Speak about the strategies of communication and cooperative principles

In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people interact with one another.

As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it, it states, "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."^[1] Though phrased as a prescriptive command, the principle is intended as a description of how people normally behave in conversation.

Listeners and speakers must speak cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a particular way. The cooperative principle describes how effective communication in conversation is achieved in common social situations.

The cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims, called the Gricean maxims, describing specific rational principles observed by people who obey the cooperative principle; these principles enable effective communication.^[2] Grice proposed four conversational maxims that arise from the pragmatics of natural language.^[2] The Gricean Maxims are a way to explain the link between utterances and what is understood from them.

Obeying the cooperative principle

People who obey the cooperative principle in their language use will make sure that what they say in a conversation furthers the purpose of that conversation. Obviously, the requirements of different types of conversations will be different.

The cooperative principle goes both ways: speakers (generally) observe the cooperative principle, and listeners (generally) assume that speakers are observing it. This allows for the possibility ofimplicatures, which are meanings that are not explicitly conveyed in what is said, but that can nonetheless be inferred. For example, if Alice points out that Bill is not present, and Carol replies that Bill has a cold, then there is an implicature that the cold is the reason, or at least a possible reason, for Bill's absence; this is because Carol's comment is not cooperative — does not contribute to the conversation — unless her point is that Bill's cold is or might be the reason for his absence. (This is covered specifically by the Maxim of Relevance).

The term communication strategy was introduced by Selinker in 1972,^[4] and the first systematic analysis of communication strategies was made by Varadi in 1973.^[5][6] There were various other studies in the 1970s, but the real boom in communication strategy scholarship came in the 1980s. This decade saw a flurry of papers describing and analyzing communication strategies, and saw Ellen Bialystok link communication strategies to her general theory of second-language acquisition.^[6] There was more activity in the 1990s with a collection of papers by Kasper and Kellerman^[7] and a review article by Dörnyei and Scott,^[8] but there has been relatively little research on the subject since then.

Strategies

No comprehensive list of strategies has been agreed on by researchers in second-language acquisition,^[3] but some commonly used strategies have been observed:

Paraphrasing

This refers to learners using different words or phrases to express their intended meaning. For example, if learners do not know the word grandfather they may paraphrase it by saying "my father's father".

Substitution

Learners may avoid a problematic word by using a different one, for example substituting the irregular verb make with the regular verb ask. The regularity of "ask" makes it easier to use correctly.^[2]

Coining new words

This refers to learners creating new words or phrases for words that they do not know. For example, a learner might refer to an art gallery as a "picture place".^[2]

Language switch

Learners may insert a word from their first language into a sentence, and hope that their interlocutor will understand.^[3][9]

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1253