The pragmatics of English

Referring to a “grammar of English” is not uncommon, and a “phonology of English”, a “morphology of English” or a “semantics of English” all sound plausible. But what about a “pragmatics of English”?

A preliminary and not inconsiderable problem in thinking about the possibility of a pragmatics of English is to get a grasp on what “English” is. The “English language” is not in itself a neatly identifiable entity. Consider the view “English is the language of England”. Historically, the roots of English are not in England at all, but in the old Germanic dialects of what is now north-western Germany. Once it became established in Britain, roughly 450 BC onwards, it was relatively restricted geographically: in the 16th century there were approximately three million speakers of English, nearly all indeed based in England. However, today there are well over 300 million native speakers of English – speakers in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on. Strictly speaking then, we should now be talking about “Englishes”. And we should not forget to mention a further 300 million regularly speaking English as a second language (i.e. in addition to their native language), and the huge number of people learning it as a foreign language, mainly to communicate with other non-native speakers of English (it is even said that there are more Chinese people learning English than there are native speakers of English in the USA!).

Thus, most English is produced, heard and read outside England. One might argue that English has a common core of words and structures that are recognized as being English. The problem here is that not everybody would recognize the same things as being English. Even within England today there are dialectal differences that make identifying that common core difficult. One might appeal to some notion such as Standard English, claiming it represents the common core. But whose standard English are we talking about – British, American, Australian? And there is the issue of what is meant by standard. Appeals to such notions frequently slide from talk of a uniform set of features to talk of a set of features which a particular group considers best. Answers to that question typically involve the social evaluation of language (e.g. British people tend to think that the British standard is best). All these issues present a problem: if we cannot agree about what constitutes English, how can we study it? To study anything requires that there be an object to study. The answer is simply to accept that there is variation in English and there are various views as to what counts as English. We should try to accommodate this variation and those views in our descriptions rather than obliterating them. In this light, aiming at a “pragmatics of English” is not viable. What one stands a better chance of contributing to, however, is a “pragmatics of Englishes”.

There has been a significant step forward towards a pragmatics of Englishes, namely, Anne Barron and Klaus P. Schneider’s The Pragmatics of Irish English (2005). This seems to be the first book to focus exclusively on the pragmatics of a national variety of English. Sociolinguists and dialectologists have contributed to descriptions of Englishes (see, for example, Trudgill and Hannah’s popular International English: a Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 2002). But such descriptions avoid delving into anything pragmatic (except perhaps brief mentions of features such as tag questions or terms of address and their functions in context). Barron and Schneider’s (2005) volume aims to plug this gap. They bring together a number of empirical studies examining Irish English in various contexts and taking account of socio-cultural norms of interaction. They cover a wide range of pragmatic phenomena, including discourse markers, silence, mitigation, speech acts (responding to thanks, offering), politeness and politeness strategies. Relative indirectness turns out to be a feature of Irish English. Schneider and Barron suggest that their volume could be seen as the beginning of a new discipline, variational pragmatics, which they suggest lies at the interface of pragmatics and dialectology.

Barron and Schneider’s volume is a landmark. By assembling a group of relevant studies, it begins to fi ll a descriptive gap. Moreover, it stimulated the production of further studies, many of which will be mentioned here. Of course, there is much still to be done. For example, they did not consider the complete range of speech acts, of discourse markers, and so on. Also, one might argue that the book does not quite have the broad scope that one might envisage for a pragmatics of Englishes. The following are some of the areas that one might consider:

1. Metapragmatics. This focuses on the language used in a particular English to talk about pragmatic phenomena, and also how such language interacts with the phenomena it talks about. It could include, for example, metapragmatic labels (e.g. speech act labels such as request, threat, compliment) or metapragmatic comments (e.g. “that was an order”, “that was rude”). Such labels and comments can provide insights into beliefs about and the attitudes towards pragmatic phenomena, as well as the real effects that having those beliefs/attitudes can have on English, its social contexts and the people who speak it.

2. Pragmatic forms. This focuses on the nature of the pragmatic forms (forms that conventionally carry pragmatic meanings) of a particular English. For example, could you tell me the time? is so conventionalized as a request that it would seem perverse to respond to the literal meaning with yes or no. The notion of “forms” here should be taken broadly – it can vary from a grammatical particle to a genre, and it can include forms of non-verbal behavior.

3. Pragmatic functions. This focuses on the nature of the pragmatic functions of a particular English, for example, its range of speech acts and how individual speech acts perform particular functions.

4. Pragmatic contexts. This focuses on the nature of the pragmatic contexts of a particular English, that is to say, the nature of the contexts within which pragmatic forms and functions interact, for example, how a job interview, a service encounter or family mealtime interaction is constituted by particular pragmatic forms and functions.

5. Pragmatic variation. This focuses on how metapragmatics, pragma-forms, pragma-functions and pragma-contexts vary. Three dimensions of variation are important: (1) inter-English variation (similarities or differences amongst Englishes), (2) intra-English variation (similarities or differences amongst the sub-varieties of a particular English), and (3) diachronic variation in English (similarities or differences amongst the historical periods of a particular English, including how pragmatic phenomena have evolved both within a particular English and across Englishes).

We have listed these areas separately for expository convenience, but they, of course, all interact with each other.