Linguistic Analysis Using the Gricean Cooperative Principle on a Television Interview

A Pragmatic Analysis of Vague Language in the News Articles on the Iraqi Security Crisis

Theory and Practice in Language Studies ◽

10.17507/tpls.0705.01 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 7 (5) ◽

pp. 327 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Huda H. Khalil

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Linguistic Analysis ◽

Political Language ◽

Cooperative Principle ◽

Common Features ◽

Pragmatic Analysis ◽

The Common ◽

The One ◽

Vague Language

There is a well-known belief among linguists and discourse analysts saying that vague language is one of the common features of political language. In order for the linguists to include vague language within the domain of linguistic analysis, they started formulating vagueness within the principles of the pragmalinguistic theory. However, the pragmatic perspective had not been paid much attention yet. With the accelerated events in the Middle East, the best way to get information is to appreciate some news items because they are objective facts that are accessible and easy to comprehend for everybody (Pan, 2012, p. 2530). Iraq has witnessed many periods of serious escalation among which is the one started in April 2014 in which, the ISIS influence started expanding suddenly and rapidly causing infrastructure damage and causalities. The present paper aims at investigating vague expressions in news articles on the security situation in Iraq in the period mentioned above by means of Grice’s cooperative principle to find out the purposes vague language serves and its effects on these news articles.

Download Full-text

Discourse analysis, pragmatics and the dramatic ‘character: Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul

Language and Literature ◽

10.1177/096394709300200201 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 79-99 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Neil Bennison

Keyword(s):

Discourse Analysis ◽

Character Development ◽

Linguistic Analysis ◽

Character Traits ◽

Critical Material ◽

Cooperative Principle ◽

Dramatic Character ◽

Wide Range ◽

Turn Taking ◽

Topic Shift

Is there any way in which characters in dramatic texts may be considered a worthwhile object of criticism? The dearth of recent critical material in this area would suggest not, but the aim of this article is to demonstrate that the study of dramatic character may be effectively achieved by the application of theoretical principles derived from the linguistic analysis of conversation. The difficulties of accounting precisely for how readers of the play text get from the words on the page to judgements concerning the ‘personalities' of characters are overcome, to some extent, by the analysis of their conversational behaviour and using the powerful interpretative apparatus of discourse analysis and pragmatics to this end. As a focus for discussion, the character of Anderson, in Stoppard's play, Professional Foul, has been chosen, and a wide range of approaches taken from discourse analysis and pragmatics is used to identify in particular scenes the ways in which four prominent character traits are deducible from his conversational behaviour. The analysis begins with an examination of turn-length, turn-taking and topic-shift before applying pragmatic theories such as Grice's Cooperative Principle, Brown and Levinson's Politeness Phenomenon and Leech's Politeness Principle. In addition, this article addresses the problematic notion of character ‘development’ and argues that this may be accounted for in terms of a change in the conversational strategies used by a character, from which changes in attitude are inferable.

Download Full-text