Metapragmatics

Introduction

Language use involves choices. We have examined the consequences of such choices for language users. One point that we have only alluded to so far is that language users are self-aware: we are aware not only of the choices we make when using language, but also the choices of others.

Consider the following extract from the column You’ve got male in an Australian newspaper, where the columnist is reporting on an interaction between a married couple that he recently witnessed. The columnist begins by describing relevant contextual details about the incident, which involves his friend, Jeff, who is hosting, along with his wife, a group of friends for a barbeque lunch. Jeff has just offered a piece of steak to the dog, but it has been rejected by the dog, so Jeff has picked it up and turned to walk back to the kitchen:

[8.1]

His wife then emasculated him in front of his guests. “Don’t put that back with the steak. Put it in the bin.” Jeff froze on the spot, his face a mask of incredulity. I instantly saw his dilemma.

He could meekly let the comment go through to the keeper and proceed silently to the bin in the interests of a harmonious lunch, thereby running the risk that his guests would go away thinking that he’s someone who regularly scavenges for food the dog has slobbered over and his wife has to admonish him for it.

Or he could have pointed out to his wife how utterly absurd it was for her to suggest he would do such a thing, thereby running the risk of upsetting her in front of the guests, spoiling the mood of the lunch, or seen to be protesting too much to hide the fact that he is indeed an eater of rejected dog food.

Jeff toughed it out with a bit of banter, but I could see in his eyes that a little piece of him died that day.

By now we hope you will be able to readily observe that the above passage interweaves allusions to numerous pragmatic phenomena, including particular referring expressions, pragmatic meanings and inferences that go beyond what is said, including not only what is implicated but also assumptions about presumed common ground, pragmatic acts such as admonishing and ordering, as well as indications of what others think of Jeff and his relationship with his wife (i.e. interpersonal relations and attitudes). The columnist is, of course, not an objective observer of events in making such comments, but rather is occupying a particular participation footing (namely, that of a side participant who is friends with one of the actors involved). Moreover, there are allusions to social discourses about what it means to be a (married) man in contemporary Australian life, which arise in part through the way in which the columnist makes reference to the other protagonist alongside Jeff as “his wife”, thereby identifying her vis-à-vis a particular social category or role, rather than using her first name (in clear contrast to references to “Jeff”). Underpinning these social discourses are numerous assumptions about what constitutes an ideal relationship between married couples, as well as (stereotypical) assumptions about how such relationships are often assumed to play out in reality. Such assumptions might be widely accessible to users of English around the world, but inevitably you, our readers, will have your own “take” on this commentary. And this is only how it should be. Pragmatics matters for all of us, not just for the columnist and his mate, a point we have made repeatedly.

An important phenomenon underpinning this anecdote is the way in which the columnist displays awareness of the ways in which participants at the party themselves would be aware of a whole raft of pragmatic meanings, pragmatic acts, interpersonal relations, attitudes and evaluations, as well as social discourses that go way beyond what the wife was reported to have said. In reporting on possible interpretations of these, the columnist thus makes a number of assumptions about what the others might have been thinking, including what the other guests might have been thinking Jeff’s wife thinks of Jeff, as well as what Jeff might have been thinking the other guests were thinking about what Jeff’s wife thinks of Jeff, and so on. It is often difficult to talk about this kind of reflexive thinking, yet it is something we easily accomplish in the course of using language. This kind of reflexivity, or recursive awareness, lies at the heart of what is studied in metapragmatics.

We first introduce in more detail what is encompassed by metapragmatics, and the notion of reflexive awareness which lies at its core, before outlining the three main dimensions of reflexive awareness that underpin the pragmatic phenomena we have discussed. In our concluding, we discuss how such reflexivity is drawn upon in negotiating pragmatic meanings, pragmatic acts and interpersonal relations and attitudes, and so on, in interaction.