FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
What figure of speech combines contradictory terms?
Oxymoron
Who developed NSM?
Anna Wierzbicka
Who is associated with Speech Act Theory?
John L. Austin
What are the three major types of context?
Situational, co-textual, and background context
What is positive face?
The desire to be liked and approved of.
Complete the synaesthetic expression: _ colours
e.g. warm colours
What are semantic primes?
Universal, indefinable building blocks of meaning.
What is a locutionary act?
The act of saying something.
What is the difference between sentence meaning and utterance meaning?
Sentence meaning is context-independent; utterance meaning depends on context and speaker intention.
Which type of face is threatened by an order?
"Give me your notes."
Negative face.
What figure of speech is illustrated by "I am reading Shakespeare"?
Metonymy
Name two semantic primes.
e.g. I, YOU, KNOW, THINK, SAY...
What is a perlocutionary act?
The effect achieved by saying something.
If A is true and B must also be true, what is the relation called?
Entailment
A customer in a café says:
"I want a coffee."
The sentence is grammatically correct. Why might it still sound impolite in English?
Because it violates English politeness norms by being too direct.
What metonymic relation is found in "The White House isn't saying anything"?
Place for institution
What problem does NSM try to avoid in dictionary definitions?
Definitional circularity
A professor says to a student:
"You may leave now."
What type of speech act is this?
A directive (=granting permission)
What type of implicature is context-dependent?
Conversational implicature
A Polish speaker answers: "How are you?" with a detailed description of their health problems.
What type of pragmatic problem may occur?
Pragmatic failure.
What is the difference between metaphor and metonymy?
Metaphor maps one conceptual domain onto another; metonymy links entities within the same conceptual domain.
Why are GOOD and BAD treated as semantic primes rather than defined through more abstract concepts?
Because they are intuitively understandable and cannot be reduced naturally to simpler meanings.
Why is the utterance
"I now pronounce you husband and wife"
successful only in certain situations?
Because the felicity conditions must be satisfied (appropriate speaker, procedure and context)
Can two speakers utter the same sentence but communicate different implicatures? Why?
Yes, because implicatures depend on context and speaker intentions.
True or False?
The more polite an utterance is, the less face-threatening it becomes.
False