PRAGMATICSBy: John War Ronald Villareal

Background of “Pragmatics” CharlesMorris (1903 – 1979)

Was concerned with the study of the science of signs,

which he called semiotic;

Distinguished 3 branches of semiotics: syntactics (or

syntax), which studies the formal relation among

different signs; semantics, the study of the relation

between the signs and the objects they denote; and

pragmatics, the study of the relation of signs to their

interpreters, i.e. people.

Pragmatics

The word pragmatics derives from

the Greek word ‘pragma’, which

means 'matter', 'thing', but also

'action' (cf. Linke, Nussbaumer &

Portmann (1996)).

Definitions

1: “Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.”

2: “ Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning”

3:“ Pragmatics is the study of how more gets

communicated than is said”

4:“ Pragmatics is the study of the expression of

relative distance.” ( Yule:2008).

Pragmatics

1. When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;

2. When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;

3. When he says no, he is not a diplomat.

4. When a lady says no, she means ‘perhaps’;

5. When she says perhaps, she means ‘yes’;

6. When she says yes, she is not a lady.

Assigning Sense in Context

Sometimes the process of identifying pragmatic meaning

involves interpreting ambiguous and vague linguistic

expressions in order to assign them sense in context.

These observations show that contextual meaning is not fully

determined by the words that are used: there is a gap

between the meaning of the words use dy the speaker and

the thought that the speaker intends to express by using

those words on a particular occasion.