Education of the republic of uzbekistan state world languages university

Chapter 2 The notion of communicative intention
2.1 Theories of some scholars to communicative intention
Communication is simply the act of transferring information from one place, person or group to another. Every communication involves (at least) one sender, a message and a recipient. This may sound simple, but communication is actually a very complex subject. The transmission of the message from sender to recipient can be affected by a huge range of things. These include our emotions, the cultural situation, the medium used to communicate, and even our location. The complexity is why good communication skills are considered so desirable by employers around the world: accurate, effective and unambiguous communication is actually extremely hard. The root of the word “communication” in Latin is communicare, which means to share, or to make common (Weekley, 1967). Communication is defined as the process of understanding and sharing meaning (Pearson & Nelson, 2000).
In everyday life we communicate. This could be: body communication, communication by the eyes, or by dress, car and so on. The well known classification of communication is that into verbal and non-verbal communication. In verbal communication people decode the meaning of people's language. Theory of communication describes communication as speech acts which produce communicative intentions. Theorists of semantics and pragmatics describe meaning differently.⁶ Communicative intention is one of the phenomena helping hearers to recognize the meaning of an utterance.
We will explore Grices and Relevance Theorists' positions (Sperber, Wilson, Carston). It is well known that every operative meaning is not literal meaning, and that in many cases context helps us determine it. For example, the utterance "I cut it all" could mean many things: I cut all my hair, or all bushes, all grass and so on. Context and pragmatic saturation can help us determine the operative meaning: "I cut all my hair". For Relevance Theorists ostensive elements can help the hearer to recognize operative meanings. But for Grice ostensive elements are not sufficient, we must say for example: "I cut it all". It could mean that "I cut a lot of my hair", but that must not implicate that I am bald. When a speaker utters: "Do you want coffee?", it means that the speaker wants to give the hearer some coffee and not that the hearer should get it by himself. Or when the speaker says: "Turn off the light", in the context in which he is very tired and lies in bed, the hearer could recognize the speaker's intention to sleep. In this example we can see that the pragmatic domain gives us more information than semantic meaning. Articulations as communicative intentions and implicit and explicit content help us determine operative meaning and enrich meaning.
When we are decoding utterance meaning, since we are communicating, it could make a difference between linguistic and communicating meaning. Grice describes the double nature of the utterance as "What is said" and "What is implicated". Grice and Relevance Theorists describe the meaning of those elements differently. For Grice "What is said" is determined by truth-conditions and "what is implicated" is determined by the communicative intention. Let's see an example: X: "Do you want to play bridge?" Y: "I have a headache". Explicature: "Y has a headache at this moment, and he can't play bridge." Implicature: "Person Y would not be playing bridge". "What is said" is that Y has a headache, and "what is implicated" is that he couldn't play bridge; his intention is to have a rest. Explicature is part of utterance content, but implicature is deduced. We could say that person Y wouldn't say that he couldn't play bridge, but he implicated it.
Relevance Theorists make a difference between Saying and Implicating. It is not truth-conditions that are necessary for Saying: what they say equals explicit content. It depends on cognitive information, and they say that "What is said" or Saying is located between linguistic meaning and cognitive information. In their opinion, explicatures consist of causal and temporal conclusions. Implicatures consist of implicated premises and conclusions. Why are intentions important for communication? They are important because of the nature of utterances, i.e. their ambiguity. The recognition of an intention tells us about illocutionary force and improves communication. An illocutionary intention differs from a perlocutionary intention. The recognition of a perlocutionary intention is not important for producing a perlocutionary effect. The fulfillment of an illocutionary intention consists in the recognition of the intention (Searle, Strawson). For Grice, a reflexive intention is an intention which serves for producing effects by the recognition of the intention. He describes a reflexive communicative intention in this way: speaker S thinks something by utterance p only if he intends to produce some effects on the public by means of a speech act, i.e. when the public recognizes his intention. But Grice allows that the hearer could recognize semantic meaning even if she doesn't know the speaker's communicative intention. It is enough that the public believes that the speaker truly believes in the sentences he utters. Grice's basic idea is that we are able to present the meaning of a sentence in terms of speaker meaning and non-semantic terms- communicative intentions.
For Relevance Theorists, intention determines the truth-conditions of the utterance content. Meaning determination is a process of inference which aims at the articulation of the speaker's intention. They make a difference between informative intention and communicative intention. The first is the intention to present a manifest group of presuppositions which serves to present the meaning of an utterance, and the second is a higher class of intentions by which the informative intention is shown, manifested to the hearer and to the listener. They think that semantic meaning could not present relevant meaning. The pragmatic meaning of an utterance is a sufficient and precise indicator of the speakers meaning. There are subintentions, too. Those are intentions to perform an utterance, locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Bach noticed that pragmatic intentions which include subintentions depend on mutual contextual beliefs, beliefs about the hearer's beliefs, beliefs about the social and physical context, and the speaker's desires and beliefs (Bach, 1984: 237)
At the center of our study of communication is the relationship that involves interaction between participants. This definition serves us well with its emphasis on the process, which we’ll examine in depth across this text, of coming to understand and share another’s point of view effectively. The first key word in this definition is process. A process is a dynamic activity that is hard to describe because it changes (Pearson & Nelson, 2000). Imagine you are alone in your kitchen thinking. Someone you know (say, your mother) enters the kitchen and you talk briefly. What has changed? Now, imagine that your mother is joined by someone else, someone you haven’t met before—and this stranger listens intently as you speak, almost as if you were giving a speech. What has changed? Your perspective might change, and you might watch your words more closely. The feedback or response from your mother and the stranger (who are, in essence, your audience) may cause you to reevaluate what you are saying. When we interact, all these factors—and many more—influence the process of communication.
The second key word is understanding: “To understand is to perceive, to interpret, and to relate our perception and interpretation to what we already know.” (McLean, 2003) If a friend tells you a story about falling off a bike, what image comes to mind? Now your friend points out the window and you see a motorcycle lying on the ground. Understanding the words and the concepts or objects they refer to is an important part of the communication process.
Next comes the word sharing. Sharing means doing something together with one or more people. You may share a joint activity, as when you share in compiling a report; or you may benefit jointly from a resource, as when you and several coworkers share a pizza. In communication, sharing occurs when you convey thoughts, feelings, ideas, or insights to others. You can also share with yourself (a process called intrapersonal communication) when you bring ideas to consciousness, ponder how you feel about something, or figure out the solution to a problem and have a classic “Aha!” moment when something becomes clear.
Finally, meaning is what we share through communication. The word “bike” represents both a bicycle and a short name for a motorcycle. By looking at the context the word is used in and by asking questions, we can discover the shared meaning of the word and understand the message.
Communication might be defined as the transfer of – facts, information, ideas, suggestions, orders, requests, grievances etc. from one person to another so as to impart a complete understanding of the subject matter of communication to the recipient thereof; the desired response from the recipient to such communication. Some popular definitions of communication are given below:
“Communication is a way that one organisation member shares meaning and understanding with another.” -Koontz and O’Donnell
“Communication is the process of passing information and understanding from one person to another.” -Keith Davis
“Communication is the sum of the things one person does when he wants to create understanding in the mind of another. It is a bridge of meaning. It involves a systematic and continuous process of telling, listening and understanding.” Louis A. Allen

2.2 Types of communicative intention

The communicative intention is what a person tries to achieve when he speaks, writes or emits a message in some way. That is to say, when we speak or write we do so with a purpose, be it to ask, convince, explain, ask or tell, among other things. In other words, the communicative intention is the goal that every participant in a communicative act pursues through their speech acts. For example, if one person asks another “do you have time?”, The communicative intention of the sender is to know what time it is.
For the communicative process to take place fully, the sender and receiver of the message must share a common code (the sender encodes the message and the receiver decodes it, that is, interprets and understands it).
This code is not only the language, it is also all the cultural and social interpretations that both the sender and the receiver share; Hence, when learning a new language, certain situations of language use must also be learned, rather than simply linguistic constructions. Depending on what we want to do when we communicate, the intention will be different. It is not the same to persuade than to command, or to ask what to tell. In each of these communicative variants, language changes. Communication is based on the fact that the human being wants to achieve certain ends through the use of language, and for that he will use specific words, gestures or intonation that allow him to transmit the message in the way he wishes. When a person wants to persuade or convince someone else, they use the persuasive function of language. With words, you want the other person to do what you want. This intention is very clear in the advertisements, where they try to convince us to buy or use a particular product.
When someone wants to convince, when speaking they will not only use expressions such as “please” or “could you?”, “Would you like it?”, “Would like”, but all their gestures and tone of voice, as well as looks, they will try to persuade the recipient. Through the arguments it will be tried that the receiver understands the point of view of the emitter. In the vast majority of cases it is an unconscious process, although there are people who carry out this communicative intention with full consciousness.
Communication, very broadly, is classified into the following two categories: Formal communication, Informal communication. Formal communication is that, which takes place in an enterprise, in a formal manner via the scalar chain or the line of command. Informal communication, also called grapevine communication, takes place through informal groups, existing inside or outside the formal organizational structure. This communication has no formal manner of routing. It might spread from any person to any person, in any manner and in any direction, like the structuring of a grapevine.
When the intention is to inform, the language will be more objective since it is about giving information to the listener. For example, when news is released: “Luis arrived last night”, “Mariela received her as a lawyer last month”, “an earthquake is a telluric movement or an earth tremor where the earth’s crust shakes abruptly and briefly”. The function of the language that is used for this communicative intention is the referential one, since it focuses on the context. Teachers often use informational intent in their classes.
The appealing function of language is related to the appealing intention, which is when it comes to ordering something from someone, or generating a specific reaction in the receiver of the message. Therefore, this intention is focused on the receiver. The language used will be clear and concise, as direct as possible. Thus, when a person says “silence”, he is telling others to be quiet. Authority figures (such as mothers, fathers, teachers and professors) regularly use the appellative intention: “bring all of today’s exercises tomorrow”, “eat all the food”, “don’t be late”, “you have to study these points better for the exam”.
But the appeal intention is also used when an institution, official or agency is asked to resolve a requirement, or when we write a letter or document requesting something, since a response is expected from the recipient.
This communicative intention is evident when in the speech we want to warn about something or warn of some danger or risk. Arguments that explain such dangers are also used to inform the recipient or recipients. It also makes use of the appellate function, as the receiver is expected to heed said warning: “Danger, recovery area”, “if you pass by they can assault you”, “as you arrive again late you will not have the allowance for this month”. Communicative intention types and examples
It is the intention of the speaker when expressing his feelings or his state of mind: “I feel sad”, “What a great day”, “I am in love”, “I do not like snails”. The function of language is expressive.
The phatic intention is to maintain contact with others, or to verify that the receiver is listening. For example: “do you hear me?”, “Hello, hello!”.
Through language we want to convey beauty, an artistic feeling, emotions difficult to express by other means. It is common in poetic texts: “I want to be, crying, the gardener / of the land you occupy and manure, / companion of the soul, so early” (Miguel Hernández).
“She did not love me, but who I wanted to be; and he always reproached me for not having fulfilled my wishes ”(André Gide).
Metalinguistics is said when information is given or requested about the language, about its uses, syntax, structure, etc. Thus, when a person says: “grammar is the set of rules and norms for speaking and writing a language correctly”, he is speaking with a metalinguistic intention. Below are several sentences with different communicative intentions:
-Please, cover your mouth when you cough, so you do not infect anyone else (appellative communicative intention).
-I would love for us to have an ice cream! What do you think? You want? You fancy? Say yes! (persuasive communicative intention).
-Mom, I don’t feel well, my stomach and head hurt, and I think I’m going to vomit (emotional communicative intention).
-The notes will be published on the first Monday in February (informative communicative intention).
-If you ignore it, I will be forced to take more drastic measures (communicative warning intention).
-Hello! With whom I speak? (phatic communicative intention).
Syntax is the part of linguistics that studies the relationship of words and the functions they fulfill in speech (metalinguistic communicative intention). Communicative intention types and examples:
– “Once upon a time / a good little wolf / who was mistreated / all the lambs. / And there was also / a bad prince, / a beautiful witch / and an honest pirate. / All these things / once upon a time / when I dreamed / a world upside down ”, José Agustín Goytisolo (poetic communicative intention).

Interpersonal communication is the sharing of information, feelings, and meaning through verbal and nonverbal messages: it is face-to-face communication. Interpersonal communication is about more than simply what is said - the language used - but also about how it is conveyed and the nonverbal cues communicated through tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and body language. Communication occurs when two or more people are in the same area and are aware of each other's presence, no matter how subtle or unintentional. Without communication, an observer may get an idea of the other's role, emotional state, personality, and/or goals based by indicators such as posture, facial expression, and clothes. People get signals through nonverbal behavior even when no communication is intended. Humor is an effective and significant part of interpersonal relations. Humor has always had a slight role in maintaining or ending relationships, and in relational conflict management. People make their addressee laugh by cracking a joke, receive their approval, and win them over or gain self-confidence.Besides the fact that humor facilitate the solution of many problems in relationships, the partners may choose to use humor at the breaking points of their relationships, and this may cause the relationship to end.Expressions (actions) are created by using various functions of humor in relationships (Affiliative humor, Self-enhancing humor, Aggressive humor, Self-defeating humor). Since it facilitates the hardships, humor has always been the most popular way of dealing with stuff in relationship conflicts. Humor is most frequently used when solving problems. However, this may lead to adverse outcomes if the partners vulnerabilities are neglected. A sense of humor on a common ground is one of the essential building stones of a sound relationship.

2.3 Humor effect in communication
We all know that humor plays many roles in our lives. Not only is it useful to entertain and to amuse, but it can also serve to break the ice and put people at ease. It can ameliorate awkward situations and assuage tense ones. For this reason, it's viable as a consideration in communicating with diplomacy and tact. There is not a large body of research on humor, but much of it centers on humor in organizations, like the workplace.
Extending the important role of interpersonal dynamics in the workplace, humor is perceived as having the opposite effect. Rather than damaging workplace morale, humor can contribute to human flourishing and well-being. Research suggests it "can help initiate and perpetuate a cycle of individual and social-level positive affect." In its role as contributing to the creation of positive affect, or feelings in others, it fits within our definitions of diplomacy and tact laid out at the onset of this article.
Humor events are defined as "discrete social behaviors that a producer intentionally creates for an audience that influences audience positive affect." Such audience positive affect can be transmitted to others through emotional contagion, or the idea that emotional states are contagious; to illustrate, consider how you feel when you are around someone who is depressed, versus someone who is happy and uplifting. Further, such shared positive affect will contribute to constructing an environment conducive to additional humor events. In this way, humor is circular; therefore, humor events in isolation do not need to have much effect on individual or group general sentiment in order to influence individual and group outcomes. Instead, humor events are part of a cyclical and cumulative process. Individual humor events within this process each have an incremental influence on individual and group feeling (affect), and also lay a foundation for additional humor events.
Researchers offer various definitions and functions of humor. Some suggest that it "consists of amusing communications that produce positive emotions and cognitions in the individual, group, or organization." Others assert that humor is "any event shared by an agent (e.g. an employee) with another individual (i.e. a target) that is intended to be amusing to the target and that the target perceives as an intentional act." Further, researchers have identified several functions of humor, including coping, stress-relief, defense mechanism, bonding and cohesiveness, ingratiation, power, control, aggression, and the subversion of power.
Some scholars have devoted some time to considering how humor works, and have developed theories explaining it. Perhaps the most supported and useful is known as incongruity theory, which asserts that humor "results from the experience of incongruity and its appreciation or resolution." For example, stand-alone jokes work because they simultaneously evoke two seemingly unrelated systems of expectation. The "punch line" bridges these systems to resolve the incongruity. We experience pleasure in making an unexpected connection within this resolution. Such a connection has been likened to the feeling associated with solving a puzzle, and to cognitive "play." Incongruity and its appreciation exist in comments, quips, puns, and other behaviors, not only stand-alone jokes. Sarcastic comments contain incongruity between what is spoken and what is intended. Violations of social norms are incongruous in expected, versus actual, behaviors.
Research on the physiological effects of humor on the brain indicate that it stimulates the same centers as rewards (dopamine), and other pleasures, including smiling, laughter, and positive emotional processing. This body of research suggests a strong relationship between cognitive processing of humor and positive emotions.
A theory known as affective events theory (AET) suggests things that happen at work that cause individuals to experience positive or negative emotion, or affect, are affective events. Affective events are important, because they strongly influence workplace behaviors and outcomes, including attitudes, through the emotions and moods they trigger. The Wheel Model of Humor, which we will discuss in a moment, relies on the assumption that humor at work falls into the category of affective events. With regard to this article, it then stands to reason that humor, through its triggering of pleasure centers and positive emotions, aids in communicating with diplomacy and tact by contributing to the creation of positive feelings in others.
The Wheel Model of Humor argues that individual humor events between just two people are important for a few reasons. First, they create positive feelings (positive affect) in the other person. Second, this positive affect can be shared with others, influencing a group or the two-person dynamic. These researchers argue that stronger relationships are built through this social transmission of positive affect, within the social context of the humor. In other words, if you and a colleague in your department share humor, not only will you build a stronger relationship with that colleague, but the entire department can benefit.
The Wheel Model of Humor also relies on the idea of emotional contagion, which suggests that emotions are contagious. People mimic each other's emotional expressions, thus essentially sharing in the feeling of others' emotions. Both pleasant and less pleasant emotions can be shared in this way; these researchers argue that humor events do an important job of setting the stage for contagion of positive emotions. Humor events can result in behaviors such as smiling and laughter, which can easily be mimicked and thus shared. Laughter has some unique properties of its own. It rarely occurs when one is alone and often occurs in groups. Further, its social contagion capabilities are so strong that hearing the sound of laughter, even stripped of its context, is sufficient to induce laughter in others. Additionally, humor activates areas of the brain associated with laughter production, and the sound of laughter triggers brain regions associated with laughter production; humor will make you laugh, and the sound of hearing you laugh will make others laugh, physiologically. The Wheel Model of Humor suggests that humor events occur within a wheel that perpetuates itself, as wheels do. A positive humor event triggers a state of positive affect. A state of positive affect leads to an emotional display. The emotional display generates group or two-person positive affect. This generated positive affect leads to constructing a humor environment. And finally, this humor environment creates a space for a positive humor event, and the wheel is complete. This Wheel only applies insofar as the humor event is intended to create positive affect in others. Mocking, aggressive or hostile teasing, ridicule, and sarcasm, meant to belittle or disparage others or to emphasize hierarchical differences, do not intend to increase positive affect in the target or in the workplace. That said, however, sometimes what appears to be hostile or mocking to an outside observer is perceived as amusing by the recipient. Research has found that sometimes bad-mouthing superiors to same-level colleagues can be a powerful means of stimulating positive affect, and put-down humor can be important to developing a sense of identity and community. Other research found that those who targeted others often found themselves targeted, perhaps indicative of a balance between dishing-it-out and taking-it that helps to maintain the group's harmony. While some of these expressions may appear hostile or aggressive to outsiders, for in-group members, they are serving an important purpose. Thus, it is important that whether humor is positive or negative should be defined by the people within the social context in which it resides.
Additional research on humor has examined the role of humor in the socialization process of new employees. This research found humor to be very important to the socialization process. It is critical to negotiating relationships with other colleagues, and plays a role as a newcomer begins her assigned tasks. Humor can also indicate appropriate and inappropriate behavior to newcomers. Further, it can be used for newcomers' integration into the workplace, and can be used by key workplace members to mold new employees into the company's own way of doing things. In short, humor can be both a regulating and coping mechanism in workplace socialization.
In sum, humor in the workplace is a good thing all around. It makes people feel good and creates a positive working environment for all to contribute to, and benefit from. In considerations of communicating with diplomacy and tact, it might be wise to recall the positive affect humor creates, and consider that it fits well with a goal of maintaining good relations with others, avoiding offense, and not causing bad feelings in others in your dealings with them. In short, humor can be a powerful tool in your tool kit for communicating with diplomacy and tact.