Читать книгу Pragmatics and its Applications to TESOL and SLA - Salvatore Attardo - Страница 20

You might say, all this is fine and dandy, but I am a teacher, what do I care about various theories of meaning? We are glad you asked!

Consider the following two arguments: the main purpose of language is to convey information. Information is meaning. Knowing about meaning is a little like knowing about the engine in your car. Pickering’s attitude toward her vehicles is roughly that: what do I care about carburetors and gaskets? All I want is to drive to school to teach my students. When her car caught on fire at an intersection, she realized that perhaps oil changes might have been a good idea (true story, by the way). As a result, she now gets her oil changed and car checked regularly. Knowing about how meaning works, for an English teacher, is like changing the oil in your car: it is not the primary purpose of the activity, and most of the time you can ignore it, but when things go wrong, you end up stranded at an intersection in East Texas, with flames coming out of your hood.

So, when do things go wrong with meaning? Plenty of times, as it turns out. Misunderstandings and miscommunications happen all the time. Consider the following example from an advice columnist:

(5) Annette Richmond (Forbes Magazine, 2013)

One way to avoid misunderstandings with the boss is to make sure you clarify what you think that she means. For instance you might want to say “I understand you want frequent updates. How often does that mean? Is it once a week or every few days?” If you’re the boss try to be specific. Then everyone will have the same expectations. (our emphasis, SA/LP)

It’s easy to imagine a situation in which, two months later, the boss is upset because the employee only provided updates every other week, whereas the boss would have wanted weekly updates. Here, remembering that “frequent” is another scalar adjective along a continuum with “rare,” “infrequent,” “occasional,” “frequent,” and “daily” or “constant” might have helped.

Even more frequently, when two interlocutors do not share the same context, background information, or presuppositions, serious communication problems may occur. For example, consider the following situation, discussed in Gumperz (1982). At a British airport, a group of workers (primarily male and British) was found to have a conflictual relationship with the servers of the cafeteria, who were primarily female and East Indian. The men perceived the cafeteria ladies as rude and aggressive, whereas they perceived the men as unreasonable. It turns out that in Indian English the tone distinction between || gravy || vs. || gravy || does not exist and so the women were saying || gravy || (meaning, would you like gravy?) but the men would have expected || gravy || and so perceived || gravy || as rude (roughly meaning, it’s gravy, take it or leave it). See also Gumperz (1982, p. 173; Pickering, 2018).

So, in conclusion, while it may be OK to ignore the issues around semantics and pragmatics, when communication goes off without problems, as soon as there is a problem, knowing what is happening becomes crucial to finding solutions and even to enhancing social justice. There is a saying that fish know nothing about the water they swim in. Water is so natural to them that they take it for granted. Communication for us is like water for the fish: as long as it’s there you can afford to not pay attention to it, but if it goes missing, you are, well, like a fish out of water.