Debreceni Egyetem Angol-Amerikai Intézet

University of Debrecen

Institution of English and American Studies

Pragmatics in my everyday practice

(meeting and addressing people)

written by

Talabér János

2

This short piece of work would intend to show or present my everyday teaching

practice from pragmatic points of view. I learned applied linguistics before, or at least

my college professors gave it a try to teach me. I always wondered this miraculous

linguistics, even if I had found it very hard to master. I am now making a research

work on the linguistic differences between American and British English, hence I have

been in love with US English since my childhood. Therefore, as my being a language

examiner at one of the language examination boards, I am not only collecting

pragmatic hints from my teaching practice, but I also would like to show some

interesting points form the language exams. Moreover, I would really love to present

some dialectical differences, which do inevitably utter pragmatics. For all this I have

got to admit that an essay of some short pages could not fulfill the task to present

every small bit of pragmatics, heedless of my honest efforts.

If you open a book on pragmatics - whatever it could be ­ it would start with

defining what lies behind this phenomenon. Usually conceived as a branch of

semantics concerned with the meaning in certain context...in which they are uttered.

In pragmatics, the relationship between signs and interpretants is really important1.

To make it as clear as possible, the following examples illustrate the point exactly:

"A motorbike is coming"

First, this sentence could only provide us a neutral statement of a moving vehicle,

however in a certain context it could stand as a warning and could play a vital role:

"Watch out! A motorbike is coming".

In this context, this sentence might save

someone′s life, who is probably now about to tread onto a zebra or something.

Therefore, it is the part of pragmatics conveying and interacting a kind of different

meanings, thus triggering out a diverse interpretation. We could change the words in

this sentence, and this could lead to a dialectical pragmatics (if there is so ­ C.V.

Morris might kill me if he was still alive):

"Your coach is coming"

This sentence would affect differently in the UK or in the States. A British guy would

easily step back and be waiting for a bus to arrive, whereas an American guy would

easily be hit by the bus, since he would be waiting for a person (a trainer, or

somebody). Imagine how funny this accident would have been.

"Watch out. You

coach is coming"

Hmm, worth pondering about, is it not?

In certain real-life cases, on the other hand, this is not so serious and we only have a

1 MATTHEWS PH., Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, OUP, New York, 1991, 290.

3

laugh at it. It is just like in the joke that I always punch.

In certain places of North America, the word "aunt" is very similarly pronounced to the

word "ant" /aent/ and not alike in British /aunt/, hence the joke corresponds really

well.

Why is the American kid scared in the zoo? Because he saw an aunt eater. (ant).

Hopefully, that is not an aunt eater animal (I rather wish there were some mother-in-

law eaters), however, this joke really interprets how the context (and we can consider

familiar background /e.g American or British origins/ to be different contexts as well)

would affect the meaning, leading to different misunderstandings. These contextual

differences form pragmatics. It means that it is not enough for a text to convey a

piece of information (semantics) but the contextual background (the intention of the

speakers and the listeners) play as important (if not more) as information

transmission.

It would be, however, impossible to list all the fields of pragmatics, all categories and

clusters. That would devour a library of books and the usefulness should also be

questioned. Therefore, I opted for the following items and would like to place them

under a magnifying glass. Names and addresses, titles and and names, and the

different versions of politeness principle in my everyday teaching life.

Addressing

Although English is said to be one of the most polite languages, it is extremely

interesting that there are no separate words for formalizing people. Certain other

languages have different forms for "

you"

(French "

tu/vous"

, German "

du/Sie".,

Hungarian Te/Ön).

These may originally have indicated number ("

vous"

and "

Sie"

)

used for plural forms, but now show different levels of formality, with "

tu"

and "

du"

being more familiar, "

vous"

and "

Sie"

more polite. In English this was shown

historically by the contrast between "

you"

and "

thou/thee"

. These are not really used

anymore, though the "

thou"

form survives in some dialects (like old cockney), while

other familiar pronoun forms are "

youse"

(Liverpool) and "

you-all"

or

"you all

gentlemen"

(southern USA).

In practice, students want to formalize with third person singular, "Kovács úr, jön