Peking University Linguistics Research 9

Mingyou Xiang
Mian Jia
Xiaohui Bu

Introduction
to Pragmatics
Peking University Linguistics Research

Volume 9

Series Editors
Rui Guo, Chinese Department, Peking University, Beijing, China
Wangqi Jiang, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, Beijing, China
Peking University Linguistics Research (PKULR) is a cooperation project between
Springer Nature and Peking University Press. This series presents the latest discov-
eries and developments of significance in linguistic research conducted by famous
Chinese scholars. Titles in this series are carefully evaluated, examined and selected
by Peking University (which ranks No. 10 in the world and No. 1 in China in the QS
World University Rankings-Linguistics 2016) and Peking University Press (which
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Book Citation Index, 2016), covering all major aspects of linguistics—phonetics,
phonology, pragmatics, semantics, morphology, syntax, theoretical linguistics,
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invaluable guide to the very nature of language. On the one hand, it tries to offer a
thorough grounding in the fundamental concepts of linguistics; on the other hand,
it also attaches great importance to the practical application of these concepts, esp.
in Chinese context.
Mingyou Xiang · Mian Jia · Xiaohui Bu

Introduction to Pragmatics
Mingyou Xiang Mian Jia
University of International Business City University of Hong Kong
and Economics Hong Kong, China
Beijing, China

Xiaohui Bu
Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from
Peking University
Beijing, China

ISSN 2662-3129 ISSN 2662-3137 (electronic)

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Preface by the Professor

Introduction to Pragmatics is the first publication of an introductory series of

linguistic studies. While addressing the current call for more introductory and inter-
esting texts in pragmatics, this project aims at developing a new pedagogical prac-
tice of preparing undergraduates for advanced studies by compiling introductory
textbooks.
Since 2010, I started to teach junior English majors Introduction to Pragmatics and
wanted to design new assessments to replace the traditional end of the semester exam.
In my class, students could receive weighted grades from completing a closed book
exam, writing a course paper, or compiling a textbook. Since textbook compilation
is the most difficult option, only two out of 18 students in one class chose this
assignment. The present textbook is a revised version of their early efforts, and these
two students also become its two co-authors.
I take this project as a systematic training for a global view, critical thinking, and a
habit of meticulous observation. Compiling a textbook in its entirety requires students
to not only understand individual theories in their local contexts but also sort out the
connections among them. Moreover, instead of passively receiving different schools
of thought, students will be actively selecting the necessary materials from a larger
pool of sources, becoming more cognizant of the pros and cons of different theories.
During this assortment, they could become more critical of different theories, gener-
ating their critiques of the established paradigms, and developing their perspectives.
Finally, to clearly explain the abstract theoretical concepts, students will be motivated
to identify interesting and updated instances from their daily communication. Grad-
ually, they are very likely to develop a habit of spotting research questions through
their daily experiences. The lively examples they discovered, in turn, could be better
received by the beginners who share similar tastes and backgrounds with our student
authors. The global awareness enables students to map out the current research trends,
the critical awareness enables them to identify niches from the existing scholarships,
and the observational awareness enables them to unearth research questions from
everyday interactions, reaching both theoretical and social significances. All of these
are necessary for the cultivation of a competent researcher.

v
vi Preface by the Professor

The present book is the first trial of this pedagogical design. The two student
authors have been successfully admitted to renowned graduate programs, one in a
Ph.D. program at The University of Texas at Austin, the other in a Master’s program
at Peking University. Now, I am happy to report this practice to the public, and I hope
it can benefit and inspire more young scholars to engage in our research community.

Beijing, China Mingyou Xiang

October 2019
Preface by the Students

This little book is designed by students of pragmatics and aims for younger students
of this thriving discipline. Its earliest draft was a course assignment in our junior
year to address Prof. Xiang’s call for interpretations of pragmatics from the learners’
perspective. Therefore, we attempt to elaborate on the most basic concepts in prag-
matics with up-to-date examples from our students’ lives. We hope to offer student
readers a fresh perspective to look at pragmatics from the eyes of their peers, to
relieve their pain when engaged in academia and to equip them with the upper hand
to deal with real-world dilemmas.
The book intends to introduce pragmatics to beginners from three parts: essential
topics, research methods, and useful resources. The essential topics follow the British
and American traditions, discussing deixis, presupposition, implicature, speech acts,
and (im)politeness. Each chapter is developed with both classical examples and
down-to-earth illustrations and applications. The final chapter introduces some of the
most basic methods and techniques, those have helped us begin our academic journey,
to prepare beginners for their own research. The appendixes attach some useful
materials as signposts to inspire students to brainstorm beyond this little book and to
engage in a larger research community. We hope our work could both contextualize
the art of pragmatics in our daily lives and inspire more researchers to elate our living
world to academia.
The completion of this textbook is also accredited by a number of rigorous
reviewers. We are fully aware of the harms of misunderstandings and misinterpreta-
tions that would do to the beginners and the necessity to revise and proofread. Thus, in
addition to Prof. Xiang’s constant guidance and supervision, we have invited profes-
sors and Ph.D. students to help us right the ship at various stages of our compilation.
They are Dr. Li Xiaochen, Dr. Yang Guoping, Dr. Cao Duxin, Dr. An Yi, Dr. Zhao
Yi, Guan Bangdi, Yu Jinghua, Luan Ruiqi, and Zhao Bo. We are also grateful to our
peers who offer us lively examples and their own views on pragmatics. They are Yan

vii
viii Preface by the Students

Caiping, Wang Tong, Zeng Yuan, Shan Ke, Tao Ziyang, Wang Ziyi, and Yang Zhou.
Finally, all the mistakes are of course ours.

Hong Kong, China Mian Jia

Shenzhen, China Xiaohui Bu
June 2019
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Definitions of Pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Meaning and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Development of Pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Organization of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.5 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Deictic and Non-deictic Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 Types of Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3.1 Person Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3.2 Time Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.3 Place Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3.4 Social Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.5 Discourse Deixis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4 Applications: Chinese Vocatives as Pragmatic Markers . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4.2 Vocatives and Coherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4.3 Vocatives and Involvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.4.4 Vocatives and (Im)politeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3 Presupposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1 Entailment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.1.2 Types of Entailment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2 Presupposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.2 Types of Presupposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

ix
x Contents

3.2.3 Properties of Presupposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3.2.4 Presupposition Trigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3 A Comparison Between Entailment and Presupposition . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4 Applications: Entailment and Presupposition in Real Life . . . . . . . . 42
3.4.1 English Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.4.2 Interpersonal Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4 Implicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.1.1 Natural and Non-Natural Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.1.2 Implicature and Implication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.2 Types of Implicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.1 Conversational and Conventional Implicatures . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.2 Generalized and Particularized Conversational
Implicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.2.3 Scalar, Alternate, and Clausal Implicatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3 Classic Gricean Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.3.1 Cooperative Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.3.2 Creation of Conversational Implicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.3.3 Criticisms of Gricean Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.4 Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.4.1 Levinson’s Q-, I-, and M-Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.4.2 Horn’s Q- and R-Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.4.3 Sperber & Wilson’s Principle of Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.4.4 Retrospections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.5 Properties of Conversational Implicature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.6 Applications: Exploiting the Four Maxims in Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.6.1 Exploiting the Maxim of Quantity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.6.2 Exploiting the Maxim of Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.6.3 Exploiting the Maxim of Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.6.4 Exploiting the Maxim of Manner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.7 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5 Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.1.1 Performative-Constative Dichotomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1.2 The Performative Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.2 Austin’s Theorizing of Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.2.1 Felicity Conditions on Performatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.2.2 Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary Acts . . . . . . . 79
5.2.3 Types of Illocutionary Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.3 Searle’s Theorizing of Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.3.1 Felicity Conditions on Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Contents xi

5.3.2 Typology of Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

5.3.3 Direct and Indirect Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.4 Recent Developments in Speech Act Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.4.1 Study of Perlocution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.4.2 Classifications of Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.4.3 Sequencing in Speech Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.5 Speech Acts Across Cultures and Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.5.1 Cross-Cultural Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.5.2 Intra-language Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum Requests . . . . . . 91
5.6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.6.2 Ethos: Projecting Self to the Requestees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.6.3 Pathos: Awakening the Emotion of the Requestees . . . . . . . . 95
5.6.4 Logos: Reasoning with the Requestees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.7 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6 Politeness and Impoliteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6.1 Theorizing Politeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.1.1 Characterizing Politeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.1.2 Politeness as Strategic Face Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.1.3 Politeness as a Conversational Maxim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.1.4 Politeness as Situated Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.2 Theorizing Impoliteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.2.1 Types of Impoliteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.2.2 Impoliteness as Strategic Face Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.2.3 Impoliteness as Conversational Maxims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.2.4 Impoliteness as a Discursive Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.3 Some Potential Issues in (Im)politeness Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.4 Applications: Politeness in Online Forum Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.4.2 Bald on Record Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.4.3 Positive Politeness Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.4.4 Negative Politeness Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.5 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7 Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.1 Literature Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.1.1 Four Types of Exigences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.1.2 Review Articles and Bibliographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
7.1.3 Search Engines and Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
7.1.4 Bibliometric Analysis and Knowledge Visualization . . . . . . 134
7.2 Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
7.2.1 Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
7.2.2 Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
xii Contents

7.2.3 Discourse Completion Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

7.2.4 Role Plays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
7.2.5 Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
7.2.6 Trending Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
7.3 Analytical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7.3.1 Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7.3.2 Statistical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
7.4 Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Appendix A: Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Appendix B: Research Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter 1
Introduction

In Marvel’s film Thor (2011), Thor has just been evicted by his father Odin to the
human world and is found unconscious by a group of scientists, including Jane, Darcy,
and Erik. When Thor wakes up, he tries to find his hammer and wants to return to
his home, Asgard. Darcy is shocked by his bluntness and aims at him with a stun
gun. After figuring out the hostility of these scientists, Thor is furious and threatens:
You dare threaten me, Thor, with so puny a weapon? However, before Thor could
finish his sentence, Darcy shoots him with her stun gun. The underlying questions
are why calling out his name carries the power to threaten and why this threat fails
to deliver? Language games like this prevail in our daily lives. For example, when
your girlfriend asks you about her fitness, why is keeping silent often understood as
acquiescence to her being overweight? In fact, people often mean more than what
they say. Hence, this book attempts to offer beginners a pragmatic explanation of
how people make sense to each other.
Section 1.1 discusses the definition of pragmatics; Sect. 1.2 unpacks some of
the important notions in pragmatics; in Sect. 1.3, the development of pragmatics is
recounted; and in Sect. 1.4, the organization of the entire book is mapped out.

1.1 Definitions of Pragmatics

Before discussing the definitions, let’s first think about the two underlying questions
in the opening scenario: why does Thor think his name could threaten people and
why does it fail? First, it is threatening because he is the son of Odin, the god of
all gods, and all the people living in the earthly world are under their rule. In other
words, by stressing his name, Thor intends to express that he is a powerful person
and disobeying him or daring to threaten him will lead to severe punishment. By
unpacking Thor’s original utterance into its full sense, we could easily understand
why it could be threatening. Bearing the answer to the first question in mind, we

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2 1 Introduction

can also work out why his powerful statement faints. Since Darcy does not know
anything about Asgard nor Odin, Thor means nothing more than a name to her.
However, if it happens in Asgard, no one would dare to shoot Thor with a stun gun
since all people know the punitive consequence. In Avengers: Infinity War (2018),
when Thor shouts out his name, Thanos, the supervillain who knows Thor’s identity,
still dares to torture him and almost kills him in outer space. This is because Thanos
believes that he is much more powerful than Thor or anyone from Asgard and is not
afraid of any repercussions of annoying the Asgardians. These two examples show
that there are gaps between what the sentence literally means and what the speaker
intends to express and how the listener interprets the meaning of the sentence. This
special property is called linguistic underdeterminacy (Huang, 2014: 8). In other
words, the shift of meaning is largely influenced by the change of situations. Bearing
these in mind, we shall move to discuss what pragmatics is.
Broadly speaking, pragmatics refers to “the study of language use in context”
(Huang, 2017: 1). In other words, pragmatics attempts to explain how speakers
convey their meaning, and how listeners understand the speaker’s meaning. This
definition, however, is too vague to account for its complexity. For example, Gazdar
(1979) proposes that pragmatics equals meaning without truth condition. Leech
(1981) concentrates on how meanings get interpreted in pragmatics. Thomas (1995)
entitles her textbook of pragmatics as “meaning in interaction”. Yule (1996: 3)
straightforwardly states that pragmatics is “the study of speaker meaning”. Mey
(2001: 6) emphasizes the determinacy of social conditions in pragmatics. Ariel (2010)
devotes an entire book to the definition of pragmatics and argues that the distinctive
feature of pragmatics is inference based on linguistic outputs. Despite these nuances,
all the above definitions seem to emphasize two key notions: meaning and context.
In the next section, we will concentrate on these two terms.

1.2 Meaning and Context

Our first task is to figure out the meaning of the word meaning. In this section, we will
distinguish sentence meaning from utterance meaning. Prior to that, we first make a
distinction between sentence and utterance. A sentence is “a well-formed string of
words put together by the grammatical rules of a language” (Huang, 2014: 13), such
as I am Thor. An utterance, however, is the concrete realization of that sentence in
a particular situation. To say the above sentence in Asgard or on Earth or to Thanos
clearly conveys different meanings and results in distinctive communicative effects.
Sentence meaning, therefore, refers to the abstract meaning of a sentence that
is independent of any concrete situations. In Thor’s case, the sentence meaning is
that the speaker states that his name is Thor. In contrast, utterance meaning (speaker
meaning) is what the speaker intends to convey via that particular utterance. That
is, the utterance meaning of I am Thor is to manifest his royal status and ask for
utmost respect. To figure out the speaker meaning is the central task of pragmatics.
1.3 Development of Pragmatics 3

Furthermore, Leech (1981: 320–321) offers four outward tests for the identifica-
tion of speaker meaning:
a. Is reference made to addressers (speakers) or addressees (hearers)?
b. Is reference made to the intention of the speaker or the interpretation of the
hearer?
c. Is reference made to context?
d. Is reference made to the kind of act or action performed by means of or by virtue
of using language?
The passing of one or more of these four tests is considered as speaker meaning
and consequently falls into the discussion of pragmatics.
The second term that needs to be specified is context. The traditional under-
standing of context contains two parts: the linguistic context and the extra-linguistic
context. The linguistic context refers to the textual environment an utterance is
situated in. It could be words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, or the whole text. In
Thor’s case, one linguistic context is that the pronoun I refers to Thor. In contrast,
the extra-linguistic context is anything that is nonlinguistic but is relevant to the
utterance. It includes but is not limited to temporal (e.g., tomorrow afternoon, in
an hour) and spatial information (e.g., in Beijing, next to you) of the utterance, the
social status of the speaker, the hearer and anyone referred to in the utterance (e.g.,
President of the university, my father), and the cultural conventions (e.g., bowing to
each other in Japanese culture, accepting compliments in American culture). One
important extra-linguistic context is that Thor is the son of Odin, who possesses
mighty power. Combining the linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts, hearers can
work out that the speaker is making a threat by claiming that he is powerful and
should not be offended.
In recent years, more emphases are paid to the dynamic perspective of context.
Mey (2001: 39) points out that context is dynamic in that it changes in accor-
dance with the ongoing conversation. This requires scholars to consider the effect of
preceding utterances when analyzing a new utterance. This dynamic nature makes
Thor’s statement effective in one situation and ineffective in another.

1.3 Development of Pragmatics

The emergence of pragmatic studies can be traced back to American semiotician and
philosopher Charles William Morris in the 1930s. The understanding of pragmatics
was mainly formed during his stay at The University of Chicago as an associate
professor of philosophy. Partly out of his desire to unify logical positivism with
behavioral empiricism and pragmatism, Charles Morris developed a theory of semi-
otics and offered a trichotomy of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (Posner, 1987).
He notes that syntax deals with “the relation of signs to one another”; semantics
deals with “the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable”;
and pragmatics deals with “the signs to interpreters” (Morris, 1938: 6). Following
4 1 Introduction

Morris, Carnap (1942) offers a similar trichotomy, in the order of the most concrete
to the most abstract, that pragmatics is assigned to where the explicit reference is
made to the user of the language, semantics the expressions and what they designate,
syntax the relations between the expressions. Morris’ and Carnaps’ classifications
laid the foundation for the development of linguistic studies.
During the 1950s, two loosely constructed philosophical schools of thought, the
school of ideal language philosophy and the school of ordinary language philos-
ophy, largely influenced the development of linguistics. The ideal language philoso-
phers such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell believe that human language is
insufficient to describe the world and hence turn to the quest of the logical system of
artificial languages. In contrast, ordinary language philosophers pay more attention
to natural language, especially its uses. British philosopher Peter Strawson (1950)
challenges Russell’s descriptive theory of truth conditions and argues that a sentence
can be neither true nor false due to the non-existence of the referent. The clash of
ideas between these two schools propels scholars to investigate deixis, how people
relate a piece of utterance to a context (Chap. 2) and sentential relationships such as
entailment and presupposition (Chap. 3). Moreover, based on the assumption of ratio-
nality and mutual cooperation between interlocutors, Paul Grice postulates his theory
of Cooperative Principle and conversational implicatures, attempting to explain how
people mean more than they say (Chap. 4). In the meantime, John Austin and his
student John Searle develop the widely applied theory of Speech Acts to analyze the
uses of natural languages, arguing that language is used to do things rather than to
simply make statements (Chap. 5). The Cooperative Principle and the Speech Act
Theory later become the two backbones of pragmatics.
The above developments, however, primarily reside in the inquiry of language
philosophy. The linguistic study of pragmatics is largely advanced by Stephen
Levinson. Received a B.A. in Archaeology and Social Anthropology at Cambridge
University and a Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology at The University of California,
Berkeley, Levinson writes extensively on the matters of pragmatics. His widely cele-
brated publication Pragmatics (Levinson, 1983) is seen as the first comprehensive
textbook of this subject that marks the establishment of pragmatics as an indepen-
dent field.1 The matters discussed in this textbook were and remain to be the core
issues of today’s pragmatic inquiries, such as deixis, presupposition, conversational
implicatures, and speech acts.
In addition to these core issues, pragmatics also displays an interdisciplinary
nature. Cummings (2005) elaborates in Pragmatics: A Multidisciplinary Perspective
that pragmatics in its broader sense can be combined with the study of philosophy,
psychology, artificial intelligence, and language pathology. Among them, the study
of (im)politeness (Chap. 6) appears to be an essential line of research in pragmatics.
Furthermore, Horn and Ward (2004: xi) note that work in pragmatic theory has
extended from the attempt to rescue the syntax and semantics from their own unnec-
essary complexities to other domains of linguistic inquiry, ranging from historical

1Verschueren (1999: 2) contends that pragmatics does not constitute a theory of language as syntax
and semantics do. Instead, it offers a different perspective to language evaluation.
1.5 Review 5

linguistics to the lexicon, from language acquisition to computational linguistics,

from intonational structure to cognitive science.
In short, the studies of pragmatics extend from a “pragmatic wastebasket2 ” to a
multidisciplinary investigation. On a macro-scale, drawing ingredients from soci-
ology, psychology, and computer technology, a large number of sub-disciplines have
flourished, including cognitive pragmatics, psycholinguistic pragmatics, computa-
tional pragmatics, clinical pragmatics, neuropragmatics, interlanguage pragmatics,
sociopragmatics, cultural pragmatics, institutional pragmatics, intercultural prag-
matics, variational pragmatics, historical pragmatics, applied pragmatics, corpus
pragmatics, literary pragmatics, legal pragmatics, and feminist pragmatics (Huang,
2013). Propelled by the continuous advancement of science and technology, the
future of pragmatics could be even more promising.

1.4 Organization of the Book

Chapters 2 to 6 address five classic topics in pragmatics: deixis, presupposition,

implicature, speech acts, and (im)politeness. In each topic, we attempt to cover its
major concepts as well as some of the heated discussions. After that, we contextualize
each of the topics with an empirical study, investigating how pragmatics is reflected
in our daily life. At the end of each chapter, readers can find a review that maps out
the key notions of that topic. By going through these concepts, learners could self-
examine their grasp of each chapter and review accordingly. In Chap. 7, we introduce
some basic research methods for beginners to start their own studies. Finally, in the
appendices, we list some useful resources for more detailed research in pragmatics.
And now, let’s begin our journey from deixis.

1.5 Review

• Linguistic underdeterminacy
• Meaning
– Sentence and utterance
– Sentence meaning and utterance meaning
• Context
– Linguistic and extra-linguistic context
– Dynamic nature

2 The term “pragmatic wastebasket” is originated from Israeli philosopher Yehoshua Bar-Hillel’s
(1971) claim that semantics is a wastebasket of syntax. It refers to a dividing line between semantics
and pragmatics that pragmatics is the offcut of truth conditional semantics (Mey, 2001: 19–21).
6 1 Introduction

• History of pragmatics
– Trichotomy of syntax, semantics, pragmatics
– School of ordinary language philosophy
– School of ideal language philosophy
– Pragmatic wastebasket
– Deixis, entailment and presupposition, implicatures, speech acts,
(im)politeness, conversation analysis

References

Ariel, M. (2010). Defining pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.

Bar-Hillel, Y. (1971). Out of the pragmatic wastebasket. Linguistic Inquiry, 2(3), 401–407.
Carnap, R. (1942). Introduction to semantics. Harvard University Press.
Cummings, L. (2005). Pragmatics: A multidisciplinary perspective. Routledge.
Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Presupposition, implicature, and logical form. Academic Press.
Horn, L. & Ward, G. (eds.). (2004). The handbook of pragmatics. Blackwell.
Huang, Y. (2013). Micro-and macro-pragmatics: Remapping their terrains. International Review of
Pragmatics, 5(1), 129–162.
Huang, Y. (2014). Pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Huang, Y. (2017). Introduction: What is pragmatics. In Y. Huang (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of
pragmatics. 1–20. Oxford University Press.
Leech, G. (1981). Semantics: The study of meaning (2nd ed.). Penguin Books.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Mey, J. L. (2001). Pragmatics: An introduction (2nd ed.). Blackwell.
Morris, C. W. (1938). Foundations of the theory of signs. University of Chicago Press.
Posner, R. (1987). Charles Morris and the behavioral foundations of semiotics. In M. Krampen, K.
Oehler, R. Posner, & T. A. Sebeok (eds.). Classics of semiotics. 23–57. Plemun Press.
Strawson, P.F. (1950). On referring. Mind, 59, 320–344.
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. Longman.
Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Chapter 2
Deixis

In Marvel’s blockbuster Black Panther, King T’Chaka, the sole ruler of Wakanda
comes to visit his sister in her laboratory and she shows him two newly designed suits
of the Black Panther. When the king utters “this one”, we would be puzzled by which
suit the king really favors because we have no idea where his finger is pointing at.
However, if you have watched this movie, you would know that the king is pointing
at a darker suit because it is not too showy. T’Chaka’s combination of pointing and
uttering “this one” conveys a complete meaning to his sister that he wants to try on
the black outfit. This specification of the referent often falls into the use of deixis.
Section 2.1 covers the essential properties of deixis, illustrating its definition,
the nature of egocentricity, and the deictic projection. In Sect. 2.2, the distinctions
between deictic and non-deictic usages are introduced. Section 2.3 presents five main
types of deixis. In the final section, a related case study of Chinese name vocatives
is investigated from the perspective of pragmatic markers.

2.1 Preliminaries

The word “deixis” originally means “pointing” via language. It is defined as “the
function of grammatical as well as lexical means relating a piece of language to its
context in terms of its users, the time and place of its occurrence, and the people
and objects it refers to” (Jiang, 2000: 11). That is, deixis is used to ensure that the
context is specific enough for the hearer to work out the pragmatic meaning of a given
utterance. The common grammatical and lexical means include demonstratives (e.g.,
this, that), first- and second-person pronouns (e.g., I, you), tense markers (e.g., -ed,
-ing), adverbs of time and space (e.g., now, there), and motion verbs (e.g., go, come)
(Huang, 2014: 169). In the opening example, T’Chaka specifies the demonstrative
“this” by pointing at a particular suit he prefers, ensuring that his sister understands

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8 2 Deixis

his preference. However, since demonstratives include both this and that, what deter-
mines the speaker’s choice of a proximal term (this) over a distal term (that)? This
concerns the issue of the deictic center.
Generally speaking, deixis is self-centered: “(1) the central person is the speaker,
(2) the central time is the time at which the speaker produces the utterances, (3) the
central place is the speaker’s location at utterance time, (4) the discourse center is
the point which the speaker is currently at in the production of his utterance, and
(5) the social center is the speaker’s social status and rank, to which the status or
rank of addressees or referents is relative” (Levinson, 1983: 64). This self-centered
organization is called the egocentricity of deixis. In Black Panther, when T’Chaka’s
long-separated cousin N’Jadaka comes back to Wakanda for revenge, T’Chaka warns
him that this is his last chance to surrender. N’Jadaka responds that.
(2.1) I lived my entire life waiting for this moment … just so I could kill you.
Black Panther (2018).

Following the aforementioned self-centeredness, we could infer that the central

person I refers to N’Jadaka and he wants to kill the king at the present time in the
exact place where he stands. If the king retorts:
(2.2) That’s not gonna happen, brother.

Then the deictic center automatically shifts to T’Chaka, the addressee in the
preceding utterance. The use of that instead of this shows that the threat was made
by the hearer not the speaker and thus is distant from the current discourse center,
i.e., T’Chaka’s point of view. Finally, following egocentricity, brother in 2.2 suggests
that the addressee is a brother to the speaker, not to anyone else.
Therefore, it is essential for interlocutors to bear this egocentric use of deixis in
mind, especially when they are not in a face-to-face conversation or they are not in
the same place or at the same time of speaking. The common media include e-mails,
letters, postcards, cellphones, WeChat, WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, etc. For
example, one needs to realize that “five score years ago” mentioned in Martin Luther
King Jr.’s speech is a century earlier than the time he gave the speech in 1963 rather
than a century before the year you read this book.
It is also worth noting that egocentricity sometimes can be violated on the
following two occasions: First, in some languages, the use of demonstratives is,
in part, determined by the addressee. In Japanese, the choice of demonstratives is
jointly decided by both the speaker and the hearer. The demonstrative sore refers to
the place that is close to the hearer and distant from the speaker, whereas are is used
in cases where the referent is both away from the speaker and the hearer. Second, the
speaker purposefully projects himself into a deictic context centered on the addressee,
so as to express empathy or politeness. See the following two examples:
(2.3) Tom is Mary’s boyfriend. And Tom just learned that Mary is sick and he wanted to
visit. Compare the two messages Tom might send to Mary:
2.1 Preliminaries 9

a. I will GO to your apartment as soon as possible.

b. I will COME to your apartment as soon as possible.

In both (2.3a) and (2.3b), Tom conveys a clear message that he will visit Mary very
soon. A close comparison between come and go, however, shows that Tom considers
himself as the center in (2.3a), whereas Mary is placed at the deictic center in (2.3b).
Compared to (2.3a), (2.3b) not only conveys the message of Tom’s quick arrival
but also places Mary as his center, revealing his considerateness. Moreover, when
arranging appointments in international contexts, it is also customary to specify
the scheduled time in accordance with the receiver’s time zone: the organizers of
a conference often project the central time to the participants by indicating Beijing
Time for Chinese and Tokyo Time for Japanese. This deictic projection reduces the
chances of miscalculation of appointment, showing the organizers’ consideration and
ensuring the efficiency of the conference. The deictic projection has recently been
made automatic in some online arrangement applications, as shown in the following
Doodle interview form sent by a professor from America to students in China:
(2.4) Doodle sheet for graduates’ interview at an American university.

In short, the pragmatic use of deixis concerns not only the precision of reference but
also the humanistic side of interpersonal communication. In the following section,
we will expound the deictic and anaphoric uses of deixis.
10 2 Deixis

2.2 Deictic and Non-deictic Uses

Deixis can be used both deictically and non-deictically. Deictic expressions refer
to the expressions with deictic use as their central usage, whereas the non-deictic
expressions have non-deictic use as their major function. For example, the second-
person pronoun is a common deictic expression, as shown in (2.5), whereas the
third-person pronoun is usually an anaphora and thus a non-deictic use, as shown in
(2.6).
(2.5) You and you, stand up!
(2.6) John believes that he will definitely win the prize.

When deixis is used to link a piece of language and its context, we call these
words deictics. They are also frequently referred to as indexical expressions or
indexicals in the literature of philosophy (Huang, 2014: 169). Deictics can be subdi-
vided into gestural and symbolic uses. The use of deictic expressions together with
paralinguistic features is called the gestural use, and that without the symbolic use.
Paralinguistic features include eye-gaze, facial expressions, nodding, hand gestures,
and unusual variations of pitch, loudness, and duration of sound. The proximal deic-
tics like this, now, and here refer to things nearby, usually in a gestural way. The
distal deictics, those for distant reference, are more often used in a symbolic manner.
See the examples below:
(2.7) This one is genuine, but this one is fake.
(2.8) You, you, but not you are dismissed.
(2.9) What did you say?
(2.10) I’m working on a new book now.
(2.11) This city is really beautiful.

Examples (2.7) and (2.8) are gestural in nature. Without pointing at a particular
referent, the hearer would be hard to know which item is fake in (2.7) and which
persons are dismissed in (2.8). Case (2.9), however, can be seen as either symbolic
or gestural. For instance, when a professor is talking to a student in front of the class,
he is more likely to specify the addressee by pointing to a particular student and
thus gestural. In contrast, when it comes to a private appointment, both interlocutors
have very clear understandings of the addressee, and thus it is used symbolically. In
(2.10), without any assistance of paralanguage, the hearer can easily work out the
meaning of “now”. The final example often falls into the category of symbolic use.
One, however, may contend that it is also a gestural use because we could point at a
city on the map. Even though we could take out a map and gesture the city, it is still
not the real referent and hence belongs to the symbolic use.
Non-deictic use involves both anaphoric and non-anaphoric uses (Levinson, 1983:
67). The key difference is that anaphoric use requires co-reference with its antecedent
in the same sentence or discourse. In the meantime, the antecedent must have a
higher position in the constituent structure of the sentence than the pronoun. See the
following examples:
2.2 Deictic and Non-deictic Uses 11

(2.12) My friend looked up when he came in.

(2.13) When he came in, my friend looked up.
(2.14) My friend looked up when HE came in. (unusual stress).
(2.15) He came in and my friend looked up.

In both (2.12) and (2.13), he is co-referent with the antecedent my friend. In (2.12),
the pronoun he is used in a typical anaphoric sense. When the pronoun precedes
the antecedent, as shown in (2.13), this co-reference is called cataphora. In contrast,
(2.14) is not an anaphoric use because the unusual stress indicates that it is a different
person compared with “my friend”. The pronoun he in (2.15) is also used non-
anaphorically in that it is not governed by the antecedent my friend, viz. they are
placed on the same syntactic level in this case.
Finally, it is worth noting that deictic expressions can also be used in a non-
deictic sense, as in (2.16), and a non-deictic expression can function in a deictic
way, as in (2.17) (Huang, 2014: 171). Moreover, a deictic term can also be used both
anaphorically and deictically, as in (2.18) (Lyons, 1977a: 676, see also Levinson,
1983: 67).
(2.16) If you escape the movie ticket, you will be fined heavily.
(2.17) She’s not the actress; she is. She’s the understudy.
(2.18) I was born in Beijing and have lived there ever since.
In a nutshell, the uses of deixis could be classified into deictic and non-deictic uses.
The deictic use can be further divided into gestural and symbolic uses, while non-
deictic use involves both anaphoric and non-anaphoric uses. The gestural use could
only be accurately understood with the assistance of perceptibly physical elements of
the speech act,1 whereas the symbolic use requires the perception of certain aspects
of the communicative situation. This is summarized as follows:

1 The gestural use of deictics can also be assisted by the direction of sound. For instance, before
getting off the train, the train attendant often says that “please get off from the door on this side of
the coach”. Even if the hearer does not see where the attendant is or where he is pointing at, the
passenger can still understand what “this” refers to as long as he is able to tell where the attendant’s
sound comes from.
12 2 Deixis

2.3 Types of Deixis

This section illustrates the five main types of deictics corresponding to the five
parameters of egocentricity proposed by Levinson in Sect. 2.1, i.e., person, time,
space, social, and discourse. The first three types are the most commonly used deictic
terms and they are often used with paralinguistic assistance (Mey, 2001: 54), whereas
the last two types are associated with contextual features.

2.3.1 Person Deixis

Person deixis contributes to the identification of the interlocutors or participant roles

in a speech event (Huang, 2014: 174). The two common types of person deixis are
personal pronouns and vocatives. The former involves the use of different pronouns
and their syntactic agreements, while the latter consists of proper names, kinship
terms, titles, general terms, etc.
Personal pronouns involve a three-way distinction of first, second, and third
persons. The most fundamental mode of communication is between “I” and “You”.
The use of pronouns usually conveys the number and the gender of the interlocutors.
Let’s start with participant roles.
In a speech event, both interlocutors are potential addressers and addressees.
However, there could be only one speaker/addresser at the production of an utterance,
whereas multiple hearers/listeners may be involved in one utterance. Although only
one person can speak at a given point, he or she often uses the plural form “we” when
representing a group of people. When releasing a new version of the iPhone, Mr.
Tim Cook would wisely choose to use “we” to indicate the joint contribution made
by the entire research and development team. Hearers/listeners can be divided into
addressee and bystander. At Apple’s annual conference, all the reporters, Apple fans,
and anyone interested in their products belong to the addressees that the company
wants to impress. Although those security guards at the venue are also able to hear
the promotion, they generally are not whom the company intends to impress and
therefore are considered as bystanders. In a conversation, the former is represented
by second-person pronouns, and the latter is addressed via third-person pronouns.
The relationship between different types of pronouns is summarized as follows:
2.3 Types of Deixis 13

Pronouns also distinguish number and gender in different languages. The singular
and plural of second-person pronouns are both expressed via “you” in English but via
ni (singular) and nimen (plural) separately in Chinese. Moreover, there is a distinction
between exclusive “we” (excluding addressee) and inclusive “we” (including both
speaker and addressee) in English (Yule, 1996: 11). See the examples (2.19–2.20)
below:
(2.19) Let us go to see a movie. (exclusive we)
(2.20) Let’s go to see a movie. (inclusive we)

There are also gender differences among different languages. In all languages
with pronominal gender marking, gender differences can be found in third persons
(e.g., English, Russian, Catalan, Marathi) (Huang, 2014: 178); some languages can
be marked on both second- and third-person pronouns, such as traditional Chinese
and Modern Hebrew (Anderson & Keenan, 1985: 269); finally, in Nagla, one can
tell gender from first person (Trudgill, 2000: 63). Moreover, some languages only
mark the singular form and some others only mark a particular gender. For instance,
English pronouns mark the third-person singular (he or she), while the third-person
plural is unmarked (using they for both genders). In modern Chinese, the third-person
plural only marks the female group, and interlocutors cannot identify if it is a group
with all males or with both males and females.
In addition to personal pronouns, vocatives also function as name deixis. In
general, vocatives are defined as “noun phrases that refer to the addressee but are not
syntactically or semantically incorporated as the arguments of a predicate” (Levinson,
1983: 71). A brief typology of vocatives is presented below in (2.21) (see Leech, 1999
for detailed studies in English and Xiang, 1995 in Chinese).
(2.21) A brief typology of Chinese and English vocatives
14 2 Deixis

Here are three caveats of using vocatives. First, in Chinese, only dissyllabic last
names can be used as vocatives without other modifiers, whereas monosyllabic
last names have to be bound with other modifiers (e.g., Laozhang, Zhanglaoshi,
Wangshu). Chao (1965/2011: 527) noted that “the force of compounding between a
monosyllabic surname and a monosyllabic given name is so strong that even a wife
sometimes calls a husband, less frequently a husband calls a wife, by his (or her) full
name”. In contrast, English last names are free. Last names without any modifiers
are often used in institutionalized contexts such as courts and parliaments.
Second, Chinese kinship terms can be uttered to both family members (kin use)
and people without blood ties (non-kin use). The non-kin use usually shares the
properties of conventionality and detachability. On the one hand, non-kin uses are
highly conventionalized, so that only certain words can be used as vocatives, e.g.,
yeye (grandfather, used for addressing people as old as the speaker’s grandfather),
shushu (uncle, used for addressing people as old as the speaker’s father or slightly
younger, gege (elder brother, used for addressing people only several years older
than the speaker). Others kinship terms such as laoye (grandfather from mother’s
side), baba (father) cannot address non-family members. On the other hand, non-kin
uses can be bound with both surnames and given names, while kin uses can only
be connected with given names. For example, Jack Ma, the founder of Alipay, is
frequently referred to as Ma baba for acknowledging his business success rather
than indicating a blood relation.
Third, evaluative terms are dynamic in accordance with socio-cultural factors
and contextual factors. In other words, a positive evaluation term could convey a
2.3 Types of Deixis 15

negative meaning when used ironically, whereas a negative term could also boost
interpersonal relationship, examples of which could often be seen among Chinese
couples or very close friends and relatives, such as nigelaobuside (you who are too old
to live), aiqiandaode (the one who deserves death by a thousand cuts), xiaoshagua
(little idiot), and zhunaodai (pig head).
This section mainly discusses vocatives from the perspective of participant roles.
The function of social indexing will be elaborated in Sect. 2.3.4 and a case study of
its pragmatic functions will be presented in Sect. 2.4.

2.3.2 Time Deixis

Time deixis, or temporal deixis, measures the encoding of temporal points and spans
coordinating to the time at which an utterance was produced. The two main types of
time deixis are time adverbials (e.g., yesterday, tomorrow, now, then, etc.) and tense
(e.g., -ed, -ing, etc.)
Our discussion starts with time adverbials. In general, time can be represented
through calendrical and non-calendrical ways. The calendrical time measures a fixed
period of naturally given temporal unit, such as 3 o’clock, Monday, and November
19, 1993. In contrast, non-calendrical use refers to the time measurements that are
relative to some definite time units, such as yesterday, today, tomorrow, and two
days ago. The calendrical and non-calendrical uses are shown in (2.22) and (2.23)
respectively.
(2.22) Please hand in your homework on November 19, 2017.
(2.23) Please hand in your homework tomorrow.

A sophist, however, may take advantage of the non-calendrical coding by subse-

quently changing the referred time in relation to “tomorrow”. He might argue with
the teacher by saying that “you said we need to hand in homework tomorrow, but now
is today, not tomorrow”. The next day, he can play the same trick when the teacher
asks him for homework. What this sophist student was trying to mix up is the coding
time and the receiving time of an utterance. The coding time is the time at which the
speaker produces the utterance, and the receiving time refers to the time at which
the hearer receives the utterance. In face-to-face communications, the coding time
coincides with the receiving time and consequently, the speaker and the hearer share
the same coordinate in the non-calendrical span. In non-face-to-face communica-
tions, such as WeChat message or voicemail recording; however, the speaker needs
to decide whether or not to keep the deictic center on himself or to project it onto the
hearer. Conversely, the hearer is also responsible to discern the coding time from the
receiving time.
An interesting point is that the non-calendrical terms often carry a preemptive
nature of usage compared to calendrical terms. As shown in (2.22) and (2.23), if
16 2 Deixis

“tomorrow” were “November 19, 2017”, the speaker would be inclined to use the non-
calendrical term. This preemptive nature commonly exists in synchronic communica-
tions, whereas it could be violated in asynchronous communication where the coding
time is not identical to its receiving time. For example, if the course instructor wants
to post his assignment deadline on the Internet, it would be clearer to choose (2.22)
over (2.23). In fact, people could be very likely to mix up time at midnight. The
writer thought that it was still the late evening of November 19; however, the earth’s
rotation has carried him to the early morning of November 20. A careless teacher
will be surprised to find that all his students will not submit their homework until the
20th if he chooses to write “tomorrow” and post the notice at midnight.
The switch between calendrical and non-calendrical uses is also determined by
the lexical richness of a language. For example, English only has one lexicalized
deictic term to describe 1 day before and after the coding time, i.e., yesterday and
tomorrow. Chinese, however, can describe 2 days before and after the coding time,
i.e., qiantian “the day before yesterday”, zuotian “yesterday”, mingtian “tomorrow”,
and houtian “the day after tomorrow” respectively (arguably the third pair daqiantian
“three days ago” and dahoutian “three days later”).
The second type of time deixis is tense. One needs to distinguish between metalin-
guistic tense (M-tense) and linguistic tense (L-tense) (Lyons, 1977: 682; Levinson,
1983: 77). M-tense refers to the theoretical category of tense, including the past tense
and the present tense. L-tense is the linguistic realization of M-tense in different
forms. For example, the difference between the present continuous tense and the
present perfect tense is not on the M-tense but the L-tense level. In a strict sense,
they are two different aspects of the present tense, i.e., how the speaker chooses to
describe the action: the present continuous tense indicates that the speaker intends
to describe the present action as ongoing and has not been finished yet; the present
perfect tense suggests that the speaker thinks that the action is complete and projects
certain influence on the present time. It is worth noting that every language has M-
tense but not all languages are marked with L-tense. For instance, Chinese has no
markings on the verb in different time spans, but the tense can be worked out through
sentence meaning, as shown in (2.24).
(2.24) a. He likes eating dumplings. (simple present tense)

b. He is going to eat dumplings tomorrow. (simple future tense)

c. He is eating dumplings right now. (present continuous tense)

Tense can be used to locate the time of the speech event in relation to the coding
time or to identify its distance from reality. The present tense is the proximal form
and the past tense is the distal form. See the examples below:
(2.25) I live in Beijing.
(2.26) I lived in New York.
(2.27) Beijing is the capital city of China.
(2.28) If I were you, I would love to go to Beijing.
2.3 Types of Deixis 17

In (2.25), without time adverbials, one can still infer that the speaker is living in
Beijing now at the production time of the utterance. In contrast, the use of past tense
in (2.26) suggests that the speaker used to live in New York and no longer live there
at the coding time. The present tense in (2.27) shows that the utterance is a statement
of truth, whereas the subjunctive mood in (2.28) distances the utterance from the
reality because the addresser “I” can never become the addressee “you”. When used
in suggestions, the subjunctive mood could convey a degree of politeness because it
indicates that what the speaker suggested is not necessarily imperative but optional,
leaving the addressee a space to decide by herself.

2.3.3 Place Deixis

Place deixis, or space deixis, spatial deixis, concerns the specification of locations
relative to the reference point at the production time of the utterance. Similar to time
deixis, place deixis is also constructed by the interaction of deictic coordinates with
the non-deictic perception (Levinson, 1983: 73). While it is possible for the addresser
and the addressee to share at the same time, it is impossible for them to occupy the
same location. The common space deixes are demonstratives (e.g., this, that), deictic
adverbs of space (e.g., here), and deictic directionals (e.g., come, go).
Place deixis can be used to suggest both physical and psychological distances.
See the following examples.
(2.29) That woman is a politician and this one is only a waitress.
(2.30) At the White House press conference held on the 21 January 1998 when Bill Clinton
made a statement about his relationship with Miss Lewinsky.
Clinton: I did not have sexual relations with that woman. (Huang, 2014: 219) In (2.29),
that is used as a distal form of deixis to refer to the female politician who stands away
in comparison to the waitress “close” in terms of physical location. In (2.30), however,
choosing that does not necessarily mean that Miss Lewinsky was standing far away from
President Clinton at the coding time of that statement (In fact, she was not present in that
press conference at all). What President Clinton was more likely to convey is the message
that he was psychologically distant from Miss Lewinsky in the sense that they were only
coworkers but not sexual partners. This is a deictic use on the psychological level. This
special type of place deixis is also called empathic deixis (Levinson, 1983; Lyons, 1977b)
or emotional deixis (Huang, 2014).

Another point that needs to be stressed is that place deixis can be encoded based
on either the addresser or the addressee’s coordinates, generating different inferred
meanings. Take the following motion verbs as examples.
(2.31) I will come to your office soon.
(2.32) I will go to your office soon.

Examples (2.31) and (2.32) can be interpreted in two different ways. Following the
egocentric use of deixis, we can infer that the speaker in (2.31) is close to the office,
whereas the addressee in (2.32) is close to the office. However, when considered as
18 2 Deixis

a deictic projection, the speaker could also be away from the office in (2.31), and the
addressee could be standing close to the speaker and being far away from the office.

2.3.4 Social Deixis

Social deixis is used to indicate the social status of the involved persons in discourse
and marks the social relationship held between them. There are basically two types
of socially deictic information: absolute and relational (Levinson, 1983: 90). The
former refers to the reserved terms for referent with special social status, e.g., Her
Majesty, Your Highness, Mr. President in English and zhen, gu in Chinese (zhen and
gu are privileged self-addressing terms for emperors and kings in ancient China).
The relational information in social deixis is more widely used and can be grouped
into four categories: speaker and referent (e.g., referent honorifics), speaker and
addressee (e.g., addressee honorifics), speaker and bystander (e.g., bystander or
audience honorifics), and speaker and setting (e.g., levels of formality) (Levinson,
1983: 90). The difference between referent honorifics and addressee honorifics is
that the former has to show respect by mentioning the referent, whereas the latter
can express respect without referring to the target (Comrie, 1976). For example, the
distinction between tu/vous forms in French is a referent honorific where the referent
happens to be the addressee. In contrast, the choice between yongshan “to eat (for
the royal family)” and chifan “to eat (for ordinary citizens)” is a common addressee
honorific in Chinese. Bystander honorifics are terms that are used to show respect
to the bystanders of a speech event, including the audience and the non-participants.
Finally, the levels of formality are also in accordance with different social settings. A
common example is that one would choose to dine in English or yongcan in Chinese
on a formal occasion while using to eat in English or its Chinese counterpart chifan
in an informal setting.
Following the illustration of person deixis in Sect. 2.3.1, we expound the relation-
ship between person deixis and social deixis. In general, social deixis can be seen
as an extension of person deixis. Person deixes such as personal pronouns and voca-
tives are also social deixes. The major difference is that person deixis concerns more
about the participant roles, whereas social deixis focuses on the choice of different
honorific forms for a particular person in a specific context. Addressers employ social
deixis to convey his or her respect, care, or closeness to the involved participants in
a speech event. Alternatively, the choice of such expressions implies the degree of
social distance or social closeness between the addresser and other participants. For
example, in Chinese, the use of ni/nin “you” indicates that the utterance is directed
to the addressee, not the bystander, but the choice between ni and nin suggests the
social relationship held between the addresser and the addressee. The use of ni, the
informal addressing term, shows a high degree of solidarity or a low degree of power
difference. In contrast, using the formal addressing term nin reveals a larger power
difference between the interlocutors. A similar difference can also be found in the
2.3 Types of Deixis 19

tu/vous distinction in French where tu represents a close social distance and vous
denotes a larger power difference (Brown & Gilman, 1960).
More importantly, since most of the social deixes are relational and subject to
change, the appropriate manipulation of these deictics could enhance the pragmatic
force of a speech act. For instance,
(2.33) Penny and Leonard are voting yes to remove Sheldon from the Tenants Association.
Sheldon is trying to get a no vote from Amy.
Sheldon: Not so fast. I believe we have one tenant here who has not made her voice heard.
Amy: Oh.
Sheldon: We’re waiting, fiancée.
Penny: Yeah, we’re waiting, best friend.
Leonard: Yeah, we’re waiting, neighbor who needed a battery and totally got one from me,
no strings attached.
The Big Bang Theory (2018).

In the above scenario, in order to win Amy’s vote, Sheldon manifests his special
relationship with Amy by saying fiancée. In so doing, Amy is more likely to vote for
Sheldon to vindicate her determination to protect her better half, which is generally
expected in marriage. Likewise, Penny also manages to display affinity with Amy by
stressing that she is her best friend. Finally, despite having no special bond with Amy,
Leonard still tries to create a seemingly intimate relation with Amy by reminding her
that he used to lend her a battery with no strings attached. The strategic showcasing of
social relationship enhances the pragmatic force of the speech act from each speaker
and hence puts Amy into a more complicated dilemma.

2.3.5 Discourse Deixis

The final category of deixis is discourse deixis or textual deixis. It concerns the use
of linguistic expressions within some utterances to refer to the current, preceding,
or following utterance in the same discourse. Since a discourse consists of complete
utterances, there is no denying that sometimes it unfolds time, space, and other
elements. Hence, both time deixis and space deixis could be employed to anchor some
part of the discourse. See the illustrative examples below (deictics are italicized):
(2.34) As mentioned in the last chapter, pragmatics can be regarded as a study of meaning.
(2.35) In the next section, I will introduce social deixis to the class.
(2.36) I believe that you do not know this rumor about Tony.
(2.37) That was the happiest moment I have ever enjoyed.

Utterances (2.34) and (2.35) employ time deictic expressions last and next, respec-
tively, as the referents to anchor some portion of the preceding and the forthcoming
discourse. Examples (2.36) and (2.37) use space deictic expressions this and that
to refer to some part of the co-text, the preceding and the following discourse. An
20 2 Deixis

interesting point is that if we analyze the deictic expressions with other elements of
the utterance, we could find that time deixes last and next assume a kind of space
prominence in the whole context, while space deixes this and that are situated in a
temporal dimension.
Furthermore, utterance initial usages of relative adverbials such as anyway,
however, but, although, thus, hence, so, in conclusion, well, besides, all in all, and
after all can also signal a cohesive relationship of the utterance in the same discourse.
A major function of this use is to link the present utterances with some portions of
the preceding utterances (Huang, 2014: 217; Levinson, 1983: 87–88).
A final category of discourse deixis is topic marking in some topic prominent
languages (e.g. Chinese and Japanese) (Huang, 2014: 217–218). For example,
(2.38) 安全问题, 我们大家都要重视。
Regarding the matter of safety, we all need to pay attention to it.

Following the analysis in Li and Thompson (1976), the topic takes precedence
over the subject in controlling co-reference. In other words, it is not women “us”
but anquan wenti “the matter of safety” is the given information. Even without
given contexts, we could infer that the matter of safety must refer to the previous
discussion about an incidence of safety. Therefore, we can observe that the topic
marking clearly connects the preceding discourse with the current and perhaps the
following utterances.
Finally, we draw a distinction between discourse deixis and anaphora. In general,
discourse deixis refers to a portion of the discourse, whereas anaphora refers to the
same entity expressed earlier (cataphora refers to the same entity which is identified
later or subsequently). Here are several examples:
(2.39) a. James exerted all his energy into a new career, and in the end, he became a successful
businessman.

b. Once she finished the course paper, Xiaohui flew to Hong Kong for a summer school.

(2.40) Dr. Xiang introduced the five types of deixis and then Xiaohui did it to James.

In (2.39), the pronoun he is used anaphorically and co-referential with the

antecedent James while she is used cataphorically and co-referential with the postce-
dent Xiaohui. Since the two pronouns refer to the same referent in each discourse,
they are not deixis. On the other hand, in (2.40), the pronoun it does not refer to what
has appeared before but represents the task of retelling the types of deixis to James.
In this case, the pronoun it is used deictically.

2.4 Applications: Chinese Vocatives as Pragmatic Markers

As we can see from the introduction of five major types of deixis, the uses of personal
pronouns and vocatives occupy a huge chunk of deictic usage, i.e., person deixis and
social deixis. As a classic topic in pragmatics, the study of pragmatic markers holds a
2.4 Applications: Chinese Vocatives as Pragmatic Markers 21

strong tie with the study of vocatives (Fraser, 1996, 2006). In this section, we attempt
to illustrate the use of Chinese name vocatives as pragmatic markers. Section 2.4.1
introduces the research design of the case study and the following three sections
present the realizations of the three main functions of pragmatic markers in Chinese
vocatives.

2.4.1 Introduction

This study adopts Fraser’s (1996) classification of vocatives as pragmatic markers

and Aijmer’s (2015: 201) tripartite of their pragmatic functions. Pragmatic markers
are commonly understood as a group of words that do not constitute the propositional
content but contain pragmatic functions in speech. Vocatives are defined as “noun
phrases that refer to the addressee but are not syntactically or semantically incor-
porated as the arguments of a predicate” (Levinson, 1983: 71). Therefore, vocatives
can be analyzed in the framework of pragmatic markers.
The data are extracted from the TV program subcategory of CCL (Center for
Chinese Linguistics) Corpus. TV programs are largely constituted of spoken language
and can best reflect the use of vocatives in conversations. This sub-corpus consists
of 44 texts, containing 4 million characters (4,374,300). Since vocatives are usually
separated by a comma in transcripts, in the CCL corpus, we use regular expres-
sions “, $5。”, “。$5,” “, $5,”, respectively, to extract phrases with no more than
five words between two punctuations. We extracted 390 vocatives from our corpus.
The following three sections introduce their pragmatic functions of coherence,
involvement, and (im)politeness.

2.4.2 Vocatives and Coherence

Vocatives carry the property of coherence. They are “the grease between the propo-
sitional parts of discourse making it work as discourse and they can create coher-
ence ‘locally’ within the speaker’s turn” (Aijmer, 2013: 32). This textual function
is achieved with strong connections to the positioning of vocatives. We identify
five sub-functions under this category: turn-initiating, turn-maintaining, turn-taking,
turn-offering, and topic-shifting.
Vocatives are frequently used in getting the addressee’s attention and therefore
initiating a conversation. This function is achieved in utterance initial, as shown in
(2.41).
(2.41) Lin Xiaofeng is mad at her husband Song Jianping for his extramarital affairs. She
doesn’t want to go to a party together with Song and is leaving:
宋建平: 小枫, 走, 洗把脸, 去!跟我一块儿去!
Song Jianping: Xiaofeng, go ahead and wash your face. Go with me!
22 2 Deixis

Chinese Style Divorce (2004).

Since Lin Xiaofeng has gone far, by shouting out her name, Song Jianping is
trying to get her attention so as to invite her again to join the party.
Similarly, name vocatives can be used to maintain the ongoing conversation. By
calling the addressee’s name, the speaker conveys his willingness to hold his position
to speak.
(2.42) Liang Bida and Chen Mohan are having a long conversation at night.
梁必达: 现在, 该是我们两个蓝桥埠娃子谈点私事的时候了。墨涵, 还记得韩秋云吗?
Liang Bida: Now, it’s time for us two boys from Lanqiaobu to talk about some private matters.
Mohan, do you still remember Han Qiuyun?
History of the Sky (2004).

In (2.42), Liang Bida has finished discussing business with Chen Mohan and wants
to talk about something private. By uttering Mohan’s name, Liang not only maintains
his position to continue speaking but also explains the details of “something private”,
connecting these two pieces of utterances.
Conversely, name vocatives can also be used to take turns in the struggle of
conversing. For instance,
(2.43) Xiao Li is trying to flirt with Song Jianping:
肖莉: 老宋, 你在新单位里是不是有一种如鱼得水的感觉?
宋建平: 如鱼得水谈不上, 比较适合我而已。外企的人事关系相对要简单, 我这人就简
单。
肖莉: 是, 简单。单纯, 善良, 可爱……
宋建平: 打住, 肖莉, 打住。不要再挑逗我, 不要再给我错觉, 不要再让我瞧不起你……
Xiao Li: Lao Song, do you feel like a duck to water in your new unit?
Song Jianping: It’s not like a fish in water. It’s just more suitable for me. The personnel
relationship in foreign companies is relatively simple, and I am simple.
Xiao Li: Yes, easy, simple, kind, cute …
Song Jianping: Stop it, Xiao Li, stop it. Don’t tease me anymore, don’t give me the illusion,
and don’t make me look down on you …
Chinese Style Divorce (2004).

In the above scenario, Song Jianping has had enough of Xiao’s flirting and there-
fore interrupts her when she is listing Song’s good qualities. By uttering Xiao’s full
name, Song obstructs Xiao’s flow, seizing an opportunity to decline her affection.
Instead of struggling to take the position to speak, interlocutors can also use
vocatives to invite bystanders, particularly the ones the current speaker intends to
address, to participate in the ongoing discourse. For instance,
(2.44) Ge Ling, Yu Deli, and Li Dongbao are discussing a solution to remedy a mistake they
made earlier:
戈玲: 我们年轻人也不会让你们顶这雷。是不是, 东宝, 得利?
余得利: 没错儿。
戈玲: 我们惹出的麻烦, 我们绝不会推诿。
2.4 Applications: Chinese Vocatives as Pragmatic Markers 23

李东宝: 对。
Ge Ling: We young people will not let you take the blame. Won’t we, Dongbao, Deli?
Yu Deli: That’s right.
Ge Ling: We will never excuse the trouble we cause.
Li Dongbao: Yes.
Stories from the Editorial Board (1991).

(2.45) Zhang Pujing, Liang Bida, Dou Yuquan, and Zhu Yudao are planning for a critical
rescue of their comrade from the enemy.
张普景: 炮不比枪, 恐怕没那么精确的。老梁, 这个决心还得你下。
梁必达: 不能打, 炮手卸弹。(对朱预道)你是什么意思, 想杀人灭口吗?……
Zhang Pujing: Cannons are no better than guns, and I am afraid they are not that accurate.
Dear Liang, this decision is up to you.
Liang Bida: Don’t shoot, the gunner unloads. (Talking to ZhuYudao) What do you mean, do
you want to kill someone? …
History of the Sky (2004).

In (2.44), by articulating Dongbao and Deli’s names, Ge Ling offers the chance
to speak to the two hearers, attempting to seek their agreement on reassuring their
willingness to shoulder the responsibility. In (2.45), facing the potential collateral
damage to their comrades, Zhang Pujing hands the decision power to Commander
Liang Bida by addressing him among the members of the leadership. In both cases,
the designated hearers respond immediately, fulfilling the pragmatic function of
turn-offering.
Finally, with regard to discourse management, name vocatives are effective in
finishing the current topic and initiating a new topic.
(2.46) Xiaochu and Captain Xie are investigating a murder case:
小楚: 似乎案犯只想偷一点儿钱, 但被死者发现了。谢队, 这个案子是上报支队还是由
我们分队刑警大队处理?
Xiao Chu: It seems that the perpetrator just wanted to steal some money but was caught by
the victim. Captain Xie, should this case be reported to the detachment or handled by our
police brigade?
Winter Solstice (2003).

In (2.46), the speaker is briefing Captain Xie about the whole story between the
criminal and the victim. The occupational vocative xiedui wraps up the first part of
the discourse and shifts to the second topic, asking if they should handle this case by
themselves or report to their supervisors.

2.4.3 Vocatives and Involvement

Name vocatives “mark the speaker’s involvement with the hearer, co-operation and
interest in what is going on in the discourse” (Aijmer, 2013: 37). They function on
24 2 Deixis

the discourse level, signaling the speaker’s agreement, disagreement, and positive or
negative evaluations of the addressee.
Vocatives can signal either agreement or disagreement with the preceding
proposition based on the choice of addressing terms. See the following examples:
(2.47) Xiao Yawen, Ouyang Xue and Ding Yuanying are chatting together:
肖亚文: 丁总, 一晃都3年了。
欧阳雪: 叫丁总多别扭, 你跟我一样叫大哥吧。
肖亚文: 好啊, 大哥, 那我就套近乎了。
XiaoYawen: Boss Ding, it’s been 3 years in a flash.
Ouyang Xue: It’s so awkward to call him Boss Ding, you should call him big brother just
like I do.
XiaoYawen: All right, big brother, then I’ll cotton up.
Tian Dao (2006).
(2.48) He Hongtao brings Xu Sanduo to meet his son Xiaozaizi:
何红涛: 他们是叔叔!…… 你就一个爸爸。今天又给你带回一个叔叔, 叫叔叔。
小崽子: (对着许三多)爸爸!
He Hongtao: They are uncles! … You have just one father. Today I bring back another uncle
to you, and say “Uncle”.
Xiaozaizi: (to Xu Sanduo) Dad!
Soldiers Sortie (2006).

In (2.47), Xiao Yawen initially addresses Ding Yuanying as dingzong (boss Ding),
showing respect to him and indicating a large power difference. However, when
Ouyang Xue suggests that Xiao could call him dage (big brother) as well, Xiao
expresses her agreement to Ouyang’s suggestion by readdressing Ding as dage,
showing a closer interpersonal relationship. In contrast, when He Hongtao corrects
his son the use of baba (dad) and asks him to greet Xu Sanduo in (2.48), his little
boy still calls Xu as baba. Since Xiaozaizi is raised up in the army not only by his
father but also by many other soldiers, he develops a false understanding that baba
is a general title used to address male adults. As a result, even if He Hongtao tries to
correct him, the little boy still expresses his cognitive disagreement with his father.
Vocatives also convey the speaker’s positive or negative evaluations of the
addressee because these addressing terms reflect the speaker’s perception of the
addressee’s social status, personality, and morality. For instance,
(2.49) Hongye went back and found out that Yin Tianchou has directed one of his underlings
to successfully collect protection money.
洪爷: 仇哥, 你真行, 幸亏了你。
Hongye: Brother Qiu, you are awesome, thanks to you.
King of Comedy (1999).
(2.50) Guo Yan is arguing with her husband David:
郭燕: 你就是欺负人, 流氓。
Guo Yan: You’re a bully, scumbag.
A Native of Beijing in New York (1994).
2.4 Applications: Chinese Vocatives as Pragmatic Markers 25

In (2.49), Hongye is impressed with Yin Tianchou’s acting talent to collect protec-
tion fees and expresses his admiration with a positive evaluative vocative ge (big
brother) over other general titles. Likewise, in (2.50), Guo Yan is mad at her husband
David and addresses him with a negative evaluative term liumang (scumbag) over
other sweet endearments that frequently appear among married couples.

2.4.4 Vocatives and (Im)politeness

Finally, vocatives are important in managing interlocutors’ interpersonal relation-

ship. Politeness is “concerned with the interactional constraints we follow when
establishing, maintaining or breaking interpersonal relationships” (Ostman, 1995:
104). Interlocutors apply different addressing terms in accordance with their inter-
personal relations. While impoliteness used to be considered as rare in daily commu-
nication (Leech, 1983), recent studies have shown that impoliteness also permeates
in interpersonal interactions (Culpeper, 2011). This section presents how vocatives
are used to convey (im)politeness. See the examples below:
(2.51) Qiao Zhiyong is asking who is coming and if there is any company. The servant
Changshuan replies:
长栓: 翠儿一个人, 二爷。
Changshuan: Cuier is alone, Junior Master.
Jstars Courtyard (2006).
(2.52) Niu Yuqing and Li Dongbao are chatting about politics:
牛玉清: 太对了, 冬宝, 就冲你这句话, 从此我不拿你当外人。
Niu Yuqing: That’s absolutely right, Dongbao. Based on what you said, I won’t treat you as
an outsider from now on.
Stories from the Editorial Board (1991).
(2.53) Dong Yunsheng and Ma Jiangwei are fighting with each other:
董云升: 马江威, 我告诉你, 你爹充其量也就是一个屁大的官儿, 别他妈太嚣张。
Dong Yunsheng: Ma Jiangwei, let me tell you: Your father is at best a puny official, don’t
be so fucking arrogant.
Owner of China (2008).

In (2.51), by addressing Qiao Zhiyong as ye (master), Changshuan manifests their

servant-master power dynamic, showing respect to Mr. Qiao. In (2.52), Niu Yuqing
uses Li Dongbao’s given name to create interpersonal solidarity. In contrast, the
name-calling realized in (2.53) violates the social convention in Chinese society and
is regarded as rudeness. Nevertheless, the impolite language does not necessarily
convey an impolite interpretation. For instance,
(2.54) Xu Sanduo is showing his father Xu Baishun his military uniform:
许百顺: 反的再来一圈, 龟儿子。
Xu Baishun: Go back and forth again, you stinky boy.
Soldiers Sortie (2006).
26 2 Deixis

In the above example, when Xu Sanduo is about to leave home, his father Xu
Baishun can’t help but swear at him. Instead of conveying rudeness as in (2.53),
impoliteness is considered as an exclusive way for the father to show his love to Xu
Sanduo.
Finally, it is important to bear in mind that these three pragmatic functions are
not mutually exclusive to each other. One vocative could achieve all three pragmatic
functions at the same time. See the example below:
(2.55) Liang Daya saved Han Qiuyun from Japanese soldiers. However, Han is trying to get
rid of Liang:
梁大牙: 贱妮子, 老子救你, 还打老子, 不识好歹的东西。
Liang Daya: Bitch, I am saving you, but you beat me. You can’t tell the good from the bad.
History of the Sky (2004).

In this example, jiannizi serves as an evaluative vocative that first specifies the
addressee to initiate Liang’s complaint; second shows that he blamed Han for not
appreciating his help; and third conveys rudeness towards Han Qiuyun. Besides, jian
can be used separately from vocatives or as an evaluative modifier before vocatives,
indicating the extreme contempt for somebody’s dishonorable character or way of
behavior; and nizi is the commonly used vocative by parents or men of older age in
China when showing tender care or pity, something like sweet, honey in English—the
combination of jian and nizi uttered by Liang may help convey the subtle feeling of
love and complaint intertwined with each other.

2.5 Review

• Preliminaries
• Definition
• Nature of egocentricity
– The violation of egocentricity

• Deictic projection
– Grammatically determined by addressee
– Intended to convey additional meaning
• Deictic and non-deictic uses
• Deictic use
– Symbolic use
– Gestural use

• Non-deictic use
References 27

– Anaphoric use
– Non-anaphoric use
• Types of deixis
• Person deixis
– Personal pronouns
– Vocatives

• Time deixis
– Time adverbials
– Tense

• Place deixis
– Demonstratives
– Deictic adverbs of space
– Deictic directional

• Social deixis
– Absolute
– Relational

• Discourse deixis
– Time deixis
– Space deixis
– Relative adverbials
– Topic markings

References

Aijmer, K. (2013). Understanding pragmatic markers: A variational pragmatic approach. Edin-

burgh University Press.
Aijmer, K. (2015). Pragmatic markers. In K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann (Eds.), Corpus pragmatics
(pp. 195–218). Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, S. R., & Keenan, E. (1985). Deixis. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic
description (pp. 259–308). Cambridge University Press.
Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. Sebeok (Ed.), Aspects
of style in language (pp. 253–276). MIT Press.
Chao, Y. R. (1965/2011). A grammar of spoken Chinese. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
Comrie, B. (1976). Linguistic politeness axes: Speaker-addressee, speaker-reference, speaker-
bystander. Pragmatics Microfiche, 1(7), A3–A1.
28 2 Deixis

Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge University Press.
Fraser, B. (1996). Pragmatic markers. Pragmatics, 6, 167–190.
Fraser, B. (2006). Towards a theory of discourse markers. In K. Fischer (ed.), Approaches to
discourse particles (pp. 189–205). Elsevier.
Huang, Y. (2014). Pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Jiang, W. Q. (2000). Pragmatics: Theory and applications. Peking University Press.
Leech, G. (1999). The distribution and function of vocatives in American and British English
conversation. Language and Computers, 26(1), 107–120.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Longman.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. (1977a). Semantics (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. (1977b). Semantics (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press.
Mey, J. L. (2001). Pragmatics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Blackwell.
Ostman, J. O. (1995). Pragmatic particles twenty years after. In Organization in Discourse:
Proceeding from the Turku Conference (pp. 95–108). University of Turku.
Trudgill, P. (2000). Sociolinguistics: An introduction to language and society (4th ed.). Penguin.
Xiang, M. Y. (1995). A view of modern Chinese vocatives. Journal of Southwest Normal University,
Philosophy and Social Science, 3, 117–120.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Chapter 3
Presupposition

In the pilot of the American TV series Newsroom, a sophomore from Northwestern

University asks the three guests: Can you say why America is the greatest country in
the world? The first two guests respond to the student with textbook answers such as
diversity and opportunity and freedom and freedom; Will McAvoy, the news anchor
who is not satisfied with the status quo, however, points out that America is no longer
the greatest country and then gives a rousing speech about how to make America
great again. An essential pragmatic phenomenon behind the scene is that the other
two guests agree with the student’s assumption that America is the greatest country
in the world, whereas McAvoy disagrees with it. This implied assumption falls into
the study of presupposition and will be elaborated on in this chapter.
Sections 3.1 and 3.2 introduce the two closely related notions of entailment and
presupposition. A brief comparison of these two concepts is presented in Sect. 3.3.
The final section discusses the practice of entailment and presupposition in academic
writing and interpersonal communication.

3.1 Entailment

Before discussing presupposition, we first introduce the sentential relationship of

entailment that concerns the truth condition of utterances. This section begins with
the three types of truth and then moves to elaborate on the definition of entailment
and its classifications.

© Peking University Press 2024 29

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2_3
30 3 Presupposition

3.1.1 Preliminaries

We start this section with three types of truth in philosophical inquiry: a priori and a
posteriori, necessary and contingent, and synthetic and analytic. An a priori truth
refers to the speaker’s knowledge regardless of the means of acquisition, whereas an
a posteriori truth requires empirical testing. For instance,
(3.1) I went to Beijing in 2011.

(3.2) Beihang University has air conditioning for all dormitories.

Sentence (3.1) describes an a priori truth because it is the speaker’s knowledge that
he has been to Beijing in 2011. In contrast, whether Beihang University has installed
air conditioning for all dormitories needs to be checked on the spot. The second
pair is necessary and contingent truth. The mathematical statement one plus one
equals two is a necessary truth because it goes unchallenged in all circumstances.
A truth that can be contradicted is a contingent truth. For example, the extinction
of leaf-scaled sea snakes was a contingently true statement until this type of fish was
rediscovered in 2002. The third distinction is between synthetic truth and analytic
truth. The analytically true sentence is judged from the meaning relations within
the sentence, as in (3.3), whereas the synthetically true sentence is concluded in
reference to the real world, as shown in (3.4).
(3.3) My father is a male.

(3.4) My father is a professor.

To sum up, these differences can be ascribed to the concerns of the analysts:
the first set rests on what the speakers know; the second set is a metaphysical one,
questioning the nature of reality; the third set is semantically oriented (Kripke, 1980).
Entailment falls into the category of analytic truth and is thus defined as follows
(Saeed, 2009: 99):
A sentence p entails a sentence q when the truth of the first (p) guarantees the
truth of the second (q), and the falsity of the second (q) guarantees the falsity of the
first (p).
This can be presented in the form of a truth table:
(3.5)

p Relation q
True → True
False → True/False
False ← False
True/False ← True
3.1 Entailment 31

As seen from the above table, only the truth of the entailing sentence (p) or the
falsity of the entailed sentence (q) determines the truth condition of the corresponding
sentence. That is, the function of entailment is to predict the truth value of a statement
by referring to that of another. For example,
(3.6) James went to school in Texas.

(3.7) James went to school in America.

Bearing that (3.6) entails (3.7) in mind, if James indeed went to school in Texas,
we can also say that he went to America for education since Texas is a state of the U.S.
Similarly, when (3.7) is false, one can state that (3.6) is also untenable. Moreover,
based on (3.5), we can also derive that the falsity of (3.6) or the truth of (3.7) cannot
determine the truth condition of each other. As long as James studied somewhere in
the U.S., statement (3.7) remains to be true even if he did not go to Texas. Likewise,
if James studied in the U.S. is true, we could not definitively infer that he went to
school in Texas.

3.1.2 Types of Entailment

Entailment can be dichotomized in three ways: upward/downward entailment, one-

way/mutual entailment, and foreground/background entailment.
In terms of direction, entailment is divided into upward and downward entailment
(Huang, 2014: 21). An upward entailment describes a sentential relation that is from
the specific to the general, as in (3.8). In contrast, a downward entailment operates
from the general to the specific, as in (3.9).
(3.8) a. Children are playing badminton.
b. Children are playing sports.

(3.9) a. Thomas does not like watching TV shows.

b. Thomas does not like watching Saturday Night Live.

Moreover, one may observe that (3.8a) entails (3.8b) but (3.8b) does not entail
(3.8a). This type of entailment is termed as one-way entailment. A mutual entail-
ment, on the other hand, describes entailment that is valid in both directions, as in
(3.10).
(3.10) a. Bob is in front of Peter.
b. Peter is behind Bob.

The distinction between one-way entailment and mutual entailment can be used
to examine paraphrasing, which is one of the most common exercises for language
learners. A good paraphrase is thus defined as a pair of sentences that mutually entail
each other. A poorly paraphrased sentence can be revised through the identification
of one-way entailment and its replacement of mutual entailment.
32 3 Presupposition

The final distinction is between background and foreground entailments. Our basic
grammatical knowledge tells us that most of the sentences include parts of speech
such as the subject, the object, and the clause. Each one of these elements gives rise to
many background entailments, as in (3.12) to (3.11). According to Levinson (1983:
219), the dichotomy between background and foreground entailments involves a
simple pragmatic rule: the background entailments of a sentence are considered
not closely related to the current context, and when the background entailment is
considered adding new information and becoming the point of saying the sentence,
it becomes a foreground entailment.
(3.11) Tony painted the wall.
(3.12) a. Someone painted the wall.
b. Tony did something to the wall.
c. Tony painted something.
d. Something happened.
(3.13) TONY painted the wall. (stress on Tony).

Sentences in (3.12) exemplify four background entailments of (3.11). By stressing

on Tony, as in (3.13), the speaker asserts that it is Tony who painted the wall, against
the assumed background that someone painted the wall in (3.12 a). It is worth noting
that (3.12 b–d) are not the background entailments of (3.13). If the stress is on painted,
as in (3.14),
(3.14) Tony PAINTED the wall. (stress on painted).

Then we can say that (3.14) foreground—entails (3.12 b). Utterance (3.14) is
considered as the answer to the question Tom did what to the wall?
To sum up, all sentences have a number of entailments—other sentences which
are automatically true if the original sentence is true. Entailments are inferences
that can be drawn solely from our knowledge about the semantic relationships in a
language. This knowledge allows us to communicate much more than we actually
say.

3.2 Presupposition

After getting familiar with entailment, we move to illustrate presupposition. This

section focuses on its definition, its classifications, its properties, and the main types
of presupposition triggers.

3.2.1 Preliminaries

While entailment predicts the truth value of a sentence via the truth condition of
another, presupposition describes the piece of information that is presumed to be
3.2 Presupposition 33

true for another sentence. For instance, (3.15b) is considered to be true before uttering
(3.15a):
(3.15) a. Tony’s brother is lovely.
b. Tony has a brother.

This semantic understanding of presupposition is usually credited to the philoso-

phers Gottlob Frege (1892) and Peter Strawson (1950).
A pragmatic interpretation, on the other hand, attributes presupposition to the
speaker rather than the sentence itself. Our real-life experience teaches us that we do
not need to state everything in one utterance. For example,
(3.16) Before leaving for school, Tom said to his mother:
a: I am going to school.
b: I am going to Beijing No.4 High School today.

Utterance (3.16a) appears to be sufficient to convey the intact meaning in this

context. Tom does not need to specify the name of the school because he assumes
his mother, the addressee, clearly knows which school he is going to. In addition,
following the nature of egocentricity discussed in Chap. 2, it is also redundant for the
speaker to clarify that he is going to school on the same day he utters that sentence.
The choice of (3.16a) over (3.16b) is dubbed as the Maxim of Common Presup-
position. That is, a presupposition is the speaker’s anticipation of the interlocutors’
shared knowledge and is thus left unsaid, achieving an optimal balance between
the interlocutors’ efforts and the necessary information required by the conversation
(Xiang, 2017). Prior to uttering a sentence, the speaker has assumed some mutual
knowledge (or common ground) that is appropriate in the corresponding context. For
example, the shared information in (3.17b) is the presupposition of (3.17a).
(3.17) a. Tony was late for the party because his car broke down.
b. Tony has a car.

This common ground could vary cross-culturally. For example, Mey (2001: 145)
notes that, in France, asking the storage of oysters normally presupposes that the
speaker intends to order some, whereas this presupposition does not stand in America.
It appears normal for someone to ask the price of a product without expressing the
intention of ordering it. In addition, it is worth noting that mutual knowledge is the
hearer’s assumption of what the speaker intends him to hold. However, the speaker’s
statement needn’t necessarily correspond to the reality so long as it convinces the
hearer of the truth. Conversely, the hearer’s responsibility is to identify the intended
truth the speaker conveys.

3.2.2 Types of Presupposition

Presupposition can be classified into six types: existential, lexical, factive, non-
factive, structural, and counterfactual presuppositions (Yule, 1996: 30).
34 3 Presupposition

The first important type is existential presupposition, indicating that the speaker
assumes the existence of the entities named. It is often realized via possessive
constructions (e.g., her computer, John’s wife) and definite noun phrases (e.g., the
President of the United States, the headmaster, the boy on the second floor, the
Forbidden City).
(3.18) John’s wife went to Beijing for a conference.
(3.19) The President of the United States held a summit with the North Korean leader in
Singapore.

Example (3.18) presupposes the existence of a woman who has marital relation-
ship with John, and (3.19) presupposes the existence of a person who is the President
of the United States and another the leader of North Korea.
Another type is lexical presupposition. In general, the identification of lexical
presupposition is relevant to the conventional interpretation of lexical items. A
typical example is the use of to manage:
(3.20) a. Yuki managed to run a full marathon.
b. Yuki did not manage to run a full marathon.

Example (3.20a) implies that Yuki successfully finished a full marathon, whereas
(3.20b) suggests that Yuki failed to complete the marathon. It is possible that she
might not feel well on the way and had to quit in the middle or she did not run at all.
In both cases, however, one can easily draw a conclusion that Yuki tried to run this
marathon, and it is thus considered as its lexical presupposition.
While in lexical presupposition, the speaker’s choice of a particular expression
presupposes an unsaid meaning, a factive presupposition indicates the truth of the
subsequent information (Yule, 1996: 28). For example,
(3.21) a. Everyone knows that he is gay.
b. He is gay.
(3.22) a. Ben regretted closing the door.
b. Ben closed the door.
(3.23) a. Xiaohui realizes that writing a book is a huge challenge.
b. Writing a book is a huge challenge.

In each example, sentence a presupposes sentence b. One can know something

only when it is a fact and people can only regret doing something when it has already
been done. When a person realizes something, he or she usually discovers a fact. This
type of triggers includes know, regret, realize, be sorry that, be indifferent that, be
aware of, be glad/ pleased/ sad that, etc.
The information following non-factive attitude verbs/predictive verbs/mental-
process words (such as dream, imagine, be likely that, suppose, pretend, etc.) cannot
be treated as a fact and is described as a non-factive presupposition. To put it
succinctly, a non-factive presupposition is one that is assumed not to be true. The
non-factive attitude verbs block the presuppositions of the embedded clauses. See
the examples below:
3.2 Presupposition 35

(3.24) a. I dreamed of going to outer space.

b. I have not gone to outer space.

(3.25) a. Jason imagined spending time in Eden.

b. Jason did not spend time in Eden.

(3.26) a. He pretends to be an astronaut.

b. He is not an astronaut.

In (3.24)–(3.26), the first sentences form a non-factive presupposition with the

second sentences. If someone dreams of something, he is definitely thinking of
something he does not have. And an imagined scenario is nevertheless distant from
reality. In (3.26), a real astronaut will not otherwise pretend to be one.
In addition to words or phrases, certain sentence structures also give rise to presup-
positions and are termed structural presuppositions. The wh-question construction
is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that the information under the
wh-form is true. For instance,
(3.27) Why did you hurt me?

(3.28) Where does Mark keep his money?

(3.29) When did Dillon marry his wife?

Examples (3.27)–(3.29) show that the clauses governed by wh-form are structural
presuppositions. By saying (3.27), the speaker claims that the addressee has already
hurt him. In (3.28), by asking the whereabouts of the money, the speaker assumes
that Mark keeps some money secretly. By asking the time of Dillon’s marriage,
one can work out that the speaker has already known Dillon is married. Apart from
wh-construction, comparative also produces structural presupposition, as in (3.30):
(3.30) Jennifer is a better driver than Xiaohui. >> Xiaohui is a driver.

Finally, certain linguistic structures can also give rise to a counterfactual presup-
position, presupposing the absolute opposite of reality. In comparison with non-
factive presupposition, what the speaker assumes in counterfactual cases holds a
binary relation with the truth. For example, as in (3.26), not being an astronaut is
not the opposite of doing other jobs, such as being a student or a teacher. In (3.31),
however, the statement that the speaker is the addressee directly contradicts the fact
that “you” and “I” can never refer to the same person in the real world.
(3.31) If I were you, I would definitely go to that movie.

3.2.3 Properties of Presupposition

Presupposition exhibits two fundamental properties, namely, constancy under nega-

tion and defeasibility. Certain cases of defeasibility will cause the projection
problem.
36 3 Presupposition

The first property is constancy under negation: in general, a presupposition

can survive under negation. That is, if the presupposition of A is true, then the
presupposition of not A remains to be true. For example,
(3.32) a. Xiaohui’s boyfriend is handsome.
b. Xiaohui’s boyfriend is not handsome.

Both two sentences in (3.32) presuppose Xiaohui has a boyfriend. Prior to making
this judgment, the speaker must have known a person who is the boyfriend of Xiaohui.
However handsome this person is, we cannot deny his existence, hence constituting
an existential presupposition. This property is a diagnostic test for presuppositions,
and is thus dubbed as the negation test (Huang, 2014: 89–90).
Now consider the classic example offered by Bertrand Russell (1905):
(3.33) a. The present King of France is bald.
b. The present King of France is not bald.

We may draw a conclusion from (3.33) that there is a person who is the King
of France. However, this goes against our common knowledge that the monarchy
has been abandoned in France in 1875. This gives rise to the second property of
defeasibility. What we listed in Sect. 3.2.2 are potential presuppositions (Yule, 1996)
and can be canceled or defeated if they are inconsistent with background assumption,
pragmatic inference, semantic entailment, and discourse contexts (see Gazdar, 1979;
Huang, 2014: 90; Levinson, 1983: 190).
First, presupposition can disappear when it goes against the interlocutors’
background assumption or common knowledge of the world. For example,
(3.34) Tony received an offer from Harvard University before he graduated from Beihang
University.

(3.35) Tony passed away before he graduated from Beihang University.

One can easily work out a presupposition that Tony graduated from Beihang at
last in (3.34) but not in (3.35). Our real-world knowledge tells us that human beings
can do nothing after death. Therefore, Tony cannot finish his degree at Beihang
University after his death, and this presupposition is thus canceled.
Presupposition can also evaporate when contradicting with pragmatic inference
(which is called conversational implicature and will be further discussed in the next
chapter). See the example below (adapted from Huang, 2014: 91):
(3.36) If Mary is organizing a slumber party, Catherine will be angry that she is doing so.

The use of factive predicate angry in (3.36) generates a potential presupposition

that Mary is organizing a slumber party. The use of the conditional structure if , on
the other hand, produces a pragmatic inference that Mary is not organizing a slumber
party. The pragmatic inference overrides the potential presupposition, canceling the
assumption that Mary will hold a slumber party.
In addition, semantic entailments can also cancel the potential presuppositions,
especially in the case of negation. For example,
3.2 Presupposition 37

(3.37) The emperor of China can have many concubines, but the monarchy has been abolished
since 1911.

In the above example, the first clause presupposes the existence of a person who
is the emperor of China and he can marry a lot of concubines. The second half of
the sentence, however, entails that no one is the emperor of China since the metric
system has been repealed a century ago. Under this circumstance, the entailment
takes priority and hence defeats the presupposition.
Finally, presupposition can be defeated when put in a larger discourse. For
instance,
(3.38) 听说了吗?村上春树今年终于不用陪跑诺贝尔文学奖了!因为今年诺贝尔文学奖
直接取消了。
Have you heard it? Haruki Murakami is no longer an also-ran for this year’s Nobel Prize in
Literature! This is because this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was outright canceled.
College Daily, 05.04.2018

The first half of (3.38) constitutes an existential presupposition that there exists
a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018. Our real-world knowledge tells us that Mr.
Murakami has been fortunately nominated for the prize many times but sadly did not
win any of them. The combination of the above two elements leads us to an inference
that Mr. Murakami must have won the prize this year. The second half of the report,
however, stated that the prize in 2018 has been canceled, defeating the existential
presupposition we just assumed. What an unfortunate Nobel hunting journey for Mr.
Haruki!
From the above analyses, one may observe a dialectical relationship between
the above two properties: on the one hand, presupposition can survive when the
meaning of the sentence is altered, as in the cases of constancy under negation; on
the other hand, some presuppositions will be canceled such as the cases presented
under defeasibility. That is, “how the presuppositions required by a complex sentence
relate to the presuppositions required by its component clauses” (Stalnaker, 1973:
454–455)? This compositional issue is referred to as the projection problem and
has been dubbed as “the curse and the blessing of modern presupposition theory”
(Beaver, 2001: 13).
The precursor to handle the projection problem is Lauri Karttunen (1973). He
distinguished three types of complementizable predicates: plugs, holes, and filters.
Plugs block off all the presuppositions of the complement sentence. Common exam-
ples include say, mention, tell, ask, promise, warn, request, order, accuse, criticize,
blame, etc. Take say as an example:
(3.39) Tom says that Jack’s car broke down. But Jack doesn’t even have a car!

By using say, the speaker merely reports what has been said and does not neces-
sarily commit himself to the same belief. As shown in (3.39), the speaker holds the
opposite belief against Tom that Jack does not own a car.
In contrast, holes are the predicates that allow all the presuppositions of the
complement sentence to survive in the matrix sentence. Representative examples
38 3 Presupposition

are know, regret, understand, surprise, be significant, begin, stop, continue, manage,
avoid, be able, be possible, force, prevent, hesitate, seem, etc. If the main predicate
is a hole, then all the presuppositions of the component clauses survive. Compare
(3.39) with (3.40),
(3.40) Tom knows that Jack’s car broke down. *But Jack doesn’t even have a car!

It appears to be anomalous to falsify Tom’s statement that Jack’s car broke down
because in uttering knows, the speaker commits himself to Tom’s belief that Jack
possesses a car. If the speaker does not believe that Jack has a car, he cannot verify
Tom’s claim and therefore should not use know to report. Instead, the speaker would
opt to say.
Finally, filters refer to the predicates that could cancel some of the presuppositions
of the complement under certain circumstances. The conditions of their usage are
proposed in Karttunen (1973) and summarized in Huang (2014: 101):
a. In a sentence of the form “if p then q”, the presuppositions of the parts will be
inherited by the whole unless q presupposes r and p entails r.
b. In a sentence of the form “p & q”, the presuppositions of the parts will be inherited
by the whole unless q presupposes r and p entails r.
c. In a sentence of the form “p or q”, the presuppositions of the parts will be inherited
by the whole unless q presupposes r and p entails r.
And these three scenarios are exemplified in (3.41)–(3.43), respectively:
(3.41) a. If the government promotes that policy, then they will regret doing so.
b. If Snowden returns to America illegally, then he will be arrested.

(3.42) a. James has three children, and all his children are doctors.
b. James has three children, and he regrets not learning art in childhood.

(3.43) a. Either the US government will cancel their meeting with North Korea, or they will
regret doing so.
b. Either Snowden returns to America illegally, or he will escape to Russia.

Example (3.41a) is blocked because they will regret doing so presupposes that the
government will promote that policy, while the first clause entails the same propo-
sition; in (3.41b), the presupposition Snowden stayed in America before survives in
the whole sentence. As for conjunctions in (3.42), James has children is presupposed
by the second half of sentence a and entailed by its first half. Therefore, sentence a
entails or asserts that James has children. In (3.42b), the same presupposition still
survives in the whole sentence under the negation test. Finally, in the case of disjunc-
tions, the embedded presupposition will not percolate up to the whole sentence in
(3.43a) but in (3.43b).
This filter-satisfaction analysis, nevertheless, is flawed at some level. As noted
by Karttunen (1973: 175) himself, one exception is that the proposition cannot be
canceled when the subject of the sentence is the speaker himself, i.e., the subject is I,
and the sentence is uttered in the present simple tense. This is rather intuitive in that
3.2 Presupposition 39

a person can hold only one belief toward the same issue. And he would report his
previous opinion in the past tense if he changed his attitude. For instance, Levinson
(1983: 196) points out that some embedded presuppositions can go through the plug,
e.g., say:
(3.44) Churchill said that he would never regret being tough with Stalin.

In the above case, one can still work out the presupposition that Churchill was
tough with Stalin. In addition to this filter-satisfaction analysis, one can also refer
to the updated theories of cancellation analysis (Gazdar, 1979) and accommodation
analysis (Heim, 1983, 1992).

3.2.4 Presupposition Trigger

From the above discussion, we may notice that a potential presupposition is usually
triggered by certain words or particular structures. In this final section, following
Levinson (1983: 181), we map out the commonly observed 13 types of presuppo-
sition triggers (see other classifications in Huang, 2014: 86–87; Karttunen, 1974;
Saeed, 2009: 107). The presupposition triggers themselves are italicized; the symbol
stands for “presupposes”.
➀ Definite descriptions (adapted from Strawson, 1950)
E.g., his car, your purse, the man.
(3.45) His son didn’t see the man in the red coat.
>>There exists a man dressed in the red coat.
>>The man has a son.

➁ Factive verbs or adjective phrases

E.g., regret, realize, be aware that.
(3.46) Nick Fury regrets initiating the Avengers project.
>>Nick Fury initiated the Avengers project.

➂ Implicative verbs
E.g., manage, forget, happen to.
(3.47) Xiaohui happened to meet Professor Xiang on the street.
>>Xiaohui did not expect to meet Professor Xiang on the street.

➃ Change of state verbs

E.g., stop, finish, begin, start carry on, arrive, come.
(3.48) Mary stopped jogging after the accident.
>>Mary used to jog before the accident.
40 3 Presupposition

➄ Iteratives
E.g., restore, rewrite, again, any more, as back to.
(3.49) Mark rewrote the letter.
>>Mark had written a letter before.

➅ Verbs of judging
This is not strictly considered as presupposition because the implication is not
attributed to the speaker but the verb itself (see Wilson, 1975; Levinson, 1983:
182).
E.g., accuse, charge.
(3.50) He accused her of forgery.
>>He thinks forgery is bad.

➆ Adverbial clauses of time

E.g., before, after.
(3.51) After losing his leg in the car accident, he became grumpy.
>>He lost his leg.

➇ Cleft sentences
E.g., “It is … that/ who” and “What … is…”.
(3.52) It is John that hurts her.
>>Someone hurts her.
(3.53) What I cared about was the holiday.
>>I cared about something.

➈ Comparisons and contrasts

They are usually marked by particles such as too, back, in return, or by comparative
constructions.
(3.54) Tony donated a lot of money, too.
>>Someone other than Tony donated a big sum of money.
(3.55) John bought a larger house.
>>John already has a house.

➉ Non-restrictive attributive clauses

(3.56) Tom, who won three competitions, is very proud of himself.
>>Tom has won three competitions.
3.3 A Comparison Between Entailment and Presupposition 41

Counterfactual conditions
(3.57) If he were alive, he would not give up any opportunity to study.
>>He is not alive.

Questions
(3.58) Is there a pen here?
>>There is or is not a pen here.

Implicit clefts with stressed constituent (also called marked stress)

(3.59) Pragmatics is or is not first systematized by Stephen Levinson.
>>Someone first systematized pragmatics.

3.3 A Comparison Between Entailment and Presupposition

At first glance, entailment and presupposition both indicate automatic relations that
interlocutors can work out the truth value of one sentence based on that of the
other. And background entailment can also be counted as presupposition (Levinson,
1983). A close comparison, however, shows that they are different in terms of three
properties.
First, interlocutors hold presuppositions, whereas sentences intrinsically have
entailments. This distinction gives rise to the second distinction of defeasibility.
Presuppositions can be considered as wild guesses the speaker upholds and these
general presumptions will be gradually narrowed down to the actual background
assumptions the speaker assumes. That is, presuppositions are cancelable when the
interlocutors are trying to figure out each other’s meaning. In contrast, a semantic
entailment cannot be defeated because it is what the language itself conventionally
conveys. This fixed sentential relationship comes from stable semantic relations,
such as hyponym or synonym. For example, one cannot deny playing basketball is
playing sports because these two phrases form a hyponym. This has nothing to do
with the speaker’s assumption and cannot be canceled.1 Finally, presupposition can
survive under negation but entailment cannot because the former exists prior to the
utterance, whereas the latter coexists with the utterance. A detailed comparison is
presented in the table below:
(3.60)

1 While the semantic range of a particular word is fixed synchronically (at the same time period),
it may change diachronically (overtime). For example, the word bird used to mean a young bird in
particular, whereas the word fowl once denoted the same meaning as what bird does today (Poole,
1999: 125).
42 3 Presupposition

Items Entailnient Presupposition

Definition Something logically follows from Something the speaker assumes to be
what is asserted in the utterance the case prior to making an utterance
Defeasibility Cannot be canceled Can be canceled in a specific context
Definiteness Absolute Relative
Function To predict the truth condition of the To infer the potential assumption the
entailed sentences speaker holds
Suppose A entails B Suppose A presupposes B
Truth Condition If A is true, B is true If A is true, B is true
If A is false, B is true or false If A is false, B is still true

3.4 Applications: Entailment and Presupposition in Real

Life

As seen from the above discussions, one can find two contrasting functions of entail-
ment and presupposition in language use. On the one hand, strictly following them
helps readers or listeners to reduce redundancies, avoiding the information that has
already been presupposed. On the other hand, the defeasibility of presupposition
permits flexible interpretations of the utterances so as to help hearers/readers compre-
hend the communicative intentions of the speaker. The first half of this section illus-
trates how the practice of entailment and presupposition contributes to better English
writing. The second half interrogates the strategic practices of presupposition in
interpersonal communication.

3.4.1 English Writing

Concision is essential in English writing. Strunk and White (1999: 23) posit that
“vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should have no unnecessary words, a para-
graph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no
unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts”. Pinkham (2000) spends a
huge chunk of her book discussing the revision of unnecessary words discovered in
Chinese-English translations. In this part, we exemplify how entailment and presup-
position shed light on the reduction of unnecessary words. The redundant parts are
italicized in the following examples.
First, if two phrases form a mutual entailment, the writer can delete either phrase.
For example,
(3.61) He is a man who takes good care of the family.

(3.62) These problems can be easily solved and tackled.

3.4 Applications: Entailment and Presupposition in Real Life 43

In (3.61), the pronoun he forms a mutual entailment with man and therefore is
redundant. Likewise, solved and tackled mutually entail each other. One cannot say
something is tackled unless it is solved. In both cases, the writer can choose to omit
either word, mostly the longer one, to reach concision.
Second, if two phrases form a one-way entailment, one can keep the entailing part
and omit the entailed part. The identification of one-way entailment can improve the
precision of the sentence.
(3.63) My father is a man who takes good care of the family.

(3.64) The government’s budget is good and economical.

Different from (3.61), sentence (3.63) holds a one-way entailment that my father
entails man. The more specific word my father should be kept and the sentence can
be revised into My father takes good care of the family. In (3.64), economical entails
good and thus the latter can be deleted.
Third, a major source of redundancy stems from the failure of recognizing presup-
positions. Writers need to identify the potential presuppositions generated by the
main idea and reduce the parts that coincide with these presuppositions. The two
representative examples are there be and the fact that:
(3.65) There are five students sitting in the classroom.

(3.66) No one realizes the fact that Tom is married.

In (3.65), the definite description of five students presupposes the existence of five
students. It is unnecessary to explicitly express their existence through there are and
thus can be deleted. In (3.66), the verb realize generates a factive presupposition that
the following statement is a fact. As a result, it is redundant to use the phrase the fact
that in the sentence. These two examples are merely signposts for the identification
of unnecessary words in a sentence. One can refer back to the presupposition trigger
discussed in Sect. 3.2.4 for further scrutiny of his writing.
Finally, it is worth noting that some repetitions are permissible if the speaker
intentionally emphasizes one particular part of the sentence. For example, the use
of man in (3.61) may mean more than the identification of gender, emphasizing
the conventional manhood, such as the responsibility to shoulder the family burden.
Otherwise, the above redundancies should be omitted.

3.4.2 Interpersonal Communication

While Sect. 3.4.1 analyzes entailment and presupposition at their production end, this
section expounds on their receiving end. Firstly, the exploration of presupposition can
convey new information so as to form a language trap to achieve a better rhetorical
effect, such as being polite (Xiang, 2017). Consider the following example:
44 3 Presupposition

(3.67) Xiaohua:I happen to have two tickets for Romeo and Juliet. Would you like to go with
me?
Xiaoli: Thank you for the invitation. But I have planned to go to another movie with my
boyfriend.

In this case, the proposal going to see Romeo and Juliet together, in Chinese
culture, conventionally entails going to see Romeo and Juliet as a couple since Romeo
and Juliet is a romantic movie and is usually watched by couples. Xiaoli observed this
entailment and opted to decline Xiaohua’s invitation politely: by saying that she has
other plans with her boyfriend, she conveys an existential presupposition that there
is a person who is her boyfriend. Thus, she is not available for dates. If Xiaohua can
identify this presupposition, he will not ask Xiaoli out anymore, avoiding receiving
an explicit rejection. In reality, Xiaoli does not necessarily need to have a boyfriend.
What she needs to do is to convince Xiaohua that she is in a relationship to decline
his offer.
Moreover, a precise differentiation between entailment and presupposition can
reconcile the misunderstanding between couples. For example, a girl would be very
angry if her boyfriend tells her to drink more water when she is not feeling well.
Her boyfriend, however, does not know why his girlfriend is being grumpy. This
miscommunication is caused by the failure of recognizing the boy’s entailment.
From the boy’s perspective, “drinking hot water” mutually entails “the most effective
treatment”. Girls, on the other hand, usually ignore this entailing relationship.
A careful observation could lead to mutual understanding, whereas excessive
meticulousness toward presupposition could also backfire. Take the following joke
as an example:
(3.68) Mary saw a slim girl passing by and asked her boyfriend Tom:
Mary: Do you love the skinny girl who just passed us?
Tom: No, I didn’t see any girl and I love you.
Mary: (pointing to the slim girl behind) Her.
Tom: No, she is skinny. I love you.
Mary: Are you saying I am fat?
Tom: No, I’m saying that you are slim and I love you.
Mary: Are you saying that you don’t love me if I’m getting fat?

In the first two pairs, Tom probably noticed the girl Mary referred to. Facing
Mary’s inquisition, however, Tom tried to please his girlfriend by denying seeing
any girls. Otherwise, even if Tom answers that he doesn’t love that skinny girl, it still
generates an existential presupposition that there is a slim girl whom Tom actually
paid attention to. The first talk exchange is quite successful for Tom. In the second
pair, however, Tom accidentally produced a structural presupposition: the comparison
between loving his girlfriend Mary and not loving a slim girl. This comparative
presupposes that Mary is not slim. Unfortunately, this potential presupposition was
captured by Mary and thus annoyed her. In the final round of conversation, to make
up for his mistake, Tom clarified that Mary is skinny and he loves her. This is also
3.5 Review 45

backfired because it generates another presupposition that Tom loves his girlfriend
only if she is slim. Consequently, poor Tom irritated Mary again.

3.5 Review

• Entailment
• Types of truth
– A priori/a posteriori
– Necessary/contingent
– Synthetic/analytic
• Definition of entailment
• Types of entailment
– Upward/downward
– One-way/mutual
– Background/foreground

• Presupposition
• Definition of presupposition
– Semantic view
– Pragmatic view
• Types of (potential) presuppositions
– Existential
– Lexical
– Factive
– Non-factive
– Structural
– Counter-factive
• Properties of presupposition
• Constancy under negation
– Negation test
• Defeasibility
– Projection problem (plugs, holes, filters)
• Presupposition triggers
46 3 Presupposition

• Thirteen types of triggers

– Definite descriptions
– Factive verbs or adjective phrases
– Implicative verbs
– Change of state verbs
– Iteratives
– Verbs of judging
– Adverbial clauses of time
– Cleft sentences
– Comparisons and contrasts
– Non-restrictive attributive clauses
– Counterfactual conditions
– Questions
– Implicit clefts with stressed constituent

• A comparison between entailment and presupposition

– Definition
– Defeasibility
– Definiteness
– Function
– Truth condition

References

Beaver, D. I. (2001). Presupposition and assertion in dynamic semantics. CSLI Publications.

Frege, G. (1892/1952). On sense and reference. In P. T. Geach & M. Black (Eds.), The philosophical
writings of Gottlob Frege (2nd ed., pp. 56–78). Blackwell.
Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Presupposition, implicature, and logical form. Academic Press.
Heim, I. (1983). On the Projection Problem for Presuppositions. In P. Portner & B. H. Partee (Eds.),
Formal semantics-the essential readings (pp. 249–260). Blackwell.
Heim, I. (1992). Presupposition projection and the semantics of attitude verbs. Journal of Semantics,
9(3), 183–221.
Huang, Y. (2014). Pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Karttunen, L. (1973). Presuppositions of compound sentences. Linguistic Inquiry, 4(2), 169–193.
Karttunen, L. (1974). Presupposition and linguistic context. Theoretical Linguistics, 1(1), 181–194.
Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and necessity. Blackwell.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Mey, J. L. (2001). Pragmatics: An introduction (2nd ed.). Blackwell.
Pinkham, J. (2000). The translator’s guide to Chinglish. Foreign Language Teaching and Research
Press.
Poole, S. C. (1999). An introduction to linguistics. Macmillan Publishers.
Russell, B. (1905). On denoting. Mind, 14, 479–493.
References 47

Saeed, J. I. (2009). Semantics (3rd ed.). Blackwell.

Stalnaker, R. C. (1973). Presuppositions. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2, 447–457.
Strawson, P. F. (1950). On referring. Mind, 59, 320–344.
Strunk, W., & White, E. B. (1999). The elements of style (4th ed.). Longman.
Wilson, D. (1975). Presuppositions and non-truth conditional semantics. Academic Press.
Xiang, M. Y. (2017). Toward a neo-economy principle in pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics, 107,
31–45.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Chapter 4
Implicature

In the popular American TV show Friends, when Joey asks his friends about his
performance in the show Mac and CHEESE, Chandler praises that the lighting is
great and Ross exclaims that they can see him on TV and right in front of them
at the same time. One can easily infer that Joey is very bad at the show and his
friends are just too shy to point it out. In fact, the show is soon suspended in the next
episode of Friends due to Joey’s awful performance. However, one may wonder how
interlocutors work out such a negative meaning (Joey’s play is awful) based on two
positive comments (good lighting and empathetic experience). This “damning with
faint praise” (Peccei, 1999: 28) falls into the study of conversational implicature.
In the first section, we interrogate the different types of meaning, unpacking
the coinage of the word implicature. The classification of implicatures is shown in
Sect. 4.2. Section 4.3 elaborates on the classical Gricean theory of conversational
implicature. The next section presents the theoretical development in contrast with the
classical Gricean theory. The four main properties of conversational implicatures are
illustrated in Sect. 4.5. The final section illustrates the exploitation of the Cooperative
Principle in the American sitcom Friends.

4.1 Preliminaries

To understand how the audience is able to work out that Joey’s play is awful without
explicitly stating it, we need to first figure out what the word meaning means. This
chapter begins with a distinction between natural meaning and non-natural meaning.
Then we move on to introduce the coinage of implicature.

© Peking University Press 2024 49

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2_4
50 4 Implicature

4.1.1 Natural and Non-Natural Meaning

To unpack the mechanism of human interaction, the British philosopher Herbert Paul
Grice (1957, 1969, 1989) observed the generic use of meaning that sometimes we
mean what we said literally, but more often we mean something more than what
we said, which is often different from or unrelated to our literal sense. Consider the
following examples (Grice, 1989: 213–214):
(4.1) a. Those spots meant measles.
b. *Those spots meant measles, but he hadn’t got measles.
(4.2) a. Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full.
b. Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full. But it isn’t, in fact,
full—the conductor has made a mistake.

Our English language sense tells us that the negation of (4.1a) is anomalous, as
in (4.1b), whereas that of (4.2a) is acceptable, as in (4.2b). The kind of meaning
expressed in (4.1a) is called natural meaning: the meaning relation that x means
that p entails p; non-natural meaning or meaningnn is the one that x means that
p does not entail p, as in (4.2a) (Huang, 2014: 28). And the theory of non-natural
meaning is summarized in Levinson (1983: 16):
(4.3) S meansnn z by “uttering” U if and only if:
a. S intends U to cause some effect z in recipient H.
b. S intends (a) to be achieved simply by H recognizing that intention (a).

The essential property of non-natural meaning is that it is an intention that is

achieved solely through being recognized (Levinson, 2000: 13). In contrast to what
is said, Grice’s major concern of human communication falls into what is impli-
cated, viz. implicature. A theory of conversational implicature makes an important
contribution to an explicit account of how a speaker expresses more than the literal
meaning of his utterance (Levinson, 1983: 97).

4.1.2 Implicature and Implication

Before elaborating on the Gricean theory, it is important to distinguish implicature (to

implicate) from implication (to imply) and inference (to infer). The term implicature
is derived from the Latin verb plicare and is coined to distinguish it from its cognate
implication (Mey, 2001: 45). We use p to represent proposition “Aria helps John with
his homework” and q to represent the proposition “John will buy Aria a gift”. The
logical relationship between p and q could be
(4.4) If p, then q.

Implication describes the logical relation that q is automatically true if p is true,

and q could be either true or false if p is untrue. This logical relationship, however,
4.2 Types of Implicature 51

does not apply to language practices in the real world: for sentences such as “If
Aria helps John with his homework, John will buy Aria a gift”, our interpretation
usually would be that John will buy Aria a gift if and only if Aria helps him with
his homework. As a consequence, the term implicature is coined to represent this
real-world implication. Similarly, p conversationally implies q can be said that p
implicates q.
The second set of distinctions is between implication and inference. Implication
refers to a hint or suggestion that is conveyed via the means of language, whereas
inference is the deduction drawn from evidence (Thomas, 1995: 58). That is, impli-
cation describes the speaker’s intention while inference addresses the hearer’s inter-
pretation. To conclude this section, we emphasize that the Gricean theory attempts to
explain how implicatures are engendered and interpreted rather than how inferences
are formed (Thomas, 1995: 61).

4.2 Types of Implicature

This section offers a brief sketch of the different kinds of implicatures interlocutors
may generate.1 On the first level, one may create either a conversational impli-
cature or a conventional implicature; and conversational implicature can be further
dichotomized into generalized and particularized conversational implicatures; finally,
the three common types of generalized conversational implicatures are scalar, clausal,
and alternate implicatures.

4.2.1 Conversational and Conventional Implicatures

The first classification Grice (1989) made is between conversational and conventional
implicatures. At first glance, these two types of implicatures are both unsaid meaning
that the hearers need to work out. A closer examination shows that conversational
implicature is an additional unstated meaning that has to be assumed to maintain the
Cooperative Principle, whereas conventional implicature is an additional unstated
meaning connected with the use of a specific word and results in additional conveyed
meaning in use (Yule, 1996: 44–45). The former is what we will mainly discuss in
this chapter as in the case of Joey, and the latter is shown in the following examples
(the lexical items that engender conventional implicatures are italicized):
(4.5) David is old but he is energetic.
(4.6) Tom also studies very hard.
(4.7) Gary Locke is a Chinese American. Therefore, he was very popular when he was the
US ambassador to China.

1 Readers could also refer to the classification between audience-implicature and utterer-

implicature (Saul, 2002).

52 4 Implicature

In (4.5), the logical connective but conventionally implicates that the first half of
the sentence forms a contrast with the second half of the sentence. And, this opposing
relationship cannot be defeated regardless of the extra contextual information added.
Similarly, also in (4.6) conveys a conventional implicature that there is another person
who studies diligently. Finally, the use of therefore implicates that Gary Locke’s
popularity is due to his Chinese ethnicity. Other representative examples include
and, actually, even, anyway, barely, merely, besides, manage to, on the other hand,
only, still, though, too, and yet (Huang, 2014: 75; Levinson, 1983: 127, see Potts,
2005 for a systematic study).
One may notice that in contrast to the properties of conversational implicature,
conventional implicature cannot be canceled. In addition, it is not calculated by the
speaker in accordance with any pragmatic principles but rather conventionally fused
in the word.

4.2.2 Generalized and Particularized Conversational

Implicatures

Grice (1989) also made a distinction between generalized conversational impli-

cature and particularized conversational implicature. The former refers to the
cases in which an implicature is not normally conveyed by what is said, and its
creation requires no specific context, as in (4.8). The latter is defined as those that
are generated through a particular context, as in (4.9):
(4.8) This cup of tea is warm.
+ > This cup of tea is not hot.
(4.9) Waiter: Coffee?
Customer: It would keep me awake all night.
+ > The customer doesn’t want any coffee.
+ > The customer does want a cup of coffee.

In (4.8), without the help of any contextual information, we can easily work out
that the speaker conveys an unsaid meaning that the tea is not hot. In contrast, in (4.9),
depending on the customer’s evening plans, the waiter may interpret the customer’s
words as asking for a cup of coffee if he plans to stay up to watch the World Cup
or declining the coffee if he plans to go to bed early. In addition, some might get
confused about the difference between conventional implicature and generalized
conversational implicature since they are both engendered out of a specific context.
A simple test would be that a conventional implicature could not be defeated, whereas
a generalized one can be canceled in particular cases (Grice, 1989: 39). For instance,
we can cancel the conversational implicature in (4.8) if we rephrase it as This cup of
tea is warm, and, in fact, too hot! However, regardless of what we add to (4.5), one
can still work out a contrasting relation between David being old and being energetic.
4.2 Types of Implicature 53

4.2.3 Scalar, Alternate, and Clausal Implicatures

Under the rubrics of generalized conversational implicature, we usually identify three

subtypes: scalar, clausal, and alternate implicatures (Huang, 2014). In expressing
quantity and degree, interlocutors always face a scale of different choices, for
example:
(4.10) < all, most, many, some, few >
< hot, warm, cool, cold >
< always, often, sometimes, hardly, never >

Bearing the above scales in mind, the speaker chooses the most truthful and
accurate word within the set. Take (4.11) as an example,
(4.11) Some students attend the class in the morning.

By using some to describe the number of students attending the morning class, the
speaker implicates that not all the students showed up. This type of unsaid meaning
is called scalar implicature: “when any form in a scale is asserted, the negative of
all forms higher on the scale is implicated” (Yule, 1996: 41). That is, some implicates
not all, not most, and not many, cool implicates not hot and not warm, and sometimes
implicates not always, and not often. Some other scales are listed below:
(4.12) < giant, large, medium, small, minute >
(4.13) < n … 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 >
(4.14) < certain, likely, possible, unlikely, impossible >
(4.15) < excellent, good, satisfactory, pass, failed >

Similar to scalar implicature, alternate implicature also implicates the nega-

tivity of others when a specific form in the scale is used. Different from those of
scalar implicature, forms in the scales of alternate implicature have no hierarchy or
gradation, as shown in (4.16):
(4.16) < red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple… >
< Chinese, English, German, Indian, Japanese >
< Peking U, Tsinghua U, Beihang U, Renmin U, Zhejiang U >

If something is red, it is not orange, yellow, green, blue, or purple. Saying Mary
is English engenders an alternate implicature that Mary is not Chinese, German,
Indian, or Japanese (ruling out the case of dual citizenship). If James went to Beihang
University in 2011, then he could not be enrolled in Peking University, Tsinghua
University, Renmin University, or Zhejiang University, etc. in the same year under
the current Chinese Gaokao system.
While scalar and alternate implicatures are triggered by a specific word, clausal
implicature is engendered by certain sentence structures (constructions) in cases
where the propositions do not hold any entailment or presupposition. The choice of
a less certain structure implicates that the speaker is unable to identify the truth or
falsity of his statements. See (4.17) and (4.18) for illustrations:
54 4 Implicature

(4.17) If John wins the lottery then he will buy a beach house in Malibu.
+ > John may win the lottery or he may not win the lottery; John may buy a beach house
in Malibu or he may not buy a beach house in Malibu.
(4.18) Tom or Mary has won the national public speaking contest.
+ > Tom may or may not win the national public speaking contest; Mary may or may not
win the competition.

In (4.17), the use of “if … then” over “since … then” conversationally implicates
that the speaker is not in a position to form the stronger causal relationship, indicating
that he or she does not know if John will win the lottery or buy a Malibu beach house.
This is also true for (4.18). The choice of “p or q” over “p and q” conversationally
implicates the uncertainty the speaker holds towards the result of the public speaking
contest.
Before expounding the Gricean theory of the Cooperative Principle, we summarize
the meaning-making process we have discussed as follows (cf. Huang, 2014: 77;
Levinson, 2000: 13):
(4.19)
4.3 Classic Gricean Theory 55

4.3 Classic Gricean Theory

The thrust of Gricean theory was delivered by Paul Grice in the William James
lectures at Harvard University in 1967 and was later compiled in his posthumous work
Studies in the Way of Words (Grice, 1989). This section elaborates on his central idea
of the Cooperative Principle and the creation of conversational implicature through
strict observation and ostentatious violation of the maxims of the principle. The
criticisms of this classical theory are also presented in this section.

4.3.1 Cooperative Principle

In order to explain the engendering of conversational implicature, Grice (1975, 1978,

1989) postulates that there is an underlying principle of cooperation that interlocutors
will bear in mind for effective and efficient use of language. This principle is labeled
as the Cooperative Principle. And following Kant’s categorization of objects, it is
embodied by four maxims: quality, quantity, relevance, and manner. The principle is
shown as follows (Grice, 1975: 45–46):
(4.20) The Cooperative Principle: Make your conversational contribution such
as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of
the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
(4.21) The four maxims:
Quantity

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 Try to make your contribution one that is true.

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Relation (Relevance) Be relevant.
Manner Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary proximity).
4. Be orderly.
Grice (1989: 28) also notes that other maxims, such as “Be polite”, are also
commonly observed by participants in talk exchange. Later on, a “Politeness Prin-
ciple” is systematized by Geoffrey Leech (1983) and will be further discussed in
Chapter Six. Moreover, the Cooperative Principle and its maxims are also appli-
cable in non-verbal exchanges. For instance, when having dinner at a restaurant, you
56 4 Implicature

expect the waiter to hand you a pair of chopsticks rather than two or three pairs for
each person. If you think the soup is too plain, you usually expect the waiter to pass
you salt instead of vinegar. And you will not appreciate it too much if the waiter
hands you a dictionary when ordering food. And you want the dinner to be served in
the order of appetizer, soup, entrée, dessert, and drink rather than backward. These
presumptions are the basis for achieving effective communications.

4.3.2 Creation of Conversational Implicature

Conversational implicatures can be created through either strictly observing or osten-

tatiously flouting the four maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The
creations of conversational implicatures via strict observations are illustrated in
(4.22)-(4.25) (“ + > ” stands for conversationally implicates):
(4.22) Quantity
Tom has a son.
+ > Tom has at least one son.
(4.23) Quality
Stephen Levinson wrote the first textbook of pragmatics.
+ > The speaker firmly believes that it is a fact that the first textbook of pragmatics is
written by Stephen Levinson.
(4.24) Relation
Two students are studying in the library
Jack: When should we go for lunch?
Mary: The library won’t close until 11:30.
+ > Mary suggests that they should go for lunch after 11:30 when the library is closed.
(4.25) Manner
Tom went to the canteen and ordered two dishes.
+ > Tom first went to the canteen and then ordered two dishes.

Moreover, the speaker often uses hedges to indicate that he or she abides by the
Cooperative Principle and its four maxims. These are shown in (4.26)–(4.29) (the
hedges are italicized in the following examples):
(4.26) Quantity
As you might know, Donald Trump is the President now.
To cut a long story short, Chandler and Monica are engaged.
I may be too wordy, but everyone needs to bring his passport.
(4.27) Quality
As far as I know, he is dating Mary.
I guess Chomsky is the greatest linguist who is still alive.
I’m not sure if it is right, but the left hand is considered to be filthy in India.
(4.28) Relation
4.3 Classic Gricean Theory 57

I don’t know if this is relevant, but should we talk about the budget?
This may sound like a dumb question, but where is the capital of Cambodia?
By the way, we will have an exam next week.
(4.29) Manner
This may be quite confusing, and we should write it down.
I don’t know if this makes sense, but they spent $200 on a birthday cake.
I’m not sure if I have made it clear, but this is the ground rule.

The above illustrations show the creations of conversational implicature through

strict observations of the four maxims and the applications of hedges by following
these four maxims. Interlocutors, however, may fail a maxim in a number of ways
(Grice, 1989: 30): First, the speakers may quietly violate a maxim if they lie without
being found out. Second, the speaker can choose to opt out of the Cooperative Prin-
ciple and its four maxims. For example, instead of directly addressing a reporter’s
questions, a press secretary could simply state that I will comment nothing on this
issue. Third, the speaker may face a clash of different maxims. For instance,
(4.30) Jack does not know the exact place Mary went for the summer vacation:
Tom: Where did Mary go last summer?
Jack: She went somewhere in Europe.

According to the Maxim of Quantity, Jack is supposed to provide the specific

location Tom asks for. The Maxim of Quality, on the other hand, dictates that he
should not make up the location if he does not know the exact place. Since Jack
does not know where Mary exactly went, he is unable to fulfill one maxim without
violating the other. Therefore, by answering somewhere in Europe, Jack implicates
that he does not know the exact country or city Mary went to for her summer vacation.
Finally, the speaker can ostentatiously flout a maxim, generating a conversa-
tional implicature. The exploitations of the four maxims are shown in (4.31) -(4.34)
respectively:
(4.31) Flouting the Maxim of Quantity
a. When Lin Daiyu first came to the Jia family, Wang Xifeng comments:
“She’s a beauty, Grannie dear! If I hadn’t set eyes on her today, I shouldn’t have believed
that such a beautiful creature could exist! And everything about her is so distingue! She
doesn’t take after your side of family, Grannie. She’s more like a Jia. I don’t blame you for
having gone on so about her during the past few days”.
The Story of the Stone (1760/1986)

b. Students are students.

(4.32) Flouting the Maxim of Quality

After his friend lost his iPad, Tom said to his friend:

Tom: You are such a meticulous person!

(4.33) Flouting the Maxim of Relation

58 4 Implicature

A Professor is writing a reference letter to a Ph.D. applicant in linguistics:

Tom is a warm-hearted person and he shows up in class on time.
(4.34) Flouting the Maxim of Manner
Waiter: Miss, what can I get you for dessert?
Mary: Ice cream, please.
Waiter: Pardon?
Mary: Ice cream.
Waiter: I’m sorry?
Mary: I-C-E C-R-E-A-M, ice cream!
Waiter: I got it. Here is your ice cream.

In (4.31a), Wang Xifeng flouts the Maxim of Quantity by producing more

comments on Lin Daiyu than is required. By constantly commenting on Lin Daiyu in
front of the whole Jia family, Wang exhibits her ability to maintain her talking power
in a serious setting. This wordiness conversationally implicates Wang’s shrewdness
and powerful status within the Jia family. In contrast, (4.31b) exploits the same maxim
by uttering less informatively. Bearing the underlying cooperation in mind, one has
to assume that the two students connotate differently: the second student must prag-
matically mean something that is embodied by the quality of a student. This tautology
may implicate that this student is inexperienced in handling problems, or this could
also implicate that he is diligent and eager to learn from others.
Example (4.32) illustrates the flouting of the Maxim of Quality. Tom’s utterance
appears to be a compliment to his friends at face value. This, however, happens after
his friend lost his iPad, contradicting the characteristics of a meticulous person. This
inconsistency gives rise to a conversational implicature that Tom is being ironic to
his friend, blaming him for losing his valuable iPad.
The exploitation of the Maxim of Relation can also engender conversational impli-
cature. In (4.33), on a literal level, the professor’s reference speaks highly of this Ph.D.
applicant in linguistics in terms of his personality and participation. This, although
important, is rather irrelevant to the core criteria of a competent Ph.D. applicant,
such as good command of languages, sharp analytical skills, systematic academic
training, etc. This divergence from these core criteria indicates that the professor is
unwilling to comment on these essential qualities, implicating that the student may
be academically incompetent to be recommended as a Ph.D. student. Or at least, the
student’s academic performance is not salient enough to be complimented.
In case (4.34), the first two pairs of the conversation follow the maxim of manner,
viz. to be brief. However, the waiter somehow could not understand Mary very
well. Therefore, Mary spelled out all the letters of the word ice cream, hoping that
the waiter could understand her better. This exploitation of the Maxim of Manner
creates a conversational implicature that Mary is irritated by the poor listening of the
waiter.
Moreover, non-linguistic cues can also generate conversational implicatures by
following or deviating from the underlying norms. For instance, if a thesis is organized
4.3 Classic Gricean Theory 59

in the order of Introduction, Literature Review, Theoretical Framework, Method-

ology, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions, then, based on the Maxim of Manner,
we may work out that the writer is familiar with the basic format of academic writing
and is willing to follow it. On the other hand, if the article is organized in other
orders, we could implicate that the writer may be unfamiliar with academic writing
or at least unwilling to follow suit. For instance, a group of American rhetoricians
launched a campaign to try out new ways of writing academic articles in the form of
theatric acts (see Powell et al, 2014). The violation of the Maxim of Manner, in this
case, implicates their unwillingness to conform to the rigidity and their eagerness to
make a breakthrough.
Here is an example of how verbal and non-verbal cues jointly contribute to the
meaning-making of a communicative event:
(4.35) A customer ordered one serving of liangpi, a traditional Chinese rice noodle dish
mixed with cucumber slices and sesame sauce. During the preparation, the chef cut a huge
pile of cucumber slices. The customer saw it and said:
Customer: No, please do not add too many cucumber slices. I don’t like eating cucumbers.
Chef: Well, others still would like to add some.

Following the Maxim of Relation, the customer assumed that what the chef was
making was all for his one serving of liangpi. Since he saw the cook make a lot of
cucumber slices which he didn’t want to have, he requested the cook stop making
it. The chef, however, did not directly address his request but stated others’ need for
cucumber slices, violating the Maxim of Relation. This deviation revealed that the
slices were not only for this customer but for many customers.
While the above scenarios are generally applicable in many cultures, a maxim
could simply be suspended in some cultures such as Malagasy (Keenan, 1976) for
the suspension of the first half of the Maxim of Quantity as well as in specific cases of
murder, funeral orations, obituaries, poetry, international calls, and jokes (Thomas,
1995: 76–78). In Chinese society, people may suspend the Maxim of Quantity when
expressing their affection towards their romantic partner. In Western society, saying
I like you generates a scalar implicature that the speaker does not love the addressee,
whereas in Chinese culture, saying wo xihuan ni “I like you” usually implicates that
the speaker falls in love with the addressee. This systematic uninformativeness is
governed by social conventions.
To sum up, in order to unpack the mechanism of human communication, Grice
postulated an overarching Cooperative Principle that interlocutors are consciously
observed in conversations. The speaker’s meaning or his intention is implicated
through the careful observation or ostentatious violation of the four maxims. It is
only the maxims that are flouted while this overarching principle of cooperation is
still upheld. More exploitation of these maxims in more complex contexts will be
analyzed in Sect. 4.6.
60 4 Implicature

4.3.3 Criticisms of Gricean Theory

Positioned as the classic theory of meaning-making, the Gricean theory has been
intensively discussed and heavily criticized since its introduction half a century ago
(Bach, 1994, 2006; Cao & Xiang, 2017; Gazdar, 1979; Gu, 1994; Leech, 1983;
Levinson, 1983, 2000; Recanati, 1989, 2004; Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Thomas, 1995,
etc.). This section presents four criticisms of this classic theory. The reductionist
reconstruction of Gricean theory is expounded in Sect. 4.3 and the expansionist
reconstruction will be discussed in Chapter Six.2
The first problem is that the four maxims are redundant on both the inter-maxim
and intra-maxim bases. On an inter-maxim level, Harnish (1976) collapses the Maxim
of Quantity and Quality into one single maxim: making the strongest and most
relevant statement based on the available evidence. Thomas (1995: 91–92) points
out that the Maxim of Quantity and Manner seem to co-occur. The first half of the
Maxim of Quantity (Make your contribution as informative as is required) entails
that the information provided is not obscure or ambiguous; otherwise, the hearer
will not be informed properly. Similarly, the second half of the Maxim of Quantity
(Do not make your contribution more informative than is required) entails that the
utterance is brief. On an intra-maxim level, Mey (2001: 82) argues that the second
half of the Maxim of Quality (Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence)
entails its first half (Do not say what you believe to be false). That is, if the speaker
does not have enough evidence, he also cannot convince himself that it is false. If
I did not study linguistics, I would not be confident enough to think the statement
Avram Noam Chomsky proposed Systemic Functional Grammar is definitely false
(it is actually first systematized by Michael Alexander Halliday who passed away in
early 2018).
The second issue is that different maxims may have been assigned with different
weights and values. Green (1989: 89) points out that the Maxim of Quality is attached
with much greater value than the remaining three values. The violation of quality
is considered a serious moral offense, whereas the violation of others is seen as
merely inconsiderate or rude. The other three maxims may also be highly valued in
different cultural and situational settings. For example, the upholding of the Maxim
of Manner is essential in performing a marriage ceremony. In Chinese society, one
may be morally prosecuted for being irrelevant when answering the question asked
by people with higher social status.
The third contention is that the imperative descriptions of these four maxims
presuppose a prescriptive nature of the Cooperative Principle. That is, this principle
and its maxims are often misunderstood as guidelines for successful communication

2 Ideally, we would like to have simple theories that explain a wide variety of issues. In reality,
however, scholars tend to prioritize one need over the other when both of them cannot be satisfied
properly. The reductionist approach refers to an effort to simplify theories into fewer maxims or
rules while maintaining the same level of explanation. On the other hand, the expansionist approach
strives to add more maxims or rules to increase the explanatory power of the theory in general.
Please refer to Huang (2014) for the reductionist approach and Leech (2014) for the expansionist
approach.
4.4 Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean Theories 61

(Bach, 2005). On the first level, the Cooperative Principle does not appear explic-
itly as social conventions to an average speaker and thus cannot serve to prescribe
interlocutors’ behavior. On the second level, contrasting to the universality of the
Cooperative Principle proposed by Grice, the assumed cooperation itself can be
breached in some cases, notably in conflictive speeches. For example, in military
training, the drill sergeant would ignore and interrupt the rookies or even ban them
from talking for disciplinary training (Culpeper, 1996: 359). The assumed coopera-
tion is blatantly breached whereas the communicative goal is still achieved. Similar
examples can also be found in the practice of rhetoric. For example, Liu and Zhu
(2011) argue that speakers should always assume a Non-Cooperative Principle that
the addressees will not be voluntarily cooperating with them to achieve their desired
outcomes. In addition, persuasion often depends on the hearer’s failure of recog-
nizing the speaker’s intention by being less truthful (the violation of the Maxim of
Quality) and less perspicuous (the violation of the Maxim of Manner) (Dascal &
Gross, 1999: 109).
Finally, Grice risked an oversimplification between what is said and what is impli-
cated. It appears to be an impassable gap between the two notions. Our linguistic
practices, however, often blur this demarcation. For example, when Usain Bolt says
that he is ready in front of the starting line of a 100-m race, he most likely means that
he is ready for the race rather than is ready for lunch. Nevertheless, the unsaid words
for the race obviously will find it difficult to fit in the category of “what is said”, and
it is also arguably inconsistent with “what is implicated” which requires pragmatic
inferences. Therefore, it calls for new sets of principles to separate these notions, and
to a larger extent, draw a clear line between semantics and pragmatics. Since then,
scholars from diverse backgrounds strive to disambiguate the interface between the
said and the unsaid meanings (Bach, 2010; Borg, 2004; Cappelen & Lepore, 2005;
Carston, 2009; Chen, 2015; Cao & Xiang, 2017; Huang, 2018; Jaszczolt, 2005;
Levinson, 2000; MacFarlane, 2009; Recanati, 2004; Stanley, 2007; Travis, 2008).
This book stops engaging this rather philosophical contention with a brief introduc-
tion of the two main schools of thought among these debates: Contextualism and
Semantic Minimalism. In general, Contextualism scholars advocate that a proposi-
tion must go through pragmatic enrichment in relation to contextual information,
whereas Semantic Minimalism holds that semantics should be independent of prag-
matics, focusing on the most formalized and conventionalized usage (see Huang,
2014 for a review).

4.4 Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean Theories

This section elaborates on the three main reductions towards the classical Gricean
theory. The tripartite proposed by Levinson and the bipartite introduced by Horn are
often dubbed as the Neo-Gricean approach and Sperber and Wilson’s one overarching
principle is called the Post-Gricean approach to conversational implicatures. Let us
begin with the most recent advancement in this area.
62 4 Implicature

4.4.1 Levinson’s Q-, I-, and M-Principles

Levinson’s tripartite was first formulated in 1981 in collaboration with Jay David
Atlas and has been developed over the following two decades (see Levinson, 1987,
1991, 2000). The central tenet of Levinson’s approach is to establish a clear-
cut between pragmatic principles governing an utterance’s surface form and those
governing its informational content (Huang, 2014: 50). That is, every utterance has
a default meaning, and the hearers can work out the intended meaning in reference
to that default meaning. Each principle contains a speaker’s maxim and a corre-
sponding corollary of the addressee. The simplified set is presented as follows (see
Levinson, 2000; Huang, 2014) (square brackets specify their corresponding maxims
in the original Cooperative Principle):
(4.36) a. The Q-Principle [Quantity1 ]
Speaker: Do not say less than is required (bearing the I-principle in mind).
Addressee: What is not said is not the case.
b. The I-Principle [Quantity2 , Relation]
Speaker: Do not say more than is required (bearing the Q-principle in mind).
Addressee: What is generally said is stereotypically and specifically exemplified.
c. The M-Principle [Manner]
Speaker: Do not use a marked expression without reason.
Addressee: What is said in a marked way conveys a marked message.

And Levinson (1991, 2000) also assigns different weights to the three principles:
The Q-principle enjoys the highest priority, whereas the I-principle obtains the lowest
priority. One of the major challenges of Levinson’s theory is that it still requires
empirical tests to examine the existence of such default meaning (Carston, 2004).

4.4.2 Horn’s Q- and R-Principles

Inspired by Zipf’s (1949) seminal work on the Principle of Least Effort, Horn (1984)
observes two ever-present factors: on the one hand, a speaker has a strong desire to
convey his message to others; on the other hand, a speaker is also seeking to spend
the least energy to fulfill his needs to communicate. Based on these two competing
factors, Horn (1984, 2012) argues that Grice’s classification of the four maxims is
rather redundant and can be reduced to two principles (square brackets specify their
corresponding maxims in the original Cooperative Principle) (Jiang, 2000):
(4.37) a. The Q-Principle [Quantity1 ]
Make your contribution sufficient;
Say as much as you can (given the R-principle).
b. The R-Principle [Relation, Quantity2 , Manner]
Make your contribution necessary;
Say no more than you must (given the Q-principle).
4.4 Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean Theories 63

That is, the Q-principle concerns the content of the utterance, ensuring that the
speaker offers sufficient information for the addressee to decode; the R-principle, on
the other hand, is concerned with the form, dictating the speaker to only produce the
necessary information and letting the hearer infer the unsaid meaning.

4.4.3 Sperber & Wilson’s Principle of Relevance

Dissatisfied with the four maxims proposed by Grice, Sperber et al. (1995) attempt to
postulate one overarching principle to account for the generation of unsaid meaning.
They contend that human communication works in an ostensive-inferential way:
the speakers try their best to manifest their intention as clear as possible, and the
hearers try their best to infer the speaker’s intention based on what the speaker actu-
ally says. The speaker’s action is called ostensive communication and the hearer’s
move is called inferential communication. Sperber and Wilson (1991) also assume
that in ostensive-inferential communication, the speaker makes his utterance as rele-
vant to his intention as possible and the hearer infers the speaker’s intention based
on that assumption. And, this assumption of relevance is called the principle of
relevance: every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of
its own optimal relevance. However, one major problem is that it is dubious to deter-
mine the meaning of “optimal relevance”. For example, it would be hard to determine
the optimal response to a compliment among “thank you”, “I really appreciate it”,
nodding, and smiling because they are all appropriate responses to a compliment.
Since we are unable to determine the optimal relevance, the degree of relevance is
also hard to be empirically tested.

4.4.4 Retrospections

The Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean theories presented above are merely the tip of the
iceberg for this core issue in pragmatics, which still bothers and fascinates scholars
for further exploration. Although we may be confounded by the abstractness of the
individual theory, we can still identify two fundamental research spirits inherited in
this line of reasoning, namely, Occam’s razor and the identification of nuances.
First, Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean scholars always bear in mind the spirit of a
metatheoretical principle called “Occam’s Razor” (Huang, 2014: 9). Named after the
English Franciscan friar and theologian William of Ockham, the gist of this problem-
solving principle is simplicity, and it is also dubbed as the “law of parsimony”.
For example, iPhone is favored over Blackberry and Nokia is partially due to its
reduction from a very complex keyboard to a single Home Button (the latest iPhone
X even removes the Home Button) while retaining the similar or even stronger
operational efficiency. In linguistic studies, this principle regulates that “senses are
not to be multiplied beyond necessity” (Grice, 1989: 47). Therefore, all these three
64 4 Implicature

advancements attempt to reduce the original Gricean theory to fewer principles while
maintaining similar explanatory power. In Chapter Six, we will expound on the
competing expansionist theory, illustrating their justifications for additional maxims
and their handling of Occam’s Razor.
The second keyword is nuance. A closer examination of the classic and new
Gricean theories suggests that these different models are not distinct from each
other. They all share some similarities: despite differences in details, the Hornian
system inherited Grice’s Maxim of Quantity, Manner, and Relation and the Levin-
sonian system maintains Horn’s Q-Principle and Grice’s Maxim of Manner. To put
it succinctly, academic advancement is built upon the achievements of the precur-
sors mainly in terms of nuances. In fact, Grice’s original theory is widely cele-
brated precisely because of its strong explanatory power to humans’ meaning-making
process. The younger generations of scholars identify the shortcomings and propose
a new model for the rescue. According to Thomas Khun (1962), scientific study is
an iterative process that there will always be shifts of paradigms with the develop-
ment of science and technology. In our linguistic inquiry, similar shifts happened in
terms of the inference pattern of the Relevance Theory to that of the classic Gricean
theory and, more significantly, Chomsky’s Transformational-Generative grammar to
Bloomfieldian Structuralism (Harris, 1995: 37).

4.5 Properties of Conversational Implicature

Conversational implicatures are characterized by a number of essential features

among different authors (Grice, 1989; Huang, 2014; Levinson, 1983). In this section,
following Grice, we illustrate the four major properties of conversational implica-
tures: defeasibility, non-detachability, non-conventionality, and calculability.3
First, similar to presupposition, conversational implicature can be defeated or
canceled by contextual factors. Take a look at the following examples (“ + > ”
stands for “implicates”):
(4.38) Xiaohong: Do you like my hat?
Xiaozhang: It’s green.
+ > Xiaozhang doesn’t like Xiaohong’s hat.
(4.39) Waiter: Coffee?
Customer: It would keep me awake all night.
+ > The customer doesn’t want any coffee.
(4.40) Father: Have you finished your book report and your housework?
Son: I’ve done my book report.
+ > The boy hasn’t done his housework.

3In addition to these four properties, conversational implicatures may also be characterized by
universality (Huang, 2014: 41), indeterminacy (Huang 2014: 42) or implicature changes (Thomas,
1995: 80) and reinforceability (Levinson, 1983: 120; Huang, 2014: 41), etc.
4.5 Properties of Conversational Implicature 65

(4.41) Tom: Are you going to Steve’s party?

Mary: Well, Steve’s got those dogs now.
+ > Mary doesn’t want to go to Steve’s party.
(4.42) Mother: Was the dessert any good?
Daughter: Mom, apple pie is apple pie.
+ > The daughter doesn’t really like the apple pie.

Examples (4.38)–(4.42) illustrate the conversational implicatures an average inter-

locutor may infer according to the Cooperative Principle and its maxims. These
conversational implicatures, however, can be defeated when further contextual infor-
mation is added. In (4.38), one may engender a conversational implicature that
Xiaozhang doesn’t like Xiaohong’s hat because lv maozi “green hat” connotates
extra-marital affairs in Chinese culture. This implicature can be canceled if the inter-
locutors are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland where everyone wears everything
green or Xiaozhang loves the color green. In (4.39), the above conversational impli-
cature would be defeated if the customer has to stay up all night for a due assignment.
The boy may have finished both works if the father and the son have reached an agree-
ment that the boy always cleans the house before starting to write his book report.
In (4.41), Mary would be excited to go to Steve’s party if she is a dog lover. The
tautology in (4.42) would convey an exactly opposite meaning if the girl’s favorite
dessert is apple pie.
In addition to adding new information to the existing context, conversational
implicature can evaporate via metalinguistic negation. It refers to a way speakers
announce their unwillingness to assert something in a conventional way and redress
it in a preferred way (Horn, 1985: 135). For example,
(4.43) a. This cup of tea is warm.
+ > This cup of tea is not hot.
b. This cup of tea is not warm; it is too hot!
~ + > This cup of tea is not hot.
(4.44) a. Peking University is not in Peking.
+ > Peking University might be in any other city but Peking.
b. Peking University is not in Peking; it’s in Beijing.
~ + > Peking University might be in any other city but Peking.
(4.45) Will McAvoy has insomnia and his girlfriend MacKenzie McHale asks if he has seen
the doctor. McAvoy reveals that he doesn’t see the doctor but keeps scheduling appointments
for the past four years:
McHale: You have been paying him for four years?
McAvoy: It’s ridiculous to say that.
McHale: Thank God!
McAvoy: I have a business manager who does that.
Adapted from The Newsroom (2012)

In (4.43), following Grice’s Maxim of Quality, one would infer that this cup
of tea is not hot; otherwise, the speaker would choose the word hot to describe a
66 4 Implicature

cup of tea of high temperature. However, the use of metalinguistic negation cancels
the conversational implicature that the tea is not hot. Likewise, the conversational
implicature generated in (4.44a) disappears when the sentence is negated metalin-
guistically in (4.44b). In (4.45), ridiculous triggers a counter-factive presupposition
that Mr. McAvoy did not pay for the appointments for four years. This implicature,
however, is soon canceled in the following line when McAvoy stated that he has a
business manager who paid the bill on his behalf. Instead of rejecting the payment
to the psychologist, McAvoy metalinguistically altered the focus of the utterance,
emphasizing the agent who made the payment. What an extravagant lifestyle!
Moreover, conversational implicature carries the property of non-detachability.
That is, the generation of a particular conversational implicature does not require the
sentence to be uttered with specific words. Instead, it is the semantic meaning the
sentence contains that invokes conversational implicatures. For example, recalling
the previous illustration of the flouting of the Maxim of Quality in (4.32) and restated
as (4.46),
(4.46) Flouting the Maxim of Quality.
After his friend lost his iPad, Tom says to his friend:
Tom: You are such a meticulous person!
+ > Tom’s friend is not meticulous.

The same conversational implicature can be inferred with the changes of specific
words so long as the semantic meaning is maintained, as shown in (4.47)–(4.51):
(4.47) You are such a meticulous person!
(4.48) You are such a mindful person!
(4.49) You are so prudent.
(4.50) You are very discreet.
(4.51) You have shown me a very high level of circumspection.

Regardless of the paraphrase, given the context of Tom’s friend lost his iPad, one
can still work out that Tom is being ironic, implicating that his friend is careless and
incautious.
Third, conversational implicatures are non-conventional in that it does not belong
to the literal meaning conveyed in the utterance (Grice, 1989: 39). Although the
creation of what is implicated relies on what is said, there is no necessary correla-
tion between these two concepts. The same sentence may generate very different
implicatures in various contexts. For example,
(4.52) Tom: I can’t believe that Mary spent $100 on her party.

Tom could mean that he thinks Mary spent too much money on her party if
it is only a small gathering of people. On the contrary, if it was Mary’s birthday
party and she invited a lot of people to the party, Tom may implicate that Mary is
very good at utilizing resources. Or he could also intend to criticize Mary for being
stingy. All these conversational implicatures are generated by the same sentence. On
a diachronic level, however, the distinction between literal meaning and implicature
4.6 Applications: Exploiting the Four Maxims in Friends 67

is sometimes blurred. For example, Thomas (1995: 79) notes that the farewell phrase
Goodbye is a contraction of the Christian catchphrase God be with you in the Middle
Ages. At that time, a farewell was one of the many implicatures this catchphrase
generated. In this modern time, however, the vast majority of English speakers are
unaware of its religious origin, taking farewell as its sole literal meaning.
The final feature is calculability. As suggested in non-detachability and non-
conventionality, what is said has little association with what is implicated and would
generate many different conversational implicatures. Despite these high uncertain-
ties, interlocutors can still understand each other clearly. This indicates that there must
be a certain mechanism that helps hearers to disambiguate the speaker’s meaning.
The existence of this mechanism is attributed to the calculability of conversational
implicatures: the inference is not random in a particular context and can be worked out
based on certain knowledge, viz. an educated guess. In general, five types of data are
usually required to work out a particular conversational implicature: the conventional
meaning of the words used, the Cooperative Principle and its maxims, the context of
the utterance, the background knowledge, and the relevant common ground shared
by both participants (Jiang, 2000: 59). It is worth noting that the intended meaning
may be interpreted distinctively in terms of the speaker’s status. For instance, the
WeChat “smile” emoji has been widely used in online communication, as in (4.53).

(4.53) 你今天真的太棒了

You did great today

The interpretations, however, display huge differences based on the age of the
addresser. When texted by a teenager, it is usually interpreted as a sign of negative
evaluation that what the addressee did was far from awesome4 ; if the addressee knows
that the above text was sent by a senior citizen, he or she is more likely to stick to
a more positive understanding, i.e. the sender was complimenting the addressee on
his excellent performance and showing friendliness.

4.6 Applications: Exploiting the Four Maxims in Friends

In this section, we provide some more analyses of flouting the maxims of the Coop-
erative Principle in the popular American television series Friends. As one of the
most-watched TV programs during the turn of the century, Friends earned its fame
through its outstanding viewer identification and pedagogical implication (Quaglio,
2009) as well as its high resemblance to the accomplishment of everyday social life
(Stokoe, 2008). The analyses of these conversations could serve as good illustrations
of the Cooperative Principle.

4 See more examples in Huang (2017).

68 4 Implicature

4.6.1 Exploiting the Maxim of Quantity

Following the first half of the Maxim of Quantity, one can infer that the speaker’s
contribution is as informative as what is required. In Season Ten Episode Eleven,
Gene and Joey are invited to a popular television game show “Pyramid”. They are
asked to form a pair to guess the keyword by using other words as hints. They had
very bad cooperation for the first two rounds. Now they are in the third and final
rounds for the big win.
(4.54) Joey will be guessing and Gene will be offering the hints:
Gene: Oak, maple, elm, birch…
Joey: I-I-I don’t know. Types of trees?
Joey also guessed out the following three keywords:
Gene: Cindy Crawford, Christie Brinkley, Heidi Klum, Claudia Schiffer…
Joey: Oh, oh, oh… (5 s left)
Gene: Christie Turlington, Kate Moss…
Joey: Girls Chandler could never get?
Gene: (irritated) Supermodels!
Joey: Where? (looking around)
Friends (2003)

The above example illustrates how Joey worked out or failed to figure out the
keywords through the first half of the Maxim of Quantity, i.e. making your contri-
bution as informative as is required. All the words Gene said should be useful to
generalize the keyword. Therefore, even if Joey was not very sure, he sensed that
all the words were related to trees, and the answer should be something about “the
type of trees” (luckily the word is just as simple as Joey’s guess). In the final guess,
however, he realized the Maxim of Quantity that all these names are necessary to
figure out the keyword but failed to recognize the Maxim of Relation when screening
his answers: There is no way for Gene and the game show to know Chandler and
definitely would not put him as the keyword. Hence, it is important to note that
meanings are not always simply inferred from one maxim, but is more likely to be
jointly calculated through several maxims.
Interlocutors can also engender conversational implicature by offering more infor-
mation than is required. In Season One Episode One, Rachel escaped from the
wedding and she was really upset. She comes to Monica’s apartment for help.
Monica’s neighbor Joey is also hanging out in Monica’s apartment.
(4.55) Rachel is crying for running away from her wedding and Joey comes to comfort her:
Joey: You need anything. You can always come to Joey. Chandler and I live right across the
hall and he is away a lot.
Monica: Joey, stopping hitting on her. It’s her wedding day.
Joey: What. Like there is a rule or something?

Friends (1994)
4.6 Applications: Exploiting the Four Maxims in Friends 69

In (4.55), in addition to offering help to Rachel (You can always come to Joey),
Joey also added an extra piece of information (Chandler and I live right across the
hall and he is away a lot). By suggesting that his apartment is close to hers, and he
has plenty of time of being alone, Joey violated the Maxim of Quantity, creating a
conversational implicature that he wants to date Rachel, or at least, to flirt with her.
This unsaid meaning, however, is successfully inferred by Monica. As a good friend
of Rachel, Monica stopped Joey from continuing doing so (Joey, stopping hitting on
her. It’s her wedding day).

4.6.2 Exploiting the Maxim of Quality

Bearing the first part of the Maxim of Quality in mind, interlocutors can conversa-
tionally implicate something by ostentatiously saying what the speaker believes to be
false. In Season One Episode Four, Ross accidentally breaks his nose and his friend
Chandler is accompanying him to the hospital. Chandler is curious about Ross’s
recent divorce because his ex-wife turns out to be a lesbian.
(4.56) Chandler: What is it? Did she leave you? Did she leave you for another woman that
likes women?
Ross: A little louder, please. Because I think there is a man on the 12th floor in a coma who
didn’t quite hear you.
Chandler: (silent)
Friends (1994)

In scenario (4.56), one may notice that Chandler is being very annoying to Ross
by constantly asking the whereabouts of Ross’s ex-wife. In addition, talking loudly
is also conventionally prohibited in the hospital. Since Chandler is his best friend,
Ross stops Chandler in an ironic way. By saying that a patient in a coma on a
different floor should also hear Chandler, Ross violates the Maxim of Quality in that
it is impossible for the patient to hear Chandler’s questions. Chandler successfully
understands Ross’s implicature and stops asking questions, rather than accepting
Ross’s “suggestion” and speaking even louder.
Corresponding to the second part of the maxim, interlocutors should not say that
for which they lack adequate evidence. In Season Two Episode Three, Phoebe and
Ross are arguing about the persuasiveness of the Theory of Evolution. Ross firmly
believes in evolution, but Phoebe still doubts about it.
(4.57) Ross: Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is a scientific
fact, like, like, like the air we breathe, like gravity.
Phoebe: Ok, look, before you even start, I’m not denying evolution, ok, I’m just saying that
it’s one of the possibilities… Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant
that you can’t admit that there’s a teeny tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?
Ross: There might be…a teeny…tiny…possibility.
Phoebe: I can’t believe you caved.
70 4 Implicature

Ross: What?
Phoebe: You just abandoned your whole belief system. Now I mean, before, I didn’t agree
with you, but at least I respected you.
Friends (1995)

In (4.57), Ross states that evolution is a scientific fact. According to the Maxim
of Quality, one should not say something without adequate evidence. Therefore,
following this maxim, one would easily infer that Ross firmly believes in evolu-
tion. Then Phoebe questions him about whether there would be a slight chance that
the entire theory of evolution is falsely constructed. Bearing scientific discretion in
mind, Ross admits the possibility of alternative explanations. This meticulousness,
however, is construed by Phoebe as an abandonment of his belief system: Ross is
saying something without sufficient proof, generating a conversational implicature
that he does not believe in evolution anymore.

4.6.3 Exploiting the Maxim of Relation

In Season Four Episode Five, after Ross and Rachel break up, Ross finds a new
girlfriend whereas Rachel is still single. In the coffeehouse, Ross intends to show off
his new girlfriend Amanda to Rachel.
(4.58) Ross, Rachel, Chandler, and other friends are sitting in the café:
Ross: Yeah. It’s tough being single. That’s why I am so glad I found Amanda.
Rachel: Ross, you guys went out once. You took your kids to Chucky Cheese, and you didn’t
even kiss her.
Ross: (Staring at Chandler angrily)
Chandler: I tell people secrets. It makes them like me.
Friends (1997)

In the above case, Ross is clearly mad at Chandler for telling his secret to Rachel,
ruining his chance to show off in front of her. Instead of admitting his mistake,
Chandler makes a general statement about him liking to tell people’s secrets for
affectation. This appears to be irrelevant to Ross’s expectation at face value. Bearing
the assumption that Chandler is aware of the Maxim of Relation, however, one could
work out a conversational implicature that Chandler tells the secret to Rachel that
Ross does not enjoy a successful date with Amanda.

4.6.4 Exploiting the Maxim of Manner

Breaching the Maxim of Manner can create dramatic humorous effects. In Season
Four Episode Thirteen, Rachel cannot stand the dullness of her job at Bloomingdale’s
and decides to quit. Before talking to her boss, she calls Monica:
4.6 Applications: Exploiting the Four Maxims in Friends 71

(4.59) Rachel: Monica, I’m quitting! I just helped an 81-year-old woman put on a thong and
she didn’t even buy it! (Pause) I’m telling you I’m quitting! That’s it! I’m talking to my boss
right now! (Pause) Yes I am! (Pause) Yes I am! Yes I am! Yes I am! Yes I am! Yes I am!
Okay bye, call me when you get this message.
Friends (1997)

Since the Maxim of Manner postulates that interlocutors should converse orderly,
the pause held between Rachel’s monologue generates a conversational implicature
to the audience that Monica has responded. This implicated meaning, however, is
soon defeated when Rachel says that Okay bye, call me when you get this message
which presupposes that Monica has not received the message yet. This dramatic
cancellation, therefore, creates a humorous effect on the audience.
When addressees fail to identify the exploitation of maxims, they may be unable to
infer the speaker’s intention, causing an awkward communication failure. In Season
Five Episode Nineteen, Chandler reveals that Ross is not good at flirting. In order to
disprove Chandler’s statement, Ross tries to flirt with the pizza delivery girl Caitlin
that he likes her and wants to ask her out. See the scenario below:
(4.60) In her last delivery, Caitlin said that she thought her haircut looks like an eight-year-
old. When Caitlin arrived with a pizza, Ross started to flirt:
Ross: By the way, if it makes you feel any better … I happen to like 8-year-old boys.
Caitlin: What?
Ross: The uh, your hair, before, your hair, you said you thought your hair looks like an
8-year-old’s, and I’m just saying I like it. The hair.
Caitlin: Oh. Thanks.
Ross: You understand I don’t actually like 8-year-old boys.
Caitlin: Y’ know, all I’m looking for is the money.
Chandler: (Handing Caitlin the money) Here you go. Now stop bringing us pizzas you.
Caitlin: I’m gonna try. (Caitlin walks away and Ross closes the door)
Friends (1998)

Instead of complimenting Caitlin on her hair directly, Ross chooses to express

his affection for her in an implicit and rather obscured way. By saying that he likes
eight-year-old boys, Ross expects Caitlin to infer a conversational implicature that
he likes her by recalling her earlier complaint of looking like an eight-year-old.
Caitlin, however, does not successfully identify Ross’s implicature and takes his word
literally, considering him pedophilic. This miscommunication is a result of Caitlin’s
failure to recognize that Ross flouted the Maxim of Manner (avoid ambiguity). The
second fiasco happens when Ross tries to clarify that he does not like young boys’ hair.
This time, Caitlin wrongly infers that Ross is trying to deny his affection towards
children because an average adult normally does not make disclaimers of being
sexually interested in kids. According to Levinson’s M-Principle (What is said in a
marked way conveys a marked message), Ross must have used this in a marked way,
revealing the fact that he is pedophilic. These two miscarriages are due to the poor
handling of the Cooperative Principle by Ross and, in turn, proving that he is a green
hand of flirting.
72 4 Implicature

4.7 Review

• Preliminaries
• Natural meaning and non-natural meaning
• Implication and implicature
• Types of implicatures
– Conversational and conventional implicatures
– Generalized and particularized conversational implicatures
– Scalar, alternate, and clausal implicatures
• Classical Gricean theory
• Cooperative Principle
– Quality
– Quantity
– Relation
– Manner
• Creation of conversational implicatures
– Careful observation
– Ostentatious infringement
• Criticisms of the Gricean theory
– Redundancy within one maxim and between maxims
– Different weighs of the four maxims
– Prescriptive nature
– Oversimplification between what is said and what is implicated
• Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean theories
• Levinson’s tripartite
– Q-principle
– I-principle
– M-principle
• Horn’s bipartite
– Q-principle
– R-principle
• Sperber & Wilson’s relevance theory
– Ostensive-Inferential communication
– Principle of Relevance
• Properties of conversational implicature
References 73

• Defeasibility
– Linguistically
– Metalinguistically
• Non-detachability
• Non-conventionality
• Calculability
– Conventional meaning of the words used
– Cooperative Principle and its maxims
– Context of the utterance
– Background knowledge
– Relevant common ground shared by both participants

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Chapter 5
Speech Acts

On May 20, 2018, US President Mr. Donald Trump tweeted the following:
I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look
into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political
Purposes—and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama
Administration!
@realDonaldTrump

This message is seen as a red herring (something that misleads or distracts from
the important issue) to the ongoing investigation that Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential
campaign has been rigged by Russian influence. By posting this tweet, Mr. Trump
urges the Department of Justice to do something or to perform certain acts. His perfor-
mance of demanding falls into the category of speech act. When a series of these
performative acts are carried out for the same purpose, it is called a speech event.
These are considered as the basic or minimal units of our linguistic communication
(Searle, 1969: 16).
This chapter is organized as follows: Sect. 5.1 unpacks the origin and definition of
speech acts. Sections 5.2 and 5.3 introduce John Austin’s original theory of speech
act and the advancements made by his student John Searle. Section 5.4 highlights
some of the latter theoretical advancements along the line of the Speech Act Theory.
The variations of speech acts across cultures and contexts are illustrated in Sect. 5.5.
Finally, Sect. 5.6 presents an empirical study of the persuasive strategies in Chinese
online forum requests.

5.1 Preliminaries

To understand how Trump’s message performs acts, in the first subsection, we recount
the seminal dichotomy between performative and constative; the second subsec-
tion introduces the performative hypothesis formulated to remedy this troubling
dichotomy.

© Peking University Press 2024 75

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2_5
76 5 Speech Acts

5.1.1 Performative-Constative Dichotomy

In the early twentieth century, a group of philosophers led by Bertrand Russell hold
that every single statement can be judged to be true or to be false. For example, by
going through a metal detector in the airport, one can easily test if the examinee’s
statement of I do not bring any metals with me is true or false. If the metal detector
goes off, the TSA officers will know that the passenger’s statement is false. Otherwise,
the passenger is telling the truth. As for those statements that cannot be tested, these
philosophers counted them meaningless. For instance,
(5.1) Captain America plays better chess than Stan Lee.

Statement (5.1) is meaningless because Captain America is fictitious and there is

no way to hold a chess match between the two. Consequently, the truth condition
of the above statement can neither be proved nor falsified. Those who believe that
a meaningful sentence can be verified for its truth-value are called the logical posi-
tivists (more precisely, descriptive fallacy) and the linguistic approach they adopted is
known as truth-conditional semantics (see Lyons, 1995: 237). The British philoso-
pher John Austin (1962), however, sharply observes that sentences could do more
than making statements. For example,
(5.2) a. Beijing is the capital city of China.
b. Beijing is the capital city of Japan.
(5.3) (Smashing the bottle against the stem) (Austin, 1962: 5)
I name this ship Queen Elizabeth.
(5.4) I ask you to buy some pizza.

In (5.2), one could easily tell that (5.2a) is true and (5.2b) is false based on their
geographical knowledge. For sentences (5.3) and (5.4), however, it is hard to tell their
truth conditions. We could verify if the speaker named the ship Queen Elizabeth
or Prince Philips, but we are unable to say whether sentence (5.3) is true or not.
The same conclusion applies to (5.4): we could tell the truth or falsity of sentences
like Tom asked Mary to buy some Pizza, but not that of (5.4). After identifying
these discrepancies, Austin named sentences or utterances like (5.2a) and (5.2b)
constatives that are used to make descriptions and statements. In contrast, those like
(5.3) and (5.4) are dubbed as performatives, or speech acts: Utterances that are
not just saying something but also doing actions. The verbs used to perform these
actions, such as name, ask, and pronounce, are called performative verbs, and are
later dubbed as Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) in Searle’s (1969) term.
A sharp reader may notice that some utterances do not have an explicit performative
verb as the verb demand in Mr. Trump’s tweet. This type of performatives is called
primary performatives (Austin, 1962: 69) or implicit performatives (Huang, 2014:
121; Levinson, 1983: 231).1 And those with such a verb are dubbed as explicit
performatives (Austin, 1962: 32). Some more examples are listed below:

1 The word Primary is favored over implicit because it indicates an evolutionary direction. Viewing
from language evolution, the explicit performatives are the later development of some primary
5.1 Preliminaries 77

(5.5) Explicit performatives (the performative verbs are italicized)

a. I promise to give you your money back.

b. We suggest you report to the administration.
c. I order you to surrender now.
d. I hereby sentence you to death.

(5.6) Primary/implicit performatives

a. I will see you tomorrow at the office.

b. How about going to the zoo tomorrow?
c. I’m sorry.
d. It’s hot here.

5.1.2 The Performative Hypothesis

The observation of implicit performatives might make people wonder how utterances
can still trigger actions without an explicit performative verb. This is explained by
the theory of the performative hypothesis put forward in the 1970s (see Ross,
1970; Sadock, 1974). The central argument is that every sentence contains a “hidden
form” that can give rise to explicit performatives (Sadock, 1974: 17): this structure
is composed of the speaker as the subject, the addressee as the indirect object, an
abstract performative verb (e.g., promise, order, suggest, etc.), and a complement
clause specifying the act. The implicit performatives in (5.6) can be rewritten as
follows:
(5.7) a. I (hereby) promise you that I will see you tomorrow at the office.
b. I (hereby) ask you that how about going to the zoo tomorrow.
c. I (hereby) apologize to you that I’m sorry.
d. I (hereby) state the fact to you that it’s hot here.

This hypothesis, however, was soon abandoned for the grammatical indistinctive-
ness of abstract performative verbs, i.e., we simply have no idea of their inventory, and
a lot of verbs could be either included in or excluded from the category (Thomas,
1995: 44; Yule, 1996: 53). And some implicit performatives have no appropriate
explicit counterpart, as in the cases of lying, punishing, and threatening (Huang,
2014: 124). For example,
(5.8) a. You are such a pig.
b. *I hereby insult you that you are such a pig.
c. Tony insulted Mary that she was such a pig.

utterances; the primitive form retains a degree of ambiguity and is made explicit based on numerous
successful communication (Austin, 1962: 71–73).
78 5 Speech Acts

(5.9) a. I promise I will beat you up.

b. * I hereby threaten you that I will beat you up.

The rewriting of (5.8a) in (5.8b) appears to be odd for native speakers, whereas the
verb “insult” can be used explicitly in a descriptive manner, as in (5.8c). Moreover,
utterance (5.9a) performs an action of threatening but is expressed via the explicit
performative verb “promise”. The explicit use of “threaten”, however, is generally
unacceptable.

5.2 Austin’s Theorizing of Speech Acts

As the founding father of the Speech Act Theory, John Austin draws wisdom from
Wittgenstein’s Game Theory and presented his seminal thoughts during his stay at
Harvard University for William James lectures in 1955 (Harris, 1995: 126). Following
his dichotomization between constatives and performatives, this section presents
his felicity conditions on performatives, the three facets of speech acts, and their
categorizations.

5.2.1 Felicity Conditions on Performatives

Since speech acts cannot be tested by truth-value, Austin (1975: 14–15) proposed a
set of conditions for politic performatives and named them felicity conditions:
(5.10) A. (a) There must be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect. (b) The
circumstances and persons must be appropriate for the invocation of a particular procedure.
B. The procedure must be executed by all participants (a) correctly and (b) completely.
C. Often, (a) the persons must have the requisite thoughts, feelings, and intentions, as spec-
ified in the procedure, and (b) if consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant parties
must so do.

For example, I hereby sentence you to death is only felicitous when it is uttered by
the judge in the court during the criminal justice procedure. The violation of any of
the above conditions will render the speech act infelicitous. Austin (1962) identified
two types of infelicities: first, a misfire takes place when conditions A or B are
infringed, as in cases where the judge sentences someone’s death in the bathroom
or the sentence is delivered by a salesman. Second, an abuse occurs if condition
C is not followed as in that the judge intentionally sets up an innocent person or
the law enforcement refuses to execute the criminal. (Strawson, 1964; Strawson,
1971) points out that Austin’s felicity condition only applies to formal and ritualistic
acts, overlooking the huge amount of daily activities where the conditions are not
necessary. For instance, when raising money for the charity, fundraisers often think
out of the box and create an unconventional way to advocate, violating Austin’s
felicity condition (Aa).
5.2 Austin’s Theorizing of Speech Acts 79

In modern times, some rituals are even performed outside of their conventional
settings. In 2012, a couple from southern Minnesota got married next to their parents’
graves to honor them and their families (BMTN staff 2012). In fact, many weddings
are performed in mountain sites, farms, bay resorts, seaside, etc. (Wedding Recep-
tion Venues near Newry, ME n.d.). Even though these wedding ceremonies were
performed in unusual locations, they are still legitimate, contradicting Austin’s
postulation of felicitous conditions.

5.2.2 Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary Acts

In the course of identifying all possible explicit performative verbs, Austin (1962:
94) realized that performatives and constatives might not be clear-cut. This led him
to abandon his early dichotomy and to argue that constatives is only a special subcat-
egory of performatives; thus, all utterances perform some actions. Then he presented
a threefold distinction of a speech act: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary
acts. Locutionary act or locution refers to the utterances with a particular form
and a relatively fixed meaning (Lyons, 1995: 240). Illocutionary act or illocution
addresses the functions the speaker intends to achieve or the action the speaker
wants to accomplish via locutionary act, such as accusing, apologizing, blaming,
commanding, congratulating, giving permission, joking, nagging, naming, ordering,
promising, refusing, requesting, suggesting, swearing, and thanking (Huang, 2014:
128). These functions are also known as the illocutionary force. And perlocutionary
act or perlocution is the sequential effects the utterance acts onto the interlocu-
tors’ feelings, thoughts, or actions (Austin, 1962: 101). These three dimensions are
exemplified as follows:
(5.11) The tripartite of a speech act:
Locutionary act: The room is hot.
Illocutionary act: The speaker suggests the addressee open the door.
Perlocutionary act: The addressee walks to the door and opens it.

In the above example, by performing the locutionary act of uttering the room is hot,
the speaker intends to fulfill the illocutionary function of suggesting the addressee
open the door. The consequence is that the addressee walks to the door and opens
it. This perlocutionary effect, however, is by no means fixed. It may well be that the
addressee thinks the room is cool and refuses to open the door.

5.2.3 Types of Illocutionary Force

Among the three facets discussed above, illocutionary act or illocutionary force is
the one that draws the most attention from pragmaticians. Based on the criteria of
80 5 Speech Acts

true-false and value-fact dichotomies, Austin (1962: 151) grouped illocutionary force
into five types: verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives.
Verdictives, as the name implies, give verdicts (fact or value) about the things that
are uncertain. Common examples are to acquit, to assess, to convict, to estimate, to
find, to rank, to rule, and to value. Exercitives refer to the exercise of powers, rights,
or influence, such as to advise, to appoint, to beg, to claim, to degrade, to demote,
to name, to pardon, to repeal, to urge, to vote, and to veto. Closely connected with
verdictives and exercitives, commissives commit the speaker to a certain course
of action, as in to adopt, to agree, to bet, to contract, to declare, to embrace, to
guarantee, to plan, and to promise. Behabitives express the speaker’s attitude and
behavior toward someone else’s previous actions, such as to apologize, to bless, to
condole, to congratulate, to criticize, to overlook, to thank, to welcome, and to wish.
Finally, expositives concern our use of words in arguments and conversations, such
as to affirm, to answer, to agree, to deny, to mention, to report, and to withdraw.
Austin’s theorizing is insightful and illuminating in terms of its challenge to logical
positivism2 and the provision of a solid foundation for the school of ordinary language
philosophy as well as the study of pragmatics. While as a cautious person himself,
Austin was not a proliferate writer and did not leave too many publications for us to
explore. The only book How to Do Things with Words was published posthumously
based on the recollection of his lectures from his students. Since then, many scholars
tend to revise, defend, or challenge his theory (e.g., Strawson, 1964; Searle, 1969;
Bach & Harnish, 1979; Wierzbicka, 1987; Sadock, 1994). Among them, his student
John Searle (Searle, 1969; Searle, 1975; Searle, 1979) is unquestionably the most
influential one.

5.3 Searle’s Theorizing of Speech Acts

In this section, we present Searle’s three major advancements in the Speech Act
Theory: a new proposal of felicity condition, an updated typology of speech acts,
and a theory of indirect speech acts.

5.3.1 Felicity Conditions on Speech Acts

In the last chapter, we introduced Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its four maxims
to unpack the inferential mechanism of speech acts. Grice’s informal approach,
however, does not specify the relationship between conventions and the meaning-
making process. Furthering Austin’s felicity condition, Searle (1969: 63) attempts to

2 Logical positivism refers to a philosophical belief that the world is composed of facts that can be
verified and analyzed based on their truth value. Austin’s theory forms a direct contrast because he
finds that some statements cannot be explained in terms of truth condition.
5.3 Searle’s Theorizing of Speech Acts 81

come up with a formal approach to speech acts, arguing that to successfully perform
a speech act is to obey a set of rules that constitute that act. The table below illustrates
Searle’s felicity condition for promising:
(5.12) Felicity condition for promising
Propositional content condition: Speaker predicates a future act of the speaker.
Preparatory condition: Speaker believes that doing act A is in H’s best interest and that
S can do A.
Sincerity condition: Speaker intends to do act A.
Essential condition: Speaker undertakes an obligation to do act A.

This can be exemplified in the following example: Suppose John says to Mary: I
promise to return your book tomorrow. The propositional content is that John says
that he will perform an act of returning Mary’s book in the future time of tomorrow.
John also believes that returning Mary’s book is in her best interest, and he is fully
capable of doing so. Moreover, John utters the sentence in a sincere manner that he
really intends to give the book back to her. Finally, in saying these words, John is
obliged to perform this act.
The violation of any of the conditions, however, would render the act infelicitous,
such as John promises that Tom will return Mary’s book (violation of propositional
content condition), John lost Mary’s book (violation of preparatory condition), John
is lying (violation of sincerity condition), or Mary says that John does not have to
return the book (violation of essential condition). One may find many occurrences
of infelicitous acts in our real lives, as shown in (5.13)–(5.15).
(5.13) When seeing a nice purse, Xiaowang says to her boyfriend.
Xiaowang: I don’t want that purse.

(5.14) Tom irritates John with four-letter words.

John: Say that again!

(5.15) The father finds his son is playing computer games:

Son: I promise I’ll start to do my homework in five minutes.

Anyone who has experiences in a romantic relationship can easily tell that (513)
actually means that Xiaowang wants that new purse. Tom would not dare to curse John
again for the sake of their friendship because he knows that John’s act is infelicitous.
The little boy in (5.15) is very unlikely to do his homework when the five-minute
countdown ends because he does not really intend to do so, breaching the sincerity
condition.
The above analyses show that it is possible to establish a set of constitu-
tive rules to account for the nature of all speech acts, mending Austin’s over-
emphasis on institutionalized speech acts. Searle (1969: 66–67) also lists felicity
conditions for eight more illocutionary acts, including requesting, asserting, ques-
tioning, thanking, advising, warning, greeting, and congratulating. Searle’s ambitious
proposal, however, remains problematic in that it is unable to clearly distinguish all
speech acts and it sometimes filters out the perfectly normal speech acts, leaving
82 5 Speech Acts

some other odd cases unaddressed (Thomas, 1995: 95). For instance, the popular
slogan of the movie Star Wars “May the Force be with you” does not fit into any of
Searle’s categories.

5.3.2 Typology of Speech Acts

In classifying speech acts, Austin (1962: 151) was not satisfied with his own cate-
gorizations and their recondite names. Searle (1979: 10) points out that the biggest
weakness of Austin’s taxonomy is that it has no clear and consistent principle to
be rooted in. Consequently, the original classification exposes confusions between
performatives and performative verbs and overlapping between different categories.
To address the shortage of governing principles, Searle (1979: 2–12) identifies 12
significant dimensions of variation for different speech acts, among which the most
important three are the illocutionary point, the direction of fit, and the expressed
psychological states. Illocutionary point is the essential condition of a speech act.
The illocutionary point of order is to get the addressee to do something, whereas
that of a promise is to oblige the speaker himself to do something. Direction of
fit concerns the matching relation between the words and the world. For example,
a customer’s shopping list is to get the groceries in the world to fit the required
items on the list, whereas a cashier’s receipt is to let the words on the receipt fit
the items the shopper actually bought in the world (c.f. Anscombe, 1957). Finally,
the expressed psychological states refer to the speaker’s attitude or state to that
propositional content, as in one’s desire in a request, one’s belief in an order, and
one’s intention in a promise.
Bearing the above dimensions in mind, Searle (1979) presents his fivefold
typology of speech acts: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and
declarations.
Assertives or representatives commit the speaker to something to be the case
with a testable truth condition. In uttering an assertive, the speaker makes words
fit the world, expressing the psychological state of belief. Representative examples
include statements of facts, assertions, conclusions, and descriptions, as shown in
(5.16)–(5.19), respectively.
(5.16) Beijing is the capital city of China.
(5.17) Usain Bolt is the fastest sprinter.
(5.18) The paper concludes that Searle’s theory is self-contained.
(5.19) John is bald.

However, one needs to be conscious that the truth or falsity of an assertive is

not clear-cut. In example (5.19), we usually consider a person bald even if he still
has a few hairs left. Similarly, we do not take it as a false statement in our daily
life if someone says that China now has 1.4 billion people (the actual number is
1,414,578,727 by May 20, 2018) (World Population, 2018).
5.3 Searle’s Theorizing of Speech Acts 83

The illocutionary point of a directive is to get the hearer to do something. In

so doing, the speaker expresses his desires or wants, fitting the world to words via
the addressee. Typical examples are suggestions, invitations, requests, and orders, as
shown in (5.20)–(5.23).
(5.20) It would be better to wear in layers at the turn of seasons.
(5.21) Could you join us for John’s party?
(5.22) A cup of black coffee, please.
(5.23) Attention! (Said by the drill sergeant to the rookies)

Directives are tightly connected to the study of politeness. In general, interlocutors

tend to apply various pragmatic modifiers (e.g., could, would, please) to redress the
imposition caused onto the addressee (Leech, 2014). This, however, can be suspended
in some specific contexts, such as military training (Culpeper, 1996). The topic of
politeness and impoliteness will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.
According to Searle (1979: 14), commissives commit the speaker to some future
course of action. In these cases, the speaker expresses his psychological state of inten-
tion, fitting the world to words by himself. Quintessential examples are promises,
threats, and refusals:
(5.24) I’ll be back. (Said the Terminator T800 in The Terminator)
(5.25) I’ll beat you up if you come to her again.
(5.26) I won’t consider your plan.

Comparing with Austin’s original illustration of commissives, we would find that

a number of commissive verbs are excluded, such as shall, intend, and favor, etc.
These words do not express the speaker’s determination of some future actions. For
example, I favor Hilary Clinton over Donald Trump for the 2016 presidential election
does not necessarily mean that the speaker will vote for Hilary. In fact, many people
only considered Hilary as “the lesser of two evils” and chose not to vote at all!
The above pagans of commissives may fall into the category of expressives.
Expressives show the speaker’s psychological states of feelings such as pleasures,
likes, dislikes, joys, or sorrows. See the following examples:
(5.27) I’m sorry for your loss.
(5.28) Congratulations on winning the championship.
(5.29) I’m excited about going to Paris.

It is worth noting that in this category, the speaker does not intend to moderate the
world and words in either direction. Instead, the truth of the expressed proposition
is presupposed: (5.27) presupposes that the addressee has lost someone precious;
(5.28) presupposes that the addressee has won the competition; (5.29) expresses the
fact that the speaker has planned to go to Paris. In contrast to its preferred negative
meaning in directives, impolite language often functions as an intensifiers of the
speaker’s attitude in expressives, as in (5.30):
(5.30) The drill sergeant asked the sole purpose of a soldier in the army and Forrest Gump
replied that it was to follow the drill sergeant’s orders.
84 5 Speech Acts

Drill Sergeant: God damn it, Gump! You’re a goddamned genius! That’s the most outstanding
answer I have ever heard! You must have a goddamned I.Q. of 160! You are goddamned
gifted, Private Gump!
Forrest Gump (1994)

Finally, declarations or declaratives are speech acts that change the world via
utterances. The successful performance of a declaration ensures that the proposition
corresponds to the world. For instance, if the officiator successfully performs the
declaration of a marriage, the couples then are legally married; if the U.S. Congress
successfully declares war on a country, then the United States is officially at war
with that country. Different from the above four types, one may notice that the
performing of declaration requires a particular institutional role: Christians won’t
regard a marriage legal unless the ceremony is performed by a priest; the international
bodies won’t consider it an official war for America unless the announcement is issued
by the U.S. Congress.
These five categories are summarized below (see also in Huang, 2014: 135; Peceei,
1999: 53–54; Yule, 1996: 55):
(5.31) Searle’s typology of speech acts

Speech act type Illocutionary Point Direction of fit Psychological state

Assertives Commitment of fact Words to worldo Belief
Directives Direction of others do something World to words Desire
Commissives Commitment of action World to words Intention
Experssives Expression of feelings Words to worldp Feel
Declarations Change of reality Words change world Causation
Note worldo stands for the outside world, and worldp stands for the psychological world.

5.3.3 Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

Before presenting Searle’s third advancement of indirect speech acts, we first intro-
duce three basic sentence types: declarative, interrogative, and imperative. Each
sentence type typically indicates one type of illocutionary force: a declarative is
to make a statement, an interrogative is to ask a question, and an imperative is
to command (Lyons, 1977: 30). A statement is usually associated with asserting, a
question questioning, and a directive requesting, as in (5.32)–(5.34), respectively.
(5.32) I want you to open the window. (statement)
(5.33) Can you open the window? (question)
(5.34) Open the window! (command)
5.4 Recent Developments in Speech Act Theory 85

In discussing felicity conditions, Searle (1969) observes that the performative

verb promise can express illocutionary force other than promising. For example,
(5.35) I promise I will kill you if I see you again.

In this case, promise no longer commits the speaker to the future act of killing the
addressee, but rather serves as a threat to the addressee. This shift of function leads
Searle (1975) to identify many more cases where the IFID for one type of illocutionary
act is used to perform another type of illocutionary act: the statement of I want you
to fetch some water is actually a request for water and a simple question Can you
pass me the salt? is a request for salt. To sum up, a direct speech act is an act with a
direct relationship between a structure and a function, and an indirect speech act is
the one with an indirect structure-function relation (Yule, 1996: 55).
Indirect speech acts give rise to new questions—how speakers say one thing to
mean both that and something else and how hearers manage to figure out the intended
meaning of the speaker. Searle (1975: 61) postulates that the successful communi-
cation of indirect speech acts relies on the Speech Act Theory, the Cooperative
Principle, the factual background shared by the interlocutors, and the hearer’s ability
to infer; more importantly, an indirect speech act is often associated with convention.
Compare the following three sentences:
(5.36) Can you open the window?
(5.37) Do you have the ability to open the window?
(5.38) Are you able to open the window?

Among the above three utterances, only (5.36) is a typical indirect speech act that
the hearers could infer a request of opening the window, whereas (5.37) and (5.38),
in most cases, confuse the hearers, despite conveying the same semantic meaning.

5.4 Recent Developments in Speech Act Theory

In the above two sections, we introduce the two founding fathers’ theories of speech
acts that are largely formulated in the 1950s to 1970s. The Speech Act Theory has
also evolved over the past half a century. Among the many developments, this section
briefly introduces three theoretical advancements addressing the study of perlocution,
the classification of speech acts, and the sequence of speech acts. These elaborations
are by no means exhaustive and serve only as signposts for future research.

5.4.1 Study of Perlocution

The first advancement addresses the largely overlooked perlocutionary facet of

speech acts. Cohen (1973) first addresses this understudied status of perlocution. He
86 5 Speech Acts

notes that the same perlocution can be directly accomplished by locution, without
going through illocution. For example, the parents can urge their children to do
their homework by saying that Finish your homework now or Have you done your
homework?
Campbell (1973) opposes the distinction between illocution and perlocution
drawn by Austin and argues that all illocutionary acts surely produce perlocu-
tionary effect and the distinction is simply empty. He also points out that some
of the perlocutionary acts described by Austin are simply other complete speech
acts. Moreover, Campbell condemns Austin’s elimination of poetic and rhetorical
languages, defending their essentiality in the meaning-making process.
To remedy the inattention of perlocutionary acts by the linguists, Gaines (1979),
in reference to Austin’s definition, classifies perlocutionary effects into two main
categories: perfected and incipient perlocutionary effects. Perfected perlocutionary
effects indicate their conceptual completeness, including involuntary (e.g., startle,
amuse), voluntary (e.g., insult, entertain), and epistemic subcategories (e.g., confuse,
enlighten). In contrast, incipient perlocutionary effects have a degree of conceptual
incompleteness without the hearer’s action. It consists of two subcategories: motiva-
tional (e.g., persuade, convince) and practical (e.g., get the hearer to do something).
This classification, however insightful, is still flawed on two levels. First, this classi-
fication seems to dedicate to perlocutionary acts rather than perlocutionary effects,
leaving the unintended cases unaddressed. Second, the incipient category may also
manifest a degree of conceptual completeness. For example, if one successfully
persuades the other, it already makes a change to the addressee’s mind, and the
rhetor does not need to adopt further means of persuasion to enforce the act.
Gu (1993) describes the Effect=Act Fallacy to criticize Austin’s equating of
perlocutionary act to perlocutionary effect. He observes that perlocutionary effects
can be unintended, such as the perlocutionary act of alerting someone causes him a
heart attack. That is, the actual perlocutionary effects do not merely depend on the
speaker, but also on the hearer’s recognition of and response to that act.
Dissatisfied with the theoretical discussion of speech acts in the vacuum, Marcu
(2000) adopts a data-driven approach to interrogate previous theories of perlocu-
tionary acts with real-world evidence. Among the seven fallacies he listed, we
selectively elaborate on two points: First, perlocutionary acts are not consequences
of simple locutionary acts. The empirical data suggest that it is very unlikely to
consummate the intended perlocutionary effect of someone quits drinking via a
simple utterance like Drinking is bad for your health. On the contrary, it involves
many other explanations, discussions, and in short, many other locutions. Second,
speech acts shall not be considered as the basic unit of communication. Admitted
by Searle himself (see Sect. 5.3.3), speech act theory is unable to solely explain the
multiple perlocutionary effects caused by the same locutionary or illocutionary act.
Instead, successful communication requires the employment of a set of persuasive
techniques, such as lexical choice (e.g., eliminating hedges, using metaphors, and
replacing abstract terms with specific terms).
From the above elaborations, we can draw two tentative conclusions: First, the
treatment of this fussy category of perlocution requires collaborations between
5.4 Recent Developments in Speech Act Theory 87

pragmaticians and rhetoricians. While pragmatics offers insightful explanations to

the inference of meaning (Ariel, 2010), rhetoric provides effective employment of
symbols (Herrick, 2013). The marriage between the two subjects is instrumental in
explaining how interlocutors interact with each other in the most effective and effi-
cient way. Second, a falsifiable approach to the formulation of pragmatic theories
emphasizes the utilitarian nature of scientific studies. The provision of natural data,
as notes by Marcu (2000: 1720), is not meant to dismantle theories, but to revise and
refine them to best serve the real world. This emerges as a cautionary tale that in the
pursuit of academic study, we should always bear in mind the applicability of the
theory and prevent our research from deviating from our daily communication.

5.4.2 Classifications of Speech Acts

Another line of research focuses on the classification of speech acts. While criticizing
Austin’s original classification for lacking consistent principles, Searle (1975, 1979)
complicated his typology with far too many principles: a collection of 12 dimensions
and tens of thousands of categories (Sadock, 2006). These criteria remain to be
open categories, facing the potentials of not covering all types of speech acts. The
remainder of this section presents several new attempts of classification.
Ballmer and Brennenstuhl (1981) postulate what they called a lexical approach to
speech activity verbs. Based on the core semantic meaning of speech activity verbs,
they identify six main semantic centers: expressing emotion, influencing others,
verbal struggle, normative behavior, expressing values, and complex discourse func-
tions (ibid: 18). Then, smaller groups are classified according to their semantic
meaning and semantic relations with other words. This approach, however, is prob-
lematic because it largely relies on the researchers’ subjective judgment of semantic
meaning.
In discussing speech acts and grammatical structure, scholars (Croft, 1994;
Harnish, 1994; Sadock, 1994) come up with three typologies. In Sadock’s (1994)
work, he distinguishes three communicative aspects: informational (open for the
judgment of truth and falsity), effective (achieving conventional effects), and affec-
tive (displaying the speaker’s feeling). Harnish (1994) groups his typology via the
characteristics of mood in each speech act, i.e., verbal vs. sentential mood and major
mood vs. minor mood. Each mood is subcategorized by linguistic form, illocutionary
force, fit compatibility conditions, and inference rules. Moreover, as the leading figure
in language typology, Croft (1994) produces a cognitive model of interpersonal inter-
action to accommodate various speech acts. The two backbones of his theory are the
force-dynamic model of interpersonal relations (Talmy, 1988) and the belief-desire-
intention model of human behavior (Fauconnier, 1985). The former concerns the
action of addition or removal and the latter addresses the speaker’s belief, desire, or
intention carried out in each speech act.
88 5 Speech Acts

In the functional camp, Leech (1983: 104) identifies four types of illocutionary
functions according to the relationship between the illocutionary goal (the speaker’s
intention) and the social goal (maintaining comity):
(5.39) Leech’s classification of illocution
Competitive: The illocutionary goal competes with the social goal; e.g., asking, begging,
demanding, ordering, etc.
Convivial: The illocutionary goal coincides with the social goal; e.g., congratulating,
greeting, inviting, offering, thanking, etc.
Collaborative: The illocutionary goal is indifferent to the social goal; e.g., asserting,
announcing, instructing, reporting, etc.
Conflictive: The illocutionary goal conflicts with the social goal; e.g., accusing, cursing,
reprimanding, threatening, etc.

Based on Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) semantic system of speech function,

Xiang (2018) proposes a functional classification of speech acts, attempting to use
two pairs of binary concepts to cover all the speech acts. On the direction of roles
in exchange, a speech act must belong to either giving or demanding; and on the
direction of exchanged commodity, a speech act falls into the category of either
information or goods & services. Therefore, all speech acts can be classified into four
categories: giving information, demanding information, giving goods & services, and
demanding goods & services.
Looking through this line of discussion, one might be frustrated with the many
theoretical models applied in each classification. While leaving the details of each
model aside, we can still easily make two observations on the classification of speech
acts: First, we once again witness the application of Occam’s Razor that scholars are
trying to reduce the principles toward the best simplest theory possible. Second,
in the formulation of different models, we could identify the use of many gram-
matical, cognitive, social, and psychological theories in pragmatic inquiries. This
observation consequently demonstrates the multidisciplinary nature of pragmatics
(see Cummings, 2005; Green, 1996: 1–2).

5.4.3 Sequencing in Speech Acts

As noted by Taylor and Cameron (1987: 58), the sequencing of an illocutionary act in
actual communications is not the main concern of philosophers. Fortunately, this gap
is addressed by the Cross-Cultural Speech Acts Realization Patterns (CCSARP) led
by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). In examining requests and apologies in seven different
languages (English, Canadian French, Danish, German, Hebrew, and Russian), they
observe that a speech act is not realized through a single utterance as Austin (1962)
and Searle (1969) suggested, but rather via a sequence of head acts and supportive
moves. The head act is the core element of a speech act in Austin and Searle’s sense
and supportive moves are the linguistic elements added to the head act (e.g., Could
5.5 Speech Acts Across Cultures and Contexts 89

you please lend me $10?) or associated with the head act (e.g., I’m running out of
cash. Could you lend me $10?) (see Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984; Blum-Kulka,
1987: 135) Similar results are also found in the aforementioned empirical data in
Marcu (2000) and Zhu et al. (2000).

5.5 Speech Acts Across Cultures and Contexts

This section reports the cross-cultural and cross-contextual variations of different

speech acts. A detailed study on the rhetorical appeals in Chinese online requests is
presented in Sect. 5.6.

5.5.1 Cross-Cultural Variations

The first thing to bear in mind is that most speech acts are culture-specific and
language-specific. For example, a Philippine tribal group called Ilongots uses little
speech act of promising in their daily life (Rosaldo, 1982) and the speakers of Yolngu,
an Australian aboriginal language, do not seem to perform the speech act of thanking
(Harris, 1984.). In Chinese culture, the acceptance of the invitation to a dinner party
often goes through several rounds of invitation and decline; and an immediate accep-
tance is considered to be disrespectful to the host (Mao, 1994). Moreover, there is a
growing trend that people tend to make insincere promises, such as I’ll see you once
I come back or I promise this is the last cigarette! In the remainder of this section,
we shall look at some interesting findings in various languages.
One heated discussion is the similarities and discrepancies between the East
and the West. In performing requests, Fukushima (1996) surprisingly finds that the
Japanese use more direct forms and less supportive moves whereas the British use
more supportive moves and conventional forms. Blum-Kulka (1987) observes that
Israelis rank hint with a lower degree of politeness than British informants do. Byon
(2006) elaborates on the unique means of requesting in Korean society (honorifics),
challenging the Anglo-American hypothesis of the correlation between indirectness
and politeness. After comparing Chinese, American, and Japanese requests, Chen
et al. (2013) cautiously point out that the correlation between West-East geographical
progression and indirect-direct cline is too dangerous to conclude. Liu et al. (2016)
analyze how individualism and collectivism influence the Chinese and American
political apologies, suggesting that Chinese politicians are more willing to admit
their fault and shoulder responsibilities than American politicians.
Moreover, studies also show many variations between English and European
languages. For example, Golato (2002) observes far more compliments made by
Americans than by Germans; and in responding to these compliments, Germans
prefer to make an assessment of them, whereas Americans tend to give apprecia-
tion. When apologizing, Russian and Polish speakers are more indirect than their
90 5 Speech Acts

British counterparts (Ogiermann, 2009a). In request, English informants frequently

use consultative devices (e.g., Can you..., Will you ...), whereas the Germans prefer
downtoners (e.g., perhaps, by any chance) and Polish and Russian speakers make
full use of tense and negation (Ogiermann, 2009b).
In recent years, an increasing number of scholars start to investigate different
varieties of major languages such as Turkish–German (Marti, 2006), Cuban Spanish
(Ruzickova, 2007), and Dakar French (Johns and Félix-Brasdefer, 2015). Some other
researchers tend to inspect areas that are largely ignored. For example, Egner (2006)
notes that in some Western African cultures, neither the speaker is bound by his
promise nor hearers expect the speaker to fulfill that promise. In Southern Africa,
Setswana speakers value the community-based face over the individual face when
making apologies (Kasanga and Lwanga-Lumu, 2007). This is particularly signifi-
cant because their treatment of face incidentally corresponds to that of the Chinese
(see Mao, 1994), a civilization that is far away from the African continent. Serving
as signposts, these findings are sufficient to demonstrate this burgeoning field of
pragmatic inquiry.

5.5.2 Intra-language Variations

Within the same language, scholars may also reach different conclusions in their
studies of speech acts. For example, Lee-Wong (1994) finds that Chinese requests
are more direct than assumed, whereas the data in Chen et al. (2013) suggest that
Chinese are much more indirect than Lee-Wong’s conclusion. Similar cases are also
found in Japanese: by comparing English and Japanese requests, Fukushima (1996)
observes that Japanese tend to use more direct requests because it is considered as an
in-group solidarity marker and therefore addresses the requestee’s face want of being
recognized. Gagné (2010), on the other hand, concludes that the Japanese are more
sensitive to requesting, concerning the face threats done upon the requestees. These
seemingly contradictory findings are mostly the results of a different composite of
research subjects and push scholars to examine speech acts in more specific contexts.
One research trend is to investigate the variation of speech acts across different
extra-linguistic factors, such as gender, age, and contextual settings. Holmes (1988:
462–463) observes seven differences between New Zealand men and women’s
performance of compliments. By studying 116 Canadian children, Astington (1988)
finds that while adults’ conceptualization is closer to Searle’s theory, children judge
promises based on their outcomes. Context also largely affects the use of speech
acts. In cyber communication, interlocutors are inclined to use more conventional-
ized expressions or add more contextual supports to the performance of speech acts
(see Yus, 2011). Xia et al. (2017) investigate how Chinese students respond to compli-
ment in the presence of a third party; Comparing with an earlier study in two parties
(Chen, 1993), they find a significant increase in evasion and rejection, indicating the
latent influence of the underlying principle of self-denigration in triadic communi-
cation. Furthermore, adding interpersonal relationships in the previous three factors,
5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum Requests 91

Terkourafi (2001) proposes a frame-based approach to the study of politeness in

Greek requests. Her results show a relatively fixed pattern for formulaic exchanges
in different combinations of the above variables.
Another bulk of studies concentrates on the performance of speech acts by non-
native speakers from different countries. Kasper and Blum-Kulka’s (1993) collection
of papers presents five studies of interlanguage speech act performance: thanking,
apologizing, complaining, requesting, and correcting. The discrepancies found in
their studies between native speakers and learners shed strong pedagogical implica-
tions for language teaching. One important section would be the learning of social
and cultural conventions of that particular language community (Allami and Naeimi,
2011; Bella, 2012).
Finally, it is important to reiterate that we should not presuppose that different
languages definitely display huge differences, whereas the same language or the same
culture is always homogenous. For example, although the Chinese and the American
often form contrasting communicative patterns, American women share a high degree
of similarity with Chinese men and women in terms of egalitarian and hierarchical
dimensions (Scollon and Scollon, 1995: 160). The cultural heterogeneity is partly
a result of diversified race, religion, and ethnicity, but is also due to its dynamic
nature. In a quasi-longitudinal study of Chinese compliment response, Chen and
Yang (2010) find an increasing tendency of accepting compliments compared to
Chen (1993); they ascribe this change to the increase of western influence across
time. To sum up, a scholar would be always aware of and cautious about cultural
homogeneity and heterogeneity when researching speech acts.

5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum

Requests

To better understand how speech acts are delivered effectively, this section, taking
Aristotle’s three artistic proofs as a critical lens, examines the persuasive strategies
employed in Chinese online forum requests. The first section presents Aristotle’s
rhetorical theorizing of persuasion and the collected data. Sections 5.6.2–5.6.4 illus-
trate the specific persuasive strategies online users devised along with the directions
of ethos, pathos, and logos.

5.6.1 Introduction

Aristotle (2007) takes rhetoric as the ability to find all the available means of persua-
sion and devises three artistic proofs to account for public forum deliberative: ethos
concerns projecting self to the audience; pathos is about appealing to the audience
with emotions; logos refers to offering logical reasons to the audience. Since online
92 5 Speech Acts

forum requests are performed in the virtual public sphere, Aristotle’s classical theory
is suitable for our analysis.
Our data were retrieved from two Chinese online forums: the Q&A section of
Corpus4u, and the learning section of Buaabt 3 . The data were collected according
to the following four principles. First, based on Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014)
dichotomy between asking for goods & services and asking for information, we
collected online requests according to requesting action and requesting information.
The former includes examples such as asking for academic literature, videos, or
syllabuses and the latter contains asking solutions to academic questions. Within each
type of request, 50 entries are selected from each of the two forums. Second, to ensure
their mastery of netiquette, we chose posters with more than one year of active online
experience. Third, requests involving financial incentives were excluded because
the employment of linguistic politeness would be easily suspended in these cases.
Nevertheless, requests with non-financial incentives are retained, such as promising
to help back and to share information. Finally, no more than one post will be extracted
from the same poster, ensuring the diversity of our sample. Abiding by the above
selection criteria, we retrieved a total of 200 instances of online forum requests. In
total, we identified eight main strategies under the rubrics of three artistic proofs.

5.6.2 Ethos: Projecting Self to the Requestees

Requesters’ character and personality are potentially persuasive to viewers on the

forum because they can exhibit the good sense, virtue, and goodwill of the composer
(Herrick, 2013). Chinese online requests are mainly carried out by displaying virtue
and goodwill.
First, online requests inherit the everlasting theme of deference from Chinese
face-to-face communication (Gu, 1990; Ho, 1976: 881), which has been explored
in many empirical investigations of Chinese offline communications (Chen, 2015;
Hong, 1996; Pan & Kadar, 2011). This strategy is primarily achieved by using polite-
ness markers qing and qiu. Liu (2000: 13) points out that qing is generally translated
into English as “please” and is often used as honorifics, indicating the subordination
of the speaker compared to the addressee. The verb qiu, which literally means “to
beg” in Chinese, suggests a larger hierarchal difference between the users. Here are
two examples:
(5.40) 请大家推荐几个“转换生成语法”“功能语法”论坛或语言学论坛。
Please recommend several online forums for “transformative grammar” “functional gram-
mar” or linguistics in general.
Corpus4u, 10.05, 2011
(5.41) 求各位大神大二物理研究性实验报告作参考。

3Corpus4u: http://www.corpus4u.org/forums. Buaabt: http://buaabt.cn/showforum-14.aspx.(2020-

5-1).
5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum Requests 93

Dear all mighty deities, please share your research experiment report on sophomore physics
for reference.
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 12.08, 2014

For example (5.40), by using politeness marker qing, the requester puts himself in a
lower position compared to the requestee, implying a degree of inferiority. Likewise,
the poster in (5.41) conveys his deference to the addressee through the intensified
negative politeness marker qiu. Compared to the frequent use of qing in face-to-face
requests (Hong, 1996), qiu prevails in online requests. This clear establishment of
hierarchy shows that politeness in online communication requires more redressive
acts than in face-to-face interaction, indicating that interlocutors express themselves
in a more casual, exaggerated, or even dramatic way.
In addition to the massive use of politeness markers, some requesters show
deference by stating their inexperience in that matter, as shown in (5.42):
(5.42) 学渣问个问题, 关于卫星轨道的……我高中物理学得不好, 理论力学也挂过, 大
学物理也是勉强过的。
A question from a study slacker: it is about satellite orbits... I was not good at physics in
high school, I failed in theoretical mechanics and barely passed physics in college.
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 11.25, 2015

The speaker above states that he was underperformed in Physics in high school,
Theoretical Mechanics, and College Physics, which are all courses pertinent to
physics. Displaying the poor performance of the requestor is a negative politeness
strategy because it suggests the relative competence in physics of those potential
answerers.
Finally, the expression of deference transcends beyond the linguistic level and
could be realized through animated stickers or emojis. These stickers can create a
more vivid impression of the inferiority of the requestor. For instance,
(5.43) 我想做一个图片存取数据库, 可是小弟不是学这个的呀, 对这方面知识欠缺
, 然后网上找了个跟着做, 做出来运行的时候是一个空白页啊! 有木有学长

学弟学姐学妹同级少男少女 对这个东东熟悉的找时间教育一下小弟好吗

I want to create an image storage database, but I didn’t study this field and lack knowledge

in this area . I tried following an online tutorial, but when I ran it, the result was just

a blank page! Are there any academic brothers and sisters, or fellow young men and

women who are familiar with this and can spare some time to teach me?

Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 05.09, 2015

The above request perfectly illustrates the use of animated stickers in online forum
requests. Four stickers are used in this request to convey deference: the first two
stickers animate a person kneeling down and crying out loud, expressing the desper-
ation of not knowing how to build a database and the failure of completing the project
94 5 Speech Acts

based on the online instruction. The third one, depicting a naive figure, highlights the
poster’s willingness to be catered to. The final sticker of crying reenacts the helpless-
ness of the requestor. While using traditional emoticons such as the smiley face ( )
primarily serves as a positive politeness strategy to build rapport (Kavanagh, 2016;
Liu, 2010), animated stickers provide abundant resources to implement negative
politeness strategies online.
The second virtue corresponds to zhi’en in Chinese culture, which means to
acknowledge and appreciate help from others (Huang, 2016: 62). This strategy is
realized by explicitly thanking or expressing gratitude to the helpers, as shown in
(5.44) and (5.45), respectively:
(5.44) 不知坛子里哪位有A.P. Cowie的这本书?有的话能够发到我邮箱xxxxx@163.
com4。跪谢!
Does anyone on the forum know this book by A.P. Cowie? If so, could you email it to
me at [email protected]. Kneeling down to thank you!
Corpus4u, 10.08, 2014
(5.45) 有小伙伴想考9系的研, 可是看完官网发现没有参考书目, 哪位学长学姐帮帮忙
给一下609和891的参考书目呀, 或者你们学的是哪版的教材。感激不尽!!!
A friend wanted to take the postgraduate entrance exam in the No.9 college but could
not find any recommended textbooks after reading the official website. Can any academic
brothers and sisters please help provide the recommended textbooks for subjects 609 and
891? Or which edition of textbooks did you use? Thank you so much!!!
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 04.20, 2015

It is also worth noting that these acknowledgments occur before the resolution
of the request. This temporal displacement is a result of the asynchronous nature
of online communication to which the poster may not respond in time. Therefore,
requesters opt to declare that they are indebted to the requestee before the request is
addressed, ensuring that the requestee will receive this recognition.
In addition to exhibiting virtues, posters can also build his ethos by showing his
goodwill or sincerity. Some posters also choose to reveal their identity by attaching
personal contact information, such as email address, cellphone number, and social
media account. These additional means of contact help requestee respond to the
requests more efficiently. Moreover, since online communication is often considered
anonymous (Graham & Hardaker, 2017; Yus, 2011), providing personal contact is
the first step going on record, showing that the poster is sincere about his request.
Here is an example:
(5.46) 求考研专业课力学基础的复习资料, 电话联系: 12345678901好心人如有电子版
请发[email protected].
Looking for review materials on the basics of mechanics for the postgraduate entrance
examination, please contact me by phone: 12345678901 If you have a soft copy, please send
it to [email protected].
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 05.19, 2015

4 Authentic email address is provided in the original request. We replace it with a fake email address
for privacy. So do the cell phone number, email address and QQ account provided in the following
examples.
5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum Requests 95

In the above case, the requester posts both his cellphone number and email address
as additional means of contact. By revealing his identity online, the poster indicates
his willingness to take responsibility for his post as well as his consideration to
provide convenience for the requestee. Consequently, the potential requestee will be
more willing to provide the materials to respond to the requester’s sincerity. Similar
to the expression of virtue, sincerity can also be further exhibited via emoji, as in
(5.47):
(5.47) 大二狗晋升下学期, 基物实验也跟着来了。可是没有花园学习资料了!!!!!!
来发个帖子看看大家谁保存着攻略啊资料啊什么的求共享_(:z)∠) (楼

主Q12345678)

The sophomore dog is about to enter the second semester, and the course on basic physics
experiments followed.. But the study materials on the Garden forum have been deleted ! !
! ! ! ! Please post if you happen to have any materials and information, etc. Please share _
(:z)∠)_ ( My QQ is 12345678)

Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 03.08, 2015

5.6.3 Pathos: Awakening the Emotion of the Requestees

Online users frequently implement emotional appeals to alter the viewers’ judgment
of their relationship, the requester’s eagerness, and the urgency of the situation. By
applying in-group identity markers, the posters actively identify themselves with
the audience. Out of 200 requests, posters manifest 109 instances of in-group iden-
tity, which either denote or connotate a sense of community. Since the forums are
anonymous, this would establish an immediate close relationship between users and
induce them to help. Roughly three-fifths of the 106 entries denote communality or
companionship, which are realized through general and specific terms of address.
Here are two examples:
(5.48) 大家有没有关于英语关联词、连接词的文章呢?谢谢。
Does anyone have any articles about English correlatives and conjunctions? Thanks.
Corpus4u, 09.01, 2012

(5.49) 同学们有没有认识的外国朋友, 需要学习汉语的?搭个伙, 我教中文, 同时学习英

语。
Does anyone know any foreign friends who need to learn Chinese? I want to form a study
pair. I can teach Chinese and learn English (from them) at the same time.
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 05.29, 2015

In the first example, the poster addresses viewers as dajia, meaning “everyone
under certain qualification” in Chinese. In so doing, the requester conveys that he
treats all viewers as members of a community, creating an intimate relationship
between interlocutors. Other words used in this category include pengyou “friend”,
96 5 Speech Acts

xiaohuoban “buddy”, and tongren “colleague”. This function could also be achieved
by using more specific addressing titles that denoting their relations, as is exemplified
in (5.49). By addressing the viewers as tongxue, “classmates”, the speaker claims a
more intimate relationship with them, attempting to establish a common identity. This
use of specific addressing terms is also found in using laoshi, “colleague teachers” in
Corpus4u that contains a number of teachers and shixiong/shijie, “senior academic
brother/senior academic sister under the same supervisor” in both forums.
The remaining 46 instances connotate common ground between posters and
viewers via cyberspeak. Since everyone in online forums is presumed to be familiar
with the use of cyberspeak to imply a membership to the Internet community, which
bridges the social distance between requesters and requestees. This function is real-
ized through popular online addressing terms such as dashen, “mighty god”, daxia,
“master”, and daxian “great god”, Internet jargon youmuyou for youmeiyou, “do
you have...” and dongdong for dongxi, “things”, and catchphrase such as liangchen
biyou zhongxie “my name is Liangchen and I will thank you with heavy rewards”5 . A
similar finding is found in Liu (2010). This strategy, however, is invalid if the viewer
is unfamiliar with online language or opposes this style of language. For example,
(5.50) 提问: 求助大神们有什么免费可用的英汉语料库?
回复: 这里的都是老师同学, 不是大神。
Question: Seeking help from all mighty deities. What free English-Chinese corpora are
there?
Answer: All people here are teachers and students. There are no mighty deities.
Corpus4u, 11.02, 2016

When asking for an English-Chinese corpus, the poster uses a very popular cyber-
speak dashen to indicate his adeptness of online dialect. This positive politeness
strategy, however, is not appreciated by one viewer who comments that there are
no mighty gods but only teachers and students in the forum. This communicative
failure is not caused by the inexperience of the replier since he is the administrator
of the forum nor is due to the unpopularity of dashen because it is the single most
used addressing term in our data (31 occurrences). In fact, it is most likely to be a
result of the commentator’s personal judgment of excluding dashen as a politeness
marker. This example suggests that in-group identity markers may not be upheld by
all members of a community and should be used with caution.
The second strategy is to awaken the audience’s emotion by strengthening the
requester’s eagerness to the request. Due to the written-based nature of online forums,
the stress of a text is not measured through intonation contour but by exclamation
markers or interjections such as a, na, and ya6 . Here is an example:

5 This catchphrase originates from an online negotiation between two college students over the duty
of cleaning a female dormitory. This expression soon went viral on the Internet for its imitation of
swordsman language style.
6 An alternate explanation of these final particles is that they convey a degree of informality and

function as in-group identity marker (Lee-Wong, 1998). In either case, these particles serve as a
positive politeness strategy and do not affect the overall prevalence of positive politeness.
5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum Requests 97

(5.51) 跪求Leech (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. 电子书, 麻烦

了!!!!!!!
Kneeling down to ask for a soft copy of Leech (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London:
Longman. Sorry to bother!!!!!!!
Corpus4u, 11.26, 2014

Exclamation marks in the above request intensify the poster’s desire to ask for
help. Though the viewers do not virtually hear the sound of the speaker, they still
could empathize with the requestee’s strong desire to obtain an electronic version of
Leech’s book.
The third strategy is to exaggerate the urgency of the request so as to arouse the
sympathy of the audience. This is often achieved by using emphatic adverbs, as is
shown in (5.52):
(5.52) 本人正在学习使用SPSS, 好完成论文。发现很多教程都不管用。看了张文彤的书
大受启发。但是有些说法可能似懂非懂。自己实在是黔驴技穷了, 急于请各位高手们
不吝赐教。不胜感激!
I am currently learning SPSS to finish my paper. I found that many of the tutorials are
not helpful. I learned a lot from Zhang Wentong’s textbook but couldn’t understand some
of his points. I really don’t know what else I can do and am eager to seek help from fellow
experts. Much appreciated!
Corpus4u, 07.05, 2008

Apart from intensifying appreciation through an exclamation mark at the end of

the request, example (5.52) also uses emphatic adverbs to elevate strong emotion,
including dou, “all”, shizai, “really”, and busheng, “endless”. Since online request
does not have a designated addressee, it is highly likely to be overlooked by potential
helpers. Other modifiers found in our data include feichang, “very”, zhenxin, “heart-
felt”, shifen, “fully”, and wanfen, “extremely”. With the help of these exaggerations,
online requesters could manifest their desperation for help.
While netizens all tend to exaggerate facts to some extent, without an active
intensification, the poster’s request would be largely overlooked and not be treated
seriously. In other words, exaggeration does not merely serve as an enforcement of
the request but also appears to be a pertinent feature of online communication. The
predilection for exaggeration is furthered by the modifier gui, “kneeling down” in
Chinese. For instance,
(5.53) 跪求四系叶轮机械原理期末考试资料。
Kneeling down to ask for the final exam materials for Turbomachinery Principles in the
No. 4 college.
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 01.02, 2017

To ask for preparation materials for a test generally will not impose tremendous
face damage onto the requestee and sharing these materials with others will not bring
life-saving exigency as is suggested by the act of begging in daily conversation.
This is a result of the absence of self-politeness in online communication. Chen
(2001) notes that, in addition to the face concern for the addressee, the speaker also
wants to preserve a certain amount of face. Therefore, a rational speaker will not
98 5 Speech Acts

overly attribute negative values to himself for expressing negative politeness. This
constraint, however, is suspended due to the anonymity of online forums. Since the
posters construe their own potential face-saving as unnecessary, they are more likely
to go to extremes, attributing as many negative values to themselves as possible.

5.6.4 Logos: Reasoning with the Requestees

The third essential aspect is to provide logical proof to the requestees. Chinese online
forum users tend to either explain their reasons for the request in detail or provide a
reciprocal condition to persuade the requestees.
First, the poster could opt to convey the reasonableness of his request, implying
that the viewers can help the poster out as well as specifying the help (Brown &
Levinson, 1987: 128). Our data contain 50 instances of reasoning that emphasize the
subjective or the objective aspect of the excuse. We find 28 posts that give subjective
reasons concerning the request. These requests either state the requesters’ wish or
goal or express their failure of solving the problem after personal efforts. Here are
two examples:
(5.54) 本人北航四系本科生, 今年考研, 求北航三系自动控制原理第七章至第九章的课
件, 望各位大神慷慨相助, 谢谢。本人邮箱29135**[email protected]。
I am an undergraduate student in the No.4 college at Beihang University. I am taking the
postgraduate entrance examination this year. I am looking for the course slides for Chaps. 7
to 9 of Automatic Control Principles in the No. 3 college at Beihang University. I hope some
mighty deities will help me generously. Thank you. My email is 29135**[email protected]
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 01.02, 2017
(5.55) 最近在改一个程序, 已经卡了n个星期了, 不是个事儿啊, 主要就是不同文件中的
变量放到一个文件中处理, 执行过程中不断中断啊, 快崩溃了, 求大神指教啊, 面对面
讲讲最好了, 天气这么热, 我们办公室很凉快。 救救我吧。

Recently, I am debugging a program, and it has been stuck for several weeks. This is not
a good situation. The main issue is that the variables in different files are processed in one
file. The execution process is constantly interrupted, and I am about to crash. Please help
me. It would be best to talk face to face. The weather is so hot, and our office is very cool.
Help me.

Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 01.02, 2017

In the first example, the poster explains that his motivation is to be enrolled in
the graduate program at his current university. This specification forms coopera-
tion by incorporating requestees into the achievement of the requester’s goal and is
considered to be a positive politeness strategy. In the second case, by retelling his
strenuous efforts spent in rewriting a computer program, the poster demonstrates
his inability to debug, justifying his request for help from others. Highlighting the
failure of personal effort is a positive politeness strategy because it makes the request
reasonable to viewers and waives the impression that the poster wants to gain profits
5.6 Applications: Persuasion in Chinese Online Forum Requests 99

without endeavor. Giving detailed accounts of his past efforts could help identify the
mistakes he made and come up with corresponding solutions. Having applied this
strategy, the above post is effective in yielding four helpful responses within two
days.
While the above sub-strategies elaborate reasons germane to individuals, others
justify their requests via providing objective obstacles to their problem-solving. Here
is an example:
(5.56) 求助Lexicalization and Language Change, 北外论坛上有, 但苦于没有账号, 而且
已经停止注册, 有北外论坛账号的能否帮忙下一下。
Looking for Lexicalization and Language Change. There is one on the BFSU forum,
but because I don’t have an account, and the registration has been suspended. If you have a
BFSU forum account, can you help me out?
Corpus4u, 09.09, 2009

Example (5.56) specifies that the requested material is unavailable because the
forum no longer admits new members, indicating that the poster is reasonable enough
to turn to those potential viewers with a BFSU forum account. By distancing himself
from his request, the requester indicates that the face-threatening act is inevitable
and it is not his intention to impose it onto the viewers, providing a stronger reason
to ask for help from others.
Another reasoning strategy is to promise something in return for the request. This
strategy conforms with a cardinal Principle of Balance in Chinese culture proposed
by Gu (1990: 239) that calls for similar behavior in return. For instance:
(5.57) 我愿有偿使用, 并会在论文中致谢; 或者我们也可以合作一起发论文。
I am willing to use it for a fee, and I will state it in the acknowledgments; or we can
collaborate and publish the paper together.
Beihang Weilai Garden Forum, 06.16, 2017

The poster promises to pay for the help and to acknowledge the helper’s assistance
in his paper. He also offers a chance to complete other papers together with the
helper. The offer to construct a new research partnership is generous and important
to researchers and thus is easy to solicit assistance.
100 5 Speech Acts

5.7 Review

• Austin’s theory of speech acts

• Performatives and constatives
– Performatives-constatives dichotomy
– Constatives as a subclass of performatives
• The performative hypothesis
– The hidden formula
– The collapse of performative hypothesis
• Felicity conditions on performatives
– Three felicitous conditions
Conventional procedure and appropriate person and circumstance
Executed by all participants correctly and completely
Have requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions, as specified in the
procedure, and the relevant parties must do it
– Two types of infelicities
Misfire
Abuse
• Three facets of speech acts
– Locutionary act
– Illocutionary act
– Perlocutionary act
• Classes of illocutionary force
– Verdictives
– Exercitives
– Commissives
– Behabitives
– Expositives

• Searle’s theory of speech acts

• Felicity conditions on speech acts
– Propositional content
– Preparatory
– Sincerity
– Essential
• Typology of speech acts
References 101

• Governing principles of classification

– Illocutionary point
– Direction of fit
– The expressed psychological states
• Fivefold categorizations
– Assertives
– Directives
– Commissives
– Expressives
– Declarations
• Direct and indirect speech acts

• Recent developments

– Perlocutionary acts
– Classification of speech acts
– The constitution of a speech act

• Speech act across cultures and contexts

– Cross-cultural variations
– Intra-language variations

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Chapter 6
Politeness and Impoliteness

In the Panda Zoo on Liugong Island, Weihai, a sign notes that “I don’t like snacks; I
don’t want to get fat; please don’t feed me!”, with a cute panda image attached below.
From Chap. 5, we get to know that this cute sign carries the same illocutionary
force of warning the tourists not to feed the pandas. The seemingly unnecessary
personifications of disliking snacks and fearing of getting fat are, in fact, implemented
for being polite and creating a rapport environment for the tourists. For the same
reason, people usually choose to say Could you please close the window?, instead
of blatantly ordering someone by saying Close the window! Moreover, apologizing
to others clearly reflects a person’s level of education because it is conventionally
considered as a polite way of reacting. Anyone who has been to Japan is always
impressed with or even overwhelmed by the high degree of politeness people show
to each other. On a broad level, we have been constantly taught to behave politely
by our parents, our teachers, and the society. Politeness is simply “the oil that keeps
the interactional hinges from creaking” (Brown, 2017: 383). This chapter focuses on
this prevailing phenomenon of politeness and its “evil twin brother” impoliteness in
pragmatic studies.

© Peking University Press 2024 105

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2_6
106 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

Section 6.1 introduces the basic concepts and classical models in politeness. The
burgeoning study of impoliteness is sketched out in Sect. 6.2. A brief discussion of
the future directions of politeness and impoliteness is shown in Sect. 6.3. Section 6.4
presents an empirical study of politeness in Chinese online forum requests.

6.1 Theorizing Politeness

This section first maps out the eight main characteristics of politeness. Then we
present three major approaches to politeness, namely, politeness as strategic face
management, politeness as a conversational maxim, and politeness as situated
evaluation.

6.1.1 Characterizing Politeness

Unlike deixis and implicature, politeness is not merely a technical term, but also
a word that prevails in our daily communication. Therefore, interlocutors from
different cultural backgrounds may hold very different understandings of it. While
the Japanese consider politeness as the appropriate allocation of self into the group
through conventions (Ide, 1989), the Chinese believe that politeness means respect-
fulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth, and refinement (Gu, 1990: 239). Its western
counterpart, however, is seen as an individualistic concept of face threat avoidance
(Brown & Levinson, 1987). In reference to Leech (2014: 4–9), this section sketches
out eight main characteristics of politeness, pinning down the position politeness
research holds in pragmatic inquiries. See the following examples:
(6.1) Fetch me some water!

(6.2) Could you please fetch me some water?

(6.3) If it does not bother you too much, could you please fetch me some water?
6.1 Theorizing Politeness 107

(6.4) I beg you for your mercy to fetch me some water.

The first characteristic of politeness is not obligatory. A person is not obliged

to be polite in communication. For example, one can achieve the same illocutionary
act by saying either of the sentences in (6.1) and (6.2) or posting an imperative
sign over the cute sign of the Panda Zoo in Weihai. Second, there are varying
gradations of polite behaviors. Examples (6.1)–(6.4) show an increase in the degree
of politeness expressed. However, the exaggerated use of polite language exceeds
what is appropriate, as in (6.4), creating a sense of hypocrisy and hence impolite.
This also gives rise to the third point that politeness concerns the sense of what is
normal. When the behavior deviates from what is perceived appropriate in a context,
it no longer conveys politeness. Fourth, conveying politeness displays reciprocal
asymmetry in that it necessarily involves one party giving high value to others or
giving low value to self. For example, in (6.2)–(6.4), the speaker gives lots of credits
to the addressee in exchange for water. The fifth point is that politeness sometimes
is realized through repetition. A fairly good example is that the Chinese often
consider repeated rounds of inviting and declining a meal invitation as polite before
finally accepting it (Mao, 1994). Sixth, interactions tend to involve the transaction
of values between interlocutors. For example, when the speaker asks for water as in
(6.2), the addressee usually waives a portion of value by uttering No sweat or Not a
problem, indicating little burden incurred to the addressee. During this transaction,
interlocutors strive to build an equilibrium of values between the addresser and
the addressee. For instance, after the performance of a drama, the audience usually
gives a round of applause to the actors and actresses as a sign of thanking them. In
return, the cast will take a curtain call as a polite gesture to balance the transaction
of values. When the play is fantastic, the audience may applaud continuously or
give standing ovations. In this case, the balance leans toward the audience and the
entire cast will take another curtain call to restore the equilibrium. This could go
on for several rounds until both the performers and the audience believe that they
have evened the imbalance. The final point we want to add is that politeness is often
a facilitative action. By saying words such as Could you or please, the speaker
increases the probability of that action (fetching water) being successfully carried
out. Section 5.6 is an illustration of how politeness is strategically employed to
achieve communicative goals.

6.1.2 Politeness as Strategic Face Management

The most popular theorizing of politeness is surely Brown and Levinson’s (1978/
1987) seminal work of face redressive strategy. First appeared in essay form in 1978,
their work has been put in the spotlight of politeness study; and its reissued book
form in 1987 still remains to be the most cited and discussed literature in the realm
of politeness research. Based on this version, our introduction will cover positive
and negative politeness, the calculation of a face-threatening act (FTA), the face
redressive strategy, and criticisms toward their theory.
108 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

Borrowing the notion of “face” from Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson (1987:
62) argue that every interlocutor involves two types of needs for “face”, viz. the posi-
tive and the negative face. The negative face refers to “the want of every ‘competent
adult member’ that his actions be unimpeded by others”, whereas the positive face is
“the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others”. People
may interact with others via different face-threatening acts (FTAs). For example,
we usually speak up for someone before asking him or her for a favor. When criti-
cizing someone, we usually use hedges (I may not be correct or I didn’t know too
much about this) to make our criticism sound less direct. Consequently, two kinds
of politeness emerge: positive politeness that addresses interlocutors’ positive face
and negative politeness that preserves the addressee’s negative face.
In addition to the concept of “face”, Brown and Levinson (1987: 62) also assume
that interlocutors are rational that they will choose appropriate linguistic expressions
that meet up the payoffs of the FTAs. This requires a way to calculate the weight of
an FTA. Brown and Levinson (ibid.: 76) propose a formula for its computation:
(6.5) Wx = D(S, H) + P(H, S) + Rx

Wx is the weightiness of FTAx the speaker wants to figure out. D stands for the
social distance between the speaker and the hearer. For example, a person usually
has a much closer social distance with his father than with a stranger. P stands for
power from the speaker to the hearer. That is, if the speaker has a higher social
status than the hearer, such as a teacher to a student, an employer to an employee,
he is able to care less about the consequence of threatening the hearer’s face. R
stands for the cost-benefit relation in a particular context. In general, to ask for $1
million cash is definitely weighed much heavier than asking for a bottle of water.
This relationship, however, will be drastically reversed if the speakers are lost in a
desert and desperately looking for water. During the Chinese New Year, neighbors
traditionally do not lend anything to others because anything, even dust and trash,
symbolizes the incoming fortune of the family, and lending stuff means giving away
fortune to others. Therefore, to borrow something from the neighbor during the New
Year must exert a much higher cost than that of other times.
According to the above calculations of the weightiness of FTAs, Brown and
Levinson (1987: 60) propose five super-strategies to account for the various politeness
phenomena:
(6.6) Face redressive strategies
6.1 Theorizing Politeness 109

Strategy 1 indicates less concern for the addressee’s face and strategy 5 the most
concern for the addressee’s face damage. Under these five strategies, Brown and
Levinson (1987) also postulate a number of output strategies that address the specific
aspect of face want. We will illustrate three output strategies under positive, negative
politeness, and off record, respectively. The first and the fifth are rather self-evident
as in doing no redressive action in the former and doing no face-threatening act in
the latter.
One typical reflection of positive politeness is to use in-group identity markers
such as address forms, in-group language or dialect, jargon or slang, and contraction
and ellipsis. Firstly, in order to cater to the addressee’s face want of being desirable,
the speaker can choose the addressing form that displays a degree of social closeness
(e.g., Lao Wang “dear Wang”, bro, dude). Secondly, by using in-group language,
the speaker is more likely to be recognized as one member of a certain community.
One would feel very acquainted with persons speaking the same dialect in a foreign
region and more likely to form a close relationship. Similarly, jargon or slang can
also establish a degree of solidarity. For example, a teenager may feel more relaxed
to talk to someone who uses “233” to mean laugh out loud1 than using hehe. Finally,
the use of contraction and ellipsis could manifest a casual style as in the choice of
can’t over cannot in spoken English.
Negative politeness is often realized through apologizing. See the following
examples:
(6.7) A salesman tries to promote his products to the customer:
I know you are very busy, but you would feel refreshed if you try our new product.
(6.8) Mary runs away from her wedding and Tom says to her:
I don’t want to be judgmental, but you really should think about the consequences.
(6.9) I can think of nobody but you to finish this job.
(6.10) Excuse me, could you close the door?

In (6.7), the salesman redresses the customer’s negative face by admitting the
impingement of occupying his busy time. Since his negative face is preserved, the
addressee is more likely to listen to what the salesman is promoting. In (6.8), Tom
indicates his reluctance to be judgmental so that he can offer suggestions to Mary
while preserving her negative face. In (6.9), the speaker redresses the addressee’s
negative face by giving a compelling reason that no other person is competent in doing
that job. Moreover, by saying excuse me, the speaker in (6.10) begs forgiveness for
interruption so as to ask the addressee to close the door.
If both positive and negative strategies are not sufficient to offset the face threat,
the speaker usually opts to employ an off-record strategy, such as hints. The speaker

1 “233” is the code number for the emoticon “laughing” on a Chinese online forum MOP. Now it
is widely used among teenagers to indicate that something is funny. It is often used with multiple
“3”s like “23333333”.
110 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

does not state his request explicitly but hopes the hearer can work out his request.
For example:
(6.11) The room is so stuffy. (Open the window)

(6.12) A foreigner comes to Beijing and says to his tour guide:

I heard that Peking Duck is very famous in China. (Take me for Peking Duck)

Based on the theory of indirect speech acts discussed in the last chapter, we can
work out that the speaker in (6.11) intends to ask the addressee to open the window.
Likewise, the foreigner in (6.12) implicitly asks for Peking Duck by stating that
he knows Peking Duck is famous. However, this strategy requires the addressee’s
ability to infer the implied meaning. Otherwise, for example, the addressee may
simply respond that “yes, it is very delicious” and do nothing afterward.
Situated as the most cited literature in politeness research, Brown and Levinson’s
work also receives heavy criticisms. First, a number of Asian scholars (Gu, 1990;
Ide, 1989; Matsumoto, 1989) criticize their theory for being primarily Eurocentric
in that it is only suitable to the Western individualism and cannot accommodate the
prevailing collectivism in the East. Some others (Locher & Watts, 2005; Mao, 1994)
point out that Brown and Levinson’s definition of “face” is static and asocial, devi-
ating from Goffman’s dynamic and social nature of “face”. Moreover, Sifianou (1997)
shows that off-record indirectness can convey both positive and negative politeness
in Greek, challenging Brown and Levinson’s postulation of five super-strategies.
Chen (2001) points out that their model only focuses on the face management of
others, neglecting the speaker’s face want. Furthermore, Leech (2014: 12) argues
that their work only considers the redressive side of politeness and fails to address
speech acts that voluntarily enhance the hearer’s face, such as invitations, compli-
ments, and congratulations. Instead of questioning the validity of face in Brown and
Levinson (1987), Jia and Xiang (2018) note that they fail to account for the ratio-
nale of employing one output strategy over the other and argue that the choice of
different output strategies conforms to an equilibrium of language economy between
the speaker’s verbal efforts and his communicative utility.

6.1.3 Politeness as a Conversational Maxim

The concept of “Politeness Principle” first appears in Lakoff’s (1973) proposal of

pragmatic competence. Its central tenet is to counter Chomsky’s claim for universal
grammar. Nevertheless, Lakoff’s concept has never been fully developed. The
systematic advancement of this term was developed by Geoffrey Leech (1980, 1983)
and updated in Leech (2007, 2014).
Reviewing the Gricean theory of conversational implicature and Austin’s theory of
speech acts, Leech (1983) points out that their theories cannot explain why speakers
frequently infringe the presumed cooperation and why interlocutors choose indirect
speech acts over direct speech acts. To rescue these previous theories, he argues
6.1 Theorizing Politeness 111

that interlocutors must have observed what he dubbed as Politeness Principle in

interaction (Leech, 1983: 88). This principle is later modified as one super-strategy
called the General Strategy of Politeness:
In order to be polite, S expresses or implies meanings that associate a favorable value with
what pertains to O or associates an unfavorable value with what pertains to S (S = self,
speaker; O = other person(s), especially the addressee).
(Leech, 2014: 90, 221)

Under this overarching constraint, Leech (2007, 2014: 92–98) postulates five pairs
of maxims to account for various politeness phenomena.2
First, the Generosity Maxim involves giving a high value to others’ wants. It is
usually direct as in (6.13) and sometimes even imposing as in (6.14).
(6.13) It is my great honor to work with you.
(6.14) You must come to our house for dinner!

In contrast, the Tact Maxim requires the speaker to associate a low value to
his own wants. The related speech acts are generally indirect, usually with hedges
involved (hedges are italicized in the following two examples).
(6.15) Do you, by any chance, have five dollars? (Lend me five dollars)
(6.16) If it does not bother you so much, could you please close the door?

The second pair addresses the attribution of qualities to the speaker and the others.
The Maxim of Approbation is about giving a high value to others’ qualities, such
as making compliments, as in (6.17). In some cases, the speaker may compliment
the addressee beyond his ability, as in (6.18).
(6.17) You are such a wonderful person.
(6.18) (To an English learner) You speak like an American.

And the Maxim of Modesty describes speakers’ predilection to give a low value
to their own qualities. This often applies to the responses of compliments, as in (6.19)
and (6.20).
(6.19) You are flattering me. I’m not that good.
(6.20) My success largely relies on the support of my school and my team.

The third pair concerns the obligation between the speaker and the others. The
first part requires the speaker to allocate a high value to his obligation to others
and the second part is about lowering the value imposed on others. The Maxim of
Obligation of S to O is illustrated in (6.21) and (6.22); and the Maxim of Obligation
of O to S is shown in (6.23) and (6.24).

2 In his earlier theory, Leech (1983: 132) proposed six maxims: Tact, Generosity, Approbation,
Modesty, Agreement, and Sympathy Maxims. The extended version is more systematic in that it is
all constrained by the same overarching principle, i.e., General Strategy of Politeness.
112 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

(6.21) I am so sorry about these inconveniences.

(6.22) I am deeply indebted to your help.

(6.23) (In responding to someone’s thanking) No sweat.

(6.24) It’s a piece of cake.

In the fourth pair, Agreement Maxim is to give a high value to O’s opinions. The
speaker expresses his approval of the addressee’s opinion, as in (6.25). Leech (2014:
97) suggests that English speakers tend to agree with their opponents before giving
rebuttals, as in (6.26).
(6.25) Xiaowang: I think Gaokao is a terrible policy.
Xiaoli: I couldn’t agree with you more.

(6.26) Xiaowang: I think Gaokao is a terrible policy.

Xiaosun: I agree with you. But it is the fairest way we have so far.

On the speaker’s side, Opinion-reticence Maxim constrains the speaker to asso-

ciate a low value to his own opinions. Lots of hedges and parentheticals are used
under this maxim. For instance,
(6.27) As far as I am concerned, this is the best solution.

(6.28) The result, I guess, would not be promising.

The final pair deals with the interlocutor’s feelings. Sympathy Maxim associates
a high value to O’s feelings. This is commonly used to express sympathy or empathy
toward the addressees.
(6.29) I’m sorry to hear that your father just passed away.

(6.30) I am so happy about your success.

In contrast, the Feeling-reticence Maxim requires the speaker to give a low value
on his own feelings. Following this maxim, the speaker tends to express his feelings
indirectly.
(6.31) Tony: How are you these days.
Sarah: It’s OK…

Finally, Leech (2014: 98) notes that the maxims that preserve the others’ values
usually have stronger power than those qualifying the speakers’ values. The maxims
that are listed in the front (e.g., Generosity and Tact Maxims) seem to enjoy
higher priorities than those listed in the back (e.g., Sympathy and Feeling-reticence
Maxims).
In addition, Leech (1983, 2014) also proposes two minor principles to account for
the occasions where the Politeness Principle is violated. Irony Principle describes
the act that is superficially being polite, but actually impolite. It is often observed in
exaggeration or understatement (Leech, 1983: 143). For example,
6.1 Theorizing Politeness 113

(6.32) John spent seven minutes on his 1000-m physical test:

Tom: John, you are as fast as light.

(6.33) John is good at handcrafts.

Tom: Doing handcrafts is all he is good at.

In (6.32), John’s physical test score is rather low in that the passing score is four
and a half minutes. One could work out Tom’s irony if he observes this degree of
exaggeration. In (6.33), John may be good at a variety of things, such as academic
studying or cooking. Tom’s comment, however, understates John’s ability, confining
his strongpoints to handcrafts. This is also considered as an irony.
In contrast to the Irony Principle, the Banter Principle describes “an offensive
way of being friendly” (Leech, 1983: 144). It is observed when the speaker says
something obviously untrue or impolite. For example,
(6.34) A friend of Usain Bolt says to him:
Bolt, you run like a turtle.

(6.35) John meets his old friend Tom and says:

You bastard, how come you didn’t reach me in 20 years?

In (6.34), it is obviously untrue to say that Bolt runs slowly because he is the
Olympic champion of sprint and is possibly the fastest person on earth. Therefore,
his friend’s comment is more likely to be construed as banter. Similarly, the impolite
vocative “you bastard” is often inferred as a way of expressing solidarity between
two friends.
To sum up, different from Brown and Levinson’s anthropological view, Leech
views politeness as a part of conversational implicature that is jointly governed by
the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle, the Irony Principle, and the Banter
Principle.
Leech’s theory is also engaged by a number of scholars. Thomas (1995: 168)
questions the applicability of these maxims. She finds that some of these constraints
may be universal, whereas others are culture-specific. A similar problem is also
identified in Gu’s (1990) modification of Tact and Generosity Maxims. Moreover,
Chen’s (2001) criticism of Brown and Levinson is also applicable to Leech’s conver-
sational maxims. Finally, Brown and Levinson (1987: 4) reject the necessity of a
principle of politeness, arguing that politeness is easy to be undermined and should
not be abstracted as a principle. Following them, Huang (2007: 37) contends that
Leech’s expansionist approach goes against the spirit of Occam’s Razor. Leech (2014)
responds that the premise of expansion is to address the insufficient explanatory
power of the Cooperative Principle. This meets up the corollary of Occam’s Razor
that entities can proliferate with necessity. Moreover, the Politeness Principle could
also be treated as a maxim under the Cooperative Principle rather than regarded as
a separate principle. This classification rectifies its relationship with the Coopera-
tive Principle, catering to its less robustness as an independent principle, but also
addresses its importance in human communication.
114 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

6.1.4 Politeness as Situated Evaluation

After the celebration of the New Millennium, politeness studies underwent a post-
modern turn which is defined as a “theoretical move which questions all concepts
and evaluations and is skeptical of all attempts at grand narrative or metanarra-
tive that is, all overarching theories which attempt to generalize or universalise”
(Mills, 2011: 28). This school of inquiry is represented by Arundale (2006, 2010,
2013), Eelen (2001), Locher (2004, 2006), Locher and Watts (2005), Mills (2003),
and Watts (1992, 2003). Based on the cross-cultural counterexamples raised by the
Asian scholars (e.g., Blum-Kulka, 1987; Ide, 1989; Mao, 1994; Matsumoto, 1989),
Watts (2003: 23) contends that a theory of politeness should never be predictive or
universal. Following Watts (1992), Eelen (2001) criticizes that the study of politeness
should be conducted solely under the layman’s understanding (first-order polite-
ness) rather than under the scientific conceptualization of politeness (second-order
politeness). All these objections push scholars to develop theories that are situated
and not overgeneralized.
The main thrust of the early attempts is developed by Locher and Watts (2005),
which is a follow-up of Watts (2003). Their model of Relational Work is constructed
on the basis of first-order politeness and a discursive bottom-up methodology. Based
on Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of habitus (predispositions of an act), Locher and Watts
(2005) argue that most of the instances incorporated in Brown and Levinson’s and
Leech’s conceptions of “politeness” are socially appropriate “politic behavior” and
do not manifest politeness in toto. Therefore, the discursive disputes over “rude”
“impolite” “politic” “polite” and “over-polite” should all be worked out by carefully
examining individuals’ judgments on that particular act (van der Bom & Mills, 2015).
This approach, on the one hand, provides a successful critique to the traditional
politeness theories; but on the other hand, this a priori rejection to the possibility
of prediction also rejects the possibility of theorizing politeness at any level and
offers nothing even on a descriptive level (Terkourafi, 2005: 245–246), rendering
analyst to be “redundant” in politeness research (Holmes, 2005: 115). Moreover,
Haugh (2007) contends that it is unpractical to disassociate analysts from participants
because the researchers cannot directly attain the participants’ conceptualization of
politeness and have to rely on an educated guess. In other words, although advocating
a pure basis of first-order politeness, relational work inevitably pins down its study
by introducing a second-order definition of first-order politeness (Terkourafi, 2005:
243). More importantly, the demarcation between “polite” and “politic” renders the
theory to be explanatively inadequate to account for the production of speech acts, i.e.,
the sole reliance on post hoc evaluation is not applicable to analyzing the speaker’s
choice of communicative strategies.
The recent development in the postmodern trend tends to emphasize the dynamic
reciprocity between and among interlocutors (Arundale, 2006, 2010, 2013; Grainger,
2011; Haugh, 2007; O’Driscoll, 2007). One notable advancement is Arundale’s
(2006, 2010, 2013) Face Constituting Theory (FCT). Construing “face” as interac-
tionally achieved, FCT takes dyad rather than individual as the basic unit of analysis,
6.2 Theorizing Impoliteness 115

addressing how face is jointly constructed through mutual constraints of both the
speaker and the hearer (Arundale, 2010). Its major contribution is that it provides a
rather interactive conceptualization of face and consequently reduces the potential
interference of analysts in the interpretation of politeness. The over-reliance on the
dynamic interactiveness, however, renders the theory to be inadequate to account for
asynchronous messages, such as e-mail and online forum discussion or unilateral
communications where the addressee is not required or unable to respond, e.g., in
public announcements, radio broadcasts, and television entertaining programs.
To recap the postmodern school of politeness, we find that this line of theorizing
offers critical rebuttals toward Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983, 2014),
pointing out the discrepancies existing between a scholarly interpretation of a certain
speech act and that of a common conception. Consequently, the postmodern models
of politeness emphasize on the situatedness of communicative encounters, rejecting
any a priori presumptions of politeness held by the interlocutors. This approach,
nevertheless, requires further reconsideration on the following three points. First,
while primarily focusing on the interpretation end of politeness for a certain speech
event, postmodern theories fail to cater to its production end, incapable of expounding
how a speaker generates politeness speech acts at first hand. Second, the heavy depen-
dence on the immediate context hinders its application in cases where the supporting
context is unavailable, such as non-face-to-face interactions (e.g., telephone calls),
asynchronous communications (online forum discussions), or indirect participation
(public announcements). Finally, the theory has few practical or pedagogical impli-
cations for interlanguage or cross-cultural communications. Their strong rejections
of the predictive nature of politeness render their theories to be too vague to produce
any hands-on politeness formulae for language learners.

6.2 Theorizing Impoliteness

Although studies of face attack or aggravating languages can be traced back to

Goffman (1967), Lachenicht (1980), and Austin (1990), impoliteness phenomena
are generally considered as marginal occurrences of urgency or efficiency (Brown &
Levinson, 1987: 62) or as what children learn to avoid (Leech, 1983: 105). However,
Culpeper (1996) finds that impoliteness is prevalent in the case of military training.
Impoliteness behaviors are often taken as an effective measure to shape the soldiers’
physical and psychological fitness. Moreover, Dynel (2015) identifies 12 major types
of impoliteness discourse: military training, legal discourse, classroom discourse,
talk in the workplace, institutional discourse, YouTube interactions, Internet forums,
political broadcast, exploitative quiz and talent shows, films and drama, exploitative
reality shows, and literature. These findings suggest that impoliteness phenomena
are important in our daily communication and need to be theorized.
Following Culpeper (2011: 23) and Dynel (2015), we take “impoliteness” as an
umbrella term to cover all types of intentional face attacks (see Terkourafi, 2008 for
her justification of “rudeness” over “impoliteness”). In the remainder of this section,
116 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

we introduce three major types of impoliteness behaviors and three branches of

impoliteness modeling.

6.2.1 Types of Impoliteness

Based on the functions displayed in interaction, impoliteness can be classified into

affective, coercive, and entertaining impoliteness (Culpeper, 2011: 221).3 First, affec-
tive impoliteness refers to the speaker’s emotional display via impolite language.
Common examples are goddamn, fucking, hell, holy shit, etc. Second, coercive impo-
liteness is the exercise of power to enforce a realignment of values between the
speaker and the hearer. It is worth noting that although being coercive, the enforced
actions are mostly legitimate, such as the police officer interrogating a suspect.
Finally, entertaining impoliteness produces pleasure for someone by being impo-
lite to the other. Du (2005: 248–249) observes that African Americans tend to play a
language game called “playing the dozens”: interlocutors tease each other’s family
members in terms of their personality and physical appearance, as shown in (6.36)
and (6.37).
(6.36) Your mother is so dumb; she couldn’t pass a blood test.

(6.37) Your mother is so old; she knew Burger King when he was just a prince.

One may notice that these impolite expressions are highly creative. In contrast,
linguistic politeness often falls into the expectation of the interlocutors (Terkourafi,
2015) or abides by social norms (Fraser, 1990; Meier, 1995, but see Watts, 2003 for
a different view).
In addition, the above three functions can be fulfilled by one utterance. For
example, in Quentin Tarantino’s celebrated movie Pulp Fiction, Jules is trying to
stop Vincent from shooting one of the robbers:
(6.38) Jules: You ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing, now hang back and shut the fuck up.
Pulp Fiction (1994)

By using profanity (goddamn), Jules displays his strong anger toward Vincent for
attempting to kill the robber, achieving the function of affective impoliteness. In the
meantime, the impolite imperative in the second half of the sentence enforces the
action, coercing Vincent to step back and stop talking. In this life-or-death moment,
impolite coercion is far more instrumental than a polite request. For the moviegoers,
to watch this impoliteness gives rise to a sense of emotional pleasure. In fact, the
whopping 265 instances of fuck in the entire movie is one of the highlights that
attracts and entertains the audience.

3Kasper (1990) terms these three categories as rudeness lack of affect control, strategic rudeness,
and ironic rudeness respectively.
6.2 Theorizing Impoliteness 117

6.2.2 Impoliteness as Strategic Face Attacks

Measuring against the three major treatments of politeness, we introduce three corre-
sponding approaches to impoliteness. The first one views impoliteness as strategic
face attacks. In reference to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) five super-strategies of face
supporting, Culpeper (1996: 356) postulates five counterstrategies of face attacking,
as shown in (6.39).
(6.39) Impoliteness strategies

1. Bald on record impoliteness: the FTA is performed in a direct and concise manner in
cases where face is relevant. E.g., cursing someone in public.
2. Positive impoliteness: strategies used to damage the addressee’s positive face want.
E.g., being disinterested in others, excluding others from the group, and ignoring others.
3. Negative impoliteness: strategies used to damage the addressee’s negative face want.
E.g., using taboo words, stepping into others’ private space, and nudging others to be
impolite.
4. Sarcasm or mock politeness: the FTA that is performed via insincere politeness. E.g.,
complimenting someone against facts.
5. Withhold politeness: the absence of necessary politeness. E.g., not thanking someone
after receiving his help.

It is worth noting that impoliteness is commonly manifested by multiple strategies

(Culpeper et al., 2003; Lachenicht, 1980). For example,
(6.40) Get the fuck out of our community.

According to the above five strategies, one can easily observe that (6.40) employs
both positive impoliteness strategy (excluding others from the group by forcing
someone to leave) and negative impoliteness strategy (using taboo word fuck).
These five strategies are updated in Culpeper (2005) by incorporating Spencer-
Oatey’s (2002) renewed interpretation of face. Bousfield (2008) collapses Culpeper’s
five super-strategies into on record and off-record strategies. In addition, Culpeper
et al. (2003) also emphasize the contribution of prosody in impoliteness interpreta-
tion. It is important to bear in mind that these impoliteness strategies do not guar-
antee impolite interpretation, and the interpretation of impoliteness relies heavily on
contexts (Culpeper, 2010). For example, imperatives are usually considered impolite
due to its directness. However, in military combat, ordering your fellow combaters
to take cover is the most salient way of showing considerateness.

6.2.3 Impoliteness as Conversational Maxims

In reference to Culpeper’s (2005) definition of impoliteness, Leech (2014) argues that

a theory of politeness is generally applicable to a theory of impoliteness. Based on his
General Strategy of Politeness (see Sect. 6.2.2), Leech (2014: 221) postulates General
118 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

Strategy of Impoliteness: “In pursuing the goal of impoliteness, S will express/

imply evaluative meanings that are favorable to S and unfavorable to O”; and the
correspondent maxims are listed as follows:
(6.41)

In addition to the realizations governed by the above ten maxims, impoliteness is

also expressed via taboo languages, such as profanity (e.g., Jesus, God damn it) and
swearing (e.g., fucking, motherfucker). The use of taboo language is often considered
as direct impoliteness and is hard to redress by politeness devices. For example,
(6.42) Would you mind taking away your fucking feet?

Swearing in the above case can be hardly modified into a polite expression even
if the negative politeness strategy of question is employed.4
In contrast to the above blatant use, impoliteness can be achieved implicitly
through irony. It requires the hearers to work out impoliteness that is implied by the
speaker. One advantage is that the speaker can take this indirectness as a defensive
strategy: the speaker can cancel the potential impoliteness implicature and prevent
it from escalating to a violent conflict (Leech, 2014: 224), as in (6.43).

4A recent study (Murphy, 2019) shows that a decent number of British native speakers consider
non-canonical apologies such as I’m sorry you are such an arsehole as appropriate apologies. This
suggests that the mismatching of polite and impolite expressions should be further investigated in
contexts.
6.3 Some Potential Issues in (Im)politeness Research 119

(6.43) Tom lost John’s iPad.

John: Tom, you are a meticulous person.
Tom: Don’t do that. I said I’m sorry.
John: No, no, no. I don’t mean that. I mean you are always careful and you can definitely
recall where you put it.
Tom: Okay, I’ll try.

In the above case, John appears to be ironic which makes Tom even guiltier. This
implicature is soon canceled when John further explained that he thought Tom is
a meticulous person and would not really lose it. Therefore, the same utterance is
modified from irony to encouragement.

6.2.4 Impoliteness as a Discursive Practice

In general, discursive scholars tend to treat impoliteness along with their theorizing
of politeness (Arundale, 2006; Locher & Watts, 2005). They attempt to come up with
one unified theory to accommodate both politeness and impoliteness phenomena. As
illustrated in Sect. 6.2.3, these scholars tend to take impoliteness as the opposite side
of politeness on the spectrum of interpersonal relationships. These diversified models
display two general features of contextual sensitivity and interactive construction.
First, the discursive scholars believe in the determinate power of context in a theory
of impoliteness. Therefore, they argue that impoliteness is not inherent in linguistic
forms, but is evaluated by the hearer according to social conventions (Eelen, 2001;
Mills, 2005; Watts, 2003). This contextual sensitivity gives rise to the second feature
that impoliteness is jointly constructed by the speaker and the hearer. That is, what
matters is not the speaker’s utterance but the judgment made by the hearers and
the speaker’s response to that of the hearers. Furthermore, Juanchich et al. (2019)
show that individuals’ judgment of politeness is not determined by the linguistic
expressions per se, but by interlocutors’ willingness to engage in that particular act.
Their findings show that when people are unwilling to donate to a charity, they tend
to rate the donation request as less polite, maintaining their higher moral ground of
“I would donate if you could have asked politely”.

6.3 Some Potential Issues in (Im)politeness Research

Although so much has been done, politeness and impoliteness research still contains
a number of contentions and research potentials. First, should politeness and impo-
liteness be researched under the same theoretical model or should they be theorized
in their own merits? On the one hand, impoliteness is traditionally considered as
the “dark side” of politeness (Austin, 1990) and should be treated together; on the
other hand, it is also treated as an effective means of communication that works
120 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

with a different mechanism compared to that of politeness (Mills, 2005). In recent

years, the rise of interpersonal pragmatics offers a new perspective to put politeness
and impoliteness into a broader interpersonal continuum (Locher, 2015; Locher &
Graham, 2010; Ran, 2018; Ran & Liu, 2015).
Second, to what degree can we theorize politeness and impoliteness phenomena?
While it is commonly agreed among scholars that politeness and impoliteness do not
reside in linguistic forms (Locher & Watts, 2005; Mills, 2005; Watts, 2003), it is also
widely recognized that certain linguistic expressions conventionally signal politeness
and impoliteness (Culpeper, 2010; Leech, 2014; Terkourafi, 2015). As pointed out
in Brown (2017), the current studies focus more on the empirical research of cultural
diversities but overlook cross-cultural parallels. The more urgent task is to determine
the degrees of generalities we can extract from their linguistic realizations and the
degrees of contextual viabilities we permit. Moreover, the rise of the postmodernist
approach pushes scholars to interrogate the evaluation of (im)politeness and the
factors that influence the evaluators (in most cases, the conversation participants)
(Davies, 2018; Haugh, 2018).
Third, while politeness and impoliteness have been majorly examined from the
direction of solidarity, power has been largely ignored or understated (see a few
attempts in Culpeper, 2008; Holmes & Stubbe, 2014; Shibamoto-Smith, 2011). In
many cases, instead of creating a rapport, the primary focus of interlocutors is to
enforce actions through the exercise of power. Moreover, it is rather untenable to use a
few politeness formulae to successfully regulate interpersonal relationships. Instead,
the management of sincere rapport is an accumulative process that requires long-
time socialization, involving both linguistic behaviors and non-linguistic attributes,
such as personalities and levels of education. In contrast, the power relation is much
more salient. Interpersonal relations can be immediately enhanced, maintained, or
degraded through the exercise of power. A theory centered on power could offer
insights to unified explanations of politeness and impoliteness.
In addition to these theoretical contentions, scholars also attempt to address the
research gaps that are generated out of updated technologies and new lifestyles.
One prominent technological breakthrough is the emergence of the Internet that
prospers computer-mediated communication, such as online forums, WeChat, and
WhatsApp. The asynchronicity of online responses between the interlocutors, the
shortage of relevant contexts, and the anonymity of interlocutors consequently breed
brand new treatments of politeness and impoliteness (see Dynel, 2012; Graham,
2007; Hardaker, 2010). The following section will provide a brief analysis of how
politeness is displayed in Chinese online forum requests.
Another development is the investigation germane to entertaining impolite-
ness (Jia & Yao, 2022). In recent years, the entertainment business constitutes a
huge portion of our daily lives, including Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show,
The Colbert Report, and many other television programs. The study of humorous
or expletive languages is the one that grows out of these entertaining programs
(Culpeper, 2005; Dynel, 2013; Gordon, 2013). This branch of research demonstrates
the prevalence of impoliteness phenomena in everyday interactions, justifying the
communicative salience of impolite languages.
6.4 Applications: Politeness in Online Forum Requests 121

In short, combining the trending postmodernism and pragmatism, (im)politeness

scholars are striving to construct models that are general enough to explain a range
of (im)politeness phenomena and, in the meantime, local enough to ensure that
these behaviors are virtually accounted for (Jia & Yang, 2021). To achieve this
goal, researchers are expected to interrogate (im)politeness in language socialization,
learning and teaching, historical, gender, regional, intercultural, and cross-cultural
variations and examine these changes framed in contexts such as workplace, service
encounters, health settings, legal settings, political exchanges, fictional texts, and
digital communication (Culpeper et al., 2017).

6.4 Applications: Politeness in Online Forum Requests

Applying Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model of politeness, this section explores
the relatively underdeveloped study of politeness strategies in Chinese online forum
requests, examining the differences and similarities between requests in cyberspace
and the physical world. Section 6.4.1 introduces the research design and data collec-
tion. Sections 6.4.2–6.4.4 present the employment of bald on record, positive, and
negative politeness strategies, respectively.

6.4.1 Introduction

We adopt Brown and Levinson’s (1987) face redressive model in our study of Chinese
online requests. As shown in Sect. 6.2.1, Brown and Levinson’s model involves five
super-strategies of politeness: bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness,
off record, and withhold politeness. Following Maricic (2001), the last two strategies
are excluded because of their scarcity and the difficulty of hinting in a text-based
online forum.
Our data are extracted from douban, a Chinese-based online forum popular among
college students. The high level of education can partially ensure that the viewers have
a good sense of social etiquette for requesting, i.e., the speakers have at least enough
knowledge of how to behave properly in daily settings. We conveniently selected 40
instances of online requests on this forum. The selection process met the following
two criteria: first, each collected instance must have at least five responses, serving
as a post hoc evaluation of its effectiveness. Second, questions for pure information
are excluded, such as asking for the timetable of the train. This is to ensure that there
was an actual imposition on the potential addressee and therefore needed to invoke
politeness strategies.
122 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

6.4.2 Bald on Record Strategies

First, bald on record strategies are found both in cases of non-minimization of the
face threat and cases of FTA-oriented bald on record usage. The table below features
the distribution of linguistic realizations of bald on record strategies:
(6.44) Bald on record strategies in the data

Among the 40 instances of online requests, we find 28 out of 40 are used to override
face concern and 12 instances for addressing face concern. This predominant use of
bald on record strategy can be largely ascribed to the textual nature of the request.
In other words, the polite concern is subordinated to the concern of clarity. And the
requestees’ face wants are satisfied via positive politeness strategies. In addition, the
12 instances of imperative in the bottom column indicate that bald on record strategies
could be considered as offers in the form of a request. By asking the requestees to
leave the link of other surveys, the speaker offers an open promise as a reciprocal help
and therefore reduces the imposition that falls upon the requesters. Nevertheless, this
reduction only comes into effect when the requestee is also seeking for help.

6.4.3 Positive Politeness Strategies

Second, positive politeness strategies address the requestees’ need for social
approval. This is achieved by claiming the common ground, conveying that S and
H are cooperators, and fulfilling H’s want for something in exchange (Brown &
Levinson, 1987: 101–129)
(6.45) Positive politeness strategies in the data
6.4 Applications: Politeness in Online Forum Requests 123

In this category, we identified 102 linguistic realizations of positive politeness

strategies in 40 instances of online requests. This clearly shows the multiplicity in
the application of politeness strategies in online forum requests. This abundant use
can be considered as a major compensation to the face damage created in expressing
requests directly.
Moreover, the prevalent use of exaggerated expressions, such as dashen,
wannengde, and guixie, shows that when the addressees’ identities are unspecified,
the speaker tends to maximize the benefits toward the addressees. This tendency
coincides with Leech’s (1983) Politeness Principle that the speaker tends to add as
many positive values as possible to the hearers. The anonymity of this online forum
renders that speakers require little necessity to preserve their individual face want,
contrasting to Fraser’s (1990) and Chen’s (2001) objection to Leech’s maximization
of positive attributes. Moreover, the repeated use of exclamation markers reinforces
the sincerity of the speakers, compensating for the concern of insecurity induced by
the anonymous nature of the Internet.

6.4.4 Negative Politeness Strategies

In addition to actively enhancing the requestees’ face, requesters also opt to address
their negative face wants. This is commonly realized through giving freedom of
action, minimizing threat, and minimizing imposition (Maricic, 2001: 413). The
uses of these strategies are shown in (6.46).
(6.46) Negative politeness strategies in the data
124 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

The use of politeness formulae occupies roughly two-thirds of the 63 realizations

of negative politeness. This mirrors the distribution of politeness strategies in face-
to-face communications (see Marti, 2006; Kim & Farashaiya, 2012), indicating that
conventionalized politeness formulae are applicable in online contexts.
Furthermore, we also identify a unique use of negative politeness strategy when
expressing deference and vulnerability. Similar to the aforementioned exaggeration
in positive politeness, requesters do not need to meet up the constraints of self-
politeness shown in Chen (2001). Consequently, some web users will opt to further
denigrate themselves, such as using animal metaphors (biyegou “senioritis”). While
implicating the sense of humbleness of the speakers, these denigrations could also
convey a degree of incivility for those who are not familiar with these expressions.

6.5 Review

• Theorizing politeness
• Eight characteristics of politeness
– Not obligatory
– Varying gradations
– Sense of what is normal
– Reciprocal Asymmetry
– Realized through repetition
– Transaction of values
– Build an equilibrium of values
– Facilitate actions
• Politeness as face management (Brown & Levinson)
– Positive and negative politeness
– Calculation of FTA
– Face redressive strategy
6.5 Review 125

• Bald on record
• Positive politeness
• Negative politeness
• Off record
• Do not do FTAs
• Politeness as conversational maxim (Leech)
– The General Strategy of Politeness (Politeness Principle)
• Generosity
• Tact
• Approbation
• Modesty
• Obligation of S to O
• Obligation of O to S
• Agreement
• Opinion-reticence
• Sympathy
• Feeling-reticence
– Irony Principle
– Banter Principle
• Politeness as situated evaluation (Postmodernist scholars)
– Early attempts
• E.g., Relational work
– Later developments
• E.g., Face Constituting Theory
• Theorizing impoliteness
• Types of impoliteness
– Affective
– Coercive
– Entertaining
• Impoliteness models
– Impoliteness as strategic face attacks
– Impoliteness as conversational maxims
– Impoliteness as discursive practices
126 6 Politeness and Impoliteness

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Chapter 7
Research Methods

In the previous chapters, we went through five essential topics in pragmatic inquiry:
deixis, presupposition, implicature, speech act, and (im)politeness. Having learned
these theoretical concepts, one may still wonder how to put these abstract notions
in practice. In this chapter, we will focus on the commonly used research methods
in pragmatics. Nunan (1992: 3) notes that academic inquires include a question,
a problem, a hypothesis, data, and the analysis and interpretation of data. To help
beginners start their own research and develop a research paper, Sect. 7.1 directs
emerging scholars to identify potential research questions; Sect. 7.2 introduces
methods to harvest convincing data for analysis; and the specific analytical methods
are illustrated in Sect. 7.3.

7.1 Literature Mining

This section first maps out four types of research questions we could raise and
then introduces three ways to unearth relevant literature: review articles and bibli-
ographies, search engine and database, and bibliometric analysis and knowledge
visualization.

7.1.1 Four Types of Exigences

The composition of a research article requires scholars to identify a problem in the

current research paradigm. This type of “imperfection marked by urgency” is often
dubbed as exigence (Bitzer, 1968: 6). Swales (1990) presents a hierarchy of four
types of exigences that help scholars create a niche for writing.

© Peking University Press 2024 129

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2_7
130 7 Research Methods

First, readers may identify a continuation exigence where researchers follow the
existing framework to make the previous study better. For instance, by applying the
same research instrument to the same research site with a similar subject population
designed in Chen (1993), Chen and Yang (2010) report a quasi-longitudinal study
that accounts for the diachronic change of Chinese compliment responses over time.
The replicated study finds that Chinese students changed their preferred compliment
response from rejection to acceptance, indicating how the influx of Western culture
changes Chinese people’s behavior.
Second, scholars could further advance an academic inquiry by raising a ques-
tion exigence that addresses an important question that has not been asked yet. In
Haugh (2018: 157), facing diversified theories of (im)politeness, the author raises an
essential question about “what do different theories allow us to see”. Haugh inter-
rogates the explanatory power of different theories, advocating a new direction of
conducting metatheorization of (im)politeness. In this case, instead of following one
analytical framework and making the existing study better, the author opens up a
different question to stimulate new studies.
Third, one could also manage to locate a gap exigence where the researcher can
fill an empty space in knowledge. For example, the study on the Chinese online
discourse marker hehe (Wang, 2012) stirred a sensation because no one has system-
atically analyzed discourse markers in cyberspeak. Indeed, addressing this exigence
requires the author to conduct an exhaustive literature review about all the existing
research available. Beginners often feel upset when they find that their “brilliant
idea” has been heavily discussed long ago. Therefore, scholars strive to discover a
knowledge gap by applying new language materials in new contextual settings, or
from new analytical perspectives. For instance, adopting Neo-Gricean pragmatics,
Huang (2018) analyzes an increasingly heated language phenomenon called “unar-
ticulated constituent” that refers to a type of propositional constituent that is straightly
communicated but not linguistically represented (e.g., stating “I’m ready” without
explicitly stating what I am ready for). Combined with rigorous analysis, this new
theoretical perspective helps Professor Huang publish the article in an internationally
renowned SSCI journal.
Finally, scholars should aim to reach correction exigence: pointing out that the
previous methods, results, or arguments are incorrect and offering solutions to right
the wrong. Some of the quintessential examples are the criticism of Grice’s Coop-
erative Principle in Chapter Four, Austin’s Speech Act Theory in Chapter Five, and
Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Strategies in Chapter Six. The identification of the
loopholes in other’s theory requires extreme caution and should not make blatant
claims before fully understanding the “flawed theories”.

7.1.2 Review Articles and Bibliographies

Bearing the above four types of exigences in mind, we begin to explore three major
ways of literature mining. First, the most traditional method is through reading review
7.1 Literature Mining 131

articles and bibliography of academic works. By reading review articles, beginners

will be able to have a quick sketch of a particular research area. At the end of the
paper, there is always a section pointing out the research gaps among the existing
studies and potentials for future studies. These gaps, though often tend to be general,
are signposts of main directions that we beginners could work on. The specific
research question, nevertheless, only emerges via intensive readings by researchers
themselves.
When identifying an interesting exigence in the review article, we could refer to
the relevant references listed at the end of the paper. Then, by reading these cited
literatures and their references, we would gradually develop a sense of what-is-
going-on in one particular research area. This process is made much easier through
the citing document function from citation databases. This allows us to pin down the
more updated literature germane to that present article we are reading. For example,
(7.1)

Example (7.1) displays the citing documents for Xiang’s (2008) article Three laws
in speech behaviors. We could find all the articles, doctoral dissertations, master
theses, and important conference proceedings that cited Xiang (2008). This function
could help us make clear a line of research following one leading publication. For
the author himself, this function is instrumental to understanding how his article has
been perceived by the research community, enabling scholars to revise their theories
132 7 Research Methods

and engage with others. Similar functions can also be found on other search engines
and databases such as Google Scholar and Web of Science.

7.1.3 Search Engines and Databases

After getting familiar with a research area, we start to collect existing studies targeted
at a specific topic. The two essential components in this set of toolkit are academic
search engines and databases. Below is a list of commonly used research engines in
pragmatics.1
(7.2) Search engines

Search engines Website

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/
Microsoft Academic https://academic.microsoft.com
http://xueshu.baidu.com

http://xueshu.so.com

In (7.2), Google Scholar is, without doubt, the most widely used search engine
worldwide. It contains a wide range of scholarly publications such as books, journal
articles, conference proceedings, preprints, theses, and dissertations in a variety of
languages (Google Scholar, 2018). Its high coverage of the literature is supported
by three algorithms: first, it contains a default logical AND between two words,
viz., the results include all the words that appear both together and separately in the
literature; second, the range of search extends to all the available full texts of the
literature; third, the searching results are case insensitive and derivation inclusive
that all different forms of the keyword will be searched on Google Scholar.
Microsoft Academic features more sorting options and more diversified visual-
izations than Google Scholar (Zhao & Chen, 2014). Therefore, it can provide readers
with a more globalized network among scholars in terms of their cooperation, citation,
academic influence, etc.

1 In addition, a newly released search engine called Semantic Scholar deserves special attention.
Based on deep learning and machine learning, Semantic Scholar provides a dynamic view of schol-
arships and helps generate an evaluative index of the influence of a particular publication, i.e., to
that extent this paper is cited and how important this citation is Xie and Guo (2017). At present,
this website only provides searches in computer science and medicine. However, we believe that
in the near future, they will also include literatures in linguistics and pragmatics, making a larger
contribution to the research community.
7.1 Literature Mining 133

The two domestic search engines BaiDuXueShu and 360 XueShu also have user-
friendly interfaces and can easily yield a large amount of literature (see Liu, 2014;
Xie & Guo, 2017 for more detailed comparisons between different search engines).
The second important source is academic databases, which are often supported by
research institutions and academic publishers. They index a variety of publications,
including journal articles, theses, dissertations, conference proceedings, books, and
edited volumes. Some commonly used databases are listed below:
(7.3) Databases

Database Website (2022-6-10)

ScieneDirect https://www.sciencedirect.com
Scopus https://www.scopus.com
Web of Science http://apps.webofknowledge.com
JSTOR http://www.jstor.org
ProQuest https://www.proquest.com
OSO http://www.oxfordscholarship.com
LoC http://catalog.loc.gov
CSSCI http://cssci.nju.edu.cn
http://www.cnki.net

http://lib.cqvip.com

http://g.wanfang.com.cn/index.html

http://www.blyun.com

In general, databases consist of full-text databases and citation databases. As

the names imply, the former contains the full content of the publication and the
latter only includes citation information and sometimes the abstract. The full-
text databases listed above are ScienceDirect, JSTOR, CSSCI, ZhongGuoZhiWang,
WeiPuQiKan, WanFangShuJu. Among these, ScienceDirect indexes a large number
of high-quality SSCI journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Language and Commu-
nication, Language Sciences, and Lingua. ZhongGuoZhiWang and WanFangShuJu
are two leading Chinese databases that provide a huge volume of journal articles,
conference proceedings, theses, and dissertations.
Citation databases include Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and BaiLianYun-
TuShuGuan. Among these, Scopus is the largest database under this category that
ensures a comprehensive coverage of relevant literature. The SSCI and A&HCI arti-
cles indexed in the Web of Science core collection can provide high-quality research.
134 7 Research Methods

Though BaiLianYun does not upload full texts on its server, we can request for a copy
of the scholarly work from member libraries.
In addition, Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) and the Library of Congress (LoC)
are two important sources for published books. Library of Congress, in particular,
has a huge collection of books because the U.S. law states that every book published
in the US must submit two copies to LoC (Sun & Zhou, 2011: 56).
While both search engines and databases have been updating themselves to aim at
a faster searching speed, higher accuracy, and larger coverage, they are still distinctive
in three ways. First, most of the search engines can only provide basic search with very
limited sorting criteria, whereas databases offer advanced search with a lot of selec-
tion categories and personalized search using regular expressions. Second, search
engines, notably Google Scholar, apply a “soft AND” that often omits trivial words,
but databases usually employ a “hard AND” that only includes precise matching
(Zhai, 2015). Third, online search engines often fail to collapse the same literature
in one title because it captures literature from a variety of sources and the different
formatting of these sources fools the system to list them as separate entries. In
contrast, since the compilation of a database follows a rather unified standard, there
are few repeated entries shown in the result.

7.1.4 Bibliometric Analysis and Knowledge Visualization

While pinpointing literature through manual reading and keywords search could yield
a clear map of the present research landscape, they are still not sufficient to discover
the internal linkage between different scholarships and unearth all possible research
potentials. Bibliometric analysis provides us with an updated tool to acquire a clearer
and more comprehensive understanding of the past, the present, and the future of a
research area. Researchers could analyze the results manually (e.g., Sun, 2015) or
use software such as CiteSpace (Li & Chen, 2017) and Jigsaw (Stasko et al., 2008).
This section mainly introduces the growing trend of using CiteSpace for literature
review.
Guided by Kuhn’s (1962) iterative view of scientific revolutions, CiteSpace2 is a
Java-based knowledge visualization tool designed by Professor Chaomei Chen from
Drexel University (Li & Chen, 2017: 2). Its main function is to “emerging trends
and transient patterns in scientific literature” in a visualized manner (Chen, 2006:
359). This section focuses on two salient features of CiteSpace, and the detailed
instructions can be found in Chen (2017) and Li and Chen (2017).
First, CiteSpace can visualize the distribution of a particular type of research
information, including authors, countries, institutions, co-occurring keywords, co-
occurring terms, overlapping sources of publication, co-occurring subject categories,

2Free download linkage: http://cluster.ischool.drexel.edu/~cchen/citespace/download/ (2021-11-

23).
7.1 Literature Mining 135

co-citation, co-cited authors, co-cited journals, citing papers, and grant acknowledg-
ments. Below is the landscape of the co-occurring keywords for SSCI publications
of pragmatics from 2000 to 2018:
(7.4) Co-occurring keywords for “pragmatics”

Example (7.4) displays the most frequently occurring keywords in pragmatics from
2000 to 2018. The size and the darkness of the nodes are proportional to their occur-
rence in this time range. The bigger the size, the more frequent it occurs. A quick
sketch could show us that pragmatics concerns the study of discourse, politeness,
speech act, conversation, context, implicature, and identity in languages such as
English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and French. These groups of information would
be conducive to our beginners to get familiar with the essential theories, heated topics,
languages investigated, methodologies applied, laying a firm foundation for further
inquiries.
Second, after locating a specific research topic, we can use CiteSpace to map out
its different schools of thought through cluster analysis. Each cluster “represents
the intellectual base of the underlying specialty” (Chen, 2017: 8). On the basis of
these clusters, users can look closely into the specific references via cited documents
and citing documents. The cited documents of A are those references article A
itself cited, and the citing documents of B refer to those publications that cite B in
their references. Hence, the accumulated cited references of a research area reflect
136 7 Research Methods

its knowledge foundation, and its citing references signal its emerging trend (Li &
Chen, 2017: 174). Examples (7.5) and (7.6) show the citing articles and cited articles
of the two biggest clusters in politeness research:
(7.5) Cited and citing documents for cluster 0

(7.6) Cited and citing documents for cluster 1

In each picture, the upper column is the list of clusters identified by CiteSpace. The
lower left column displays the citing articles of a cluster and the lower right section
shows the cited references of this cluster. By analyzing the cited references, we find
that the cluster represents the classical study of politeness and cluster 1 embodies
the postmodernist approach to politeness. Then, by carefully going through their
citing articles, we conclude that future studies could be dedicated to bridging the gap
between theoretical analysis and authentic interaction, advancing metatheorization of
(im)politeness, investigating situated variations in its full embodiment, and utilizing
the instrumentality of developed theories.
7.2 Data Collection 137

To sum up, CiteSpace provides detailed networking among different literatures

and helps scholars to identify research trends and foci. What we have introduced
is only the tip of an iceberg, and there is still a huge bulk of functions waiting
for further exploration. For reference purposes, below is a list of applications of
CiteSpace in pragmatics studies: an overview of pragmatics (Xiang, 2015), critical
discourse analysis (Mu & Ma, 2016), interlanguage pragmatics (Yuan & Liu, 2017),
relevance theory (Zhao & Xiang, 2018), grammaticalization (Yang & Xiang, 2018),
and metaphor using the corpus method (Xue & Xiang, 2018), etc.

7.2 Data Collection

After mining the literature, we begin to address the research exigence we identified
among the existing studies. How to collect reliable and valid data largely determines
the quality of our studies. Kasper and Dahl (1991: 217) note that data are collected
on a comprehension-production continuum. Moving from the comprehension pole
to the production pole, this section introduces five basic methods of data collection:
interviews, questionnaires, discourse completion tests, role plays, and recordings.3
The final part of this section presents three more trending methods advanced by
cognitive psychology and computer technology.

7.2.1 Interviews

Interviews include structured, unstructured, or open-ended and semi-structured inter-

views (Sun & Zhou, 2011: 134). In structured interviews, researchers usually
have prepared a list of questions and ask these questions in order. Since the ques-
tions are standard, the results are often used for quantitative research. In contrast,
unstructured interviews do not have fixed questions and are designed to uncover
the language use of the interviewee. In between, semi-structured interviews contain
a guideline of questions but retain a degree of freedom to the interviewees.
Interviews have three advantages when carried out using audio or video recordings
(Wray et al., 1998: 182). First, this allows the interviewers to free themselves from
choosing what to take notes and what not to, helping them to concentrate on the
content of the participants. Second, leaving the notes behind provides a more natural
conversational environment that is conducive for the interviewees to process the
questions. Third, researchers can collect these data without being influenced by their
cursory writings.

3Other methods include intuition, introspection, oral report, field notes, diaries, observations,
experiments, corpus data, etc.
138 7 Research Methods

Nevertheless, it also exposes three barriers. First, the transcription of data is time-
consuming, especially for conversation analysis.4 Researchers need to write down
the whole speech with proper annotations. It is important to conduct the interview in
a quiet place to avoid unnecessary background noise. Second, for unstructured and
semi-structured interviews, the interviewer has to be trained to elicit data from the
interviewees. In many cases, it means that the researchers have to carry out these
interviews by themselves, making the study more time-consuming. Third, there is
a potential variable that the participants’ responses may be subject to the charac-
teristics of the interviewer. For instance, if the participant is the roommate with the
interviewer, he or she may use language differently from that of strangers.
For further explication, below is an application of an unstructured interview in a
published journal article discussing the discursive approach to (im)politeness
(5.7) After having selected an extract, we then interviewed the four participants separately
to find out how they evaluated the interaction. All participants were asked to listen to the
recording and were given a transcript of the interaction before they were asked to give an
evaluation of the situation.
(van der Bom & Mills, 2015: 194).

In the above case, the authors argue that politeness is not inherent in words and is
subject to individual judgment (van der Bom & Mills, 2015). By setting up the above
interview, they find that participants have different interpretations of their linguistic
performances, supporting their hypothesis.

7.2.2 Questionnaires

In pragmatics, questionnaires are often used to assess language users’ perception or

comprehension of a particular subject. The two commonly used methods are rating
tasks and multiple-choice questions. Both formats consist of a vignette description
of a scenario followed by some questions; the former is followed by a 3 point, 5 point,
or 7 point scale to measure how appropriate a speech act is in the scenario, whereas
the latter provides a number of possible speech acts and the examinees are asked to
choose the most appropriate one (Hong, 2005: 43, 49). To improve the validity and
the reliability of the questionnaires, we need to ensure that the test subjects match our
research question and are represented evenly (e.g., age span when investigating how
age affects the performance of a speech act). Before sending out the questionnaires,
a pilot study on a small scale can help us to identify the loopholes in our design and
revise it accordingly.
Below is an example of using rating tasks to measure the appropriateness of
compliment responses between Chinese and English native speakers:

4 Some companies have developed software that can automatically transcribe audio and video
recordings in texts. Some common examples include kedaxunfei (https://www.iflyrec.com, 2021-
11-20) and Descript (https://www.descript.com, 2021-11-20).
7.2 Data Collection 139

(7.8) The questionnaire comprised five scenarios, all of which contained a compliment on
someone’s performance/achievement, such as coming top in an examination…
For each scenario, five different responses were listed: two acceptance responses, two
rejection responses, and one deflection response...
Respondents were asked to evaluate each of the responses in terms of appropriateness,
conceit, and impression conveyed (favorable/bad). Three 5 point Likert-type rating scales
were listed under each compliment response, and respondents were asked to circle the
numbers on these scales that corresponded to their reactions to that response…
Chinese and English versions of the questionnaire were produced through the collaborative
efforts of six bilingual speakers, who carefully checked the developing versions of the ques-
tionnaire for equivalence of meaning. Using the decentring process suggested by Brislin …
the scenarios and the responses were modified, until all parties have agreed on Chinese and
English versions that were both acceptable and equivalent in meaning.
(Spencer-Oatey et al., 2008: 100–101).

From (7.8), we could observe that the rating task is contextualized in complimenting
someone for his or her top examination score. Each scenario contains five speech acts
that need to be evaluated on a 5 point scale. To address the validity and reliability of
the test, the authors also specifically describe how the Chinese and English versions
are matched and acceptable to all parties.
A modification of the research question can make (7.8) into a design for multiple-
choice questions. For instance, if the researchers want to investigate the pragmatic
competence between native English speakers and EFL (English as Foreign Language)
speakers, they could use the compliment scenario above and ask examinees to choose
the most appropriate answer from the five listed responses. Then, by analyzing the
choices between the two groups of speakers, they could find out to what extent the
home culture influences the pragmatic competence in a learned culture. Nevertheless,
Leech (2014: 250) notes that multiple-choice questions and its variants went out of
fashion in the 1990s for their restricted coverage of pragmatic competence. It is still
a valid measurement but needs to be used with caution.

7.2.3 Discourse Completion Tests

Discourse completion tests or discourse completion tasks (DCTs) were devised by

Levenston and Blum (1978) and then adapted by Blum-Kulka (1982) to study requests
in Hebrew. It is an incomplete written discourse sequence that requires participants
to provide a response to address a specific scenario in a particular context. Below is
an example used to elicit compliment response among Chinese college students:
(7.9) 说明: 请就以下情景做出回应, 对于每一种情景, 您可能会发现好几种回应在社交
方面均适当。如果是这样, 请在画线部分写下所有这些回应。

Directions: Please respond to the following situations. For each situation, you might find
more than one response socially appropriate. In that case, please write all of them in the
space provide.
140 7 Research Methods

1. 您遇见一位已有一段时间没有见面的熟人, 互致问候之后, 他/她说: “View, /漂亮。”

您对此的回应是:

You meet an acquaintance you haven’t seen for some time. After an exchange of greetings,
s/he says: “You look so nice! Even nicer than when I saw you last.” To this, you reply:

$

%

&

'

(Chen & Yang, 2010: 1961–1962, with adaptions of format and font).

While DCT is convenient to harvest a large amount of data and effectively control the
variables (Hong, 2005: 61), it also faces heavy criticisms regarding the authenticity of
the data (Leech, 2014: 252). First, the written questions entail the imaginary nature of
the conversation that may not authentically reflect interlocutors’ verbal encounters.
In (7.9), the students have to imagine what they will do to respond to the compliment;
in reality, however, they may be very likely to do otherwise. One solution is to use
audios or videos to provide test scenarios that simulate real-life interactions.
Second, the limited space of DCT dictates the length of the response. Since Chen
and Yang’s (2010) study only leaves one line for each response, students will try to
limit their answers in one line of texts. However, if the researcher chooses to leave
a larger space, students then tend to fill in the empty space with lots of words, as
they were told when preparing for the Chinese Gaokao. One potential solution is
to upload the entire test on the Internet where the space for response grows as the
respondent writes.

7.2.4 Role Plays

Role play, sometimes dubbed as oral DCT, is one endeavor to balance the above
predicament between the authenticity of data and the manipulation of variables. It is
defined as “participation in simulated social situations that are intended to throw light
upon the role/rule contexts governing ‘real’ life social episodes” (Cohen, Manion, &
Morrison, 2000: 370). In general, role plays can be divided into open role play and
closed role play (Kasper & Dahl, 1991). The former only sets the initial situation, the
actors’ roles and their communicative goals and the latter also dictates the outcome
of the interactions. Below is an open role play designed to elicit request data from
American learners of Spanish:
7.2 Data Collection 141

(7.10) Role-play requests

Student-Professor: Asking for a letter of recommendation

Imagine that you are in a Spanish-speaking country of your preference. You are in the final
year of your undergraduate studies and you have decided to ask your Spanish professor,
Professor “X”, to write you a letter of recommendation. You have been a good student in the
class and although your professor has always treated everyone equally, you’re sure that he
wouldn’t have any reason not to write a letter for you. You prefer that the letter be written by
this professor because this class has been an important one for your major and the material
is representative of classes you have taken toward your major. The relationship between you
and your professor is strictly academic and you have only interacted with each other at the
University either in class or during office hours. You need the letter of recommendation and
you go to his office to ask him to write you one. What do you say?
(Félix-Brasdefer, 2007: 280).

In (7.10), the author created a scenario where participants need to use Spanish to ask
for a recommendation letter. By comparing the performance between speakers with
different levels of proficiency and contrasting them with other scenarios designed in
this study, the researcher could uncover the developmental patterns of these language
learners, contributing to the study of interlanguage pragmatics.
The main advantage of role play, particularly open role play, is that it provides
analysts with near-authentic data and the full discourse context of a particular speech
event (Hong, 2005: 77). On the contrary, one practical shortcoming is that it requires a
lot of manual work to transcribe and code the data (Leech, 2014: 254). Consequently,
it is hard for researchers to collect a larger amount of data to even the insufficient
representativeness of a small sample.

7.2.5 Recordings

We could also use audio and video taping equipment to record more authentic data.
Recordings can expand the range and enhance the precision of the data available;
it also allows other researchers to have direct access to these firsthand data to help
avoid personal bias in the analysis. When collecting these data, it is very important
to note the underlying ethics and legality that researchers have to gain the permission
of the participants (Wray et al., 1998: 154). This may raise the observer’s paradox
(Kasper & Dahl, 1991) that the participants’ behavior will be affected by knowing
that they are being watched. One solution is to only inform the participants they will
be recorded but do not reveal the exact timing of the recordings. Here is an example:
(7.11) ➀ 语料收集人得到观察对象的同意, 在接下来的—学年中观察记录其在宿舍内
的语言使用行为, 作研究语料之用。为避免录音行为潜在的影响,保证会话的真实性,
每次录音前不再告知观察对象将进行录音; ➁ 在开始阶段, 语料收集人每天录制一段
宿舍谈话, 包括收集人缺席或者作为旁听者在场两种情况, 重点关注被观察对象相互
之间发起恭维时的恭维回应; ➂ 语料收集人将录音中的恭维和恭维回应语料进行转
写, 按照外貌、所属物、性格品质、能力和成就四个主题分类。
142 7 Research Methods

(1) After obtaining consent from the participants, the researcher observed and recorded their
language use in the dormitory throughout the academic year for the purpose of collecting
research materials. To avoid potential impacts on recording behavior and ensure the authen-
ticity of conversations, the participants were not informed of the recording before each
recording. (2). In the initial stage, the researcher recorded a conversation in the dormitory
every day, including cases where the researcher was absent or present as an observer. The
focus was on the compliment responses when the subjects complimented each other. (3).
The researcher transcribed the compliment and compliment response data from the record-
ings and classified them into four categories: appearance, belongings, personality traits, and
abilities and achievements.
(Xia, Yin & Lan, 2017: 689).

The above case explains the data collection procedure in a study of Chinese
compliment responses. By informing the participants one year ahead, the study
addresses both the authenticity of the data and the legality of the recording.
The choice between audio and video recording depends on the specific research
question. If the study only focuses on the verbal aspect of speech, audio recording is
both sufficient and convenient to elicit data. In recent years, the rise of multimodal
analysis (Jewitt, 2009; Streeck, 2009; Zhu, 2007) boosts the need for visual data.
By compositionally analyzing both verbal and non-verbal language, we could gain
a more comprehensive understanding of interlocutors’ meaning-making process.

7.2.6 Trending Methods

What we have introduced above are the most basic methods of data collection in
pragmatics. In recent years, there is a growing trend to use authentic data over elicited
data (Ishihara, 2010; Leech, 2014) and the development of new methods brought
informed by experimental pragmatics (Noveck & Sperber, 2005), Internet pragmatics
(Yus, 2011), and corpus pragmatics (Aijmer & Rühlemann, 2015).
The rise of experimental pragmatics gives birth to collecting data through
psycholinguistic experiments (Gibbs, 2005). From the previous chapter, we get to
know that pragmatics concerns the study of the meaning-making process, espe-
cially how people infer the pragmatically enriched meaning that has not been stated
semantically. Therefore, scholars represented by Grice, Levinson, Horn, Sperber,
and Wilson came up with different solutions to account for the meaning-making
mechanism in our brain (see Sects. 4.3 and 4.4). However, their theories, though
insightful and self-contained, cannot be testified in real-world usages. Joining forces
with psycholinguistics, experimental pragmatics enables researchers to indirectly
observe how our brain functions through ERP (Evoked Response Potentials), fMRI
(Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), eye tracking, etc. This interdisciplinary
trend requires our beginners to explore not only the essential topics in pragmatics
but also related knowledge.
The second trending method is to harvest data from cyberspace. Yus (2011)
notes that online communication offers a distinct interpersonal relation between the
addresser and the addressee and may lead to brand new choices of communicative
7.3 Analytical Methods 143

strategies. Computer-mediated communication forms salient contrast with face-to-

face communication over asynchronicity online versus synchronicity offline, task-
orientation versus relation-orientation, anonymity versus familiarity, and longevity
versus temporality (Graham & Hardaker, 2017). These distinctive features are
conducive to interrogating and revising the existing theories. More importantly,
online data are authentic and easy to retrieve. This saves our researchers from the
treadmill job of transcribing and coding. Nevertheless, online data are not sufficient
to explain all kinds of problems and should be used with caution: researchers need
to consider to what extent the heterogeneousness of the online users will affect the
result of the study or how to control these variations.
Third, the marriage between corpus linguistics and pragmatics gives birth to an
emerging discipline of corpus pragmatics that produces both qualitative and quanti-
tative analysis at the same time (Rühlemann & Aijmer, 2015: 12). By extracting data
from pragmatically annotated corpus, researchers are able to draw their conclusions
with a much lower risk of hasty generalization and do not have to superstitiously
note in their limitations that their data size is too small to generalize. In the mean-
time, these annotations ensure that the pragmatic meaning worked out in each entry is
contextualized and has been treated individually, catering to the contextual sensitivity
in pragmatics. This approach, however, is still facing three challenges (see Leech,
2014). First, to complete annotating an entire corpus, even a small one, requires a
heavy workload by a number of researchers. This calls for collaboration between
different researchers and the rewarding could be substantial: scholars can use one
corpus to produce a huge number of studies in many areas of pragmatics. While
the first challenge is still manageable, the second is paradoxically unattainable: the
annotation could be inconsistent when finished by multiple researchers because each
of them may hold different interpretations of a single phenomenon. We hope this
paradox could be solved by advancing semi-automatic or even full-automatic anno-
tation that is guided by unified principles. Finally, sometimes, we could not exhaust
all the necessary examples of a complied corpus and have to rely on introspection
and field observation, etc. For instance, when describing the composite of Chinese
vocatives in Sect. 7.2.4, we find that the CLL corpus can only identify a small portion
of their possible semantic representations. More complicated forms such as VP + de,
nizhege + evaluative terms/titles are never found in the 4 million word corpus but are
widely used in our daily lives. This indicates that our data should not be constrained
to only one method and the combination of different methods could better contribute
to our research.

7.3 Analytical Methods

After gathering sufficient data for the identified exigence, we move to come up with
solutions to explain our findings. The data we gathered can be either qualitative or
quantitative. The distinction between these two types of data is that the qualitative data
are nonnumerical and quantitative numerical (Babbie, 2013: 24). This section begins
144 7 Research Methods

with some basic concepts in data analysis and then introduces three commonly used
qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis: conversation analysis, discourse
analysis, and statistical analysis.

7.3.1 Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis

Conversation analysis (CA) is defined as the study that discovers the linguistic
features of these naturally occurring conversations. Its precursors are American
sociologist Harvey Sacks and his assistant Emanuel Schegloff. In the 1960s, while
working at the Center for the Scientific Study of Suicide, they noticed that the calls
made to the center share similar patterns and began to systematize their openings
(Schegloff, 1968) and closings (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). These two articles map
out the central tenet and research methodology of conversation analysis, manifesting
its interactive nature and the tendency to analyze conversation structure globally
(Yu, 2008: 5). The main body of this section elaborates on four essential analyt-
ical concepts in conversation analysis: turning-taking, adjacent pairs, preference
organization, and presequence.
Turn-Takings
When Mr. Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, we knew that it was
Trump rather than his rival Mrs. Hillary Clinton who would have the right to speak
at the inaugural address. This right to speak is called the floor and having control of
it is termed as a turn (Yule, 1996: 72). And only one person can hold the floor at a
particular turn. Turn-taking, consequently, refers to the shift of this control from one
speaker to another. And the point where this shift occurs is called transition relevant
places or TRPs. Let’s illustrate this with the following examples:
(7.12) A moderator is hosting a talk show with three guests:
Moderator: Welcome to today’s program. Today’s topic is GM food. And let’s talk about the
pros and cons it may have.
(4 s)

Guest C: I’ll say something first. I don’t think it would be a big problem.

Guest A: I think there are too many unknown factors about it.

Guest B: I think it depends …

At first, it is the moderator who holds the floor. Guest C takes the next turn by saying
that I’ll say something first. In general, the TRPs are the ends of each complete
sentence, as in from Guest C to Guest A and to Guest B.
To explain the mechanism of turn-taking, Sacks et al. (1974) postulate two general
rules: the first is that the current speaker selects the next speaker; the second is that
the next speaker selects himself by himself. In conversation, the first rule is preferred
over the second one. Therefore, the current speaker is required to select the next
7.3 Analytical Methods 145

speaker during his own turn. Otherwise, it would generate a pause (a gap) after the
speaker finishes. In scenario (7.12), the floor is left untaken for 4 s because the
moderator did not select a specific speaker for the next turn. Levinson (1983: 302)
suggests that listeners can signal their intention of speaking to the current speaker by
actively gazing at the speaker. For instance, a student is very likely to be chosen to
answer the question in class if he gazes at the teacher, or in most cases, just simple
eye contact. If the question is very difficult, the teacher usually finds that most of the
students will bury their heads between their arms, avoiding being asked to take this
challenge. And whoever pops their head up would be called upon immediately.
When the first rule is not applicable, the next rule is abided by. Guest C volunteers
to share his opinion in (7.12). Others may also step in before the current speaker
finishes his speech if the first speaker talks continuously and does not follow the first
rule. This frequently occurs in political debates. For example,
(7.13) In the third round of presidential debates between Barack Obama and John McCain
in 2008, the moderator is Bob Schieffer:

Obama: And I think Congressman Lewis’ point was that we have to be careful about how
we deal with our supporters. Now…

McCain: You’ve got to read what he said…

Obama: Let-let-let…

McCain: You’ve got to read what he said.

Obama: Let me-let me complete…

Schieffer: Go ahead.

Obama:… my response. I do think …

In the above case, as indicated by ellipses, Mr. Obama was interrupted twice by Mr.
McCain before the moderator granted the floor to Obama again. The phenomenon
that both speakers attempt to say something simultaneously is called overlap. One
may observe that McCain successfully interrupted Obama when he started a new
sentence (now…). A useful technique practiced by politicians is to ignore the natural
break that occurred at the end of each sentence; instead, they create breaks in the
middle of the sentence, leaving fewer chances for others to take the floor (Mey,
2001: 139). Another commonly used strategy is to indicate a larger structure at the
beginning of the speech (Yule, 1996: 75), as in (7.14)–(7.16).
(7.14) I have three arguments against your proposition. First…
(7.15) I’ll spend two minutes introducing our project…
(7.16) Do you know about the Manhattan Project? It is …

In (7.14), the speaker indicates that he has three rebuttals, and his opponent will be
more likely to retort after he has finished all three points. Example (7.15) suggests
the time duration the speaker wants to occupy; therefore, the hearer usually will give
the speaker two minutes before making responses. Finally, in (7.16), the speaker
146 7 Research Methods

highlights the topic he is going to talk about; a cooperative listener will know the
speaker ends his turn when he finishes talking about the Manhattan Project.
Moreover, the speaker can opt to stress the importance of the addressee listening
to his speech. For example,
(7.17) You have to listen to what I say; it’s about your investment. It is about…

In doing so, the speaker attracts the addressee’s attention, being less likely to be
interrupted and therefore holding the floor for a longer period. In fact, the effort of
carefully listening to others is also seen as a communicative art to reduce misunder-
standings, and this kind of rhetorical practice is called listening-rhetoric (see Booth,
2004).
Adjacent Pairs
In our daily communication, speakers usually generate some automatic follow-ups
to the previous turn. For example,
(7.18)–How you doin?
—Doin’ good. And you?
(7.19) –You did an awesome job!
—Thanks, man.
(7.20)–We would like to invite you to our opening ceremony.
–I’d love to come.

In these examples, a greeting is followed by another greeting, a compliment binds

with a compliment response, and an invitation is responded by acceptance (or
rejection). This mechanism of conversation organization is called adjacency pairs.
An adjacency pair is considered as the basic unit of conversational organization
(Coulthard, 2014: 70; Levinson, 1983: 304). Schegloff and Sacks (1973: 295–296)
suggest five characterizations of an adjacency pair:
(7.21) a. It contains two utterances.
b. These two utterances are positioned adjacently.
c. These two utterances are produced by two different speakers.
d. It consists of a first part and a second part.
e. A particular first part creates a specific expectation of the second part.

The adjacency pair basically operates as follows: when a speaker produces the first
part of a particular pair, he has to stop speaking; and the next speaker must respond
immediately with the second half of that pair.
However, Schegloff and Sack’s characterization also exposes several problems.
First, adjacency pairs often do not strictly occur as exemplified in (7.18)–(7.20). In
many cases, the speaker may insert another question before receiving the answer to
the first question. This phenomenon is called conditional relevance (Merritt, 1976:
332). See the illustration below:
7.3 Analytical Methods 147

(7.22) Customer: Do you have computer chargers? (Q1)

Salesperson: What kind of computer do you use? (Q2).
Customer: It’s a MacBook Air 2015 (A2)
Salesperson: Yes, we have. It’s $100 (A1)

Instead of answering the customer directly, the salesperson asks a follow-up question
to inquire about the type of computer model the customer uses. After getting the
specifics of the type model, the salesperson responds to the initial question asked
by the customer. And the embedded question–answer part is called an insertion
sequence (Q2–A2 in 7.22).
Another problem is that the first part may correspond to a great many second parts
(Levinson, 1983: 307). For instance, suppose Mary asks a question about conversa-
tional implicature to John. John could directly answer Mary’s question. He could also
direct Mary to another person if he thinks this question is too difficult to answer. Or he
could refuse to answer Mary’s question because he simply dislikes her. Among these
three responses, what Mary most prefers is John answering her question directly. And
what she most disprefers is John refusing to give her any information. This involves
the concept of preference organization and will be elaborated on in the following
part.
Preference Organization
The central tenet of preference organization is that these potential second parts can
be grouped into preferred and dispreferred categories of responses (Levinson, 1983:
307). The preference is not what an individual speaker expects; rather, it refers to
what the society conventionally expects. Their general patterns are presented below
(adapted from Levinson, 1983: 336; Yule, 1996: 79).
(7.23) General patterns of preferred and dispreferred responses

First parts Second parts

Preferred Dispreferred
Assessment Agreement Disagreement
Blame Denial Admission
Invitation/offer Acceptance Refusal/declination
Proposal Agreement Disareement
Question Expected answer Unexpected answer
Request Acceptance Refusal

These dispreferred seconds display several important features: first, they often
contain more words than the preferred responses; second, the speaker may pause for
a while before giving responses; third, the speaker tends to use filler words (e.g., uh,
well,) or hedges (e.g., I don’t really know, but…); fourth, the dispreferred responses
often appear to be sound explanations (e.g., I really want to help you, but I’m afraid
148 7 Research Methods

it goes beyond my reach); finally, the speaker may reply in an indirect way. The
patterns for dispreferred seconds in Chinese are presented as follows (adapted from
Yule, 1996: 81):
(7.24) Patterns for dispreferred seconds in Chinese

Patterns Examples
Apology

Appeal for understanding

Delay/hesitate

Express doubts

Give an account

Hedge the negative

Make it non-personal

Mention obligation

Preface

Token appreciation

Use mitigators

While the above analyses mainly focus on the maximally cooperative responses,
Pomerantz (1975, 1984) points out that speakers often display degrees of agree-
ment and disagreement with a second assessment. In general, an agreement can be
assessed with the upgraded, the same evaluation, or the downgraded agreements and
disagreements. An upgraded agreement employs a stronger evaluative term or an
intensifier in the second assessment. For example,
(7.25) With stronger evaluative term
–I think Tom did a good job.
–He did an excellent job!
7.3 Analytical Methods 149

(7.26) With an intensifier

–Tim says he found some important evidence.
–Yes, he found some really important evidence.

A same evaluation is a case that the recipient repeats the speaker’s original statement.
Finally, a downgraded agreement is the weakened assessment compared to the
prior one. Same evaluation and downgraded agreement are weak agreements and
often time express disagreement and are called agreement tokens. For instance,
(7.27) –He didn’t do well today.
–Yes, he didn’t. But at least he tried very hard.
(7.28) –Durian is the queen of all fruits.
–Durian is tasty. I think strawberry is better.

In both (7.27) and (7.28), the recipients offer their different opinions after agreeing
with the previous speaker.
In contrast, the speaker can also express their disagreements with the following
delay devices: “no talks”, request for clarification, partial repeats, and repair initiators
(e.g., what?; Hm?), and turn prefaces (e.g., well) (Pomerantz, 1984: 70). These are
illustrated in (7.29)–(7.33) respectively:
(7.29) –Tom ruins the project.
(2 s)
(7.30) –You know what? Tom is the most diligent person in the group.
–We should elect Jack as our class president.
(7.31) –Do you mean the Jack who escapes classes all the time? Are you crazy?
–Mary looks pretty.
(7.32) –She is pretty, but not according to my criterion.
–We learned that Grace proposed the Cooperative Principle.
–Hm?
–I said Grace proposed a theory called the Cooperative Principle.
–Boy, I think you meant Paul Grice, right?
–Sorry, I got it wrong.
(7.33) –Could you lend me $200? I promise I’ll pay you back tomorrow.
–Well, dude, you still haven’t returned the $200 you borrowed last week.

Moreover, not all agreements are preferred and not all disagreements are dispreferred.
A disagreement is often preferred if the speaker makes a self-depreciation evaluation
(Pomerantz, 1975: 101). See the following illustration:
(7.34) Jane: Am I getting fat?
Tom: Of course not, you are too skinny.
(7.35) Jack: Do you think I’m a loser?
Jim: Are you kidding, man? You are the best in our class.
150 7 Research Methods

Finally, the exploitation of preferred and dispreferred responses can create humorous
effects (Benwell & Stokoe, 2002). Recalling the example we used to illustrate inser-
tion sequence in (7.22), the answer It is a MacBook Air can be considered as a
preferred response. A dispreferred response, on the other hand, can be hilarious:
(7.36) Customer: Do you have computer chargers?
Salesperson: What kind of computer do you use?
Customer: It’s a white one.
Salesperson: …

In the above case, instead of describing the brand and the mode of his computer, the
customer responds with an unexpected but somewhat related answer: It’s a white
one. The audience will find the answer funny when making a comparison with the
preferred answer.
Presequences
Everyone must have experienced that the speakers usually feed some information
related to their topic before engaging in the essential business. This additional infor-
mation is called presequence. Typical examples are summons or attention-getters,
such as Hey, Excuse me, vocatives (e.g., man, dude, see Sect. 2.3.1), and nin hao,
“hello”, etc. Some other commonly used presequences are pre-announcements (e.g.,
You know what? Guess what I dug out?), pre-invitations (e.g., Do you have plans
tonight?), pre-requests (e.g., Do you have your wallet with you?), and pre-closings
(e.g., okay, well, so) (cf. Levinson, 1983: 346; Terasaki, 2004). These are illustrated
in (7.37)–(7.40), respectively.
(7.37) Pre-announcement
John: You know what?
Mary: What did you get?
John: Trump just beat Clinton by a very small margin.
Mary: Are you serious?
(7.38) Pre-invitation
Tom: Do you have any plans tonight?
Mary: Not really.
Tom: I happen to have two tickets for a drama tonight. Do you wanna go with me?
(7.39) Pre-request
Franny: Do you have your wallet with you?
Dillon: What do you need?
Franny: Could you lend me $20?
Dillon: (Taking out his wallet). Here you are.
(7.40) Pre-closings
Christine and Gregory are chatting and it’s getting late.
Christine: Yes, that’s interesting… So…
Gregory: Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you around.
Christine: Sure. Good-bye.
7.3 Analytical Methods 151

Gregory: Bye.

It is worth noting that pre-request is often accompanied by the aforementioned inser-

tion sequences. In (7.39), instead of directly answering Franny’s question, Dillon
initiates another question, asking about her needs. If Dillon is going for a trip and he
often forgets his wallet, Franny’s question could also serve as a reminder for Dillon.
In this case, it is no longer a presequence of a request, but the main content of a
particular turn.
In contrast to presequence, Liu and Yu (2018) propose a closely related concept of
goings-in-front-of-an-action that also occurs before the base pair, but holds a loose
logical relation with it. One common example is to make small talks at the beginning
of the conversation. This type of sequence is interactively significant because it helps
create a rapport conversational environment, naturally moving into the main content
(ibid: 32).
In addition to CA, discourse analysis (DA) is another major approach to the
examination of longer stretches of texts and the understanding of language beyond
the sentence level. In general, DA is essentially a theoretical approach that sums up
a number of basic categories and formulates a set of rules upon these categories. The
common topics in DA are information structure (how given and new information are
organized in discourse), cohesion (grammatical and lexical relatedness), coherence
(logical consistency of the content), and discourse markers (a set of expressions
that connects sentences but does not constitute the propositional meaning of these
sentences) (Liu & Wen, 2006).
We close this part with a brief comparison between CA and DA. Generally
speaking, there are two major distinctions between the two approaches. First, in
terms of methodology, CA focuses on inducing the recurring patterns based on many
instances of naturally occurring data, whereas DA attempts to give immediate catego-
rization according to the limited data at hand. CA mostly derives systematic proper-
ties of talks from many instances of a particular phenomenon and DA tends to unveil
“what really happened” in one particular occurrence. The second distinction is that
CA values the interactional and inferential outcomes of different choices, but DA
objects to this intuitive guess, focusing on the occurrences that actually happened.
In other words, CA concentrates on sense-making, whereas DA displays diversified
goals, such as establishing the factual status of an event, revealing the relevant mental
states toward some social actions, or unearthing the development of ideologies.

7.3.2 Statistical Analysis

After introducing the two common qualitative research methods in pragmatics, we

move to elaborate on how to deal with numbers in pragmatics. The first step is to code
our data and transfer them into numbers, for instance, the number of positive polite-
ness and negative politeness strategies used when applying Brown and Levinson’s
152 7 Research Methods

theory or the number of people choosing different compliment responses listed in

the questionnaire.
Based on the number of variables investigated simultaneously, quantitative data
analyses include univariate analysis (one dependent variable), bivariate analysis
(with two dependent variables), and multivariate analysis (with multiple dependent
variables). Univariate analysis is used to describe the distribution and dispersion of
the sample; bivariate analysis is applied to determine the relationship between these
two variables; and multivariate analysis is designed to investigate the outcome of
several variables, such as studying how age, gender, and level of education influence
people’s choice of compliment responses and their evaluation of different responses
(see Babbie, 2013: 418, 430, 434).
In most statistical analyses, we need to calculate the correlation between different
variables. Ideally, we hope that the result of our small sample can represent the
distribution of the larger population we study, as in interviewing 300 college students
from four universities in Beijing to represent the population characteristics for a study
of all university students in Beijing. Nevertheless, the correlation we computed may
be erroneous due to the unrepresentativeness of our sample. For instance, we may
choose a sample that uses more positive compliment responses than average or a
group of students who intend to respond more negatively than the population. This
is called sampling error and we use the level of significance to measure the degree
of confidence we have in the relationship between different variables. A level of 0.05
significance indicates that there is only a 5% chance that we might falsely reject
the null hypothesis because we made a mistake in collecting the sample. While this
0.05 is usually the minimum threshold for a legitimate association, researchers may
set a more stringent threshold if they could not afford an error rate of 5%, such as
in medical procedures. On the other hand, researchers may also set a more liberal
threshold (larger than 0.05) if the study is exploratory in nature that tries to identify
possible relationships between variables. In the remainder of this section, we present
two commonly used methods to calculate correlation: Chi-square test and T-test.
Within limited space, we do not intend to go into the specifics of these tests, but to
offer you their underlying mechanisms.
Essentially, the chi-square test is based on the null hypothesis that “there is no
relationship between two variables in the total population” (Babbie, 2013: 475). It
measures the discrepancy between the observed and the expected distributions of
our sample and the probability that we could solely attribute this discrepancy to
sampling error. The test result is jointly determined by the degree of freedom,5 the
level of significance, and the value of chi-squared statistic. If the value of chi-square
is higher than its threshold on a specific level of significance, say at 0.05, then we
could conclude that the null hypothesis is 95% true and that the discrepancy is only
a result of sampling error. Otherwise, the difference must have been influenced by

5The degree of freedom refers to the variation for possibility for a statistical model. It is computed
as follows: df = (c − 1) * (r − 1). df stands for degrees of freedom; c stands for the number of
columns in the observed chart and r means that of the rows. For example, in an observed chart of
2 by 2, the degree of freedom is 1.
7.4 Review 153

its internal relation in addition to the sampling error. In other words, if we find the
chi-square value is lower than the threshold at 0.05, then we can conclude that at
least a 95% chance that the variables are related. It is used between two categorical
variables.
T-test is used to for categorical independent variables and continuous dependent
variables. It is commonly used to compute the statistical significance of differences
in means between two groups. Sharing a similar logic, we calculate the value of T-test
and then compare it to its threshold at a specific level of significance. To close up this
section, we would like to bring about one more caveat: While tests of significance
offer us objective data of to what extent the result helps us infer the relationship of
variables, it does not entail any causal relationship between the two variables. We
researchers still need to provide logical arguments to identify the underlying reasons
for the association.

7.4 Review

• Literature mining
• Four types of exigences
– Continuation exigence
– Question exigence
– Gap exigence
– Correction exigence
• Review articles and bibliographies
• Search engines and databases
– E.g., ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, Web of Science
• Bibliometric analysis and knowledge visualization
– E.g., CiteSpace, Carrot2
• Data collection
• Types of data collection
– Comprehension
– Production
• Interviews
– Structured interviews
– Unstructured or open-ended interviews
– Semi-structured interviews
• Questionnaires
154 7 Research Methods

– Rating tasks
– Multiple choice questions
• Discourse completion tests
– Written DCTs
– Oral DCTs
• Role plays
– Open role play
– Closed role play
• Recordings
– Audio recordings
– Video recordings
• Analytical methods
• Types of analysis
– Qualitative analysis
– Quantitative analysis
• Conversation analysis
– Turning-taking
– Adjacent pair
– Preference organization
– Presequence
• Discourse analysis
– Information structure
– Cohesion
– Coherence
– Discourse marker
• Statistical analysis
– Level of significance
– Chi-square
– T-test.

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Appendix A
Resources

To help beginners engage in a deeper study of pragmatics, below is a brief sketch of

textbooks, handbooks, collections, dictionaries, journals, and conference papers of
pragmatics published and circulated internationally:
Textbooks
Chen, X. R. (2009). A New Coursebook in Pragmatics. Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press.
Cummings, L. (2005). Pragmatics: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Edinburgh
University Press.
Green, G. M. (2012). Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding. Rout-
ledge.
Huang, Y. (2014). Pragmatics (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Jiang, W. Q. (2000). Pragmatics: Theory and Applications. Beijing University
Press.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. Longman.
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Mey J. L. (2001). Pragmatics: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Blackwell.
Peccei, J. S. (1999). Pragmatics. Routledge.
Poole, S. C. (1999). An Introduction to Linguistics. Macmillan Publishers.
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics.
Longman.
Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. Routledge.
Yule, G. (1996). (Pragmatics). Oxford University Press.
何自然、冉永平, (2009)。 《新编语用学概论》 。北京大学出版社。
钱冠连, (1997)。 《汉语文化语用学》 。清华大学出版社。
Handbooks
Allan, K. & K. M. Jaszczolt (eds.). (2012). The Cambridge Handbook of
Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.
Barron, A., Y. G., Gu & G. Steen. (eds.). (2017). The Routledge Handbook of
Pragmatics. Routledge.

© Peking University Press 2024 159

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2
160 Appendix A: Resources

Horn, L. & G. Ward. (eds.). (2004). The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell.

Huang, Y. (ed.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford University
Press.
Verschueren, J., Ostman, J., Blommaert, J.O. & C. Bulcaen. (eds.). (1995). Hand-
book of Pragmatics. John Benjamins. This handbook series is published annually
since 1995.
Collections in specific areas
Aijmer, K.& Rühlemann, C. (eds.). (2015). Corpus Pragmatics. Cambridge
University Press.
Culpeper, J., Haugh, M., & Kádár, D. Z. (eds.). (2017). The Palgrave Handbook
of Linguistic (Im) politeness. Palgrave Macmillan.
Herring, S., Stein, D. & Virtanen, T. (eds.). (2013). Pragmatics of Computer-
Mediated Communication. Walter de Gruyter.
Jucker, A. H., Schneider, K. P. & Wolfram, B. (eds.). (2018). Methods in
Pragmatics. De Gruyter Mouton.
Kasper, G. & Blum-Kulka, S. (eds.). (1993). Interlanguage Pragmatics. Oxford
University Press.
Linguistic Politeness Research Group (ed.). (2011). Discursive Approaches to
Politeness. Walter de Gruyter.
Locher, M. A. & Graham, S. L. (eds.). (2010). Interpersonal Pragmatics. Walter
de Gruyter.
Noveck, I. & Sperber, D. (eds.). (2005). Experimental Pragmatics. Palgrave.
Taguchi, N. (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
and Pragmatics. Routledge.
Tipton, R. & Desilla, L. (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Pragmatics. Routledge.
Zienkowski, J., Ostman, J. O. & Verschueren, J. (eds.). (2011). Discursive
Pragmatics. John Benjamins Publishing.
Dictionaries
Allott, N. (2010). Key Terms in Pragmatics. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Cruse, A. (2006). Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University
Press.
Huang, Y. (2012). The Oxford Dictionary of Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Journals (2021-10-30)
Argumentation
https://link.springer.com/journal/10503
Appendix A: Resources 161

Corpus Pragmatics
https://link.springer.com/journal/41701
Discourse Processes
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hdsp20/current
Language and Communication
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/language-and-communication/
Language Sciences
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/language-sciences/
Lingua
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/lingua/
Linguistics
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ling
Intercultural Pragmatics
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/iprg
International Journal of Language Communication Disorders
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14606984
International Review of Pragmatics
http://www.brill.com/international-review-pragmatics

Internet Pragmatics
https://www.benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/ip/main
Journal of East Asian Pragmatics
https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/EAP
Journal of Historical Pragmatics
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/jhp
Journal of Language and Social Psychology
https://journals.sagepub.com/home/jls
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
https://benjamins.com/catalog/jlac
Journal of Politeness Research
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jplr
162 Appendix A: Resources

Journal of Pragmatics
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-pragmatics/
Multilingua
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/mult
Pragmatics
https://ipra.uantwerpen.be/main.aspx?c=*HOME&n=1360
Pragmatics & Cognition
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/pc/main
Pragmatics and Society
http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/18789722
Semantics and Pragmatics
http://semprag.org
Text and Talk
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/text?lang=en
Conferences
全国语用学研讨会.
Annual Conference of the Society for Text and Discourse
International Pragmatics Conference
International Conference of the American Pragmatics Association
International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication
International Communication Association Annual Convention
International Conference on Language and Social Psychology
National Communication Association Annual Convention
Appendix B
Research Notes

While our efforts end here, there are still a lot more that remain undone in pragmatics.
We leave the blanks below for you to note the works and phenomena you may observe,
read, and encounter in your quest for pragmatics. We believe that these summaries
will help you develop a clearer map of different research topics and grow your own
research trajectories.
Topic:
Argument 1:

Examples:

Counterexamples:

© Peking University Press 2024 163

M. Xiang et al., Introduction to Pragmatics, Peking University Linguistics Research 9,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6464-2
164 Appendix B: Research Notes

Argument 2:

Examples:

Counterexamples:

Argument 3:

Examples:

Counterexamples:
Appendix B: Research Notes 165

Method 1:

Method 2:

Method 3:

Remaining Problems: