“Expressive meaning” has many different “meanings” if you should ask to explain the definition of. The definition of expressive is showing feeling, or full of meaning. It is of, or relating to, or characterized by expression. It effectively conveys thoughts or feelings. Expressive meaning is full of meaning or feelings. It serves to express or indicate meaning or feeling by showing or communicating meaning or feeling effectively. For someone to be expressive it means they would be described by a person or by their behavior as expressive, meaning that their behavior clearly indicates their feelings or intentions. What’s expressive meaning? It is words like oops and ouch. Both of these words convey a certain kind of meaning, neither referring to things in the world. Nor do they help determine conditions under which a sentence serves the immediate expression of subjective sensations, emotions, affections, evaluations or attitudes. Expressions with expressive meaning are called expressives. More examples of this is father vs dad, dad is less formal, different respect and different emotions… alcohol vs booze is more casual.. and eating vs devouring is different in respect and mannerism. Expressive language and wordplay are embodied in a special word class called “expressives”. This is a basic class of words that are distinct from verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in that they can’t be subjected to logical negation. They describe noises, colours, light patterns, shapes, movements, sensations, and emotions. There is a difference between expressive and propositional meaning. When a translation is described as ‘inaccurate’, it is often the propositional meaning that is being called into question. Expressive meaning can’t be judged as true or false. This is because expressive meaning relates to the speaker’s feeling or attitude rather than to what words and utterance refers to.
Posts
Blog Post 6-Introduction
The difference between a sentence and an utterance is that while a sentence conveys a complete meaning through a combination of clauses, an utterance conveys a meaning through a few words that may not even make a complete clause. To understand an utterance, we need to distinguish between what the words mean and what are meant by the words. In the case of telling sentence versus utterance meaning apart, the differences are purely pragmatic rather than semantic. Pragmatics analyzes the meaning of words in relation to the context. Utterances are context dependent. In order to evaluate an utterance you should know the time and place of utterances as well as who is speaking and what they are talking about. However, sentences are typically involved with the meaning of words without understanding the context in which it occurs. Sentence meaning refers to the semantic content of a sentence, denoting that the meaning of the sentence is derived from the words themselves rather than the context. Sentences are typically in both written and spoken languages while utterances are used in spoken language. However, utterances may be represented in the written form. Several instances come into play when picking apart an utterance, whether it be change in tone, facial expressions, stress, or intonation. The hearer, using these implicated social cues, will be able to pick up on what the speaker is intending on saying. But, behind a screen you may not catch this. What you say may not be what you intend to mean. In Olivia Rodrigo’s popular song, “Good For You,” she appears to be taking a hit on her former love interest who has moved on very quickly from their relationship. Her lyrics are full of sarcastic remarks, implying that “good for you” doesn’t really mean “good for you.” Several remarks in the song point out that she isn’t actually happy for him, rather bitter about how her past love interest acted after the breakup. In my research, I will be using a questionnaire to asses the difference between sentence and utterance meanings. I want to be able to decipher instances in which people use the same phrase but in different contexts- sincere and sarcasm.
Blog Post #5
Someone can violate the Gricean maxims to avoid an uncomfortable conversation at Thanksgiving dinner.
Guest A may mention their support for an unpopular candidate in the next election.
Guest B will try to steer the conversation away from politics by refusing to provide information about who they intend to vote for, intentionally flouting the Maxim of Quantity. By not supplying this information, the message is sent that Guest B does not want to talk about the election.
Another way is to change the subject, asking who cooked a certain dish and complimenting them on it, violating the Relevance maxim. This signals that Guest B would rather talk about something else.
In these ways, Guest B shows that they are unwilling to ‘cooperate’ in further conversation on the topic, because the expected responses are intentionally withheld.
Blog post 5
During thanksgiving dinners, there are controversial topics that many family members would like to avoid, but there is always someone who has to bring them up (Guest A). Guest A brings up the topic of Abortion and their thoughts on it, which starts to make the rest of the family uncomfortable. Guest B then completely changes the subject and responds the Guest A by bringing up whos going to be hosting Christmas this year. When Guest B changes the subject it violates Grices maxim of relevance because they aren’t continuing the subject of abortion, but completely switching the topic.
Blog Post #6-Final Intro
Humor is a literary device that I’m sure everyone is familiar with. We use humor everyday when interacting with family, friends, and even people that we may have just met. There are lots of ways to be humorous and oftentimes this attempt to be funny comes from 3 major components; irony, sarcasm, and satire. The 3 are all very closely tied, varying slightly. These differences are what I will explore through this paper. So far there is a fair amount of data and research that analyzes works from unrelated fields that use the 3 components in varying ways. There are others that provide examples outlined with clear definitions of irony, sarcasm, and satire, making the differences clear enough for me to report on. Using this information I will first outline the details of each variable comparing and contrasting. Next I will break down experiments that have already been done that aim to answer the question of when humans acquire this skill of using irony or even when they start to understand it. Children often gain a sense of humor at a young age and I’m curious to see whether their jokes are intentional and whether they understand the mechanics of irony without even realizing it. Another point in this paper will be what happens when people with a neurodivergence cannot recognize humor and make the distinction in conversation of seriousness vs. joking. People that have autism and other syndromes that make it hard to pick up on social cues, especially in language, have the hardest time grasping these specific skills. I hope to find articles and papers that show how SLPs and other professionals can be helpful in these areas and perhaps by learning how SLPs try to explain humor, it can be beneficial to the overall goal of this paper. What’s great about this topic is that it combines my genuine confusion between irony, sarcasm, and satire, curiosity about innate human nature, and desire to better understand my role as a future SLP, all while investigating semantics and pragmatics.
blog post 5
We all have those moments when we are sitting at the dinner table on Thanksgiving and that one family member brings up a controversial topic/conversation. When a guest (A) mentions something out of pocket or uncomfortable for example guess (A) may start up a conversation by talking about how marijuana should be legal in all states because it has helped the crime rate decrease and health benefits. While guest (B) may use the “maxim of manners’ ‘ to initiate clear, brief, and efficient use of the language to avoid inappropriate conversation guest (B) states that marijuana will be harmful and corrupt the youth. This created a discrepancy between the two guests but the Grice Maxims of conversation proposed that every speaker of every language operates with several default assumptions about how conversation works to avoid “ambiguity and obscurity.” While the maxim of manners is important we can also use the maxims of conversation and point out if the conversation is lacking adequate evidence or if it does not say what we believe to be false. This way communication can be conveyed in an appropriate way and everyone can understand what is being said compared to what is being implicated.
Blog post 5
At the thanksgiving dinner table, there is a possibility that a family member or guest of the family can bring up a controversial topic that makes everyone uncomfortable or that family members do not like to give their opinion for many reasons. Given in a situation where in the thanksgiving dinner person A brings the controversial topic about racism that makes everyone uncomfortable. Guest (b)can use Grice maxims in order to change the topic by stating something that everyone at the dinner table can contribute or relate to for example discussing how they feel about the school’s covid restrictions and vaccinations in order to change the topic and ignore the topic of racism. The relevance/ relation of the unwelcomed contribution is what brings the Grice maxims into play since it breaks the relation/ relevance of the dinner topic.
Blog Post 5
At most family dinners it is common for someone to bring up a topic that not everyone shares the same opinions on. Guest (A) brings up a controversial topic, one that if someone responded could cause an issue or doesn’t want to get involved in the conversation at hand. For example, Guest (A) may be bringing up politics at the table, which is notably a touchy subject for some. Guest (B) can intentionally disobey a maxim as long as he or she provides enough context indicators for the hearer to notice. This is called flouting a maxim and is used to indirectly express information. The maxim that Guest (B) violates is the maxim of relation. Guest (B) could say “The stuffing is great!”By saying something like such, it allows us to avoid confrontation directly and imply something (such as getting off topic) without having to keep going at a potentially argumentative conversation.
Corn Sandwich
At the Thanksgiving table, it’s possible and often is the case that family members may bring up things that may be controversial or uncomfortable for people around the table. It’s a good thing Aunt Betty made the Thanksgiving staple, corn sandwiches. These delicious sandwiches will be your way out to this kind of situation.
If person (A) says something uncomfortable, Person (B) may respond with something like,
“Aunt Betty. These corn sandwiches are fantastic! Did you do something differently to them?”
This automatically changes the conversation and violates Grice’s maxim of relevance. This maxim states that a response must be relevant to carry a conversation and by being irrelevant and talking about the corn sandwiches rather than engaging in the controversial topic, you are violating this rule and getting it across to person (A) that you would rather not talk about whatever they brought up.
Blog Post 5
Thanksgiving dinner can be the perfect opportunity to implement Grice’s Maxims of Conversation. Out of the four principles, quality, quantity, relation, and manner, I believe that the most effective to use would be relation. This principle simply means to keep the what you are saying relevant to the conversation at hand and not to veer off into random topics. For example, if Person A brought up the pandemic and vaccine mandates and it seemed like it would cause controversy, Person B could violate this principle by asking them something completely different, like how they are doing at work or how their children are if they have any. This would steer the conversation away from a controversial subject and make it obvious that it is something that they would not like to discuss.
