Pragmatics

Pragmatics (Introduction and Background)

Hello everyone! Today I'm going to introduce you to a branch of Linguistics, i.e. Pragmatics. I'm no expert, for sure. So I just make summaries from Yule's book (1998). 

Since I'm also learning Pragmatics, it'll be useful for me if I make summaries orderly from every chapter of Yule's book. And I think it'd be better if I share this here. 

In this section, you're going to learn the definition of Pragmatics, and to differentiate between Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. I'll put the reference at the bottom of this section.

Pragmatics is:

·           The study of speaker meaning

·           The study of contextual meaning

·           The study of how more gets communicated than is said

·           The study of the expression of relative distance

Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

Syntax	The study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed.
Semantics	The study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; that is, how words literally connect to things.
Pragmatics	The study of relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms.

·     The advantage of studying pragmatics is that one can talk about people’s intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (for example, requests) that they are performing when they speak.

·     The disadvantage is that all these very human concepts are extremely difficult to analyse in a consistent and objective way.

Regularity

·      Some regularity derives from the fact that people are members of social groups and follow general patterns of behavior expected within the group.

·      Another source of regularity in language use derives from the fact that most people within a linguistic community have similar basic experiences of the world and share a lot of non-linguistic knowledge.

·       Nothing in the use of linguistic forms is inaccurate, but getting the pragmatics wrong might be offensive.

The Pragmatics Wastebasket

·    Wastebasket is made from the notes on ordinary language that fill up linguists and philosophers’ work tables and that are knocked off.

·       The contents of that wastebasket were not originally organised under a single category. They were defined negatively, as the stuff that wasn’t easily handled within the formal systems of analysis.

Conclusion

Pragmatics is different from syntax and semantics, since it studies the relationships between linguistics forms and the users of those forms.

By using pragmatics, we will be able to know speaker’s intentions, assumptions, and goals. In pragmatics, however, we cannot analyse the human concepts consistently and objectively.

Reference: Yule, G. 1998. Pragmatics. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

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