Pragmatics: Crash Course Linguistics #6 - Free Educational videos for Students in K-12

Pragmatics: Crash Course Linguistics #6 - By CrashCourse

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00:0-1	Hello . I'm taylor and welcome to crash course linguistics
00:02	. Sometimes we don't say exactly what we mean and
00:04	yet we still managed to understand each other if you
00:07	ask , is it raining when I come inside soaking
00:09	wet and I say great job Sherlock . You'll probably
00:12	assume that I'm being sarcastic rather than giving you a
00:14	compliment . Or if you ask me , can you
00:16	close the window ? I'll probably interpret your question as
00:19	a polite request rather than a question about my physical
00:22	ability . The reason we can figure out what's going
00:24	on is because we don't just look at words and
00:26	sentences for meaning . We also look at context .
00:29	The area of linguistics that puts meaning into context is
00:32	called pragmatics . Mm . Mhm . We don't have
00:46	100% complete information about everything that's going on when we're
00:49	talking to people . So we often need to make
00:51	some assumptions about the context in order to understand each
00:55	other . There are four main assumptions that pragmatic cysts
00:57	talk about when it comes to communication . Let's start
01:00	with great job Sherlock in some context . That could
01:03	be a statement of admiration at your friend's deductive powers
01:06	. But in other context , like if your friend
01:08	has done something especially unwise calling them , Sherlock actually
01:13	illustrates how much they're not like Sherlock Holmes . That's
01:16	because most of the time we assume that people are
01:18	trying to communicate high quality information , we know that
01:22	people can lie , but we usually assume that they're
01:25	telling the truth . So when the context and the
01:27	words clearly don't match , we can deduce a more
01:30	subtle truth like sarcasm . Let's move on to a
01:32	second assumption . Here is a gift that floating around
01:35	the Internet a while back with the caption . Look
01:37	at all these ducks , there are at least 10
01:40	. This caption is technically true . There are at
01:43	least 10 ducks . In fact , there's a whole
01:45	swarm of ducks , Probably hundreds And hundreds is definitely
01:49	consistent with at least 10 . But anyone who can
01:51	see that there are at least 10 ducks in this
01:54	shift can also see there are way more than 10
01:57	ducks and there's something so funny about the way that
02:00	the caption goes against our assumptions about communication . That
02:03	assumption is that people are giving us a sufficient quantity
02:06	of information , enough detail , but not too much
02:09	. The boring consistent with our assumption version of this
02:11	caption would have been , look at all these ducks
02:14	, There are hundreds , but the ordinary version wouldn't
02:17	have been as funny and probably wouldn't have gone as
02:20	viral . Food labels also generally align with our third
02:22	assumption . For example , if a pack of gum
02:24	says it's sugar free , it's because gums sometimes does
02:28	contain sugar , we generally assume that people will tell
02:30	us information that is of relevance . So the boring
02:33	gum packaging checks out . But our assumption about relevance
02:35	can also be used for humor or to mislead to
02:38	imply that something is relevant when it's actually not .
02:40	Like if an olive oil brand starts labelling , it's
02:43	bottles sugar free olive oil , you might think ,
02:46	wait a sec . I didn't know olive oil ever
02:48	contains sugar that might convince you to avoid other brands
02:51	of olive oil . That don't say they're sugar free
02:53	, even though none of them ever contain sugar ,
02:56	That information actually isn't relevant . Finally , let's say
02:59	you're trying to figure out whether you want to take
03:00	a particular class with a particular professor next year ,
03:03	you ask one person for advice . Well , it
03:06	certainly is a class . They say , you ask
03:09	someone else who says , Oh yeah , the professor
03:11	shows up every week and wears clothes and stands in
03:13	front of the room and talks to us and gives
03:16	us assignments . Both of these statements theoretically seem like
03:19	they should be completely unremarkable . Of course you'd expect
03:22	a class to be a class or a professor to
03:25	show up and wear clothing and give assignments . And
03:28	yet somehow , when your friends give you way less
03:30	detail than expected or lots of detail about obvious things
03:34	, it raises suspicions . What on earth is going
03:36	on with this class that they can't just tell you
03:38	if it's good or fourth assumption is that people will
03:40	say things in a manner which is as straightforward as
03:42	possible for the context . If something is good ,
03:45	we can probably just say that it's good . If
03:47	something is not so great though , we might be
03:49	reluctant to criticize it overtly . So we sometimes say
03:52	things in a less straightforward manner in order to be
03:55	more diplomatic . So when our friends say something that
03:57	miss aligns with our assumptions , that might tell us
03:59	that something's up with that Professor , these four assumptions
04:02	that what someone says will be of sufficient quality ,
04:05	quantity , relevance and manner can be summed up with
04:08	one bigger idea that we assume people are generally trying
04:11	to be cooperative with us . So these assumptions are
04:13	called the cooperative principle . They were first described by
04:16	the philosopher paul Grace . So they're also sometimes known
04:19	as Grace's maxims , but it's okay we can use
04:21	them to according to the co operative principle . Whenever
04:24	someone says something that doesn't make sense at a literal
04:27	level , we can figure out or infer what else
04:29	they could have meant assuming they're still trying to contribute
04:32	in a cooperative way to the conversation . Sometimes we
04:34	assume cooperation so quickly that we don't even really notice
04:37	it . For instance , if I say , hey
04:39	God , do you want to have a picnic and
04:40	gave says it's raining ? We can probably infer that
04:43	God was declining my picnic suggestion . But technically speaking
04:47	, God didn't actually say yes or no if we
04:50	were a computer program or a lawyer , someone else
04:52	who cares about very strict literal interpretations , we have
04:56	to point out that the picnic sentence and the reigning
04:58	sentence don't have to be related . It's only because
05:01	we have an understanding of context and cooperation that we
05:04	interpret them as related . We know that picnics involve
05:07	eating food outdoors and that it's hard to eat outdoors
05:09	in the rain . This additional meaning , layered on
05:12	top of the words were saying is known as an
05:14	implicate chur . Understanding how implicates her works can help
05:17	us make sense of the moments when someone says one
05:19	thing and means another . If God asks , can
05:21	I have a cookie and I reply , I don't
05:23	know , can you gavel quite justifiably be annoyed at
05:27	me because I'm deliberately ignoring the implicate chur that this
05:30	is a request and if you watch enough youtube videos
05:32	, you know what the subscribe button looks like and
05:34	that it sits below this video . So if I
05:36	turn to the camera and say the subscribe button is
05:39	below this video , I'm not actually telling you new
05:41	information , I'm not even asking you to subscribe ,
05:45	but you might have thought about it in this context
05:47	, pointing out the button is really saying please subscribe
05:50	without overtly saying please subscribe . I'm using implicate chur
05:54	to ask without asking . It's a way of being
05:56	polite by being in direct and languages have lots of
05:59	other strategies for being polite . Some language is at
06:02	a short word or particle to make something more polite
06:04	, like please are sorry in malay , you can
06:07	add law to a command , something like Henry ,
06:09	that law that turns it from a demand into something
06:12	more like would you please do that in mandarin ,
06:14	you tell a person to have a seat by just
06:16	saying sit sure , that probably sounds way too strong
06:19	like something you command your pet and it found strong
06:22	to mandarin speakers too . But instead of adding please
06:25	, they repeat the word tool , tool or sit
06:28	, sit , which means something like here have a
06:30	seat . Some languages have different forms of verbs or
06:32	other words depending on the social status of the person
06:35	that you're talking to in french the pronoun to is
06:39	informal and singular and vu is formal and plural .
06:42	English . Actually also used to make this distinction with
06:45	vow for the informal singular and you for the formal
06:48	or plural version of the word , making something seem
06:50	more questions like or tentative can also make it more
06:53	polite . In BSL raised eyebrows are used both to
06:56	indicate questions and also as a way of making a
06:59	request or apology more polite . While there's a wide
07:02	variety of grammatical ways to show politeness across languages ,
07:05	we also see a general tendency that adding qualifiers and
07:09	caveats known as hedges to our replies tend to be
07:12	seen as more polite . So does being indirect ,
07:14	such as asking or even just hinting rather than ordering
07:17	. So if I want you to close the window
07:19	because I'm freezing , it would be more polite to
07:21	say , would you mind closing the window or birds
07:25	chilly in here ? Then it would be just straight
07:27	up tell you close the window , we follow our
07:29	culture and our language is norms of politeness because it's
07:32	part of the whole process by which we create meaning
07:34	between us and the people were talking to both politeness
07:37	and the co operative principle are part of pragmatics .
07:40	They're part of our agreement about how we're going to
07:42	talk to each other . Pragmatics affects everything from our
07:45	words to even the very way we have those conversations
07:49	. Let's step into the thought bubble for a chat
07:51	. The flow of words between people is known as
07:53	turn taking . I say something you reply . I
07:57	reply to that back and forth . There's a lot
07:59	of variation across individuals and even across cultures as to
08:02	who does more or less of the speaking , how
08:05	long they talk for and how much overlap or silence
08:08	. There is between people talking when it comes to
08:10	overlap in conversation , we can think broadly about two
08:13	different ends of a spectrum . On one end ,
08:15	we have a conversation style where people do a lot
08:17	of overlapping talk at the same time and don't leave
08:20	much room for any silence after the other person is
08:23	finished speaking . This is known as high involvement interaction
08:26	style . On the other end we have a conversational
08:29	style where people do not overlap and leave space after
08:32	someone else's finished before beginning their turn . This is
08:35	known as high considerate Nous interaction style . You might
08:38	tend to be more high involvement and have a friend
08:40	who is high considerate nous and it makes you feel
08:42	like you're doing all the conversational , heavy lifting .
08:45	If you tend towards high considerate nous , you might
08:47	feel like your friend doesn't let you get a word
08:49	in edgewise , there's some general trends in different areas
08:52	to speakers of celta and Japanese tend to have more
08:55	overlap than speakers of lao and danish . Even within
08:58	american english . New Yorkers tend to be more high
09:00	involvement and Californians tend to be more high considerate nous
09:03	. These differences are measured in just milliseconds which shows
09:06	how sensitive humans can be to turn taking differences and
09:09	all the other little pragmatic nuances that make up politeness
09:12	. Thanks thought bubble , I appreciate it . So
09:14	when we look at how people use language and conversation
09:17	, we see that it's less like one person baking
09:20	in all the meaning they want to convey in their
09:21	words and handing it over to another person and more
09:24	like we're using context to bake a cake as a
09:26	team and just like everyone has their own way of
09:29	making a carrot cake . The individual conversation styles and
09:33	cultural norms mean each conversation or interaction can turn out
09:36	a little bit differently . Next time on crash course
09:39	linguistics will look specifically at how your social reality affects
09:42	your linguistic choices . Thanks for watching this episode of
09:45	crash course linguistics . If you want to help keep
09:47	all crash course for you for everybody forever you can
09:51	join our community on Patreon

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