Analysis of Pragmatic Strategies in Political Speeches 政治演讲中的语用策略英语专业硕士论文.doc

政治演讲中的语用策略分析Analysis of Pragmatic Strategies in Political SpeechesContentsCHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION11.1Aim and Scope11.1.1Political Speech21.1.2Pragmatic Strategy31.2Research Methodology and Data Collection3CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL REVIEW OF MAJOR PRAGMATIC PRINCIPLES52.1Grices Theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative Principle52.2Horns Q- and R- Principles72.3Levinsons Q-, I- and M-principles102.4Sperber & Wilsons Relevance Theory12CHAPTER 3 PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES IN POLITICAL SPEECHES173.1Lexical Pragmatic Strategies173.1.1Scalar Implicatures173.1.1.1 Logical Operators173.1.1.2 “Ordinary” Values183.1.2Lexical Pragmatic Enrichment203.1.2.1 Lexical Narrowing203.1.2.2 Lexical Broadening223.2Sentential Pragmatic Strategies243.2.1Rhetorical Questions243.2.2“X is not Y” Sentence Pattern253.2.3“I think/believe that” Sentence Pattern273.3Contextual Pragmatic Strategies293.3.1Flouting of Maxim of Quantity293.3.2Flouting of Maxim of Quality313.3.3Flouting of Maxim of Relation323.3.4Flouting of Maxim of Manner32CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF PRAGMATIC STRATEGIES IN POLITICAL SPEECHES344.1Analysis of Different Categories of Pragmatic Strategies344.1.1Lexical, Sentential, Contextual344.1.2CP, Neo-Grician Theory, RT364.2Pragmatic Functions in Political Speeches374.2.1Withholding Information384.2.2Reducing Commitment384.2.3Achieving Politeness394.2.4Creating Humorous Effect39CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION415.1Summary of This Study415.2Limitations of This Study and Open Problems415.3Further Research Possibilities42BIBLIOGRAPHY43ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS45Chapter 1 IntroductionThis study examines pragmatic strategies applied in political speeches from the perspective of pragmatic principles, through analysis of the American national candidates election speeches, and press conference speeches delivered by American President and British Prime Ministers.The first Chapter is a brief introduction of the research. Chapter 2 is a theoretical review of major pragmatic principlesGrices Cooperative Principle, Horns Q-and R-principles, Levinsons Q-, I- and M-principles, and Sperber and Wilsons Relevance Theory. After that, Chapter 3 examines the pragmatic strategies used in political speeches from three levelslexical level, sentential level, and contextual level. Chapter 4 analyzes and sums up the strategies applied in political speeches from linguistic structural view and pragmatic principle view. Chapter 5 is conclusion of this study.1.1 Aim and ScopeThe study of pragmatic strategies in China has become popular since the 1990s. While most of Chinese scholars have paid more attention to the pragmatic strategies such as strategies of politeness, humor and euphemism applied in political conversations from different perspectives, and many scholars, both home and abroad, have made study of the strategies in speeches from a managerial view, which seems to be lacking in language data as evidence; this study focuses on the strategies fulfilled by specific language structures and the communicative situations in realistic political speeches, and answers the question of which linguistic structures have been chosen to fulfill the strategic functions of the political speeches, from the perspective of pragmatic principles. 1.1.1 Political SpeechWhen we think of politics, we think of it mainly in terms of struggle for power in order to convey ideas and secure interests and put them into practice. In this process, language plays an important role. In fact, all political actions are prepared, accompanied, controlled and influenced by language. Political speeches in the twenty-first century are perhaps more frequently analyzed than any other body of language in modern English. And with the growing popularity and the use of major news media and the Internet, the general public currently has an utterly unprecedented level of access to reports, transcripts and even videos of every word that passes through a public speakers lips. The characterization of a text as political can be based on functional and thematic criteria. Political texts are a part of and/or the result of politics, they are historically and culturally determined (Bochmann, 1986). They fulfill different functions due to different political activities. Their topics are generally related to politics, i.e. political activities, political ideas, political relations, etc. Another feature is that they are meant for a wider public.Political speeches are a case in point, and they are the special focus of the series of studies on the strategies applied in political languages. Looking at the speeches from the function perspective, we can probably differentiate sub-genres, for example, as leading politicians, the speakers can either speak to members of the same political group or address the whole nations. A linguistic analysis of political texts in general and of political speeches in particular, can be most successful when it relates the details of linguistic behavior to political behavior. This can be done from two perspectives: we can start from the linguistic micro-level and discuss the strategic functions the specific structures (e.g. word choice, a specific syntactic structure) serve to fulfill. Or, we can start from the macro-level, i.e. the communicative situation and the function of a text and ask which linguistic structures have been chose to fulfill this function. The political situations and processes can be linked to linguistic structures by way of an intermediate level that of pragmatic strategies.1.1.2 Pragmatic StrategyIn the pragmatic field, Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) are the pioneers. Leech (1977), Brown and Levinson (1987), and Verschueren (1995, 1999, 2000) are the major representatives of the later pursuers. Austin and Searle put forward the Speech Act Theory, which is one of the most influential topics in the studies of pragmatics. Austins work How to Do Things with Words (1962) first brought out the concept of Speech Act, and Searle developed it to Speech Act Theory and gave a new categorization of speech acts.Leech (1983) pointed out that it is by the use of language that the speaker can understand the meaning that has being implied but not expressed, directly or indirectly. In other words, using language, directly or indirectly, can be considered as pragmatic strategies, which laid the theoretical foundation to the speakers used of pragmatic strategies.Verschueren (1995, 1999), Brown & Levinson (1987) noted that the language in use is always strategic to achieve different aims by using different lingual forms. Leech (1983) supported their point of view by considering that speaker always faces the problem of how to use language. They further figured out that the selective use of different language forms means the strategic use of language. Grice (1975) believed that there must be some mechanisms governing the production of the utterances, and so came his Cooperative Principle and later a series of pragmatic principles, which were claimed to be the guideline for participants to communicate in a maximally efficient, rational and cooperative way. This will be further discussed in the second chapter of this thesis.1.2 Research Methodology and Data CollectionThe research data of this study is from the transcripts of American and British political speeches, including the presidential debate between President Bush (R) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D) (2004), speeches of current American national candidates during campaigns for presidential primary elections (2008), House of Commons debates in Britain Parliament (2006-2008), President Bush and Prime Minister Blair Press Conference (2002, 2007), White House Press Conferences (2006-2008), and Downing Street Press Conferences (2006-2008), altogether 24 pieces of transcripts, amounting to 175,000 words.This study applies the major pragmatic principlesGrices Cooperative Principle, Horns Q-and R-principles, Levinsons Q-, I- and M-principles, and Sperber and Wilsons Relevance Theory in analyzing case by case the chosen political speeches, from three different levels: lexical level, sentential level, and contextual level. And then identifies the common pragmatic strategies applied in political speeches and the effects fulfilled by political leaders who addressed the speeches. Chapter 2 Theoretical Review of Major Pragmatic PrinciplesThis chapter commences with a short review of Grices underlying idea of implicature and Cooperative Principle; after that is a brief introduction of the Neo-Grician Theories including Horns Q- and R-principles and Levinsons Three Principles, followed by Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson. Further, a short review of previous studies concerning pragmatic strategies is provided.2.1 Grices Theory of Conversational Implicature and Cooperative PrincipleH. P. Grice was the first to systematically study cases in which what a speaker means differs from what the sentence used by the speaker means. He proposed the ideas of implicature first in the William James lectures at Harvard in 1967 (Levinson, 2001: 100). In his thesis “Logic and Conversation” (1975), Grice described the concept of implicature as: “In uttering a sentence S, a speaker implies that p is the case if, by having been uttered, S suggests as its conclusion p, without p having been literally said. If the conclusion rests exclusively on the conventional meaning of the words and grammatical constructions that occur in S, the conclusion is called a conventional implicature. Where an implicature rests not only on the conventional meaning of the uttered expression but also on the supposition that the speaker is following or is intentionally breaking certain maxims of conversation then that implicature is called a conversational implicature.” (Bussmann, 2000: 219)In addition to identifying and classifying the phenomena of implicature, Grice developed a theory designed to explain and predict conversational implicatures. He also sought to describe how such implicatures are understood. Grice (1975) postulated a general Cooperative Principle, and four maxims specifying how to be cooperative. It is common knowledge, he asserted, that people generally follow these rules for efficient communication. Cooperative Principle:Make your 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.Table 1 Maxims of Cooperative Principle1. Maxim of Quantity:1) Make your contribution as informative as required;2) Do not make your contribution more informative than required.2. Maxim of Quality:1) Do not say what you believe to be false;2) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.3. Maxim of Relation: 1) Make your contribution relevant.4. Maxim of Manner:1) Avoid obscurity;2) Avoid ambiguity;3) Be brief;4) Be orderly.Grice (1975) concluded “it is just a well-recognized empirical fact that people do behave in these ways; they have learned to do so in childhood and not lost the habit of doing so; and, indeed, it would involve a good deal of effort to make a radical departure from the habit. It is much easier, for example, to tell the truth than to invent lies.” However, as alluded to already, it is also true that people do violate these maxims in conversations and people do tell lies. Grice was fully aware of this, and consequently he devoted the next half of the paper to discussion of the violations. In a sense, the theory of conversational implicature may be seen as an attempt to explain how communication succeeds by violation of the maxims.Grice noted that a participant in a talk exchange may fail to fulfill a maxim in four ways. Firstly, he may quietly and unostentatiously violate a maxim; if so, in some cases he will be liable to mislead. Secondly, he may opt out from the operation both of the maxim and the CP; he may say, indicate, or allow it to become plain that he is unwilling to cooperate in the way the maxim requires. Thirdly, he may be faced by a clash: he may be unable, for example, to fulfill the first maxim of Quantity (Be as informative as is required) without violating the second maxim of Quality (Have adequate evidence for what you say). Last, he may flout a maxim, that is, he may blatantly fail to fulfill it (姜, 2000: 43-44). However，Grices four maxims and the associate Cooperative Principle have been under attack almost from the very beginning. On one hand, the critique has focused on the values attached to the maxims; for instance, there is a greater value attached to the maxim of quality than to the others (Green, 1989: 89). A further question is whether the maxims have the same weight, and are used in approximately the same manner, in different situations. On the other hand, one may also question the necessity of having all of the maxims around. Especially as to the maxim of relevance it self, this has been the subject of two major efforts at rethinking Grice. The first is due to Horn (1984), the other to Sperber and Wilson (1986). The two proposals are a bit alike in that they both concentrate on relevance; they are different in that Horns model keeps relevance within the general frame work of Griean theory, whereas Sperber and Wilson made the maxim of relevance the cornerstone of their own approach to “communication and cognition”, aptly described as Relevance Theory (RT) (Mey, 2001: 82). 2.2 Horns Q- and R- PrinciplesLarry Horn has long argued for the reduction of the Gricean maxims of conversation to two principles, one that turns on saving the hearers processing effort (the Q-Principle), the other orients to reducing the speakers effort (the R-Principle). These two principles were first proposed in his “Toward a New Taxonomy for Pragmatic Inference: Q-based and R-based Implicature” of 1984, and further elaborated in his “Pragmatic Theory” of 1988 and “A Natural History of Negation” of 1989 (姜, 2000: 110). According to his important and influential 1984 paper, apart from the Quality (truthfulness) maxim, which he considered essential and irreducible (Horn, 1984:12), the Gricean maxims should be reduced to two general principles. These are the Q-Principle and the R-Principle, the first of which is oriented to the interests of the hearer and the second to the interests of the speaker. In Horns view, these two competing forces are largely responsible for generating Grices conversational maxims and the implicatures derived therefrom. The first Quantity maxim, concerned with the speakers need to convey his message fully, is essentially George Zipfs Auditors Economy. Most of the other maxims respond to the Speakers Economy (Mey, 2001: 85), e.g. the Relation maxim. S