I
have spent some time reading ‘Meaning in Interaction’ by Jenny Thomas and
noting down any ideas, theories, or statements that I believe might be relevant
to, or helpful in further analysis of our love letters with regards to
pragmatics (and possibly other areas, for example, lexis). I intend to look
over the findings from my original analysis of the letters, and decide whether
anything I’ve learnt from this book can explain specific occurrences or trends
I have noticed.
Ideas
(p.63-64) ‘Grice’s Conversational Maxims’:
Quantity: -‘Make your contribution
as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange)’
-‘Don’t make it more informative than required’ – May be used to explain
the level/ lack of detailed information in each letter, taking into
consideration the contextual elements surrounding the relationships between
writer and reader of each letter.
Relation: - ‘Be relevant’. – May be useful in explaining the concise nature of
some of the letters, and the focus on topics immediately related to the
relationship being represented, ie. Why the army is a theme in M’s letter to
MJ/ why Beethoven’s letter talks of nothing but his love for the recipient,
etc.
Manner: - ‘Avoid obscurity of expression.’
-
‘Avoid
ambiguity.’
-
‘Be
brief.’
-
‘Be
orderly.’ – Avoidance of ambiguity might explain the candidness of particularly
older love letters, eg. Beethoven. It will be interesting to look and see if
anything said in any of the letters is in
any way ambiguous, and what this might say about the writer/ the letter/ the
relationship. The idea that communicators should be ‘orderly’ will be useful
when looking at the generic love letter conventions and layouts which appear in
various places in our data.
Indirectness
-
(p.120)
‘[indirectness is]’costly’ in the sense that an indirect utterance takes longer
for the…[writer]…to produce’.
-
‘it is
‘risky’ in the sense that the hearer may not understand what the speaker is
getting at’.
-
‘they may
wish to avoid hurting someone else’. – This last one in particular might be
used to explain the indirectness in M’s letter to MJ, where the idea that he
may not return from the army is not said explicitly. Otherwise, these can
relate to and explain the levels of directness/indirectness found in each letter.
-
(p.120-121)
‘there are things which (arguably)…human beings find impossible to express.
This could be because certain concepts beyond our present
understanding…[this]…applies to the expression of very powerful emotions, such
as love’. – Will be either proven or disproven by looking at each of the texts
to see how direct each letter is in conveying love.
-
(p.128)
‘If you feel close to someone, because…you know him or her well or are similar
in terms of age, social class… you feel less need to employ indirectness’.
-
Reasons
for using directness: (p.143) ‘To increase the force of one’s message’, ‘The
desire to make one’s language more/less interesting’, ‘people may use
indirectness because they enjoy having fun with language’.
-
ALSO: (p.144) ‘If your hearer has to work at understanding the message, he or
she has a greater ‘investment’ in that message’. – The above reasons can be
used to explain why eg. Beethoven and Henry VIII have used metaphor and simile
in their letters.
Politeness
-
(p.157)
Brown and Levinson (1987 [1978]) – ‘politeness is interpreted as a strategy
employed by a speaker to achieve a variety of goals, such as prompting or
maintaining harmonious relations’. – Can be used to explain the keenness to
keep the recipient of the letter in good humour, the emphasis on the
faithfulness of their love and requests for reassurance that the love is still
reciprocated.
-
(p.159)
Leech’s ‘Politeness Principle 1’ – ‘Minimise…the expression of impolite beliefs;
Maximise…the expression of polite beliefs’ – Could be useful for analysing
Henry VIII’s (and general) avoidance of discussion of physical love in these
letters (may be particularly relevant for Henry VIII considering the context of
his relationship with Anne Boleyn).
Explicit Commentary
-
Much of
our analysis of the pragmatics of these love letters is/will be based on our
own ‘explicit commentary’ (p.206) as Thomas addresses, as we can’t ask writers
like Henry VIII for example, what it was he actually meant by what he was
writing. We have to rely on our own explicit commentary to bring us to
conclusions about the meanings of the language used in these letters.
Thomas’ book has
proven very useful with regards to finding relevant literature to back up and
add to details I have already found in our data. I intend to select a couple
more pieces of literature to study in the same way, and will make reference to
some of the points they make in my final analysis, which will be displayed in
our group presentation.
References
Thomas,
J. (1995), Meaning In Interaction: An
Introduction To Pragmatics, New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc., pp. 63-4,
120-1, 128, 143, 157, 159, 206
Now that you have reached Milestone 2, please can you add an extra page or pages as suggested so that you can keep all your finding together which will be less public, and leave the landing page for quick updates?
ReplyDeleteGlad you have found this source useful; I hoped you would - and it will be interesting to see how far the ideas you have identified are applicable to your data.
ReplyDeleteDo please do as we have suggested and add some pages to your blog, though!