) anticipation and deployment of attention; (b) impulse control and self-​regulation; (c) initiation of activity; (d) working memory; (e) mental flexibility and utilization of feedback; (f) planning ability and organization; and (g) selection of efficient problem-​solving strategies. (Anderson, 2008, p.4) Executive functions are often treated as some sort of supporting act to the main business of communication, namely, the exchange of communicative intentions. But this view could not be more mistaken. Without executive functions, no complex mental state attribution could take place during communication at all. To understand why, let us consider the different ways in which mental state attribution and communication more generally draws heavily on executive functions. First, there is a sizeable demand on memory when speakers and hearers attribute mental states to each other. A communicative intention is normally only arrived at after speakers and hearers have attributed a range of other mental states to each other. In the exchange in section 8.3, repeated below, Bill can only derive the implicature of Fred’s utterance –​that Fred found the lecture very boring –​after he has attributed a range of other mental states to Fred’s mind, e.g. that Fred knows that boredom can cause people to fall asleep. These mental states must be stored in working memory if Bill is to track them and use them to calculate the implicature of Fred’s utterance: Bill: What did you think of that lecture? Fred: I went asleep after 10 minutes. In section 8.2, we described how communicative intentions are conveyed between speaker and hearer by means of a linguistic code. But for Bill and Fred to process the linguistic structures that make up this code during language encoding and decoding, they must be able to retain these structures in memory. Once again, working memory is not supplementary to mental

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Clinical pragmatics  179 state attribution; rather, this executive function is an integral part of the cognitive apparatus by means of which speakers and hearers exchange communicative intentions during communication. We must not stop with memory. Inhibition or inhibitory control is also a vital executive function during communication. It is the cognitive ability that prevents a speaker converting thoughts and beliefs that are offensive or that violate social norms into communicative intentions. Inhibition can also help us to avoid hasty (and mistaken) interpretations of a speaker’s utterances, to pull back from sending an email correspondence that we may later regret and to suppress the urge to say something unpleasant when we feel angry or upset by others. The important role that inhibition plays in communication is most vividly illustrated when it breaks down. We saw in Chapter 6 how a man with Parkinson’s disease proceeded to talk about his libido when asked by the author to describe the symptoms of his condition. In the same chapter, an adult with schizophrenia, who made disparaging remarks about a doctor’s tie, also displayed reduced inhibition. How many times have we each entertained a similar thought about something that someone has worn? But whereas we were able to ensure that the thought remained unexpressed and hidden in our minds, the adult with schizophrenia displayed no such inhibitory capacity. Utterances do not happen by chance; they must be carefully planned at each stage in the communication cycle. The process of planning communication begins with the speaker deciding what he or she wants to communicate. The speaker must also decide what information to make explicit and what information to leave implicit in the background of an utterance. Information must be presented in a manner that is logical and that observes temporal and causal relations between events in the world. It does not facilitate a hearer’s comprehension, for example, to be told the consequence of an action (e.g. the window broke) before being told the event that brought the consequence into existence (e.g. a boy threw a stone at the window). Each of these steps relates to the way in which information is planned and organized by a speaker so that it may have maximal comprehensibility for a hearer. Like inhibition, the important role that planning and organization plays in communication is best understood when these cognitive skills break down. Below, a 50-​year-​old woman with Long Covid is struggling to narrate the Cinderella story. The extract starts at the point where the stepsisters learn that they will be going to the ball: ‘… the sisters were going to a a ball where they were hoping to meet a prince and (cough) they um (.) they didn’t want Cinderella to go um and anyway hang on where they didn’t want Cinderella to go so erm the (.) the off they went to the ball um and in the meantime the mice helped Cinderella escape by getting the key to where she was locked into and I don’t know how the fairy godmother comes into it

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180  Clinical pragmatics but there was a fairy godmother who erm made her wish come true by er putting her into a beautiful dress …’ This woman had considerable difficulty in organizing her narrative. She states explicitly that she does not know ‘how the fairy godmother comes into it’. She also described how the mice helped Cinderella escape by getting the key. But this event appears at the wrong point in the story. The mice did help Cinderella escape from her room, but only towards the end of the story when the king’s courtier was trying the shoe on all the women who attended the ball. This lack of narrative organization suggests significant difficulty with the planning of the story and is consistent with the executive function difficulties that are a feature of people with Long Covid (Cummings, 2023). Briefly, two other executive functions are integral to communication: attention and utilization of feedback. To comprehend any utterance during communication, we must first be able to attend to it. A hearer cannot afford to be distracted by competing stimuli as there is a risk that in doing so, part of a speaker’s utterance will be overlooked. Put simply, the hearer must exercise selective attention. The speaker must also attend selectively to stimuli as he plans and executes his utterances. There is meaning or significance in his hearer’s facial expressions and so he must attend to them; there is no significance, however, in a vast range of other stimuli to which he is exposed (e.g. birdsong in a local park as he talks to a friend). The poor attentional skills of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are responsible for their widely reported behavioural and communication difficulties in classroom settings, such as not following teacher instructions. Without attention to these instructions, children with ADHD cannot comprehend them. Speakers and hearers must also be able to utilize feedback during communication. A speaker uses feedback such as a hearer’s facial expressions to work out that an utterance has not been understood and must be reformulated. Verbal and non-​verbal feedback from hearers can also lead speakers to modify their volume and speaking rate, change the topic of a conversation, or stop talking altogether. The ability to use feedback to modify behaviour, in communication as much as in other contexts, is an important executive function skill. With executive functions so integral to communication, it is not surprising that individuals with executive function deficits should also have communication disorders. In recognition of the cognitive basis of these disorders, speech-​ language pathologists call them cognitive-​ communication disorders. Cognitive-​ communication disorders are found in children and adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI), in adults with dementia, and in people with right-​ hemisphere damage (RHD). Individuals with these conditions often communicate inadequately despite having relatively intact structural language skills like phonology, syntax and semantics. (It should be noted that aphasia –​a disorder of structural

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Clinical pragmatics  181 language for the most part –​may also be found in TBI, dementia, and RHD.) And so we find speakers with TBI who engage in topic perseveration (repetition), adults with dementia who cannot grasp the implication of a remark even as their phonology and syntax are intact, and individuals with RHD who struggle to comprehend metaphorical language (see the adult with RHD in section 5.3 who could not explain the meaning of the metaphor X is a witch). These communication problems are not caused by impairments of structural language; rather, they are related to deficits in executive functions. We conclude by briefly considering experimental studies that report a relationship between executive function deficits and pragmatic aspects of language. It is worth remarking that not all studies have demonstrated a role for executive function in pragmatic language in individuals with clinical conditions. When Cardillo et al. (2021) studied pragmatic language in children with ASD, only ToM, not executive function, contributed significantly to the ability of these children to comprehend nonliteral language and draw inferences. Many other clinical studies, however, have found that executive function plays a significant role in pragmatic aspects of language. Udhnani et al. (2020) examined the relationship between executive function, structural language, and pragmatic language in children with Down syndrome or ASD. Executive function predicted pragmatic language in children with Down syndrome but predicted pragmatic and structural language in children with ASD. Save-​Pédebos et al. (2016) examined pragmatic aspects of language and executive functions in 40 children who underwent hemispherotomy for the treatment of hemispheric epileptic syndromes. The children were examined at a mean age of 12.8 years. Pragmatic language skills were assessed using the French version of the Children’s Communication Checklist (CCC) (Bishop, 1998; Maillart, 2003). The French version of the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) questionnaire (Gioia et al., 2000; Fournet et al., 2015) was used to examine executive functions. The scores obtained by these children on several CCC subscales, including use of context, inappropriate initiations and interest, were dependent on executive functions. A similar relationship between executive functioning and pragmatics has been demonstrated in individuals with adult-​onset conditions. Li et al. (2017) examined performance in an irony task in 42 patients with schizophrenia. Three subcomponents of executive function –​inhibition, updating (memory) and switching (mental flexibility) –​were also examined. The performance of the patients on the irony task was impaired relative to that of 42 healthy control participants. Importantly for our present purposes, irony scores correlated with two subcomponents of executive function (viz., inhibition and updating). Inhibition was the best predictor of performance on the irony task, accounting for 29.9 per cent of the variance in irony comprehension in the patients with schizophrenia. Bosco et al. (2018) examined the ability to produce and comprehend sincere, deceitful and ironic communicative acts in linguistic and extralinguistic

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182  Clinical pragmatics modes in 35 adults with TBI. Executive function and ToM tasks were also administered to these adults and 35 healthy control participants. The comprehension and production of all pragmatic phenomena were compromised in the adults with TBI. A multiple regression analysis was undertaken. The percentage of explained variance in the comprehension of linguistic and extralinguistic irony increased significantly in a model that included cognitive flexibility, working memory and planning.

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This chapter identified the pragmatic impairments encountered in earlier chapters with specific points of breakdown in the communication cycle. This exercise allowed readers to see that pragmatic disorders do not only arise at the level of language encoding and decoding but that they can also be related to motor and sensory deficits. A child or an adult with hearing loss may be unable to perceive subtle intonational cues that permit a statement to be distinguished from a question or a warning. Pragmatic processes are present at every stage in the communication cycle but so too are a range of cognitive skills. If speakers cannot plan utterances, hold linguistic structures in memory, and attribute mental states to hearers, then no pragmatic communication is possible. The chapter described how a special type of mental state, a communicative intention, is integral to communication between speakers and hearers. But while an important mental state, communicative intentions are not the only mental state that speakers and hearers attribute to each other’s minds during communication. A wide range of cognitive and affective mental states play a role in utterance interpretation; we are able to understand these mental states because we have a theory of other people’s minds (so-​called theory of mind). ToM has cognitive and affective components; the mental states that we attribute to others can be about the world (first-​order ToM) or about the mental states of others (second-​ order ToM). All these forms of mental state attribution play a role in utterance interpretation. Executive functions are a set of cognitive skills that are essential for goal-​directed behaviour. These skills include mental flexibility, initiation, planning, and inhibition. Executive functions also play an important role in utterance interpretation. ToM and executive functions are impaired in many children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Experimental studies have found that deficits in these cognitive abilities are significantly correlated with pragmatic language impairments.

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Clinical pragmatics  183

Suggestions for further reading (1) Cummings, L. (2009) Clinical Pragmatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This volume examines clinical pragmatics as a separate sub-​discipline of pragmatics. It provides a wide-​ranging survey of pragmatic impairments in children and adults. The application of pragmatic theories (e.g. relevance theory) to the study of pragmatic disorders is examined. The cognitive substrates of pragmatic disorders –​ToM and executive functions –​are discussed. How speech-​language pathologists assess and treat pragmatic disorders is also addressed. (2) Cummings, L. (2015) Pragmatic and Discourse Disorders: A Workbook, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This volume contains structured exercises (with answers) on all the conditions featured in this book and many more. Each exercise is based on authentic linguistic data from clients so that readers can become acquainted with how pragmatic disorders present in real-​life contexts. A glossary provides definitions of all key terms used in the volume. (3) Cummings, L. (ed.) (2017) Research in Clinical Pragmatics, Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. This edited volume contains 23 chapters organized into 5 parts. The volume addresses pragmatic impairment across the full lifespan. It includes conditions like hearing loss, visual impairment, and stuttering and cluttering that are rarely examined in relation to pragmatics alongside conditions like schizophrenia that are more often addressed in this context. Issues relating to the management of pragmatic disorders–​ assessment and intervention–​are also examined.

Questions (1) PART A: We described in section 8.2 how pragmatic processes –​and pragmatic disorders –​can occur at any stage of the communication cycle. Identify each of the following scenarios with one of the stages shown in Figure 8.1: (a) John is ten years old and has developmental language disorder. His impaired language means that he cannot produce the grammatical structures in a conventional indirect request such as Can you close the door?

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184  Clinical pragmatics (b) Betty is 70 years old and has early-​stage Alzheimer’s disease. Although she can still communicate quite well with family members, they report that she has difficulty understanding when they are being ironic in conversation. (c) Tom was born with genetic hearing loss. Although he has received cochlear implants, he often cannot perceive intonational features of speech that are important to the identification of speech acts used by speakers. (d) Simon is 57 years old and has chronic schizophrenia. He displays poor topic management skills in conversation primarily because he selects topics that are inappropriate or of no interest to his listener. (e) Bobby is 34 years old and sustained a head injury in a motorbike accident 6 months ago. He has speech disorder following his accident and struggles to coordinate movement of his articulators adequately to use stress appropriately. It frequently leads to misunderstanding of his utterances on the part of his family members. PART B: We also described in section 8.2 how some pragmatic problems are related to deficits in language (secondary pragmatic disorder) while others are the result of impairments of pragmatic competence or knowledge (primary pragmatic disorder). For each of the following scenarios, indicate if the pragmatic disorder is primary or secondary in nature: (a) Mandy is 15 years old and has intellectual deficits as part of Down syndrome. Her expressive language is markedly delayed. She is unable to use a number of linguistic constructions that trigger presuppositions, including cleft constructions and counterfactual conditionals. (b) Tony is 45 years old and has aphasia following a stroke. Language testing shows that his receptive grammar is impaired. He cannot comprehend utterances that contain inversion of the subject pronoun and auxiliary verb. Tony also struggles to comprehend certain indirect requests (e.g. Can you tell me the time?). (c) Sophie is nine years old and has social communication disorder. She has an excellent lexical repertoire for her age and can use and comprehend complex syntax. However, her communication is considered to be ‘odd’ or ‘bizarre’ by her teacher who reports that she uses words and sentences that are overly formal when conversing with her peers. (d) Jack has right-​ hemisphere damage sustained in an accident at work. His structural language skills are intact, yet he communicates inadequately. He produces verbose, tangential language, and struggles to comprehend metaphors and idioms.

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Clinical pragmatics  185 (e) Michael is eight years old. He has developmental language disorder and receives regular speech and language therapy at his school. His poor expressive language skills limit the range of speech acts that he can use during communication with his peers. (2) A wide range of cognitive skills underpins communication. Speakers and hearers must attribute mental states to each other in order to produce and interpret utterances. This process is at all possible because we each have a theory of other minds (so-​ called ToM). But speakers and hearers must also be able to store information in memory, plan their utterances, attend to salient linguistic and other stimuli, and inhibit inappropriate utterances. These skills involve executive functions. Each of the following scenarios depicts a speaker using a pragmatic language skill. For each scenario, (a) identify the pragmatic skill in question (the underlined words are a clue), and (b) indicate if the skill you have identified involves ToM or executive function skills: (a) Molly wants Sam to help her complete her tax forms, a task he has done several times before for her. She utters: Can you help me with my tax forms again? (b) Mike is telling a work colleague about a dinner party he attended the night before. He was talking to two women, Samantha and Pauline. He then went on to say: It turns out she was my mother’s best friend at school. (c) Mark has written a story about his summer holiday in Spain for his teacher. It is poorly organized, with events occurring in the wrong sequence or order. For example, he reported having an argument with his sister on the flight back from Spain before describing what he and has family did on holiday. (d) Chloe asks her friend Susan if she will go to the cinema with her. Susan replies: I must finish my term paper. The implicature of Susan’s utterance is that she does not want to go to the cinema. For this implicature to work, Susan must know that Chloe knows that it is not possible to attend the cinema and finish the term paper. (e) Pete and Bill are visiting a contemporary art exhibition. Bill does not appreciate contemporary art and is only with Pete to keep him company. Pete asks Bill what he thinks of the collection. Bill responds: It’s absolutely charming! Pete is attentive and notes the intonation used in Bill’s reply. Pete also observes Bill rolling his eyes. Pete concludes that Bill is being sarcastic. (3) Hearers attribute cognitive and affective mental states to the minds of speakers during utterance interpretation. For each scenario below, indicate if the hearer has attributed a cognitive mental state or an

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186  Clinical pragmatics affective mental state to the mind of the speaker during utterance interpretation: (a) Jack says to his friend Tony ‘I would LOVE to eat here again’ after they have both endured a poor meal in a restaurant. Tony uses his knowledge of Jack’s mental states –​specifically, that Jack knows their meal was poor –​to infer that Jack is being ironic. (b) Martha asks Ted if he would like to go to the cinema with her. Looking happy and relaxed, Ted says ‘Do I have to?’ Martha concludes that Ted is being humorous and that he is willing to go to the cinema with her. (c) Paula and Sue are at a late night dinner party. Paula asks Sue if she would like more coffee. Sue replies ‘I have to finish my essay when I get home’. Paula concludes that Sue wants more coffee. She arrives at this conclusion because she knows that Sue knows that coffee contains caffeine, that caffeine is a stimulant, and that by drinking coffee she will be able to stay awake long enough to complete her essay. (d) Mike is trying to decide if he should go to a live music performance on Friday night. His best friend Tom tells him ‘Big Billy will be there’. Mike reads the worried expression on Tom’s face, interprets what he says as a warning, and decides not to attend the music performance. (e) Jill asks her mother if she will look after her two children while she is at work. Jill knows that her mother wants to go shopping instead with her best friend. Jill’s mother says ‘Oh, I’m sure your father would love to spend the day with them’. Jill interprets her mother’s response as a rejection of her request.

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Answers

Chapter 1 (1)

(2)

Extract A: The man’s wife issues a command (a directive) to her husband to get him to tell the author about his work in the library at Queens. Extract B: The man’s wife poses two interrogatives to her husband. Neither interrogative is an information-​ seeking question as the wife knows the answers to both questions. She is instead using these questions to get her husband to tell the author about the next river cruise that they are planning (a directive). Extract C: The man’s wife is using a statement to issue a denial (an assertive). (a) The utterances in T1, T9, and T11 have the grammatical form of interrogatives. T1 has the illocutionary force of a request (a directive). T9 and T11 have the illocutionary force of questions (also directives). (b) HW comprehends the illocutionary acts that the utterances in T1, T9, and T11 are performing. (c) The utterances in T3 and T5 are questions (directives) even though they have the grammatical form of statements. HW understands that the interviewer is using these statements to ask questions. (d) The condition is that HW is able to tell the interviewer about the problems that HW has experienced. This is a preparatory condition on the performance of a request (directive). The reason why the satisfaction of this preparatory condition is not guaranteed in this case is that HW has a language disorder due to a stroke and may lack the ability to give the interviewer the requested information.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177562-10

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188 Answers (e) In T14, HW is performing an assertive. HW consistently produces assertives throughout the exchange because this speaker’s utterances take the form of statements that are conveying information to the interviewer. (3) In T3, the adult abandons an indirect speech act in favour of a direct speech act, namely, an imperative that is used to issue a command (a directive). The adult calculated, correctly as it turned out, that the child with pragmatic impairment would more readily comprehend the illocutionary force of a direct speech act.

Chapter 2 (1) In extract 1, the child with ASD produces two utterances which must be enriched by the researcher to arrive at a complete proposition. The first of these utterances is a form of ellipsis: I want to. The researcher may correctly expand this utterance into I want to [stay in a hotel] which is an appropriate and meaningful enrichment of this utterance in context. So, the child with ASD has succeeded in producing an utterance on this occasion which can undergo enrichment by the hearer. The same is not true of the second utterance in bold in extract 1. In the utterance it seems that they didn’t agree, the researcher is likely to assign friends as the referent of they when, in fact, the child with ASD intends this pronoun to refer to mom and dad. On this occasion, the child with ASD has not produced an utterance that can be pragmatically enriched along correct lines by the researcher. In extract 2, the child with ASD is asked by the researcher if his iguana was difficult to catch. After indicating that this was the case, the child uses ellipsis: but uh I wasn’t. The only expansion of this utterance available to the researcher is but I wasn’t [difficult to catch] which is not meaningful in the context of this exchange. Once again, the child has failed to produce an utterance that can be pragmatically enriched along correct lines by the researcher. (2) Extract 1: Adam reports two events –​going to his cousin’s house and returning home from snow tubing –​in the incorrect temporal order. He reports going to his cousin’s house first even though this happened after returning home from snow tubing. Adam does not observe the Manner maxim to be orderly and report events in the order in which they occur. Extract 2: The adult’s response is under-​informative. He has not observed the first Quantity maxim to make his contribution as informative as is required. Extract 3: The adult’s response is over-​ informative. He has not observed the second Quantity maxim to not make his contribution more informative than is required.

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Answers  189 Extract 4: The adult first states that he puts deodorant on every morning and then contradicts himself by saying that he puts it on every night. In producing contradictory or misleading information, the adult has not observed the first Quality maxim to not say that which he believes to be false. (3) The expressions in a nutshell, very briefly, and to make a long story short indicate that Nancy is aware that she must not make her contribution more informative than is required (second Quantity maxim).

Chapter 3 (1) The adult with Parkinson’s disease in extract 1 takes it for granted that the author will be able to identify the referent of the pronoun he in T8. However, the referent Trimprint is not part of the hearer’s background knowledge. Consequently, the hearer must ask the speaker in T9 who had the contract. In extract 2, the adult with progressive supranuclear palsy takes it for granted that the author has sufficient background knowledge to understand the meaning of the potentially ambiguous noun phrase the five boards in T2. This phrase could mean either health boards or education boards. The author’s question in T7 reveals that the adult’s assumptions about her level of background knowledge are mistaken, and that she cannot achieve disambiguation of this phrase. The adult’s definite description the five boards presupposes not only that there are five boards but that the author will know what these boards are. Only the first of these presuppositions is valid in this context. (2) Part A: ‘started’ (change-​of-​state verb): the speaker was not weird prior to September 20. ‘the apartment above me’ (definite description): there is an apartment above the speaker. ‘forgot’ (implicative verb): the speaker should have mentioned her friend in her will. ‘my best friend of 30 years’ (possessive): the speaker has a best friend of 30 years. ‘trusted more than my family’ (comparative): the speaker trusts her family, albeit not very much. Part B: The question presupposes that the woman with schizophrenia has experienced recovery from Covid-​ 19. By asking ‘What recovery?’, this woman is challenging the presupposition of the question. (3) The hearer undertakes accommodation by extending his or her mental representation of the narrative to include the following five propositions: (i) the weather was about to change; (ii) the farmers

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190 Answers had difficulties; (iii) there was a barn and a barn door; (iv) there was a local village; (v) all the animals were returned to the barn.

Chapter 4 (1) Part A: Tony uses proper names instead of pronouns to achieve person deixis. This can be seen in the utterances Judy talk mummy and Tony is sick, where Tony uses Judy and Tony in place of you and I, respectively. There is also an instance of pronoun reversal in Can I talk to mummy? where Tony uses the first-​person pronoun I instead of the second-​person pronoun you. That Tony’s teacher Judy recognizes this as an instance of pronoun reversal is suggested by her response What do I do to talk to mummy? Part B: When a mother says to her child Sally must go to bed now, the mother is using a proper noun deictically to refer to her daughter as the addressee of the utterance. This example involves person deixis and social deixis. It is because of the social relationship between Sally and her mother –​namely, that the mother is in a caregiver role to Sally –​that it is possible for the mother to refer to her daughter through use of a proper noun rather than the pronoun you. (2) Part A: Abraham’s teacher is not present during snow tubing. Accordingly, Abraham must recreate the context within which snow tubing takes place for his teacher to be able to establish the referents of the deictic terms he uses. However, he fails to do this adequately. This is most clearly illustrated if we consider Abraham’s use of place deixis. In the utterances it pulls you back up and you tell my parents from up there, it is not possible for his teacher to establish the referents of the underlined words, which are a direction and location, respectively. The third-​person pronouns in he spins you and they have a machine also appear to be deictic and refer to, or pick out, people who are involved in snow tubing. But it is also not possible based on Abraham’s explanation to establish the referents of these instances of person deixis. Combined, Abraham’s use of place and person deixis makes it difficult for his teacher to understand his account of snow tubing. Part B: Abraham is making non-​deictic use of the pronoun you in his explanation of snow tubing. (3) The boy who makes the phone call to invite his friend to the movie is the speaker who produces the direct reported speech in lines (2) and (3). The boy’s location is the deictic centre of this direct reported speech. To view the movie, the boy and his friend need to move away from their respective locations towards a third location. Accordingly, the boy who produces the direct reported speech needs to use the verb go, instead of come, to indicate that movement away from his location and the location of his friend towards a third location is necessary to view the movie.

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Answers  191

Chapter 5 (1)

(2)

(a) Actual expression =​Davey carries the world on his shoulders Standard expression =​carry the weight of the world on one’s shoulders Reason for variation =​learning (b) Actual expression =​I’m playing against the wind Standard expression =​I’m sailing against the wind Reason for variation =​adaptation to context (the speaker is talking about a game and so substitutes the word sailing with a word that is semantically related to game, namely, playing) (c) Actual expression =​a handshake Standard expression =​a golden handshake Reason for variation =​learning (d) Actual expression =​I had the blinkers on Standard expression =​I was wearing blinkers Reason for variation =​paraphrasing (e) Actual expression =​two-​edged thing Standard expression =​double-​edged sword Reason for variation =​learning

(i) part (e): if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours part (g): I wouldn’t break my heart part (j): try your hand at doing something part (o): it didn’t even cross my mind that much (ii) In utterance (h), the speaker uses the idiom push the boat out to mean to overdo work and other events that cause stress. For most speakers of English, this idiom means to engage in lavish spending such as in the utterance Mike pushed the boat out for his daughter’s wedding. (iii) The utterances that contain idioms relating to emotions are (f) scared stiff of falling, and (l) scare the wits out of me. The emotion that these idioms have in common is fear. (iv) Success –​utterance (a) hit the jackpot Failure –​utterance (k) miss the mark Immediacy –​utterance (i) out of the blue Extended duration –​utterance (n) donkey’s years (v) The use of got the T-​shirt in utterance (c) suggests that speakers are analysing the individual parts of idioms and working out which parts convey the central meaning of the idiom. The parts of the idiom that are peripheral to this meaning are then omitted. The phrase got the T-​shirt captures the experience of visiting a tourist destination or attending a special event where T-​shirts

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192 Answers

(3)

are on sale. Speakers who use this idiom are effectively saying they have already had a particular experience and do not need to repeat it. (a) Metaphor =​WORK TASK as JIGSAW Comparison: Puzzling how to fit jigsaw pieces together → Item with parts that needs repair (b) Metaphor =​BODY as CLOCK Comparison: Clock mechanism stops working → Body stops functioning (c) Metaphor =​DISEASE as ROAD JOURNEY Comparison: Obstruction on road requiring detour → Disease requiring different course in life

Chapter 6 (1) In (A), the threat to the man’s negative face can be characterized as follows: the author is encouraging him to discontinue a topic that it is easy for him to discuss –​his work on cancer –​and to begin talking about holidays, a topic that is possibly of less interest to him. The imposition in this shift of topic is compounded by the fact that the speaker suffers from Covid-​related fatigue. He has already expended considerable energy detailing what his medical work involves and is now being asked by the author to continue talking about something else. The author attempts to mitigate this threat to the man’s negative face in three ways. First, she signals that she is aware that this is a topic shift for the man (a slightly different track) which carries an inherent risk that it may not be fully welcomed by him. Second, she personalizes her utterance to the man by using his first name. Third, she reinforces this personal dimension by including for you. In (B), the threat to the man’s negative face can be characterized as follows: the author is asking him to name pictures that are of acceptable, but not excellent, quality. There is not just an imposition from the task itself, but also from the fact that the naming exercise was presented at the end of a long session of testing, which was likely to have left the man severely fatigued. The author attempts to mitigate this threat to the man’s negative face in three ways. First, she uses the performative verb apologize to signal explicitly that her utterance has the illocutionary force of an apology. Second, she accepts that the quality of the pictures could be better but explains that this is the available artwork. Third, she concludes by expressing some regret that the situation is not otherwise through her use of the word unfortunately.

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Answers  193 (2) (a) avoid disagreement (b) The psychiatrist characterized his view as just one theory. (c) Three linguistic strategies: (i) the woman interrupted the psychiatrist; (ii) the woman repeated one of her statements; and (iii) the woman placed stress on the word ‘are’ (they are hearing things) (d) The woman uses you to personalize her remarks to the psychiatrist (you’re saying). When the psychiatrist uses you, it is a generic personal pronoun that has the meaning of ‘one’ (you could look at). This generic form of the pronoun allows him to distance himself from a claim that the woman appears to find problematic. (e) The psychiatrist resorts to using a question. (3) The man’s response protects his face first and foremost. He is saying that the problem does not rest with his recall; rather, the task is so impossibly difficult that even a ‘recording machine’ could not remember it. But his response also protects the author’s face. He begins his response by personalizing it to the author (if you). But he recognizes that this is threatening to the author’s face and revises it to make the ‘recording machine’ the subject –​a recording machine couldn’t remember that. His use of humour in his utterance also reduces the threat to the author’s face. (4) By stating he’s not a DIY man, the man’s wife is making the author aware of a factor that she believes is at least partly responsible for his difficulty in naming a spanner. While this remark may serve to protect the face of her husband from any embarrassment resulting from his inability to name a common tool, its primary purpose is to protect the wife’s face. She later admitted to the author that she was worried that her husband was developing dementia as part of his condition. By dismissing his naming difficulty as something related to a lack of DIY experience, she was trying to lessen the threat of his evident cognitive difficulties for her own face (sadly, many people still register cognitive impairment in a family member as something to feel embarrassed about). If her primary purpose had been to protect her husband’s face, she would have been more likely to use you’re not a DIY man.

Chapter 7 (1) In exchange A, the man with Parkinson’s disease is unable to answer the author’s questions about the programmes that he likes on the Discovery channel. This difficulty may reflect memory problems or a word-​finding difficulty. In T4, he asks his wife what the programmes are called. She responds with Quest in T5 and the man repeats Quest in T6 as confirmation. In T7 the man’s wife undertakes topic-​shading

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194 Answers when she moves the topic from a programme about big machines to why the man likes big machines. This is more familiar territory for the man and, as such, is likely to assist him in contributing to topic development. The man’s wife provides a clear directive to him in T7 to develop the topic by telling the author what he served his time as and why he is interested in big machines. In T8, the man responds that he was a fitter. In T10, he provides more specific information when he says he was a mechanical fitter. Finally, in T12, the man reports that he made parts for turbines. The man’s topic-​extending utterances at T8, T10, and T12 are a direct consequence of his wife’s facilitation of his topic development in T7. In exchange B, the author asks the man with progressive supranuclear palsy what type of work he did before he retired. He responds in T4 that he was a policeman. He then went on in T6 to try and state when he joined the police service. Cognizant of the man’s cognitive difficulties, his wife does not wait to be asked before she provides the year 1986 in T7. Through his repetition of the year in T8, the man can be seen to make a topic-​extending turn, albeit one that is first established for him by his wife. In T10, when the man tries to say when he retired from the police, his wife once again does not wait to be asked for the year by her husband. Instead, she pre-​empts his difficulty in responding and provides the year 2001 on his behalf. The man again contributes to topic development by repeating the year that his wife supplied. In exchange C, the author asks a man with Parkinson’s disease about his earlier career in engineering. In T2 and T4 the man produces topic-​extending turns when he says that he cut and folded metal and made cabinets and handrails. As a familiar communication partner, the man’s wife knows that she will need to play an active role in his topic development on account of his cognitive difficulties. And so, at T6 she produces a single-​word cue to elicit bank tills, another item that the man produced as an engineer. But the man appears unable to contribute additional information about the bank tills that he made. In T9, his wife utters hydraulic tanks with the aim of facilitating his further topic development. In T10, the man appears unaware of what she has said, prompting his wife to repeat hydraulic tanks in T11. In T12, the man repeats hydraulic tanks. This not only confirms that he has understood what his wife has said, but also allows him to make a topic-​extending turn, albeit one that his wife established for him. (2) (a)  The two instances where it appears the narrator has ‘leapt’ over an episode are first, when he moves from describing how Cinderella was treated as a skivvy to stating that the fairy godmother arrived at Cinderella’s house and second, when he describes how the sisters fought over the shoe and then says that Cinderella got back with the prince. The first ‘leap’ skipped

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Answers  195 over the king deciding to host a ball so that his son could find someone to marry, invitations being sent to all eligible women, and Cinderella’s stepmother telling her she is not permitted to attend. The second ‘leap’ skipped over Cinderella trying on the shoe, the shoe fitting her, and the royal aide reporting to the king that the mystery woman had been identified. (b) Introduction of new character into the story: use of an indefinite noun phrase in ‘a fairy godmother arrived in the house’. Use of presupposition to represent background information: the iterative expression in ‘the prince (3:67) wanted to meet this girl again’ triggers the presupposition that the prince had met this woman before. (c) The narrator of the Cinderella story in section 7.4 did not state what would happen if Cinderella did not return by midnight and did not state that a search would be undertaken to identify the owner of the shoe. Both additional pieces of information were contributed by the man with progressive supranuclear palsy in his Cinderella story. Their presence suggests that this man is better able to couch the events in the story in a network of goals, consequences and purposes that confer global coherence on narration. (d) There is correct sequencing of the events in the story. (e) The conventional opening and closing sequences in a fictional narrative are once upon a time and lived happily ever after. Only the latter closing sequence is evident in the narrative of the man with progressive supranuclear palsy.

Chapter 8 (1) PART A (a) language encoding; (b) communicative intention; (c) sensory processing and speech perception; (d) communicative intention; (e) motor programming and motor execution PART B (a) secondary; (b) secondary; (c) primary; (d) primary; (e) secondary (2) (a) The iterative expression again triggers the presupposition that Sam has helped Molly with her tax forms before. To make appropriate use of this presupposition, as Molly has done, requires that she first establish what Sam knows. This involves theory of mind. (b) Mike used the pronoun she which could refer to either Samantha or Pauline in this context. He has not set up in the mind of his work colleague a unique referent of this pronoun. This suggests some difficulty in using theory of mind.

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196 Answers (c) Mike has not planned his narrative carefully, with the result that events are poorly organized. This suggests some difficulty with executive functions. (d) Susan must attribute certain knowledge to Chloe’s mind in order for her implicature to work –​the knowledge that someone cannot simultaneously attend the cinema and finish a term paper. This involves theory of mind. (e) Pete attends to several stimuli in arriving at his assessment of the sarcasm of Bill’s response. Pete notes Bill’s use of intonation. He also observes that Bill rolls his eyes. Further, Pete retrieves from memory the fact that Bill does not like contemporary art. Pete’s ability to attend selectively to these features of Bill’s behaviour and retrieve information from memory allows him to draw the conclusion that Bill is being sarcastic. Attention and memory are executive functions. (3) (a) cognitive mental state (knowledge) (b) affective mental state (happiness) (c) cognitive mental state (knowledge) (d) affective mental state (fear or anxiety) (e) cognitive mental state (desire)

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Glossary

Affective mental state:  A mental state the content of which is an emotion like happiness, fear, or disgust. Affective mental states may be established through the processing of facial expressions and linguistic utterances (e.g. I am really unhappy today). An ability to attribute affective mental states to another person’s mind is called affective theory of mind. Agrammatism: A feature of non-​ fluent aphasia (hence, term ‘agrammatic’ aphasia) in which the speaker retains content words but omits function words and inflectional morphemes from his or her speech; verbal output has the appearance of a telegram, e.g. ‘Man … walk … dog’ for The man is walking the dog. AIDS dementia complex:  Also referred to as AIDS-​related dementia, AIDS encephalopathy, and HIV encephalopathy. The condition is characterized by a progressive deterioration in cognitive function, including language, which is accompanied by motor abnormalities and behavioural changes. The association of cognitive changes with motor and behavioural signs is denoted by the word ‘complex’. Alcohol-​related brain damage:  An umbrella term that covers the various psychoneurological/​cognitive conditions associated with long-​term alcohol misuse and related vitamin deficiencies. The term includes Wernicke-​Korsakoff syndrome at the more extreme end as well as less severe frontal lobe dysfunctions. Alzheimer’s disease:  A neurodegenerative disease that is the most frequent cause of dementia. Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles develop in the brains of AD sufferers. Anaphoric reference:  A form of cohesion in which there is reference to a preceding textual unit (known as the antecedent). In the following example, the pronoun it in the second sentence refers to the noun phrase a red dress in the first sentence: Mary bought a red dress. It was very expensive. Anomia:  The inability of an adult with aphasia to access the spoken names of objects and concepts despite having the articulatory skills to produce these names if they could be retrieved. If this inability occurs

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198 Glossary alongside normal comprehension and fluent sentence production, then the patient is described as having anomic aphasia. Antecedent:  A noun phrase which may be referred to by a personal pronoun (Sally saw the red dress and liked it), a reflexive pronoun (Brian washed himself), or a relative pronoun (the vase which you dropped) which appear after it in the sentence. Aphasia:  An acquired language disorder in which the expression and/​or reception of language (spoken, written, and signed) is compromised. Aphasia can be broadly classified as fluent and non-​fluent types. Fluent aphasia is further subdivided into Wernicke’s, anomic, conduction, and transcortical sensory aphasia. Non-​fluent aphasia is further subdivided into Broca’s and transcortical motor aphasia. A further non-​fluent aphasia –​global aphasia –​is characterized by severe impairment of all language functions. Articulation:  The production of speech sounds through the coordinated action of articulators such as the lips, tongue, jaw, and velum. Articulation is impaired in motor speech disorders like dysarthria and apraxia of speech. Asperger’s syndrome:  A neurodevelopmental disorder in which there are impairments of social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities. Asperger’s syndrome was included as a disorder separate from autism for the first time in 1994 in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Since the publication of the fifth edition of DSM in 2013, the diagnostic label ‘Asperger’s disorder’ has been superseded by the label ‘autism spectrum disorder’. Attention:  A state of focused awareness on a subset of the perceptual information available in the environment. Attention is an executive function which is mediated by the frontostriatal circuit in the brain. There are different types of attention. For example, selective attention is the differential processing of multiple sources of information that are available simultaneously. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder:  A disorder that is diagnosed on the basis of symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-​ impulsivity; there are three main subtypes of ADHD: a combined type; a predominantly inattentive type; a predominantly hyperactive-​ impulsive type. Autism spectrum disorder: A neurodevelopmental disorder in which there are persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities. These symptoms must be present in the early developmental period and cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Bipolar disorder:  Formerly known as manic depression, this is a psychiatric disorder in which the patient’s mood alters between manic episodes (characterized by euphoria, restlessness, poor judgement,

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Glossary  199 and risk-​ taking behaviour), depressive episodes (characterized by depression, anxiety, and hopelessness), and episodes of normal mood (known as euthymia). Central nervous system:  The part of the nervous system that consists of the brain and spinal cord. Cerebrovascular accident:  This is the medical term for a stroke. CVAs may be caused by a blood clot (embolus) in one of the blood vessels in the brain or leading to the brain (embolic stroke) or by a haemorrhage (haemorrhagic stroke) in one of these vessels. Cochlear implant:  A surgically implanted electronic device which is coupled to external components and provides useful hearing to children and adults with severe-​ to-​ profound sensorineural hearing loss. Cognitive-​communication disorder: The term applied to any communication disorder which is related to cognitive deficits. The language and communication impairments of clients with traumatic brain injury and right-​hemisphere damage are described as cognitive-​ communication disorders. Coherence:  Although we can all recognize the difference between coherent and incoherent discourse, there is no widely accepted definition of coherence. Coherence may be defined as the extent to which spoken and written discourse holds together or makes sense as a unity. There is no specific set of linguistic features which confers coherence on a text. Proposed features include the use of adjacency pairs in conversation and discourse markers at the beginning and end of topic digressions. Cohesion: See cohesive device Cohesive device:  Certain grammatical and lexical features of sentences can link them to other sentences of a text. Forms of cohesion include anaphoric reference (e.g. Paul likes marathons. He completes one every year), substitution (e.g. Jane bought an expensive sofa. It was the one in the shop window), lexical reiteration (e.g. The man and woman left the party early. The man was tired), and ellipsis (e.g. Would anyone like a drink? I would). Communicative competence:  The body of knowledge that enables speakers and hearers to make use of, and interpret, linguistic utterances and non-​ verbal behaviours (e.g. gesture) in a communicative exchange. Communicative competence involves complex judgements about how utterances are used in context. A speaker can have intact linguistic competence and still communicate inadequately because of compromised communicative competence. Communicative intention:  A mental state that has significance in utterance interpretation. A hearer cannot be said to have understood a speaker’s utterance unless he is able to establish the communicative intention which motivated the speaker to produce it.

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200 Glossary Content word:  Words that convey most meaning in a sentence. Content words belong to open classes like noun (e.g. table, holiday), verb (e.g. play, run), adjective (e.g. tasty, solid), and adverb (e.g. fast, hastily). Context:  Any aspect of a language user’s knowledge, physical environment and social relationships to others may shape the production and interpretation of utterances and form part of their context. These aspects include physical context (e.g. setting of a conversation), social context (e.g. social standing of speaker and hearer), epistemic context (background knowledge of speaker and hearer), and linguistic context (e.g. preceding utterances in a conversation). Conventional implicature:  A type of implied meaning that is attached by convention to particular lexical items. For example, the word ‘but’ in the utterance ‘Frank is overweight but healthy’ generates an implicature to the effect that it was not expected that Frank would be healthy. Conversational repair:  Trouble sources can arise during conversation and need to be repaired by participants. Repair work can be initiated either by the speaker who is responsible for a trouble source (self-​ initiated repair) or by the hearer (other-​initiated repair). The speaker who utters I want a new dress, um hat for the wedding, undertakes a self-​ initiated repair that is unprompted by the hearer. Repair work is often achieved collaboratively, especially in clients with neurodegenerative disorders. Cooperative principle:  A principle proposed by Grice to capture certain rational expectations between participants in verbal and non-​verbal exchanges. This principle is the basis upon which speakers and hearers can derive implied meanings from utterances in conversation. Corticobasal degeneration:  A neurodegenerative disease that is caused by the accumulation of abnormal protein. The disease is characterized by asymmetric cortical dysfunction that often affects motor control of a limb, along with executive dysfunction, rigidity, a jerky postural tremor, myoclonus, dystonia, and a gait disorder. Speech may be compromised as a result of apraxia and non-​fluent aphasia. Cue/​Cueing:  The delivery of a verbal or non-​verbal prompt to elicit a response (usually a target word) from a client. In order to elicit the target word ‘watch’ from an adult with aphasia, for example, a speech-​language pathologist may produce the initial sound of the word (phonemic cue), may say ‘This is the thing you use to tell the time’ (semantic cue) or may gesture looking at a watch on her wrist (gestural cue). Deictic expression:  Linguistic expressions can be used to ‘point’ to aspects of spatiotemporal, social, and discourse context. There are five types of deixis: personal (I want to leave early), social (Wie heiβen

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Glossary  201 Sie?), temporal (Sally departed last week), spatial (Joe lives here), and discourse deixis (The next section will present a different view). Deixis: See deictic expression Dementia:  A deterioration in higher cortical functions (e.g. language, memory) that can be caused by a range of diseases (e.g. vascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease), infections (e.g. HIV infection), and lifestyle (e.g. alcohol-​related dementia). Direct reported speech:  In direct reported speech, the reporting speaker presents the reported speaker’s words in the form of a direct quotation (e.g. Joan said ‘That meal was cold and too salty’). In indirect reported speech, the reported speaker’s words are presented in the form of a paraphrase (e.g. Joan said that the meal was cold and too salty). Disambiguation:  Words (e.g. bank) and sentences (e.g. I said I would do it last week) can have more than one sense or meaning. In order to arrive at the intended sense of a word or meaning of a sentence, disambiguation must occur. Language users draw on context during utterance interpretation to achieve the disambiguation of words and sentences. Discourse:  In terms of linguistic analysis, discourse is the level of language above individual sentences. The focus of study is on extended extracts of language in spoken and written texts. Down’s syndrome:  A chromosomal disorder that results from an extra chromosome 21. This additional chromosome may be found in all cells (trisomy 21), in some cells (mosaic), or attached to another chromosome (translocation). This results in physical problems (e.g. heart defects) and cognitive difficulties (intellectual disability). Dysarthria:  A speech disorder that is caused by damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems. Dysarthria can be developmental or acquired in nature and affects articulation, resonation, respiration, phonation, and prosody. Ellipsis:  A form of grammatical cohesion in which there is omission of elements that are required by grammatical rules. For example, the question Who would like beans on toast? may receive the elliptical response I would. Executive function:  A group of cognitive skills that is essential to goal-​ directed behaviour (e.g. planning ability, mental flexibility). Impairment of these skills is thought to be related to communication difficulties in clients who sustain a traumatic brain injury, develop dementia or have right-​hemisphere damage. Felicity condition:  A condition on the appropriate performance of a speech act. Felicity conditions specify who must say and do what and in what circumstances in order for a speech act to be performed felicitously. If these conditions are not met, a speech act is infelicitous. Figurative language:  This includes metaphorical, idiomatic and other non-​literal language in which the meaning of an utterance is not

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202 Glossary derivable from the sum of its component words. Figurative language is not confined to literary texts but occurs in everyday language use. Fragile X syndrome:  The most common inherited form of intellectual disability. It is caused by the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene on the X chromosome and is more commonly seen in males. Frontotemporal dementia:  A group of dementias associated with a range of neuropathologies including motor neurone disease, corticobasal degeneration, Pick’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body variant, prion disease, and vascular dementia. Frontotemporal dementia includes a behavioural variant and three language variants: semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (PPA), non-​fluent/​agrammatic variant PPA, and logopenic variant PPA. Generalized conversational implicature:  A type of implied meaning that does not require any special context for its generation. For example, the indefinite article ‘a’ in ‘Bill is meeting a woman this evening’ generates an implicature to the effect that the woman Bill is meeting is not his mother, sister, wife, etc. Gesture:  The use of the hands and other parts of the body for communicative purposes. Gesture may be used alongside speech or in place of speech during communication. Glossomania:  A feature of schizophrenic language, also known as clanging, in which a speaker produces long sequences of utterances in which sound or meaning associations are developed. Grammar:  The branch of linguistics that examines word structure (morphology) and sentence structure (syntax). For Chomsky, the grammar of language also contains phonological and semantic aspects. Hallucination: The perception of things that do not exist. Hallucinations may be visual or auditory in nature. Hallucinations can occur in psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. They are also a neuropsychiatric symptom in dementia. Hearing loss:  Hearing may be impaired on account of anomalies in the external and middle ear (conductive hearing loss) or anomalies in the inner ear and auditory cortices of the brain (sensorineural hearing loss). Depending on the type and severity of hearing loss, different types of amplification (e.g. cochlear implants) may be required. Hedge/​Hedging:  A pragmatic device that allows a speaker to modify the definiteness of an utterance and the attitude of the speaker towards a proposition expressed by an utterance. Several linguistic features can perform hedging including modal auxiliary verbs (She might attend the meeting), probability adjectives (It is likely that Mike will apply), and phrases such as I believe and to our knowledge (To our knowledge, the parcel was delivered on time). Humour:  A technical expression which is intended to cover all pre-​ theoretical notions of comical, ridiculous or laughable language.

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Glossary  203 Humour is a high-​level language skill that is still being acquired into adolescence and young adulthood. Humour appreciation is often impaired early in dementia. Huntington’s disease:  A neurodegenerative disease that is caused by a dominantly inherited defective gene –​the huntingtin gene –​on chromosome 4. The main clinical features of the disease are movement disorder, cognitive impairments, and neuropsychiatric problems. Hyperbole:  A type of figurative language that involves exaggeration, often for humorous effect, e.g. She is older than the hills! Hypophonia: See Parkinson’s disease Idiom:  A linguistic expression the meaning of which cannot be based on the meanings of its individual words (i.e. the meaning of idiomatic expressions is non-​ compositional). Common idioms include pop the question and let the cat out of the bag. The understanding or comprehension of idioms is often compromised in clients with pragmatic disorders. Implicature:  A type of implied or implicated meaning that goes beyond what is said by an utterance. Grice recognized the following types of implicature: generalized conversational implicatures (includes scalar implicatures), particularized conversational implicatures, and conventional implicatures. Impulsivity:  Impulsivity is broadly defined as action without foresight. It is a feature of neurodegenerative disorders and psychiatric conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, mania, and substance abuse. Indirect speech act:  A speech act can be performed directly (e.g. ‘Open the window!’) or indirectly (e.g. ‘Can you open the window?’). The choice of speech act is determined by politeness considerations, among other factors. An indirect speech act is often produced by questioning one of the preparatory conditions on the performance of a speech act (in the case of the above directive, that the hearer can undertake the requested action). Inference:  A cognitive process in which a conclusion is derived from premises. There are several different types of inferences, which vary according to the strength of the warrant provided by the premises. Inferences are vital for pragmatic language understanding, although the exact nature of the inferences involved (deductive, inductive, etc.) is uncertain. Inhibition: See inhibitory control Inhibitory control:  A central component of executive function, inhibitory control focuses on the ability to actively inhibit or delay a dominant response to achieve a goal. Inhibitory control is impaired in a wide range of neurodegenerative, neurological, and psychiatric conditions including dementia, traumatic brain injury, and schizophrenia. Intellectual disability:  A term used in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-​5) to describe

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204 Glossary children and adults with an intelligence quotient (IQ) below 70. Intellectual disability is a feature of many syndromes (e.g. Down syndrome) and is found in other clinical conditions (e.g. autism spectrum disorder). Intonation:  The use of identifiable pitch patterns over stretches of speech to convey attitude and feelings (e.g. anger, surprise), grammatical categories (statements versus questions), and semantic content (completeness versus incompleteness). Irony:  In conversation and other forms of discourse, speakers and writers can produce utterances which it is clear from context they do not believe to be true in order to convey an ironic attitude towards a situation or event. For example, the speaker who utters What delightful weather we’re having! in the middle of a thunderstorm is intending to be ironic. Language delay:  Children who fail to acquire expressive and receptive language skills at specific ages may be diagnosed with language delay. Although these children follow the normal pattern of language development, they do so more slowly than children with typical language development. The delay may be a few months or one or more years. Language delay is associated with poor academic achievement and behavioural problems in children and is a focus of intervention by speech and language therapists. Language disorder:  A general term to describe any type of language impairment. A language disorder may have its onset in the developmental period (a developmental language disorder) or in adulthood (an acquired language disorder). When the term is applied to children, it demarcates a group of children who display language features that are not found in typical language development. Lewy body disease:  A pathological condition caused by the accumulation of Lewy bodies (aggregations of abnormal protein) inside the nuclei of neurons in certain regions of the brain. Lewy body disease shares clinical and pathological features with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. In dementia with Lewy bodies, deficits of attention, memory, and executive function can be more severe than those found in Parkinson’s disease dementia. Lexical substitution:  A type of grammatical cohesion in which the substitute item and the item for which it substitutes have the same structural function. In the sentence Mary bought a house and John sold one, the word one has the function of a noun. Linguistic competence:  A native speaker’s intuitive knowledge of the grammar of language, where ‘grammar’ is understood to include phonology, syntax, and semantics. Chomsky distinguishes linguistic competence from performance. Long Covid:  Also known as post Covid-​ 19 condition, Long Covid occurs in individuals who have probable or confirmed infection with SARS-​CoV-​2 and have symptoms that persist for weeks or months

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Glossary  205 after acute infection. Symptoms include breathing difficulties, heart problems, and cognitive dysfunction. The symptoms can persist from the initial infection or may be new onset. Maxim:  A proposal of Grice in which four maxims of quality, quantity, relation, and manner are used to give effect to the cooperative principle. Maxims can be flouted or not observed in various ways often with a view to generating implied meanings. Mean length of utterance:  An index of grammatical development which is measured in words or morphemes. As children acquire new grammatical knowledge (e.g. the addition of obligatory morphemes), the mean length of utterance increases. Memory:  A higher-​order cognitive function in which there is storage and recall of different types of information. Some forms of memory relate specifically to language (e.g. semantic memory), some are defined by temporal characteristics (e.g. short-​term and long-​term memory), and some contain personal life events (e.g. autobiographical memory). Injury and disease can disrupt specific types of memory. For example, impairment of episodic memory (i.e. recall of specific events) and working memory is a feature of Alzheimer’s disease in the mild to moderate stages. Mental state attribution: See theory of mind Metaphor:  A pragmatic phenomenon in which a speaker intends to describe an attribute of X by relating X to prominent features or characteristics of Y. For example, in the utterance The rugby players were lions on the field, a speaker does not intend to say that the players were actual lions, merely that the players were courageous, strong, and fearless during a game of rugby. Motor neurone disease:  A progressive neurodegenerative disease in which there is a widespread and often rapid deterioration of upper and lower motor neurones. Motor neurone disease compromises speech production, swallowing, mobility, and many other functions. Motor speech disorder:  An impairment of speech production which may arise as a result of disruption in motor programming (apraxia of speech) and/​or motor execution (dysarthria). Motor speech disorders may be developmental or acquired in nature and can result in mild to severe unintelligibility. Motor speech production:  The programming and execution of the motor processes that are required to produce speech. Motor speech production requires coordination of the following speech production sub-​ systems: articulation, resonation, phonation, respiration, and prosody. Dysarthria and apraxia of speech are disorders of motor speech production. Multiple sclerosis: An autoimmune disease in which there is demyelination (destruction of the myelin sheath) of neurones in the central nervous system. Multiple sclerosis is the single biggest cause

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206 Glossary of disability in young adults. A significant number of individuals with multiple sclerosis experience speech and swallowing disorders and cognitive deficits. Narrative discourse:  A type of spoken or written discourse in which the events of a story are narrated to a listener or reader. The events so narrated are normally in the past and typically involve one or more actors. Neurodegenerative disorder:  A group of mainly age-​dependent disorders with diverse pathophysiology and cognitive and motor symptoms. Common neurodegenerative disorders include Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Paranoid delusion:  These are persecutory beliefs that occur in psychosis. Paranoid delusions are beliefs that some harm is going to occur to the speaker and that others intend the harm (e.g. a woman with schizophrenia reported ‘I was in danger of the community continuing to reprise against me’). Parkinson’s disease:  A neurodegenerative disease that is caused by the loss of cells that produce dopamine (a neurotransmitter substance) in the substantia nigra of the brain. Parkinson’s disease is characterized by slowness of movement, stiffness, and tremor. Other difficulties include speech disorder, reduced vocal intensity (hypophonia), and language and cognitive deficits. Particularized conversational implicature:  A type of implied meaning that requires a particular context for its generation. This meaning is recovered through the combined operation of the cooperative principle and maxims. Perseveration:  The repetition of a linguistic form (word, phrase, etc.) beyond the point where it is appropriate. Perseveration is a feature of the spoken output of several types of clients with communication disorders including adults with aphasia and patients with schizophrenia. Phonology:  The study of the organization of speech sounds into systems. Phonologists examine how sounds function contrastively to convey differences of meaning, e.g. a single phonetic difference of voicing between pat and bat conveys a difference of meaning. The phoneme is the unit of analysis. Planning:  Planning is a higher-​order, cognitive process that involves several aspects of executive function. These aspects include plan formulation, the monitoring and regulation of the responses to execute the plan, and the capacity to maintain goal representations in working memory. Poverty of speech:  Also known as alogia, poverty of speech describes the substantially reduced verbal output that is a negative symptom of schizophrenia. Pragmatic disability/​disorder:  A general term to characterize a language disorder in which there is impairment of pragmatic aspects of language.

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Glossary  207 Pragmatic language impairment:  This term describes a subgroup of children with developmental language disorder in which there are marked difficulties with the pragmatics of language. A more common term for the same population of children is social (pragmatic) communication disorder. Pragmatics:  The study of language use and aspects of meaning that are dependent on context. Pragmatic meaning is variously referred to as speaker meaning, implied meaning, and non-​literal meaning. Presupposition:  This describes information which is assumed, taken for granted or in the background of an utterance. Presuppositions reduce the amount of information that a speaker must explicitly state and are triggered by certain lexical items and constructions. Primary progressive aphasia:  A slowly progressive aphasia which occurs initially in the absence of generalized dementia. Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is associated with several neuropathologies, including Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia, and vascular dementia. Three subtypes of PPA are recognized: nonfluent/​ agrammatic PPA, logopenic PPA, and semantic PPA. Progressive supranuclear palsy: A rare progressive neurological disorder with onset of symptoms after the age of 60 years. Clinical features include difficulty shifting vertical gaze, frequent falls, slowness of movement, neck and trunk rigidity, cognitive decline, and communication impairments. Pronominal reference:  The use of a pronoun to refer to a noun phrase. The noun phrase is called an ‘antecedent’. In the sentence Jackie bought a dress but then returned it to the shop, the pronoun it refers to the noun phrase a dress. Proposition:  A unit of meaning expressed by a sentence or utterance and which can be true or false. Traditionally, propositional meaning has been studied in semantics. Increasingly, theorists are recognizing a role for pragmatic factors in propositional meaning. Prosody:  The study of the suprasegmental features of speech such as stress and intonation. Prosody can be divided into linguistic prosody, which is the means by which speakers can clarify potentially ambiguous syntax, and affective or emotional prosody, which allows speakers to express attitudes and emotions. Psychosis:  A condition in which there is a loss of contact with reality, delusions (the holding of false and bizarre beliefs), and hallucinations (the perception of things which do not exist). Psychosis is a feature of several mental illnesses including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Reference:  The use of a linguistic expression to identify things in the external world. Reference is an important concept in a semantic account of meaning (hence, the term ‘referential meaning’). Referent:  The object or event in the external world which is identified by an act of reference.

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208 Glossary Register:  Also known as register variation, register describes how language can vary to reflect changes in situation or context. On some definitions, register is used to capture variation based on aspects of people’s identities which are not permanent such as occupations (use of legalese by lawyers) and temporary roles (use of baby-​talk by an adult who is interacting with a child). Right cerebral hemisphere:  The brain contains two cerebral hemispheres. In most people, the left hemisphere contains centres that are vital for language production and comprehension, namely, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. However, the right hemisphere also plays an important role in communication, as witnessed by the communicative deficits that occur in individuals with right-​hemisphere damage. Right-​hemisphere damage:  Strokes, tumours, and head injuries can cause areas of damage called lesions in the right cerebral hemisphere. The resulting right-​ hemisphere damage (RHD) has implications for language and communication. While structural language (e.g. syntax) is intact in RHD, significant impairments in pragmatics and discourse can compromise communication, resulting in a condition called right-​hemisphere language disorder. Scalar implicature:  A type of generalized conversational implicature that is generated by a set of terms which differ in informational strength. For example, the word ‘some’ in the utterance ‘The thief stole some of the jewels’ generates the implicature that the thief did not steal all the jewels (‘some’ is semantically weaker than ‘all’). Schizophrenia:  This is a serious mental illness that affects 1 in every 100 people. It is assessed by psychiatrists who use positive and negative symptoms to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms include thought disorder, delusions, and hallucinations (mostly auditory). Negative symptoms include affective flattening, poverty of speech, apathy, avolition, and social withdrawal. Semantics:  The study of the linguistic meaning of words (lexical semantics) and sentences. Social communication disorder:  This diagnostic category was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for the first time in its fifth edition published in 2013. In social (pragmatic) communication disorder, there are persistent difficulties in the social use of verbal and non-​verbal communication. These difficulties have significant adverse impacts in terms of reduced social participation, poor academic achievement, and compromised psychological wellbeing. Specific language impairment:  This is an earlier term for developmental language disorder. Specific language impairment has been described as a diagnosis by exclusion. This is because there is a severe and specific impairment of language in the absence of factors that are normally associated with language disorder, such as hearing loss, craniofacial anomalies, and intellectual disability.

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Glossary  209 Speech act:  A term used by Austin and later Searle to describe utterances which perform acts or actions. Both Austin and Searle recognized different types of speech acts such as assertives (e.g. statements) and directives (e.g. requests). Speech-​language pathologist:  The health professional who assesses, diagnoses, and treats children and adults with communication and swallowing disorders. Speech-​language pathologists are known as ‘speech and language therapists’ in the UK and as ‘logopaedists’ in some European countries. Stroke: See cerebrovascular accident Syntax:  The study of sentence structure. The aim of a syntactic analysis of a language is to produce a precise and rigorous description of the rules that characterize the phrases and sentences of that language. The ability to produce and understand syntactically well-​ formed sentences –​expressive and receptive syntax, respectively –​may be impaired in children and adults with language disorder. Theory of mind:  The cognitive ability to attribute mental states (e.g. beliefs, knowledge) both to one’s own mind and to the minds of others. Theory of mind deficits are a feature of many disorders in which there are significant communication problems including autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. Topic management:  The selection, introduction, development, and termination of a topic in conversation or other form of discourse. Topic management is disrupted in a range of clients with communication disorders, including individuals with autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, and dementia. Traumatic brain injury:  This is the type of brain injury that is sustained from road traffic accidents, trips and falls, violent assaults, and sports injuries (e.g., boxing). There are two forms of traumatic brain injury (TBI). In an open or penetrating head injury, the skull is fractured or otherwise breached by a missile. In a closed head injury, the brain is damaged while the skull remains intact. TBIs can result in haemorrhages (bleeds) and blood clots, brain swelling (oedema), and loss of consciousness. Turn/​Turn taking:  The interactional nature of conversation is reflected in the exchange of turns between speaker and hearer. This two-​way exchange of turns is known as turn taking. Turn taking is governed by rules about when it is appropriate to assume one’s turn and relinquish it to another speaker. Utterance interpretation:  The decoding of linguistic structures in an utterance sometimes arrives at the message that a speaker intended to convey. Often, however, an utterance must undergo further processing to arrive at a speaker’s intended meaning. This additional processing, referred to as utterance interpretation, moves beyond rule-​ based processing of language to include inferences about a speaker’s communicative intention.

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210 Glossary Vocabulary:  The words of a language, sometimes called the lexicon. Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that studies the vocabulary of a language. A speaker’s expressive vocabulary is the words that he can produce. Receptive vocabulary describes the words that a speaker can understand. Expressive and receptive vocabulary may be reduced in adults with neurodegenerative disorders. Word-​finding difficulty:  An expressive language problem in which an individual cannot produce a target word and may substitute a vague term (e.g. thing, stuff) or engage in circumlocution (i.e. talk around the target word); Word-finding difficulty is a feature of many communication disorders including aphasia in adults.

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Appendix

Sam and Fred story Sam and Fred were brothers who had farmed the same land for 30 years. They had been closely following weather forecasts and knew that the weather was about to change. They had been working frantically in the fields when suddenly the skies opened. Several days of hard labour were disappearing before their eyes as crops were washed away. To add to their difficulties, the storm ripped open the door of the barn. Many sheep and cows escaped. People from the local village arrived to help the two distressed farmers. It was nearly nightfall by the time all the animals were returned to the barn.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables and those in italic refer to figures.

banter 64 body posture 105, 149 bridging inference 156

cognitive pragmatics 165 coherence 4, 140, 157–​9 cohesion 4, 6, 140, 156–​8 cohesive device 157 communicative: competence 16, 168; intention 9, 105, 124–​5, 166–​71, 177–​9, 182 communication cycle 4, 165, 167–​70, 173–​4, 179, 182 comparative 60 constancy under negation 57, 58 constative utterance 18, 21–​2 context 1, 3–​4, 11–​12, 26, 31, 36, 42–​4, 46, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 63–​5, 69–​77, 82–​99, 104–​15, 119, 124, 128, 134, 143, 151, 156, 158, 168–​81 conventional implicature 41, 44–​5, 53 conversation analysis 140, 151, 154, 160 cooperative principle 3, 35, 37–​41, 44–​9, 53 corticobasal degeneration 130, 153 counterfactual conditional 60 cue/​cueing 154

cancellability 35, 46, 53 cataphoric reference 4, 79, 88, 156; see also anaphoric reference cerebrovascular accident 6 change-​of-​state verb 61 Chomsky, N. 168 cleft construction 60, 67, 70, 156, 169 clinical pragmatics 8, 166–​86 cognition 12, 133, 166, 173 cognitive-​communication disorder 180 cognitive linguistics 103

declarative 18 deep structure 168 default interpretation 45 defeasibility 46 definite description 60, 65–​6, 69 deictic centre 82–​3, 86–​7, 90 deictic expression 4, 74, 82, 84–​8, 91, 93, 168–​9, 176 deixis 2–​4, 74–​92, 175–​6 dementia 89, 145, 149, 151, 177, 180–​1

affective mental state 9, 166, 174–​5, 182 AIDS dementia complex 145 alcohol-​related brain damage 130 Alzheimer’s disease 6 anaphor 88–​91 anaphoric reference 4, 79, 89, 156–​8 antecedent 63, 74, 88–​90, 91 aphasia 7, 22, 25, 58, 80, 89, 147, 169, 180 apology 28, 119–​20, 136 articulation 9, 159 Asperger’s syndrome 14, 23–​4, 28 assertion 27, 45 attention 27, 49, 124, 166, 175, 178, 180 attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 180 Austin, J. L. 2, 13, 15, 17–​27, 31 autism spectrum disorder 2, 30, 48, 52, 75, 79, 98–​9, 104–​5, 152–​3, 160

0 2

220 Index developmental language disorder (DLD) 5, 89, 160, 169 developmental period 5–​6, 14 developmental pragmatics 5, 165 directive 28, 30–​1, 194 direct reported speech 84 disambiguation 52, 54, 169, 175–​7 discourse 4, 6, 9–​12, 79, 82, 86, 89–​90, 102, 112, 135, 137, 140, 141–​2, 146–​7, 150, 155–​60, 161, 169, 176 discourse deixis 4, 74, 76, 79, 86–​7, 91, 92 discourse topic 140, 141, 160 Down’s syndrome 150 dummy subject 76, 88 ellipsis 59, 156–​7 emotion 1, 94, 100, 107–​9, 119 endophoric reference 79 enrichment 5, 52, 104, 108, 114, 171, 174 entailment 57, 62–​4, 70 executive function 5, 7, 165, 167, 175, 177–​82 exophoric reference 79 explicature 52, 94, 104, 108, 114, 171 extreme case formulation (ECFs) 108, 114 face 4, 6, 10, 118, 119–​37, 140–​1, 169 face-​threatening act 118, 124, 135, 136 facework 118, 135, 137 facial expression 10, 22, 105–​6, 114, 142, 169–​70, 175, 180 factive verb 60, 64, 67, 70 felicity condition 3, 13, 14, 20, 31 figurative language 4, 94–​114 figure of speech 35, 43, 53 first-​order theory of mind 8, 165, 174, 177, 182 flouting 3, 35, 41, 43–​4 formal pragmatics 65 frontotemporal dementia 89 generalized conversational implicature 35, 44–​5, 53, 172 gesture 9–​10, 22, 42–​3, 46, 80, 105, 132, 169–​70, 172, 175 gist 160 global coherence 157–​9 glossomania 98

grammar 17, 21, 45 grammatical impairment 169 greeting 19–​20, 26, 147 Grice, H. P. 3, 9, 29, 35, 36–​41, 44–​9, 52, 53, 106, 144, 166–​7, 172–​3 hallucination 127–​8, 143 hearing loss 170, 182 hedge/​hedging 39, 126, 129 historical pragmatics 165 honorifics 78 humour 2, 64, 94, 133, 170 Huntington’s disease 58, 61, 132, 136, 150 hyperbole 4, 35, 43, 53, 94, 96, 106–​9, 113–​4 hypophonia 170 ideal language philosophy 16–​17, 31 idiom 4, 6, 94, 95–​101, 111, 113 illocutionary act 23–​30, 31, 34 illocutionary force 23–​6, 28–​9, 169 imperative 29, 110, 149 implicative verb 61 implicature 1–​5, 35–​56, 57, 64, 70, 166, 171–​5, 178 impoliteness 78, 118, 121, 135, 137, 170 impulsivity 121 indeterminacy 47–​8 indexical 74 indirect speech act 2, 13, 28–​31, 35 inference 10–​12, 29–​30, 31, 36, 45, 49, 53, 62–​3, 156–​7, 160, 177, 181 information management 4, 11, 140, 157 inhibition 165, 175, 179–​81, 182 inhibitory control 179 intellectual disability 5, 26 intelligence quotient (IQ) 177 intercultural pragmatics 165 intonation 10, 18, 105–​6, 142, 149, 170, 182 inversion 6, 16, 169 irony 3–​4, 43, 94, 96, 104–​6, 113–​14, 177, 181–​2 iterative 3, 60, 62 language: decoding 5, 168, 170–​1, 174; delay 15–​20, 24; disorder 1, 5, 7, 21–​4, 38, 67–​9, 73, 79, 89, 134, 140, 157, 160, 169; encoding 168, 169, 182 laughter 105–​6, 130–​3, 153

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Index  221 Lewy body disease 96, 100–​3, 107–​9 lexical: ambiguity 177; narrowing 171; reiteration 157–​8; substitution 97, 156 linguistic code 169, 179 linguistic competence 16 locutionary act 23 logical form 5, 17, 171–​4 Long Covid 87–​9, 98, 120, 129, 179–​80 loosening 52 lying 105 manner maxim 11, 43–​4 maxim 3, 11–​12, 35, 38–​49, 53, 55–​6, 172 mean length of utterance 15 memory 11–​12, 39, 44, 49, 51–​2, 66–​7, 90, 96, 151–​2, 160, 166–​7, 174–​5, 178–​82 mental flexibility 178, 181, 182 mental health condition 126–​7 mental lexicon 154, 159, 168 mental representation 49, 53, 66, 69, 73, 155, 158–​9 mental state attribution 174–​5, 178, 182; see also theory of mind metaphor 3–​6, 35, 43, 53, 94–​6, 100–​9, 113, 181 metaphorical extension 171 metonymy 113 motor execution 168 motor impairment 169–​70 motor neurone disease (MND) 7, 96, 132 motor programming 168, 169 multiple sclerosis (MS) 84, 96, 107 narrative 45, 66–​9, 89, 148, 150–​1, 157–​9, 160, 176, 180 negation 58, 62–​3, 69, 70 negative face 120, 123, 125, 133–​4 negative politeness 118, 125, 126 neurodegenerative disorder 6, 7, 12, 109, 121, 170, 177 neurodevelopmental disorder 5, 105 neuro-​pragmatics 165 non-​compositional meaning 95–​6 non-​conventionality 47 non-​detachability 35 ordinary language philosophy 17, 31 overstatement 107–​9, 114

paranoid delusion 48–​9 Parkinson’s disease 13–​14, 40, 43–​4, 58, 80, 85, 96–​7, 103, 119, 121, 129, 167, 170, 177 particularized conversational implicature 35, 44, 53, 173 performative utterance 13, 18–​19, 21 perlocutionary act 23–​4 person deixis 74, 75–​6, 79, 81, 90 phonology 19, 67, 180–​1 place deixis 74, 76, 81–​2, 90–​1 planning 7, 59, 66–​7, 165, 174–​5, 178–​82 politeness 4, 94, 98, 118–​41 positive face 120, 123–​7, 133 positive politeness 125, 126 power 72, 121, 128 pragmatic competence 2, 12, 169 pragmatic disability 57–​8, 62, 175 pragmatic disorder 4–​7, 14, 22–​3, 79–​80, 126, 165, 169, 171, 182 pragmatic enrichment 5, 54, 174 pragmatic language impairment 26, 92, 182 pragmatics 1–​7, 8–​12, 14, 36, 64–​5, 94, 99, 104, 141, 165–​6, 167–​82 presumption of optimal relevance 50 presupposition 2–​3, 6, 57–​70, 156–​7, 161, 166, 169, 173, 175–​6 presupposition trigger 57, 60, 156 primary pragmatic disorder 6, 11, 169 primary progressive aphasia 89 progressive supranuclear palsy 44, 72, 82, 85, 131, 149, 170; see also Parkinson’s disease projection problem 57, 65, 70 promise 3, 5–​6, 7, 14, 20–​1, 25, 27–​8, 31, 126, 133 pronominal reference 69 pronoun reversal 75 proposition 12, 25, 27, 58, 65, 67 proverb 94–​6, 101, 109–​13, 114, 177 psycholinguistics 94 psychosis 61, 110 quality maxim 43 quantifier 108, 171 quantity maxim 43–​5 reasoning 29–​30, 36, 41, 165, 166, 173–​4 redressive language 123–​8 reference 4, 9, 20, 23–​4, 52, 54, 69, 76–​9, 81–​2, 88–​90, 112, 157–​8

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222 Index reference assignment 54 referent 4, 62, 66, 68–​9, 74–​90, 146, 152–​3, 158, 161, 166, 168–​9, 171, 176 referential cohesion 156, 158 register 119 relation maxim 44 relevance theory 35, 48–​9, 52, 53, 94, 104, 171 repair 4, 68, 87, 140, 153–​4, 161 right cerebral hemisphere 95 right-​hemisphere damage (RHD) 52, 94–​5, 101, 171, 180 scalar implicature 44 schema 113, 160 schizophrenia 2, 37–​9, 42, 46, 52, 61, 83, 94, 98, 107, 110–​13, 118, 126–​8, 143, 167, 172, 177, 179, 181 Searle, J. R. 2, 13, 15, 25–​31, 35 secondary pragmatic disorder 6–​7, 169 second-​order theory of mind 165, 174–​5, 177, 182 semantic redundancy 47 semantics 67, 180 sign language 167 simile 113 social communication disorder (SCD) 98–​9, 104, 106, 168 social deixis 4, 74, 76, 90 social distance 107, 121–​2, 136 societal pragmatics 165 specific language impairment 52, 89, 145 speech: act 1–​3, 6–​7, 13–​31, 35–​6, 137, 166, 168–​9, 173; disorder 184; signal 5, 170, 175; production 9, 170

speech-​language pathologist 5, 180 stroke 6, 33, 147 syntactic topic 140, 141, 160 syntax 9, 19, 67, 88, 97, 180–​1 tautology 43 teasing 170 temporal clause 61, 64 text representation 160 theme 141, 157–​9 theory of mind (ToM) 5, 66–​7, 90, 152, 165, 166, 174–​8, 181–​2 threat 3, 14, 18, 31, 109, 111, 120–​35, 136, 152 time deixis 74, 76, 83–​6, 91 topic initiation 151 topic management 4, 140–​61 topic perseveration 181 topic shift 151 topic termination 149–​51 traumatic brain injury 45, 75, 81–​2, 133, 148, 160, 172, 176, 180 trouble source 140, 153–​4, 161 turn/​turn taking 20, 127, 145 understatement 3, 4, 43, 113 utterance interpretation 9–​11, 49, 105, 165, 166–​7, 182 visual impairment 170 vocabulary 15, 21 vocative 78 warning 3, 14, 21, 23–​4, 28–​9, 31, 170, 182 what is said 38, 43, 46–​7, 49, 53, 103 word-​finding difficulty 154 world knowledge 155–​6, 173