Dr. Myers’ Neighborhood

Peter is dumb. That's all I need to say to set up this FG quote.

Lois: It's geat they picked your theme, but isn't it a little esoteric?
Peter: Esoteric?
(Zoom in to the guys in Peter's brain)
Guy1: Could it mean sexy?
Guy2: I think it's a science term.
Guy3: Fellas, fellas! Esoteric means delicious!
(back to the real world)
Peter: Lois, "Who's the Boss" is not a food.
Brian: Swing and a miss.

This is Peter's attempt at figuring out the meaning of an unknown word by using context clues. Cruse writes a bit on this subject on pg. 41 of our textbook:
    "...an example of a contextual approach to meaning, because relative normality is a concept which applies only to combinations of elements; that is to say, it implies that meaning is to be studied by observing the interactions between elements and other elements, in larger constructions such as sentences...the normality profile of a linguistic item, that is to say its pattern of normality and abnormality across the full range of possible contexts, gives in some sense a picture of its meaning..."

Neither Peter nor his brain committee are good at judging the normality of  unknown words  or using context clues. But I guess I'm not either b/c I have no idea what esoteric means.

Here is an example of flouting the maxim of quantity. Diane, the reporter on the Quahog news network is introducing her co-worker who is doing a story in the field.

Diane: And now to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa, who filed this report... all by herself!

The maxim of quantity is flouted by the addition "all by herself!" The tone is also important but we won't discuss it here. The last bit of Diane's statement is completely unnecessary in the introduction of Trisha Takanawa but she adds it to express something about the intelligence and professional ability of her co-worker. She deviated from the preferred (most efficient) utterance in order to encode more information in what she was saying.

Here is an example of violating the maxim of quantity. Lois had been trying to get Peter to go to the doctor and now she is inquiring about the scheduled visit.

Lois: Hi honey. How was your physical?
Peter: Good. Good. Good...yeah, yeah. Too good, in matter of fact. You know what the doctor said? Doctor said I was too healthy. You know? In too good of shape. Don't even know how. Too good of shape.
Lois: You didn't go to your physical, did you?
Peter: No. Ahm, I did not.

She knows he's full of it b/c he tried to give more details than she asked for. He did this not to enrich his communication but to lie. So he also violated the maxim of quality. If the listener is not meant to catch the flouting then it becomes a violation.

Family Guy example. All of my posts will be regarding FG and the analysis of funny quotes from the show. Anyway...

Lois: Brian, you're not wearing the sweater I made you.
Brian: Well, y'know, it's a little warm in here ...
Lois: Don we now our gay apparel!
Brian: It doesn't get much gayer than this.

Brian's response is not the preferred response so Brian must use more language to explain himself. He would've said more but Lois cut him off. Also "Well, y’know" is letting Lois know that he is about to flout the maxim of politeness  and relevance. He isn’t giving her the preferred response but he is making up for it by paying the penance (having to come up with an excuse). It should also be noted that "Brian, you're not wearing the sweater I made you" is a speech act. She is trying to get Brian to go put it on.

This excerpt is taken from Family Guy. The two characters talking are the reporters on the local news show. Tom says the first part of a well-known adjacency pair and when Diane responds with the normal answer he takes the opportunity to make fun of her. I suspect her answer was the expected one even though he acted as if it weren't. He's such an ass...

Tom Tucker: A bit of breaking news. A local family is forced out of their home by ghosts. Who are they gonna call?
Diane Simmons (sighs): Ghostbusters, Tom.
Tom Tucker: No, Diane. Their insurance company. That's just stupid what you said.”

Here is a very lengthy example of violating the maxim of relevance in a Family Guy episode. Peter goes in for a check up or something and while the doctor is telling Peter and Lois the results the doctor keeps bringing up irrelevant facts. Lois assumes he is telling them that Peter is ill. She is expecting the doctor to follow the rules of communication by staying on topic and not only that but by talking about what the listener (Lois and Peter) is interested in. Enjoy!
 

Doctor: My goodness, you'll be dead within a month.
Peter: What?
Doctor (revealing comic he was reading): Oh, Hagar the Horrible, if you keep up that lifestyle of pillaging and eating giant turkey legs, you'll be dead within a month. Now, onto you.
Peter: So, what do you think? Pretty healthy, eh?
Doctor: Well, Mr. Griffin, let's take a look at your physical results. Argh! There's a spider in here. Now, here we go. Mr Griffin, you're going to expire in a month.
Peter/Lois: Argh!
Doctor: This is your driver's licence, isn't it? Now, unfortunately, I'm afraid you're going to die...
Peter: Argh!
Doctor: ...when you watch these Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts.
Lois: Will you just tell us how Peter's health is?!
Doctor: Ah, Mr. Griffin, I'm not quite sure how to say this. Kim Bassinger? Bass singer? Bassinger? But now, onto the cancer.
Lois: Oh my goodness!
Doctor: You are a Cancer, right? You were born in July? Now onto these test results. My, they're much worse than I thought.
Peter/Lois: Oh!
Doctor: My son got a D minus on his history test. Now Mr Griffin, that liver's got to come out.
Lois: What?!
Doctor: It's been in the microwave for three minutes, it'll get dry. Now-
Lois: Please, please, we can't take any more schtick.. Please just tell us, is Peter healthy?
Doctor: Oh, yeah, he's fine, he's just really fat.

Here's the first draft of the presentation. I don't have your emails, so I'll just post it up here. See you guys on tuesday.

Semantics and Pragmatics Group Presentation

The story of our group presentation begins a long time ago in this very classroom when our heroes remembered they had a group presentation to write. Dr. Myers, their ravishing and erudite professor, had just finished class.

MF: Ok, guys. Let’s meet up next weekend on Saturday at two o’clock at the library.

MC: Ok, that sounds good. Let’s get this done. I love semantics so much that I really can’t wait to get started.

A:  Ya, let’s start learning!

One week passes. Dr. Myers has just dismissed us from our Tuesday class.

MC: So where were you guys? I was down at the library at 2 o’clock this weekend and none of you showed up.

MF: But we weren’t supposed to meet last weekend, we were supposed to meet this weekend. Remember, I said ‘next’ weekend this past Tuesday.

A: Guys, guys, I think what we are suffering here from a deictic mix-up. We all seem to have different referents for the term ‘next weekend’. Mademoiselle Fennel’s “next weekend” meant the weekend over one week from her time of speaking because she, at the time of speaking, still considered the next upcoming weekend as ‘this’ weekend. The Lady Coulter believed that the upcoming weekend was the next weekend because the past weekend was still ‘this’ weekend.

You know, this reminds me of a blog post I did over this semester. Let me tell you about it….

MC: Oh, okay. That makes sense. Well then, let’s definitely work on the project this weekend. Let’s use a date.

MF: Oh, hey, here’s a note from Shannon, our other group member. Let me read it aloud:

“Hey guys, we should meet to work on our project here on this date”. What you guys think?

A; Ok, sounds great. Let’s start learning!

MC: Ok, it’s a deal.

One week passes. Dr. Myers has just dismissed us from our Tuesday class.

MC: Ok, I’m really getting tired of this. I was here last weekend and none of you guys showed up. We are never going to get this project finished.

MF: You were here? But the deictic center from Shannon’s note was clearly at the William T. Young library, where the note was written. We waited for you there for two hours before we finally gave up.

A: Deixis strikes again!

MC: Arg, where is here anyway?

A: Ok, here. We will meet at the William T Young Library in 5 days at the Rose Street entrance. There. No mix ups anymore.

That weekend they finally met up at the library. Now they are in the lobby trying to get a study room.

A: Ok, guys, let’s get this study room and finally get started on our wonderful project. Here, I know how to handle these library types. Watch my politeness style in action.

So, umm, ya, I was just walking around today, you know, with my backpack on… full of papers and homework to do and, you know, things to study. It’d be really great if there was some sort of room where I could, what’s the word, study(?). Gee, I would really like a room to study in…. Some sort of study room. If only there was some way to get one of those…

Ok, guys, the politness strategy of ‘hinting’ did not work. Maggie, why don’t you give it a shot.

MF: Ok, guess which politeness strategy I’m going to use. I’ll give you a hint. I am going to make sure that the library worker does not lose any face.

Dear Library Student Assistant, if it’s not to much trouble, would you kindly be so kind as to kind of be gracious enough to please allow us, again only if it is not too far beyond the call of duty, to lend us a study room key for just a little while, as long as its not too much of an imposition on you, which I would understand if it is.

Ok guys, that didn’t work either. The Library Student Assistant fell asleep while I was using that negative politeness strategy.

MC: Guys, sometimes a bald request is the best request.

Give us a study room key. Thank you.

See. That worked. This reminds me of a blog entry I once did.

(Maggie Coulter blog)

MF: You know, you’re not the only one to a do a blog entry on politeness. I did one on…

(MF blog)

A: Ok ok guys, there’s room in this library for more than one politeness blogger. Let’s put this behind us and get up there and start LEARNING!

Our heroes finally sit down in their study room to work on the group project.

MC:  Ok guys, we should definitely start with something from semantics, because I’m sure we will have plenty of entries from pragmatics. Hey, like my synonyms post.

(Coulter blog bam)

A: Okay, that sounds like a good idea. We should definitely put that in the project. I’m glad we’ve finally started learning. Maggie, what blog entry would you like to contribute to this educational endeavor?

MF: Did you go to 80’s night at the Dame? Just kidding. See, that was an inappropriate response to your question in terms of adjacency pairs. What I should have done was answer your question. See, this reminds me of a blog I worked on.

(Fennel adjacency pair blog)

A: Hmm. Ya, we should put that into the presentation. Oh crap, I just realized that I’ve got to go.

MF: Ya, me too.

MC: But wait, what about the group project? What will we do?

A: It’ll be alright. We’ll just wing it. After all, semantics and pragmatics are all around us.

And now our heroes find themselves in the present moment at the front of the class talking out the final lines of the play they wrote about writing their group presentation.

(Andrew will finish this up and do the final part on either manwhore or grandma)

I'm thinking about looking at these posts:

Taxes! - adjacent pairs

Movie Reviews - performative verbs

Tautologies galore! - Place name tautologies

Trees - sense relations across languages

One of the aspects of conversation that I find interesting is repair. This is the act of clearing up problems of communication (i.e. speaking, hearing, understanding) and in CA is usually defined in terms of who initiates the repair and who ultimately resolves the confusion. In the conversation from the handout about the shopping center, this can be seen in lines 15-17. In 15, person C mistakenly asks about a typewriter instead of a tape recorder. Before A can even finish the word, B has already recognized the possible confusion and works to repair it. In 16, B initiates the repair by correcting C. Ultimately, C follows B's advice and self-corrects, effectively completing the repair. 

This week we discussed the role of extralinguistic communication in creating an equal opportunity for members of a conversation to have the floor. We discussed several models for how silence in conversation is negotiated by the members of the group, including deferential nodding that maximizes the amount of communication even during silence and an aversion to silence that leads some to finish a speaker's sentence.
Personally, I can identify with the method of providing feedback in silences that let the speaker know I am listening. That is, when acting as a listener, I feel the need to fill in the silences left by the speaker with affirmations such as "uh huh" or "oh yeah?" This not only eliminates silences, but also reaffirms the status of the speaker has having the floor. I am communicating that I am listening and understanding the story, while still maintaining my deference of the floor to the speaker.
Do you think these methods are truly cultural? Or can anyone provide exceptions (i.e. americans who nod and smile)? What are your conversational styles?

So, as in my previous post I mentioned that I have been thinking about awkward silence during conversations. I was wondering what exactly causes these awkward pauses during our conversations. My theory is that it is one of two things:

1. There is an error in communication of the transition relevance place. This means that there is a misunderstanding of who's turn it is to talk. Perhaps the speaker did not get the point across and the hearer is waiting for more information to be relayed, thus, making the entire conversation irrelevant and uncomfortable.

2. There is a element of inappropiateness within the context of the speaker's utterance. Our converstaions (her in the U.S.) have been shaped by what we call social norms. In other words, society trains us to socially operate within a certian appropriateness and when this boundary is breached, we are unable to normally function while outside the area that contains these social norms.