Quiz on Pragmatics

What does pragmatics study?

• The rules of grammar

• The structure of words

• Language use in context

• The origin of language

Which of the following best describes a speech act?

• A grammatical sentence

• An act performed via speaking

• A narrative in storytelling

• A metaphor in literature

"Can you pass the salt?" is an example of which type of speech act?

• Declarative

• Commissive

• Directive

• Expressive

In the utterance "He is a bit slow," the speaker might actually mean "He is stupid." This is an example of:

• Deixis

• Implicature

• Entailment

• Reference

Which philosopher is most associated with the theory of speech acts?

• Noam Chomsky

• John Searle

• Paul Grice

• Ferdinand de Saussure

What is deixis concerned with?

• Word meaning in dictionaries

• Words that point to time, place, or person

• Changes in sentence structures

• Hidden meanings in utterances

Which of the following is a temporal deictic expression?

• Here

• Yesterday

• You

• That

"He said that she would come tomorrow" contains how many deictic expressions?

• 1

• 2

• 3

• 4

According to Grice's Cooperative Principle, which of the following is not a conversational maxim?

• Maxim of Quantity

• Maxim of Relevance

• Maxim of Manner

• Maxim of Politeness

Saying "It's cold in here" when you want someone to close the window is an example of:

• A violation of the Maxim of Quantity

• A flouting of the Maxim of Relation

• A directive speech act

• Both B and C