Deborah Schiffrin Editor

Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications Deborah Schiffrin editor Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications Deborah Schiffrin editor Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C. 20057 BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTICE Since this series has been variously and confusingly cited as: George- town University Monographic Series on Languages and Linguistics, Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, Reports of the Annual Round Table Meetings on Linguistics and Language Study, etc., beginning with the 1973 volume, the title of the series was changed. The new title of the series includes the year of a Round Table and omits both the monograph number and the meeting number, thus: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1984, with the regular abbreviation GURT '84. Full bibliographic references should show the form: Kempson, Ruth M. 1984. Pragmatics, anaphora, and logical form. In: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1984. Edited by Deborah Schiffrin. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 1-10. Copyright (§) 1984 by Georgetown University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Number: 58-31607 ISBN 0-87840-119-9 ISSN 0196-7207 CONTENTS Welcoming Remarks James E. Alatis Dean, School of Languages and Linguistics vii Introduction Deborah Schiffrin Chair, Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1984 ix Meaning and Use Ruth M. Kempson Pragmatics, anaphora, and logical form 1 Laurence R. Horn Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature 11 William Labov Intensity 43 Michael L. Geis On semantic and pragmatic competence 71 Form and Function Sandra A. Thompson 'Subordination' in formal and informal discourse 85 Wallace Chafe Speaking, writing, and prescriptivism 95 Gillian Sankoff Substrate and universals in the Tok Pisin verb phrase 104 in iv / Contents Talmy Givdn The pragmatics of referentiality 120 Jerrold M. Sadock Whither radical pragmatics? 139 Meaning and Form Richard Hudson A psychologically and socially plausible theory of language structure 150 Richard Bauman The making and breaking of context in West Texas oral anecdotes 160 Thomas A. Sebeok Enter textuality: Echoes from the extraterrestrial 175 Michael Silverstein On the pragmatic 'poetry' of prose: Parallelism, repetition, and cohesive structure in the time course of dyadic conversation 181 Contexts: Institutional and Interpersonal Thomas Kochman The politics of politeness: Social warrants in mainstream American public etiquette 200 Don H. Zimmerman Talk and its occasion: The case of calling the police 210 Alan Davies Idealization in sociolinguistics: The choice of the standard dialect 229 Ellen F. Prince Language and the law: Reference, stress, and context 240 Howard Giles and Mary Anne Fitzpatrick Personal, group, and couple identities: Towards a relational context for the study of language attitudes and linguistic forms 253 John 3. Gumperz Communicative competence revisited 278 v / Contents Susan Gal Phonological style in bilingualism: The interaction of structure and use 290 The Acquisition of Meaning, Form, and Use George A. Miller Some comments on the subjective lexicon 303 Marilyn Shatz A song without music and other stories: How cognitive process constraints influence children's oral and written narratives 313 Elinor Ochs Clarification and culture 325 WELCOMING REMARKS James E. Alatis Dean, School of Languages and Linguistics Georgetown University Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of Georgetown University and the School of Languages and Lin- guistics to the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT '84). The chairman of this year's conference is Dr. Deborah Schiffrin, who has chosen for this, the 35th annual Georgetown University Round Table, the theme: 'Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications.' The program she has prepared is impres- sive, and the superb organization of all the conference details is her work and that of her able assistant, Susan M. Hoyle. Like many of you, I was fortunate enough to attend some of the preconference sessions earlier today. One cannot help but remark that, once again, the preconference sessions present almost as wide and as interesting a range of topics as the conference itself. This is a tribute to the energy and enthusiasm of Deborah Schiffrin and our good colleagues who dedicated so much time and effort to the success of the presessions; to all these colleagues, I would like to offer our heartfelt thanks. I especially want to extend a hearty welcome to the members of the Inter-Agency Round Table of the U.S. Government. I assure them of my intention to continue the tradition of acting as their host at all future Georgetown University Round Tables on Languages and Lin- guistics, for as long as they wish. It is a pleasure to see that, as in previous years, some of the best scholars in linguistics and related disciplines have assembled for this year's Round Table, thus ensuring a most exciting and productive conference. One of the few prerogatives reserved to the Dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics is the honor of thanking our speakers for having agreed to come, many from very long distances, to share the results of their research with us. You do Georgetown University a great honor, and render a great service to our colleagues at this Round Table. Thank you for coming. I do not wish to delay unduly what will surely be a very profitable and Vll viii / Welcoming Remarks productive session. Before concluding, however, I am pleased to note that other segments of society have come to appreciate both language teaching and linguistics. Thanks to the dedicated research and skilled writing of scholars in these fields, the world has begun to realize what vital ingredients language teaching and linguistics are in the creation of the mutual understanding necessary for people to function constructively and beneficially in a multicultural, interdependent society. Surely then, in a world that all too frequently edges toward the brink, I am very pleased to welcome you to a conference that will contribute to the educational goals which we all cherish and the sense of mission which we all have. INTRODUCTION The theme of this year's Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics is 'Meaning, form, and use in context: Lin- guistic applications.' Because this is so broad a theme, and one which can be approached from so many different directions, I would like to say a few words about how we will be approaching meaning, form and use of language in context during the next few days at the Round Table. A continuing task in any academic discipline is carving out a special domain to be a focus of inquiry, and finding a special set of problems for which to seek resolution. Sometimes, it seems that these tasks repeat themselves over and over again, as we attempt to find some area of scholarship (which necessarily gets smaller and smaller) within which to achieve expertise. During this progressive—and inevitable—narrowing of our interests, our larger, more holistic frameworks may seem to disappear. Our initial assumptions and definitions, concepts and ideas, theories and meta- theories, may seem to be overshadowed by specific findings within a very small area of research. But our larger frameworks never really totally lose their salience. Rather, they continue to provide implicit models—because it is within such frameworks that answers are sought and problems are resolved. Even more basically, it is within such frameworks that our questions and our problems actually take shape. In a way, our disciplinary paradigms are like cultures: just as cultures provide, organize, and sustain our perception of reality, our paradigms provide, organize, and sustain our academic realities. They do so not only by providing the questions that we ask and the problems that we try to resolve, but by helping to form the methods that we bring to bear on those problems. Our disciplinary paradigms also frame the interpreta- tions that we provide for our findings. In addition, our paradigms help define the everyday issues to which we seek to relate and apply our findings. And just as we accept our cultural constructs without question, so too, do we accept our academic constructs. These comments are all relevant to the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics because meaning, form, and use of language, in context, have all been domains of inquiry for many very different academic disciplines, each providing its own sets of paradigms, IX x / Introduction models, and constructs: linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, to name just a few. Furthermore, within those disciplines, an inevitable division of labor often results in different subareas, each of which focuses on one or another of those domains. In linguistics, for example, we have the familiar three-part distinction among semantics (for meaning), syntax (for form), and pragmatics (for use). Focus on language in context actually undergoes further subdivi- sion as different levels of contextual frames are pulled apart from one another. For example, we differentiate sociolinguistics, which focuses on social context, from psycholinguistics, which focuses on cognitive and perceptual contexts; ethnolinguistics, which locates language in cultural context, from discourse analysis, which (at least in one very narrow interpretation) focuses on linguistic context. The more we become partitioned by our particular academic worlds, however, the more our overall academic world view becomes confined to the paradigms, models, and constructs specific to our own relatively narrow fields of interest. In a way, of course, such partitioning is a strength, because it allows us to understand and describe, perhaps even explain, something that has been perplexing. Thus, such partitioning allows us to catch at least a glimmer of insight into some small part of an often confusing world—and this is certainly a strength.

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