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HOW DO WE USE LANGUAGE? :PENCIL2: D+L2 LECTURE 4 - Coggle Diagram
HOW DO WE USE LANGUAGE?
:PENCIL2:
D+L2 LECTURE 4
Direct and Indirect speech
Searle (1975); Gibbs (1986)
Direct speech acts (<10%)
Literal meaning intended
Indirect speech acts (>90%)
Need to move beyond the literal meaning
Non-literal speech acts:
Idioms
--> "kick the bucket"
Metaphor / simile
--> "She's a brick"
Irony
--> "What an exciting lecture, Professor Gaskell"
"British Politeness"
How do we understand indirect speech?
Searle (1979)
Two-stage mechanism
: literal meaning first and then non-literal interpretation
Gibbs (1989)
One-stage:
parallel literal and non-literal, or only non-literal
Mixed evidence - depends greatly on the context and the type of indirect speech
“Kick the bucket” probably gets a lexical entry of its own (Swinney & Cutler, 1979)
Subtle irony may take several seconds to detect (if at all)
Scalar Implicature
"
Some tuna are fish"
(1) Has semantic meaning (at least one tuna is a fish - true)
(2) And a pragmatic meaning (some tuna are fish and some are not - false)
“Have the cakes been eaten?”
“Some of them have”
Most people opt for the pragmatic interpretation (i.e. some tuna are fish is FALSE)
But is there competition between the two meanings?
De Neys & Schaeken (2007)
Asked participants to verify statements while manipulating cognitive load (maintain patterns in memory)
Difficult / high load led to fewer pragmatic responses
Competition between automatic semantic interpretation and more resource-dependent pragmatic interpretation?
Pijnacker et al. (2009)
(1) "All sparrows are birds"
(2) "Some sparrows are birds"
(3) "All birds are sparrows"
(4) "Some birds are sparrows"
Tested high function ASD adults and controls.
Groups generally well matched on performance.
Interpretation in this case may not rely on mind reading skills.
Might be a more automatized process?
Conversational Structure
Grice (1975)
Co-operative principle, 4 maxims:
(1)
Quantity
: Make your contribution as informative as required and no more.
(2)
Quality
: Make your contribution true.
(3)
Relation
: Make your contribution relevant to the aims of the conversation.
(4)
Manner
: Be clear.
Like grammar, another mutually agreed convention?
Co-operation between speaker and listener to maximise information flow.
Evaluating Grice
Linguistic contribution
Useful for description of conversation
Also identification of violations (e.g. jokes, political interviews)
Good example
- Jeremy Paxman interviews Michael Howerd
Same question asked 12 times (“Did you threaten to overrule him”)
Clear violations of many maxims (although perhaps not quality)
Psychological contribution
Several offshoots of Grice’s work now research areas in their own right.
Issue of collaboration/common ground
What does the speaker know about the listeners task/mental representation (and vice versa)
Can speakers avoid ambiguity?
Ferreira et al. (2005)
Pairs of participants, one has to name objects on the screen, the other has to mark the objects on paper form.
Both see the same pictures in three conditions:
Non-linguistic ambiguity
Linguistic ambiguity
No ambiguity
Speakers are good at avoiding non-linguistic ambiguity.
Evidence of common ground
Less good at avoiding linguistic ambiguity
Often unaware of a problem.
Number represent the order in which the speaker has to name the object.
Can listeners read speakers' minds?
Keysar et al. (2000)
Two participants:
Director (confederate)
Addressee (naive participant) - eyes tracked.
Participants informed that some shelves in the grid are blocked from view of the director.
Director performs set of instructions
E.g. “put the truck one slot down”
Key instruction: “Now put the small candle above it.”
Addressees generally picked the appropriate object
Suggests a representation of common ground
But their initial response was often egocentric
Sometimes hand movements towards occluded objects
Many fixations toward occluded objects
Simpler egocentric interpretation needs to be inhibited?
Cultural differences in Perspective Taking
Wu & Keysar (2007)
Are some cultural groups better at seeing the other person’s point of view?
Tested two groups
Collectivist - Chinese
Individualist - American
Chinese listeners showed better ability to determine speaker’s point of view - even in initial eye-movements.
But are there other ways of explaining the data?
How far does mind-reading go?
Speakers and listeners read each others’ minds.
But what about larger groups? (e.g. friends, lecture)
Do we still read each others’ minds in larger groups?
Social N400
We can read co-listeners’ minds
At least when directed to
Conversation involves tracking common ground in terms of multiple participants.
Is it all about mind-reading?
Individual differences:
ASD individuals often have problems with pragmatic inference:
A: Would you like some chicken soup?
B: I am a vegetarian
Fits with the “Theory of Mind” deficit interpretation
We can assess mind reading explanations using these groups.
Conclusions
Language understanding involves going beyond the literal meaning
Particularly difficult in ASD
In a conversation, the participants establish common ground.
Speakers and listeners attempt to read each others’ minds, with varying success.
More automatic egocentric skills may supplement this mind reading.