What is Pragmatics?

- The use of language in social contexts as in the ways people produce and comprehend meanings - Basically, it is language use to perform speech acts (eg. To inform, predict, describe, offer, etc.) - Involves two kinds of contexts i) Linguistic context - The discourse that precedes the phrase or sentence to be interpreted - Helps to disambiguate words, eg. Bank as In river bank of financial institution Situational context - Everything non-linguistic in the environment of the speaker - The speaker, hearer, any third parties present, their own beliefs and their knowledge about the beliefs of others influence the way language is interpreted - Can you pass the salt?- can be interpreted as a request to carry out a certain action

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Pronouns and Discourse Pronouns may be used: i) ii) In place of noun phrases from prior discourse To refer to entities presumably known to the participants of a discourse

In a discourse, prior linguistic context play a primary role in pronoun interpretation If reference is made to someone other than the person mentioned earlier on, the use of gesture, intonation and emphasis give clues. Example: It seems that the man loves the woman. Many people think he loves her. Interpretation: her is the woman referred to in the first sentence, whoever she happens to be. Possibility: her can also refer to a different person, perhaps indicated with a pointing gesture. Thus, her would be spoken with added emphasis.

Deixis A process whereby words or expressions rely absolutely on context Deictic words are language features that refer to the who, where and when of language Words whose meanings change quickly depending on the time or space in which they are uttered The Origo is the point of view/ context from which the reference is made and must be understood in order to interpret the statement

There are three main types of dexis Personal: pronouns such as I, she, he, you, this man, that boy o Eg. Eva is a manager. She works in a bank Spatial: words describing the speaker in space or in relation to other objects such as here, this place (proximal), there, that class (distal) o Eg. I am in the office, Please come here. Temporal: word describing the speaker in terms of time such as now, then ,yesterday and verb tenses(went, go) o Eg. She was at work yesterday.

Anaphoric and cataphoric reference Anaphoric reference is reference back to a word or other ideas in the text for its meaning Eg. She refers to Jo, so there is no need to repeat her name

Cataphoric reference is references to a word or idea later in the text Eg. When she reached home, Susan was surprised to find her apartment door open.

Maxims of conversation Conversation-communication by two or more people on a particular topic For successful communication to take place, both people in a conversation must cooperate Paul Grice identified 4 groups of maxims (a maxim is like a rule of thumb) which people implicitly obey when communicating.

The four conversational maxims i) Maxims of quality - people are expected to say what they know to be true - this maxim has to be truthfulness - when talking with each other, we expect the others to tell us the truth - do not say what you believe to be false - do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence eg. Scenario: geography class Teacher: whats the capoital of New zend? Student: New York is the capital of New Zealand Teacher: yeah, and London is the capital of Brazil The teachers answer raises an implicature, the students knows that London is not the capital of Brazil. So the teacher has violated the maxis of quality the student reasons. There must be reason why the teacher said something false. It is like that students answer is absurd and wrong

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Maxims of quantity - When talking, provide just enough information - This maxim will be violated by being less or too informative - Violation of this maxim is perceived as uncooperative or obnoxious and may find it difficult to attract conversation partners Make you contribution as informative as required Do not make your contribution more informative than is required