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ETKIII1. Introduction to pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of meaning as communicated by the speaker/writer and interpreted
by the listener/reader. It is the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what
the words in used in those utterances mean (speaker meaning). The study also considers who
the speaker is talking to, where, when, and under which circumstances. This is the context
and can influence what people say and how they say it. So, it has to be taken into account as
well (contextual meaning). The study also explores how listeners/readers make inferences
about what is uttered and come to an interpretation of the intended meaning. This is, in other
words, the investigation of invisible meaning (more gets communicated than is said).
The question is then: what determines the choice between the said and unsaid? The answer
is closeness or distance. Whether physical, social or conceptual, closeness means shared
experience and this helps the speaker assume how much needs to be said for the
listener/reader to interpret correctly what is meant (study of the expression of relative
distance).
1.1 Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
Syntax is the study of well-formed sentences. How are words arranged in a sequence and
which sequence is well-formed? Semantics is the study of the relationship between linguistic
forms and entities in the world (meaning). Pragmatics is the study of the relationship between
linguistic forms and the users of those forms. The difference between syntax and semantics
with pragmatics is that only the latter allows humans into analysis.
Narrow sense: meaning that is not coded by lexical and grammatical expressions (= semantic
meaning) but that is inferred from these coded meanings (= utterance meaning in context).
Broad sense: how speakers, of a given community, use language (= meaning as interaction).
Advantage of pragmatics: we can talk about people’s intended meaning, assumptions,
purposes, goals, and kinds of action they perform while speaking such as request, command,
ask, tell, etc. So, it is appealing because it is how people make sense of each other
linguistically.
Disadvantage of pragmatics: human concepts are difficult to analyse in a consistent and
objective way. It requires us to make sense of people and what they have in mind.
- So – did you? + Hey – wouldn’t you?
1.2 Regularity
If pragmatic meaning is context-based and dependent on speaker/hearer, how to study it?
Regularity, meaning that people behave in regular ways when it comes to using language
(routines). This is because people are members of social groups and follow general patterns
of behaviour expected within the group. In a familiar setting, it is easy to be polite and say
appropriate things because of the shared knowledge with the other members, whereas, if the
setting is unfamiliar, people are worried that they may say something wrong or perceived as
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,wrong in that environment and will want to be pragmatically correct (like saying
‘hamdoulilah’ instead of ‘fine’ when a Muslim asks how you are). Society and culture have to
be taken into account.
Members of a same linguistic community have shared experiences of the world and share
non-linguistic knowledge (with people they do not necessarily know now).
I want a new phone because the camera is not working properly.
One is not going to ask, upon hearing this question, why a camera is suddenly mentioned
while we are talking about phones. Everyone will make the inference that phones have a
camera and that the camera on the speaker’s phone must be broken, hence the desire of a
new phone. It would be odd to say:
I want a new phone. A phone has a camera. My camera happens to be broken.
This sentence is syntactically okay, but not pragmatically because the hearer will think that
more was being communicated than was being said and feel like he was treated as stupid.
Getting the pragmatics wrong might be offensive.
1.3 Pragmatics wastebasket
For a long period, linguists were interested in formal systems of analysis, abstract principles
or potentially universal features of the language, shortly, everything that had a logical
explanation. This resulted in the ignoring of everyday language, which ended up in the
wastebasket. That what was in the wastebasket was defined negatively as stuff that was not
easily handled within the formal systems of analysis.
Linguists were mostly concerned with syntax and semantics. In the following sentence the
two fields of study would focus on different things:
The duck ran up to Mary and licked her.
syntax: abstract innate rules for well-formed sentences
- The structure of the sentence is correct and it would be incorrect to say *‘Up duck
Mary to the ran’.
- The missing pronoun would also be noticed (The duck ran up to Mary and IT licked
her).
- This field of study, however, would not say that ducks do not run and that maybe dog
was meant, and it would also not question the sentence ‘the bottle of ketchup ran up
to Mary’.
semantics: logical rules for reference (to ‘things’) and truth-value judgments (about ‘events’)
- The concern here would be that duck is labelled animate whereas the bottle of
ketchup is inanimate. So, only duck is correct since a verb requires an animate noun
to be performed.
- Truth-conditions: p = the duck ran up to Mary; q = the duck licked Mary
→ If p is true and q is true, then p & q are true
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,→ If p is false and q is false, then p & q are false
→ If p & q is true, then q and p is true as well
the sentence would then be: ‘the duck licked Mary and ran up to her’, which is
not identical with the original sentence. We expect the events to occur and be
uttered in a chronological sequence. ‘And’ is thus ‘and then’ (more would be
communicated than said in this case). The pragmatic principle is: interpret
order of mention as a reflection of order of occurrence. We can ignore this
principle if it does not apply in some situation (where chronological order is
unimportant).
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, 2. What is pragmatics?
Speakers frequently mean much more than they say. For example, it is hot in here could mean
different things: ‘please open the window’/ ‘can I open the window’ or ‘you are wasting
electricity’. The opposite of what you say can also be meant, which is sarcasm. For example
to say to someone to whom you leant your car and has returned it with no petrol in the tank:
‘thank you for filling up the car’ or ‘what a shame you could not find the petrol tank’.
The questions are then:
- How do people manage to understand one another if they regularly mean something
else than what they say?
- In the case of there being different implied meanings, how can one know which one
is meant on one specific occasion?
- Why do people not just say what they mean?
2.1 Defining pragmatics
The early definition of pragmatics, in the 1980s, were ‘meaning in use’ or ‘meaning in
context’. Although not incorrect, these definitions are too broad. Some aspects of semantics,
which developed around the same time, can come under this definition too.
Definitions of now tend to speak of two different things: speaker meaning (force) and
utterance interpretation. These are two different approaches, however. The definition
‘speaker meaning’ is a social approach and focuses on the producer of the utterance but
ignores the process of interpretation of that message (so, the moving between several layers
of meaning). The definition ‘utterance interpretation’ is a cognitive approach of the discipline
and focuses on the receiver of the message while ignoring the process of production or the
social constraints (so, the choice the speaker made to convey something). Both have to be
taken into account. Focusing on either the speaker or the hearer does not give a full view of
pragmatics.
The difference between the two approaches can be examined though levels of meaning:
- Abstract meaning: coded meaning; literal meaning; meaning as you can find in a
dictionary or a grammar book (for structures).
- Contextual meaning or utterance meaning: the abstract meaning applied to a specific
context by the speaker and hearer and infer the pragmatically inferred meaning.
Interpretation of a specific utterance in a specific context.
- Force: speaker’s intention; what does the speaker want to achieve when making an
utterance?
2.2 From abstract meaning to contextual meaning
Abstract meaning refers to what a word, phrase or whole sentence could mean (dictionary
meanings). The domain of discourse is important here. If a hearer is in the wrong domain of
discourse, there is a possibility that the wrong meaning is going to be assigned to a word
(which has several meanings; ‘cat’ is not only a pet but can also mean cat-o’nine-tails or
catalytic converter). The speaker is going to assume that the hearer knows what will be meant
by ‘cat’ and is going to use that instead of cat-o’nine-tails or catalytic converter (depending
on domain of discourse).
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