LET'S ENHANCE OUR PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE.

POLITENESS STRATEGIES. Read this text bellow and complete the task when finished. 

TASK 1. PRACTICE ON THE FOLLOWING  SITUATIONS AND APPLY POLITE STRATEGIES WHEN NEEDED. GIVE THE RIGHT ANSWER TO THE COMMENTS

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This is probably one of my most  beloved disciplines in Linguistics, to teach how to understand inferred and intended meanings in oral messages and to deal with the right utterance in the right context of place, register and time. 

The term Pragmatics coined in the 1930s by the philosopher C.W. Morris describes  a field  of LINGUISTICS that studies how  CONTEXT contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology.

Differences between semantics and pragmatics:

semantics examines the conventional or coded meaning in a given language

pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on grammar constructions, on lexicon, on structural and linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance.

This all involves the speakers' and listeners' attitude, feelings and intentions aling with other factors.

Pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.

The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence.

POLITENESS STRATEGIES

These are speech acts that express concern for others and minimize threats to self-esteem ("face") in particular social contexts.

We must distinguish between:

Positive politeness strategies,  intended to avoid giving offense by highlighting friendliness.

These strategies include:

- juxtaposing criticism with compliments

- establishing common ground, and using nicknames,honorifics, tag questions, special discourse markers(please), and in-group jargon and slang.

All of these features will be explained, practiced and discussed in class. 

Negative politeness strategies are intended to avoid giving offense by showing deference. These strategies include questioning, hedging, and presenting disagreements as opinions.

All of these features will be explained, practiced and discussed in class. 

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