Slide ENGLISH SEMANTICS MEANING AND INTENTIONS

Group 6
Meaning- intentions


PRESENTERS






1. Tran Thi Thu Hien
2. Vo Thi My Hanh
3. Hoang Le Hanh
4. Nguyen Thi Huong
5. Pham Phuong Hoa







6. Nguyen Duong Ha
7. Do Thi Hong Diep
8. Le Ngoc Han
9. Vu Lan Huong
10. Hoang Thi Diem Hang

Instructor: Dr. HA CAM TAM

OUTLINE
PART I : INTRODUCTION
I.
Communication
II.
Accidental information transmission
III.
Intentional Communication
PART II : MEANING(NN) AND INTENTIONS
I.
Meaning
II.
Intentions
III.
The link between Meaning (NN) and Intentions
1.
2.
3.

The first hypothesis
The second hypothesis
The third hypothesis

PART III : CONCLUSION


MEANING AND INTENTIONS
PART I: INTRODUCTION

I. Communication

HOW DO HUMANS COMMUNICATE?


How do humans communicate?

with language

Linguistic communication

without language.

Non-Linguistic communication


☺ Humans: capable of inferring (‘working
out’, ‘reasoning’) and decoding a
speaker’s
intended meaning.
Non-human
communication

Human comunication

> Is an automatic coding- > Relies to a massive
decoding process.
extent on the intensions
behind communicative

behaviour, and the
inferential recognition of
those intensions.


A quizzical look and a
glance at 2 tables
↓
“Which table do you
want to sit at?”

A fake silver
↓
“I want to sit at the table
inside.”

 These are in virtue of the intentions behind
the behavior in question.


What is communication?

Communication as something like
“the transmission of information”


TYPES OF INFORMATION
TRANSMISSION

ACCIDENTAL

INTENTIONAL

COVERT

OVERT


Examples


Jack and Lily
meet for a coffee.
Jack smells
( rather strongly)
of sweat. She
concludes that
he has run to the
café.


II. Accidental information tranmission




1 What is accidental
information
transmission ?
2. Accidental

information
transmission and
non- verbal
communication




1. What is accidental
information
In linguistics, accidental information
transmission
?
transmission is the additional information we

gather when someone speaks — from their
word choice, their syntax, their body
language, etc. — which was not part of what
was actually said and which the speaker may
have intended to conceal.
(Deirdre Wilson, Relevance and Understanding,
in Language and Understanding, Oxford
University Press, 1992)




Accidental
information
transmission.

e.g. information about
age, social origins,
mood, attitudes,
betrayed by accent,
intonation, facial
expression, vocabulary ,
etc. This need not
involve any speaker’s
intentions, or be part of
what the speaker wanted
to share with us.




2.Non-linguistics
communication and
Lily: How do you
feel about this
AIT
dish? (Lily has just cooked this)

Jack ( faking a smile, and lying): It’s
absolutely delicious, really….
 Jack: How are you enjoy your
geography course?
Lily: So so ( looks at Jack and sighs)



Non-linguistic
communication and
(Ekman 1989: 159).
AIT
“There is no evidence about precisely
what type of information is conveyed
when, during an on-going social
interaction, one person sees a facial
expression of emotion on another
person’s face”


III. Intentional Communication
1. Covert intentional communication
2. Overt intentional communication


1. Covert intentional communication
Definition of covert communication

Features of covert communication


Definition of Covert
communication


Covert means hidden, covered or secret

What is Covert
communication????



Definition of Covert
communication


Covert communication has been defined as a
“case of communication where the intention of
the speaker is to alter the cognitive environment
of the hearer, i.e. to make a set of assumptions
more manifest to her, without making this
intention mutually manifest” (Tanaka, 1994:41).


Features of covert
communication


2. Overt intentional communication
Definition of overt intentional
communication

Features of overt intentional
communication



Definition of Overt
Intentional
Communication

Overt means ostensive, not secret or hidden;
done or shown openly

What is overt intentional
communication (Ostensive-inferential
communication)???





Definition of Overt
Communication
Overt communication is a form of

communication in which the
communicator produces a stimulus
which makes it mutually manifest to
communicator and audience that
the communicator intends, by
means of this stimulus, to make
manifest or more manifest to the
audience a set of assumptions. (D.
Wilson, & D. Sperber (ed.)

2000 Metarepresentations. OUP, Oxford)


Features of Overt Communication
Show the communicator’s informative intentions
Involve the use of an ostensive stimulus
The force of an utterance recognized by the audience