Deck 14: How Do We Use Language Introduction

Question 1

In the statement, "Boris-you´re fired for riding a bicycle!" the speaker is bringing about a new state of affairs. According to Searle, this falls into which speech act category?

A)Declaratives
B)Directives
C)Representatives
D)Expressives
E)Commissives

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Chambers, Tanenhaus, and Magnuson gave participants temporarily ambiguous sentences such as "Pour the egg in the bowl over the flour." The eggs in the scene could be in liquid form or whole. The results showed that the listeners:

A)Did not restrict their attention to any particular object
B)Restricted their attention to objects that were not physically compatible with what they heard
C)Did not pay attention to the ambiguous sentence
D)Restricted their attention to the egg in liquid form regardless of the sentence
E)Restricted their attention to objects that were physically compatible with what they heard

Answer 2

E

Question 3

People´s recognition of speech can be influenced by the lip movements of the speaker. This is known as the:

A)Fixedness effect
B)Linguistic effect
C)McGurk effect
D)Functional fixedness effect
E)Clever Hans effect

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Filled pauses during a conversation indicate:

A)A wish for the speaker to stop speaking
B)The listener´s wish to end the conversation
C)The speaker´s wish to end the conversation
D)A wish for the speaker to continue speaking
E)A wish for the listener to start speaking

Question 5

The perlocutionary force of an utterance is the:

A)Its literal meaning
B)Its implicit meaning
C)The effect the utterance actually has on the actions and beliefs of the listener
D)Its referential effect
E)What the speaker is trying to get done with the utterance

Question 6

Which of the following analyses was pioneered by ethnomethodologists, who examine social behavior in its natural setting, and aims to uncover the general properties of the organization of conversation without applying rules?

A)Discourse analysis
B)Conversation analysis
C)Termination analysis
D)Rationalization analysis
E)Center-embedding analysis

Question 7

During a conversation one speaker is making sounds ("hmm hmm"), words ("yep"), or gestures (e.g., nodding) to show that he or she is still listening, is understanding, or is agreeing. This is a form of:

A)Back-channel communication
B)Just-cause transmissions
C)Forward-channel communication
D)Unfilled pauses
E)Blocking hesitations

Question 8

Be clear: avoid obscurity, ambiguity, wordiness, and disorder in your language. This is the maxim of:

A)Quality
B)Reliance
C)Relevance
D)Quantity
E)Manner

Question 9

Speaker A says something, speaker B has a turn, speaker A then has another turn, and so on. This is the aspect of conversation known as:

A)Back-channel communication
B)Turn-taking
C)Vocal play
D)Semantic restoration
E)Lexical entertainment

Question 10

In one experiment, speakers described simple objects (e.g., triangles) to other people. Some information was known only to the speakers (e.g., that there was also another, larger triangle in the scene concealed from the listeners) Wardlow Lane et al. called this:

A)Privileged information
B)Lexical entertainment
C)Semantic restoration
D)Back-channel communication
E)Just-cause transmissions

Question 11

In the statement, "I´m sorry to hear that Boris only rides a bicycle," the speaker wishes to reveal his or her psychological state. According to Searle, this falls into which speech act category?

A)Commissives
B)Declaratives
C)Expressives
D)Directives
E)Representatives

Question 12

Garrod and Anderson observed people cooperating in attempting to solve a computer-generated maze game. The pairs of speakers very quickly adopted similar forms of description-a phenomenon called:

A)Semantical recreation
B)Pragmatic syndrome
C)Lexical entrainment
D)Telegraphic detachment
E)Vocal play

Question 13

Make your contributions as informative as is required, but no more. This is the maxim of:

A)Quality
B)Reliance
C)Quantity
D)Relevance
E)Manner

Question 14

Grice proposed that in conversations speakers and listeners cooperate to make the conversation meaningful and purposeful. That is, we adhere to a:

A)Principle of economy
B)Fractioning principle
C)Cooperative principle
D)Principle of autonomy
E)Common-store principle

Question 15

In the English language what percentage of requests are indirect?

A)About 45%
B)About 50%
C)Over 90%
D)Under 75%
E)1

Question 16

Straightforward utterances, where the intention of the speaker is revealed in the words used, are called:

A)Indirect speech acts
B)Inferences
C)Implicit speech acts
D)Direct speech acts
E)Implicatures

Question 17

In the question, "Does Boris ride a bicycle?" the speaker is trying to get the listener to do something, in this case answer the question or give information. According to Searle, this falls into which speech act category?

A)Representatives
B)Commissives
C)Expressives
D)Declaratives
E)Directives

Question 18

The illocutionary force of an utterance is:

A)Its literal meaning
B)Its implicit meaning
C)Its referential effect
D)What the speaker is trying to get done with the utterance
E)The effect the utterance actually has on the actions and beliefs of the listener

Question 19

According to Austin and Searle, every time we speak we are trying to get things done with our utterances. We perform:

A)A conversation
B)A speech act
C)Dialog
D)Batonicly
E)Rime