Image fron canva.com Paul Grice’s Cooperative Principle, proposed in his 1975 William James Lectures, outlines how people generally cooperate in conversation to achieve mutual understanding. Grice suggested that participants in a conversation implicitly agree to cooperate with one another, aiming to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. This underlying agreement, or “Cooperative Principle,” is elaboratedContinueContinue reading “G is for Grice’s Cooperative Principle”
Tag Archives: Discourse
P is for Politeness
The post which follows is an article which appeared in the IATEFL Business English Special Interest Group Newsletter in 2015
N is for New Information
Definition New information is information that is assumed by the speaker not to be known to or assumed by the addressee, or previously established in the discourse. Discussion New information typically is placed late in the sentence, and has a high amount of stress placed on the words representing it. Examples (English) In the following exchange, the stressed wordsContinueContinue reading “N is for New Information”
C is for Coherence
Watch this much discussed video of a young beauty pageant contestant answering a question posed by the judges. Thinking Tasks 1. Is Miss South Carolina coherent or not? 2. Read this text and say if it is coherent. Try to answer the following questions: Where was published? Who authored it? What was the author’sContinueContinue reading “C is for Coherence”
G is for Genre
Definition Genre ( /ˈʒɑːnrə/ or /ˈdʒɑːnrə/; from French, genre French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ʁ], “kind” or “sort”, from Latin: genus (stem gener-), Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres areContinueContinue reading “G is for Genre”