Topic: PRAGMATICS

Presented by

Mehwish Nazar

Roll No.12

Introduction

The term “pragmatics” was first coined in the 1930s by the philosopher C.W. Morris; developed as a subfield of linguistics in the 1970s.

Pragmatics is needed if we want a fuller, deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior

Definitions

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.

Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others. (David Crystal)

Definitions

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Fotion 1995). Pragmatics is the study of language which focuses attention on the users and the context of language use rather than on reference, truth, or grammar.

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Bach 2004. Semantic information is information encoded in what is uttered — these are stable linguistic features of the sentence. Pragmatic information is (extralinguistic) information that arises from an actual act of utterance, and is relevant to the hearer's determination of what the speaker is communicating.

Outside of pragmatics, no understanding; sometimes, a pragmatic account is the only one that makes sense, as in the following example, borrowed from David Lodge's Paradise News:'I just met the old Irishman and his son, coming out of the toilet.'

'I wouldn't have thought there was room for the two of them.''No silly, I mean I was coming out of the toilet. They were waiting.’ (1992:65)

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How do we know what the first speaker meant? Linguists usually say that the first sentence is ambiguous, and they excel at producing such sentences as:Flying planes can be dangerous

The missionaries are ready to eat what is meant by 'ambiguous': a word, phrase, or sentence that can mean either one or the other of two (or even several) things.

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Whereas semantic information is encoded in what is uttered, pragmatic information is generated by, or at least made relevant by, the act of uttering it.

Four fundamental cornerstones of pragmatic inquiry.

The points are

(1) Communication involves complex intentions. (2) These communicative intentions have to be inferred. (3) Communication is governed by principles/maxims. 

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(4) There is a fundamental distinction between explicit and implicit conveyance of information.

Pragmatics involve three major communication skills:

Using language for different purposes, such as

greeting (e.g., hello, goodbye)

informing (e.g., I'm going to get a cookie)

demanding (e.g., Give me a cookie)

promising (e.g., I'm going to get you a cookie)

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requesting (e.g., I would like a cookie, please)Changing language according to the needs of a listener or situation, such astalking differently to a baby than to an adultgiving background information to an unfamiliar listenerspeaking differently in a classroom than on a playground.

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Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such astaking turns in conversationintroducing topics of conversationstaying on topicrephrasing when misunderstoodhow to use verbal and nonverbal signals

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how close to stand to someone when speaking

how to use facial expressions and eye contact

Difference between Semantics and Pragmatics

Semantics attempts to relate meanings to logic and truth, and deals with meaning as a matter primarily of sense-relations within the language.Pragmatics attempts to relate meanings to context of utterance; it views language as action which is performed by speakers.

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Pragmatics is the study of meaning of words, phrases and full sentences, but unlike semantics which deals with the objective meanings of words that can be found in dictionaries, pragmatics is more concerned with the meanings that words in fact convey when they are used, or with intended speaker meaning as it is sometimes referred to.

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Semantics is concerned with the word and sentence meaning, pragmatics entails utterance meaning. An utterance can be defined as a word or sentence which is uttered by a speaker.Pragmatics attempts to analyze how it happens that often more is communicated than said.

Types of Contexts

pragmatics is the study of the contribution of context to meaning. Context of an utterance consists of- speaker, the sentence which is uttered, the act performed in the uttering of sentence, and the hearer.In pragmatics four types of context can be differentiated:

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physical context

epistemic context

linguistic context

social context

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Physical context: The physical context is the location of a given word, the situation in which it is used, as well as timing, all of which aid proper understating of the words Epistemic context: the epistemic context refers to what speakers know about the world. For example, what background knowledge is shared by the speakers is part of your epistemic knowledge.

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Linguistic context: the linguistic context refers to what has been said already in the utterance. For example, if I begin a discussion by referring to Jane Smith and in the next sentence refer to "her" as being a top notch athlete, the linguistic context lets me know that the antecedent of "her" (the person "her" refers to) is Jane Smith.

Social context: the social context refers to the social relationship among speakers and hearers.

Speech Act

A sentence is uttered by a speaker, and when the speaker utters it he/she performs an act. This is called a speech act.Pragmatics is also concerned with the functions of utterances such as promising, requesting, informing which are referred to as speech acts.

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Meaning in this sense involves the speaker’s intention to convey a certain meaning which may not be evident in the message itself.For example in sentence “There is a fly in my soup” speaker’s intention may be to complain. So the meaning of the utterance contain the meaning of the complaint.

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A hearer may interpret it not just as a statement but as a Request to take the soup away. That is, the meaning will include certain intended effect on the hearer.

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The consideration of meaning as a part of the utterance or speech act was initiated by the philosopher J.L. Austin and developed by J. Searle and H.P. Grice.

Austin’s ideas

Keeping in view the distinction between what is said and what is intended Austin makes a distinction between Sense and Force.Sense is the propositional content or logical meaning of a sentence. Austin calls it the “Locutionary” meaning.Force is the act performed in uttering a sentence. It is the performative meaning, defined by Austin as “Illocutionary” Force.

Examples

‘Please shut the door’

Sentence form: Imperative

Sense: Shutting the door (someone)

Force: Request

Certain felicity conditions are required for the above mentioned utterance to have the “force of request”

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In the given example, sense and force are similar to each other. However, in some cases there may be a difference, Consider the following example:“Can you shut the door?”Sentence form: InterrogativeSense: Question about the ability of the hearer to shut the door which is evident from the use of word “Can”Force: RequestIt is clear that sense is not the total meaning of utterance.

Conventional and individual or situation-specific utterances

“There’s a cold breeze coming through the door” a statement in sense and form but speaker may intend it to be a request.Such discrepancy between sense and force gives rise to distinction between conventional and individual and situation-specific utterances.“Can you shut the door?” is the kind of utterance which has been conventionalized to a great extent i.e it can occur in many situations. So the hearer is less likely to misinterpret as a real question about his ability to shut the door.

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Whereas “There is a cold breeze coming through the door” more indirect manner of making the request, more dependent on the relation between speaker and hearer.

So these are the utterances which can occur only in specific situations e.g informal, friendly etc.

Grice’s Cooperative Principle

All communication takes place in a situation where people are co-operative.When people communicate they assume that other person will be co-operative and they themselves wish to co-operate.Under this principle following maxims are followed:Maxim of Quantity: Give the right amount of information, neither less nor more than what is required.Maxim of Quality: Be true, do not say what you know is false or for which you do not have adequate evidence.

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Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity and ambiguity; be brief and orderly.Whenever any or all of these maxims are violated “ implicature ” is generated. For example in the interaction:A: Where is my box of chocolates?B: The children were in your room this morning.Here maxim of relation is flouted which implies that B does not know the answer and also implies a suggestion on B’s part that the children may have taken the chocolates.

Thank You

References

http://www.unc.edu/~gerfen/Ling30Sp2002/pragmatics.htmhttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatics/http://www.cognitivelinguistics.org/Reviews/allotthttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatics/Pushpinder Syal, D.V. Jindal.An Itroduction to Linguistics.