Sociolinguistics & Discourse Review Sheet Answers

Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What is the overriding principle of conversations?

Cooperation. If the participants in a conversation are committed to achieving maximally effective conversations, they will try to follow the rules governing conversations.

2. What are the two general types of rules that govern what people say?

• Rules that govern the character of contributions
• Rules for turn taking

3. Paul Grice, articulated four rules for efficient speech, known as conversational maxims. What are they?

• The Maxim of Quality – Speakers should tell the truth as they know it or acknowledge the uncertainty of what they are telling you.
• The Maxim of Manner – Speakers should strive to be clear and unambiguous, not verbose and disorganized.
• The Maxim of Quantity – Say all that is necessary or required but no more.
• The Maxim of Relation – Speakers must confine themselves to what is relevant.

4. List the different types of speech acts identified by Searle.

• Assertives – The speaker says that something is the case.
• Directives – The speaker tries to get the listener to do something.
• Commissives – The speaker commits to doing something.
• Expressives - The speaker makes his/her feelings known.
• Declarations – The speaker attempts to bring about a change in the rality so as to make the reality correspond to what is declared.

5. Taking into account the Given-New strategy, identify the new information in the following sentence: The umbrella in the car was green.

The fact that it is green.

6. Define the term anaphora and explain what an anaphora resolution refers to.

Anaphora is a relationship between two words or phrases where the meaning of one (the antecedent) is linked to the later one (the anaphor).
Anaphora resolution is the problem of resolving what a pronoun or a noun phrase refers to.

7. How does the term accent differ from the term dialect?

An accent refers only to the way words are pronounced. Dialects can differ in multiple ways, not just pronunciation. They can differ

• phonologically
• lexically
• syntactically
• pragmatically