Foreword [chapter]

2022 Toward a Motivation Model of Pragmatics  
This monograph is a proposal of a theoretical model, called "the motivation model of pragmatics" (MMP). The gist of the model is that language use can be adequately and elegantly studied by looking at the motivation behind it. There are two levels in the motivation structure in MMP. At the first level, motivations are categorized into the transactional and the interactional. At the second level, the transactional is divided into clarity and effectiveness and the interactional is divided into
more » ... maintaining of the public image of other and the maintaining of the public image of self. The two components of each pair, further, display a gradient relationship on a conflictive vs. assistive cline, i.e., depending on context, they can be in opposition; they can be mutually assistive; and they can be anywhere in between. It is hoped that MMP provides a framework in which connections between things that might otherwise appear unrelated be revealed; reasons for what we find in our empirical studies be sought, and the dynamic context in which communication takes place be coherently accounted for. The thought of writing this monograph began to percolate about a decade ago. But once it was completed, I realized that the preparation for it had actually (and "secretly") commenced three decades earlier when I was a graduate student at Lancaster University, UK (1981)(1982)(1983). That stint exposed me to the teachings of the late Geoffrey Leech (who talked about "principles of politeness", the title of his influential 1983 monograph), the bubbling ideas of critical discourse analysis (Norm Fairclough was never shy about what he was working on), the writings of the Oxford ordinary language philosophers: John Austin, John Searle, and H. Paul Grice, and the politeness theory by Penelope Brown and Steven Levinsonnot in the better-known iteration (1987, CUP), but as part of a volume edited by Esther Goody (Questions and Answers, 1978, also by CUP). Thus hooked was I to pragmatics. Returning to China, I began to write about pragmatics (Embarrassing to say that many believe I was the person to have brought Grice's theory of conversational implicature and Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness to linguists in China through my earlier publications in Chinese.) I found myself, in the ensuing years and decades, dabbling into quite a few subareas of pragmatics (as verified via a glance at the References), in addition to areas typically viewed as outside pragmatics (e.g., cognitive linguistics). Being a Rong of more than one trade has enabled me to appreciate the diversity of pragmatics. If pragmatics was thought of as a waste basket by Charles Morris (He did not exactly say so), its practitioners have found treasure aplenty from it. Given the "charge" of pragmatics -studying language use in context -we have claimed (and should continue to claim) territorial rights on all things language. The argument is on our side: language is always used in context; context
doi:10.1515/9783110787702-202 fatcat:nfp4sfovafda3jsm3wucj753le