Azu’s Notes

Like the cooperative principle, the politeness principle also may be divided into a series of maxims

Robin Lakoff (1973) formulated these maxims as:
- don’t impose
- give options
- make your receiver feel good

these maxims explain
- utterances in which no new information is communicated

e.g.
‘I am sorry. I was waiting for you …’
‘I am sorry to bother you …’

- apology for the imposition

- orders, requests and pleas phrased as elaborate questions:

e.g.
‘Would you please …’
‘I wonder if you could possibly …’
‘May I ask you to …’

- gives the receiver the option of refusal

- praise phrased as factual statements

e.g.
‘You are much better at Math than I am.’
‘You are great with people.’

- make the hearer feel good

The politeness principle is often in conflict with the cooperative principle - politeness and truth are rarely compatible!

This conflict is something most speakers are consciously aware of.

That is why we have the term ‘white lie’ in English.

SOCIAL BASIS OF CONVERSATIONAL PRINCIPLES

The conflict between the cooperative and politeness principles can be explained in terms of the two major purposes of human interaction:
- act efficiently with other people
- to create/maintain social relationships

There are situations and relationships where one of these purposes is more dominant and the other is of little significance.

e.g.
1. paramedics trying to get to an injured person on the site of an accident shouts at the gathered crowd:

‘Out of the way!’

2. A passer-by who arrives at the scene tries to look at the injured person through the crowd with little success, so he shouts:

‘Out of the way!’

What would be your reaction to the two situations above?

Brown and Levinson (1978) having studied the politeness phenomena in a number of languages and cultures suggest that the origin of politeness principles are the same in all societies

All societies have principles to ensure that social relations are maintained

However, what is acceptable/tolerant in one society may be very different from another

e.g.
- the length of silent pauses during conversations
- acceptance/refusal of offers
- reactions to compliments

As proposed by the philosopher Paul Grice, conversation is effective because speakers conform to the cooperative principle which he articulated as follows:

Make your conversational contributions such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged

This agreement of cooperation can be divided into four maxims or general principles according to the areas of communication they reflect:
- Maxim of Quantity
- Maxim of Relevance
- Maxim of Manner
- Maxim of Quality

Maxim of Quantity

Speakers are expected to provide as much information as is necessary for the interlocutors to understand their utterances and not to give more information that is necessary.

e.g.
If you ask a neighbour whether she has any children and she answered, ‘I have three sons’, it is the maxim of quantity that lets you assume she has no other children. You would take the utterance to imply that the neighbour has three (and only three) sons (and no other children)

What if she had three sons and two daughters?
What is she had four sons?

If she had other children, you would consider yourself deceived.

While her reply is not false as far as it goes, your (culturally defined) expectation that all information necessary to answer the question asked will be provided (without any parts of it being withheld or concealed) is violated.

Another example:

On your first day at work in a new school you meet a friend who used to study with you. You ask him what subject he is teaching and he replies:

When I fist joined here they asked me to teach Mathematics. Can you imagine? Me? Teaching math? When I asked for another subject the principal refused saying that what they needed most at the moment was a Math teacher and that I could find myself a job at another school if that didn’t suit me! I was quite put off by that, I tell you. But there wasn’t much I could do about it either; I mean, I needed the job, I have two children in schools and have to pay the rent too. So I agreed, albeit grudgingly. But just before start of term someone with a diploma in Math joined here. So I was asked to teach Social Studies instead. Man! That was a relief, I tell you. Since then I have been teaching Social Studies; but I am beginning to realize that I am not particularly keen on teaching this either. Perhaps English would be easier to teach? Maybe I should have a chat with the principal again? What do you think?

By providing too much information, far more than is required to answer the asked question, this person is as uncooperative as Fuad in the first example.

The maxim of quantity provides that, in normal circumstances, speakers say just enough (neither too much nor too little) to achieve the purpose of a particular communication – the aim is to be appropriately informative

Maxim of Relevance

According to this maxim, in normal circumstances, speakers need to be relevant at the time of the utterance.

e.g.

Gamaru: Who was that with you at the coffee shop?
Thakuru: They are going to set up a science lab there.

Taken literally, Thakuru’s utterance appears to be totally unrelated to what Gamaru said immediately before - thus it is a violation of the maxim of relevance.

It is due to expected conformation to this maxim that when someone produces an apparently irrelevant utterance listeners often try to understand the possible ways in which it might be relevant (e.g. as a joke, desire to change the subject …)

Maxim of Manner

This maxim can be summarized as - be orderly and clear.

According to this maxim speakers and writers should avoid ambiguity and be orderly in their utterances.

e.g.
Knead the dough well. Sift flour and salt together. Divide dough into several golf-ball sized pieces. Add the oil and hot water. Make a cup out of each dough ball. Deep fry over a medium flame. Fill with the prepared filling and close.

Why is this recipe odd?

Orderliness is necessary not only in the order of events; all languages also have rules that indicate how information should be organized within a piece of discourse.

e.g.

In most languages descriptions should be organized such that more specific details usually follow more generic information.

The country occupies an archipelago of about 322 islands, of which 106 are permanently inhabited. The name Fiji is the old Tongan word for the islands, which is in turn derived from the Fijian name Viti. In addition to these, there are some 522 islets. Fiji, officially the Republic of the Fiji Islands, is an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean. The two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, account for some 87% of the total population. The country is to the east of Vanuatu, west of Tonga and south of Tuvalu.

Why does this passage seem difficult to follow?

Violations of the maxim of manner can create ambiguity and confusion.

e.g.
She went to Mulaku. She took five days’ leave.

Maxim of Quality

According to this maxim, speakers and writers ought to say only what they believe to be true and have evidence to prove what they say.

Although this maxim applies principally to assertions and certain other representatives only (expressives and directives cannot be judged to be either true or false) it is the most important maxim.

If the maxim of quality is not adhered to then the whether or not the other maxims are followed is irrelevant.

i.e. whether an utterance is too short or too long, relevant or not, ordered or not all lies are false.

Ironically, it is also the expectations that speakers and writers will abide by this maxim that makes lies possible.

Look carefully at the following utterances …

- Policeman: you are under arrest
- Referee: (pointing to the penalty spot) penalty!
- Boss: your services are no longer required

The philosopher J.L Austin (1911 - 1960) claims that utterances such as the ones above are equivalent to actions -  i.e a new reality (social/psychological) is created when they are uttered.

Actions that are carried out through language are called speech Acts.

The theory where the effect of an utterance is analyzed in relation to the speaker and listener’s behaviour is Speech Act Theory.

Speech Act Theory can help analyze utterances from the perspective of their function rather than form.

Among the many types of speech acts that have been identified, 6 have received particular attention:

1. Representatives
2. Commissives
3. Directives
4. Declarations
5. Expressives
6. Verdictives

1. Representatives

These speech acts represent a state of affairs and can generally be characterized as true or false.

e.g.
- assertion
- claim
- statement
- description
- suggestion
- hypothesis

2. Commisives

These speech acts commit the speaker to a course of action.

e.g.
- threat
- vow
- pledge
- promise

3. Directives

These speech acts are intended to get the addressee to carry out an action.

e.g.
- command
- challenge
- invitation
- request
- dare

4. Declarations

These speech acts bring about the state of affairs they name.

e.g.
- blessing
- arrest
- marrying
- firing

5. Expressives

These speech acts indicate the speaker’s psychological state of attitude.

e.g.
- greeting
- condolence
- apology
- congratulation

6. Verdictives

These speech acts make assessments or judgments.
e.g.
- assessing
- condoning
- appraising

According to Speech Act Theory speech acts have 3 broad aspects that determine the outcome of an utterance:

- Locution
- Illocution
- Perlocution

Locution
- the semantic or literal significance of the utterance
Illocution
- the intention of the speaker
Perlocution
- how the message is received by the listener

e.g.

can I see that pen?

Locution: show me that pen

Illocution: (most probably) a request for the pen to be passed on to the speaker

Perlocution: the listener might interpret this just as a request for the pen to be shown (from a distance)

As illustrated above, when locution, illocution and prelocution are out of balance, serious miscommunication can occur
Pragmatic rules help to coordinate the structure of the utterance with the context of the message

To be an effective speaker (i.e, one who gets his message across without hurting/offending others) it is necessary to be aware of the three factors: locution, illocution and perlocution.

Then, the rules of discourse that will ensure that the utterance is correctly coordinated, must be applied.

The way to do this is by coordinating the structure of the utterance with the context of the message.

This may perhaps seem a mammoth task! However, children quickly begin to learn and apply these rules as soon as they begin to talk (if not earlier)

There are many such rules that govern how content of an utterance should be structured in order to convey the intended message

The first set of rules involves coordination of the non linguistic cues with the intent of the linguistic components of the message

Non linguistic contextual cues can totally change the locutionary content of a linguistic message.

e.g.
You get 5 out of 25 for an assignment and a friend (?) says in a sarcastic tone:

Wow, you scored well on that!

The tone of voice and the facial expressions belie the locutionary content of the utterance.

One of the most important verbal aspects to be considered is lexical selection

Of course, there are many other pragmatic verbal considerations including:
- maintaining a topic (many small children start a new topic with almost each new sentence)
- changing a topic (people get bored if you have only one topic of interest)
- introducing a topic (it’s necessary to provide not too much, nor too little information in the process)

Although the principles that govern the interpretation of utterances are diverse and complex, (and despite occasional misinterpretations) people in most situations manage to understand utterances essentially as they were intended.

This is because without reason to accept otherwise, interlocutors normally trust that they and their conversational partners are honouring the same interpretative conventions.

There is an unspoken agreement that people will cooperate in communicating with each other, and speakers rely on this cooperation to make conversation efficient.

The transcriptions we considered yesterday were phonemic transcriptions, (also used synonymously with broad transcriptions) which contain the minimum amount of phonetic detail needed in order to be able to distinguish between words.

A narrow transcription contains phonetic detail which can often be predicted by ‘rules’.

Today, we will discuss some of the main “rules” for converting a broad transcription to a narrow transcription.

Remember that any narrow, ie. phonetic, transcription must be enclosed in [ ] brackets.

“Rules” for Narrow Transcription

You need to understand clearly that the guidelines to narrow transcription provided below are not really “rules” but more of predictions.

That is, the uncritical application of these guidelines will not always result in a perfect narrow transcription.

Speakers are at liberty to modify their pronunciations in various ways.

Speakers differ from each other in their precise pronunciation and the same speaker may vary the pronunciation of the same word in different contexts.

Guidelines for transcription are therefore probabilistic in nature in that they suggest the most likely pronunciations.

It is up to you to carefully listen to the actual recordings when doing your transcriptions and to record each speaker’s actual pronunciation (especially in the assignment).

Narrow Transcription of /r/

It has been a long convention in English phonetics and phonology for the phoneme /r/ to be represented by the symbol “r”.

This has simplified the symbolic representation of this phoneme which can be realized in a number of different ways in various English dialects (alveolar, post-alveolar and retroflex approximants are the most common, but alveolar trills and taps as well as uvular trills also occur in some dialects).

In General English this phoneme is usually realized as an alveolar or a post-alveolar approximant.

Therefore, the first thing that you should do when converting a broad transcription of general English to a narrow transcription, is to convert all instances of /r/ to
Aspiration and release of oral stops

(i) Aspiration

Voiceless oral stops are aspirated before stressed vowels/diphthongs in the same syllable.

e.g.

The aspiration rule does not apply when voiceless oral stops follow /s/ (in the same syllable).

e.g.

(ii) Syllable and word-final (VC) oral stops

What we have discussed so far, are on oral stop aspiration and release, concentrating on initial or CV stops.

Word and syllable-final oral stops or VC stops show somewhat different patterns of release to those shown by CV stops.

When carrying out a narrow transcription of VC stops we are particularly interested in whether the release of the stop is audible or inaudible.

This applies to both voiced and voiceless stops.

It is customary, when transcribing English to leave audibly released stops unmarked (ie. [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g]) and to indicate stops without audible release as:
Here are some examples of pairs of words with and without audible release:

Devoicing

(i) Devoicing Voiced Oral Stops and Fricatives

Voiced oral stops and voiced fricatives are usually devoiced in the following contexts:
a) Before a pause (eg. at the end of a sentence or utterance):

b) Before a voiceless or devoiced obstruent (ie. before oral stops, affricates or fricatives)

(ii) Devoicing Approximants Following Voiceless Fricatives

When approximants immediately follow voiceless fricatives they are often, but not always, devoiced.

Note that this devoicing doesn’t always happen.

It usually happens when the fricative and approximant are in the same syllable.

It also seems to be more likely to happen when the syllable is stressed.

Clear and Dark realizations of /l/

i) Before pure vowels, diphthongs and /j/, /l/ is realized as [l] (clear ‘l’).

ii) Before consonants (except /j/) or a pause (eg. the end of a sentence or utterance), the allophone is dark (velarized)

Dark l is also usually found at the end of a word even when the following word starts with a vowel.

This articulation clearly marks the /l/ as belonging to the end of the first word rather than the beginning of the second word.

Assimilation of alveolars

The following assimilations should be noted.

Alveolar assimilation is extremely common, but exceptions to these rules do occur, even in casual connected speech.

Assimilations are much less likely to occur in careful speech and particularly when articulating isolated words carefully.

i) Labiodental nasals before labiodentals

ii) Dental nasal and oral stops before dentals

Syllabic consonants

All syllabic consonants must be marked with a diacritic (as shown in the examples below) in narrow transcription.

Nasalization

Nasalization is particularly likely to occur when a low vowel such as occurs next to a nasal consonant.

Nasalization can occur for any vowel adjacent to a nasal consonant but it tends to be stronger and more audible for low vowels.

Phonemic Transcription

Phonemic transcription uses a restricted set of symbols to capture the meaningful sound contrasts of a language.

e.g.

The first sound in these words are usually aspirated, but as English does not contrast aspirated vs unaspirated plosives (phonemically) the difference is not annotated in a phonemic transcription.

Phonetic Transcription

Phonetic transcription uses a larger set of symbols to capture more phonetic detail relating to the actual production of the utterance.

There are two types of phonetic transcription:
- broad phonetic transcription
- narrow phonetic transcription

Broad Phonetic Transcription

Broad phonetic transcription of speech does not attempt to record the extremely large number of idiosyncratic or contextual variations in pronunciation that occur in normal speech nor does it attempt to describe the individual variations that occur between speakers of a language or dialect.

The goal of a broad transcription is to record the phonemes that a speaker uses rather than the actual spoken variants of those phonemes that are produced when a speaker utters a word.

Strictly speaking:
a “broad phonetic” transcription classifies speech sounds into broad classes of actually spoken sounds
and
a “phonemic” transcription classifies speech sounds in terms of the phonemes that a speaker intends to communicate.

In practice, however, the terms “broad phonetic” and “phonemic” transcription are often used interchangeably and mean the transcription of phonemes.

Symbols for phonemic transcription

The most widely accepted system of symbols is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

This alphabet is used to represent both phonemes and allophones in normal practice even though it is defined in terms of actual speech sounds.

When linguists are developing a phonemic description of a language or dialect they most often select the most common or widely distributed allophone of each phoneme as the typical allophone of that phoneme and use its phonetic symbol to represent the phoneme as a whole.

When a symbol is used to represent an actual sound (allophone) it has an entirely different meaning to the same symbol when used to represent a phoneme. For this reason we always enclose transcriptions in /…/ when we are indicating phonemes and in […] when we are indicating the actually produced sounds.

Phonemes of English (pdf document)
Word Stress

Primary Stress

In English, the syllables of words differ in prominence.

In polysyllabic words (words of more than one syllable), one of the syllables always has a greater degree of prominence than any other syllable.

The syllable of greatest prominence is known as the primary stressed syllable, or the syllable that carries primary stress.

The primary stressed syllable can be marked by placing a diacritic in the following way:

In monosyllabic words (words of one syllable), the outcome is unambiguous: the syllable, i.e. word, has primary stress (e.g. heat, look, greet) and does not need to be marked.

Secondary stress

Many words have two stresses, one primary and one secondary. The secondary stress can be marked by placing the diacritic before the syllable which has secondary stress:

Further comments

i. words that have secondary stress are very often morphologically related to simpler forms
ii. secondary stress (mostly) precedes the primary stress
iii. at least one syllable (usually) intervenes between the secondary and primary stress

Exceptions to (ii) and (iii):

Compounds

A compound is a word which is composed of two separate words.
e.g.

roadblock
sunglasses
loudspeaker
These have two stresses, one of them primary, the other secondary.
The secondary stress can precede or follow the primary stress, and there need not be an intervening syllable:

Unreduced syllables

There are some words in which the secondary stress can follow the primary stress.
In such cases, it is conventional to refer to the secondary stressed syllable as an unreduced syllable.
The same diacritic can be used to indicate an unreduced syllable.

In some cases, the occurrence of an unreduced syllable is predictable (eg. words ending in -ate or -ise), in others it is not.

Unstressed syllables

In almost all cases, syllables other than primary stressed, secondary stressed or unreduced syllables are unstressed.
Generally in English, the large majority of the vowels of unstressed syllables can be transcribed as schwa:

There are also some cases when unstressed vowels have a quality other than schwa

It is not possible to list them all, but some of these include words that end in unstressed -ish, -ic, -ism and -ing

e.g.