Pragmatics is a subfield of
linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses
speech act theory, conversational
implicature,
talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in
philosophy,
sociology, and
linguistics.
[1] It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge (e.g.
grammar,
lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred
intent of the speaker, and so on.
[2] In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent
ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.
[1] The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called
pragmatic competence. So an utterance describing pragmatic function is described as
metapragmatic. Pragmatic awareness is regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and comes only through
experience.
[citation needed]
The sentence "You have a green light" is ambiguous. Without knowing the context, the identity of the speaker, and their intent, it is not possible to infer the meaning with confidence. For example:Structural ambiguity
- It could mean you are holding a green light bulb.
- Or that you have a green light to drive your car.
- Or it could be indicating that you can go ahead with the project.
- Or that your body has a green glow
Similarly, the sentence "Sherlock saw the man with binoculars" could mean that Sherlock observed the man by using binoculars; or it could mean that Sherlock observed a man who was holding binoculars.
[3] The meaning of the sentence depends on an understanding of the context and the speaker's intent. As defined in linguistics, a sentence is an abstract entity — a string of words divorced from non-linguistic context — as opposed to an
utterance, which is a concrete example of a speech act in a specific context. The closer conscious subjects stick to common words, idioms, phrasings, and topics, the more easily others can surmise their meaning; the further they stray from common expressions and topics, the wider the variations in interpretations. This suggests that sentences don't have meaning intrinsically; there is not a meaning associated with a sentence or word, they can only symbolically represent an idea.
The cat sat on the mat is a sentence of English; if you say to your sister on Tuesday afternoon: "The cat sat on the mat", this is an example of an utterance. Thus, there is no such thing as a sentence, term, expression or word symbolically representing a single true meaning; it is underspecified (which cat sat on which mat?) and potentially ambiguous. The meaning of an utterance, on the other hand, is inferred based on linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the non-linguistic context of the utterance (which may or may not be sufficient to resolve ambiguity). In mathematics with
Berry's paradox there arose a systematic ambiguity with the word "definable". The ambiguity with words shows that the descriptive power of any human language is limited.
Origins
Pragmatics was a reaction to
structuralist linguistics as outlined by
Ferdinand de Saussure. In many cases, it expanded upon his idea that language has an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others. Pragmatics first engaged only in
synchronic study, as opposed to examining the historical development of language. However, it rejected the notion that all meaning comes from
signs existing purely in the abstract space of
langue. Meanwhile,
historical pragmatics has also come into being.
Areas of interest
- The study of the speaker's meaning, not focusing on the phonetic or grammatical form of an utterance, but instead on what the speaker's intentions and beliefs are.
- The study of the meaning in context, and the influence that a given context can have on the message. It requires knowledge of the speaker's identities, and the place and time of the utterance.
- The study of implicatures, i.e. the things that are communicated even though they are not explicitly expressed.
- The study of relative distance, both social and physical, between speakers in order to understand what determines the choice of what is said and what is not said.
- The study of what is not meant, as opposed to the intended meaning, i.e. that which is unsaid and unintended, or unintentional.
- Information Structure, the study of how utterances are marked in order to efficiently manage the common ground of referred entities between speaker and hearer
- Formal Pragmatics, the study of those aspects of meaning and use, for which context of use is an important factor, by using the methods and goals of formal semantics.
Referential uses of language
When we speak of the referential uses of language we are talking about how we use
signs to refer to certain items. Below is an explanation of, first, what a sign is, second, how meanings are accomplished through its usage.
A sign is the link or relationship between a
signified and the signifier as defined by Saussure and Huguenin. The signified is some entity or concept in the world. The signifier represents the signified. An example would be:
Signified: the concept catSignifier: the word "cat"
The relationship between the two gives the sign meaning. This relationship can be further explained by considering what we mean by "meaning." In pragmatics, there are two different types of meaning to consider:
semantico-referential meaning and
indexical meaning. Semantico-referential meaning refers to the aspect of meaning, which describes events in the world that are independent of the circumstance they are uttered in. An example would be propositions such as:
"Santa Claus eats cookies."In this case, the proposition is describing that Santa Claus eats cookies. The meaning of this proposition does not rely on whether or not Santa Claus is eating cookies at the time of its utterance. Santa Claus could be eating cookies at any time and the meaning of the proposition would remain the same. The meaning is simply describing something that is the case in the world. In contrast, the proposition, "Santa Claus is eating a cookie right now," describes events that are happening at the time the proposition is uttered.
Semantico-referential meaning is also present in meta-semantical statements such as:
Tiger: omnivorous, a mammal
If someone were to say that a tiger is an omnivorous animal in one context and a mammal in another, the definition of tiger would still be the same. The meaning of the sign tiger is describing some animal in the world, which does not change in either circumstance.
Indexical meaning, on the other hand, is dependent on the context of the utterance and has rules of use. By rules of use, it is meant that indexicals can tell you when they are used, but not what they actually mean.
Example: "I"
Whom "I" refers to depends on the context and the person uttering it.
As mentioned, these meanings are brought about through the relationship between the signified and the signifier. One way to define the relationship is by placing signs in two categories: referential indexical signs, also called "shifters," and pure indexical signs.
Referential indexical signs are signs where the meaning shifts depending on the context hence the nickname "shifters." 'I' would be considered a referential indexical sign. The referential aspect of its meaning would be '1st person singular' while the indexical aspect would be the person who is speaking (refer above for definitions of semantico-referential and indexical meaning). Another example would be:
"This"
Referential: singular count
Indexical: Close by
A pure indexical sign does not contribute to the meaning of the propositions at all. It is an example of a ""non-referential use of language.""
A second way to define the signified and signifier relationship is
C.S. Peirce's
Peircean Trichotomy. The components of the trichotomy are the following:
1. Icon: the signified resembles the signifier (signified: a dog's barking noise, signifier: bow-wow)
2. Index: the signified and signifier are linked by proximity or the signifier has meaning only because it is pointing to the signified
3. Symbol: the signified and signifier are arbitrarily linked (signified: a cat, signifier: the word cat)
These relationships allow us to use signs to convey what we want to say. If two people were in a room and one of them wanted to refer to a characteristic of a chair in the room he would say "this chair has four legs" instead of "a chair has four legs." The former relies on context (indexical and referential meaning) by referring to a chair specifically in the room at that moment while the latter is independent of the context (semantico-referential meaning), meaning the concept chair.
Non-referential uses of language
Silverstein's "pure" indexes
Michael Silverstein has argued that "nonreferential" or "pure" indexes do not contribute to an utterance's referential meaning but instead "signal some particular value of one or more contextual variables."
[4] Although nonreferential indexes are devoid of semantico-referential meaning, they do encode "pragmatic" meaning.
The sorts of contexts that such indexes can mark are varied. Examples include:
- Sex indexes are affixes or inflections that index the sex of the speaker, e.g. the verb forms of female Koasati speakers take the suffix "-s".
- Deference indexes are words that signal social differences (usually related to status or age) between the speaker and the addressee. The most common example of a deference index is the V form in a language with a T-V distinction, the widespread phenomenon in which there are multiple second-person pronouns that correspond to the addressee's relative status or familiarity to the speaker.Honorifics are another common form of deference index and demonstrate the speaker's respect or esteem for the addressee via special forms of address and/or self-humbling first-person pronouns.
- An Affinal taboo index is an example of avoidance speech and produces and reinforces sociological distance, as seen in the Aboriginal Dyirbal language of Australia. In this language and some others, there is a social taboo against the use of the everyday lexicon in the presence of certain relatives (mother-in-law, child-in-law, paternal aunt's child, and maternal uncle's child). If any of those relatives are present, a Dyirbal speaker has to switch to a completely separate lexicon reserved for that purpose.
In all of these cases, the semantico-referential meaning of the utterances is unchanged from that of the other possible (but often impermissible) forms, but the pragmatic meaning is vastly different.
The performative
J.L. Austin introduced the concept of the
performative, contrasted in his writing with "constative" (i.e. descriptive) utterances. According to Austin's original formulation, a performative is a type of utterance characterized by two distinctive features:
- It is not truth-evaluable (i.e. it is neither true nor false)
- Its uttering performs an action rather than simply describing one
Examples:
- "I hereby pronounce you man and wife."
- "I accept your apology."
- "This meeting is now adjourned."
Jakobson's six functions of language
The six factors of an effective verbal communication. To each one corresponds a communication function (not displayed in this picture).
[5]Roman Jakobson, expanding on the work of
Karl Bühler, described six "constitutive factors" of a
speech event, each of which represents the privileging of a corresponding function, and only one of which is the referential (which corresponds to the
context of the speech event). The six constitutive factors and their corresponding functions are diagrammed below.
The six constitutive factors of a speech event
-
-
- Context
- Message
Addresser---------------------Addressee
-
-
- Contact
- Code
The six functions of language
-
-
- Referential
- Poetic
Emotive-----------------------Conative
-
-
- Phatic
- Metalingual
- The Referential Function corresponds to the factor of Context and describes a situation, object or mental state. The descriptive statements of the referential function can consist of both definite descriptions and deictic words, e.g. "The autumn leaves have all fallen now."
- The Expressive (alternatively called "emotive" or "affective") Function relates to the Addresser and is best exemplified by interjections and other sound changes that do not alter the denotative meaning of an utterance but do add information about the Addresser's (speaker's) internal state, e.g. "Wow, what a view!"
- The Conative Function engages the Addressee directly and is best illustrated by vocatives and imperatives, e.g. "Tom! Come inside and eat!"
- The Poetic Function focuses on "the message for its own sake"[6] and is the operative function in poetry as well as slogans.
- The Phatic Function is language for the sake of interaction and is therefore associated with the Contact factor. The Phatic Function can be observed in greetings and casual discussions of the weather, particularly with strangers.
- The Metalingual (alternatively called "metalinguistic" or "reflexive") Function is the use of language (what Jakobson calls "Code") to discuss or describe itself.
Related fields
There is considerable overlap between pragmatics and
sociolinguistics, since both share an interest in
linguistic meaning as determined by usage in a speech community. However, sociolinguists tend to be more interested in variations in language within such communities.
Pragmatics helps anthropologists relate elements of language to broader social phenomena; it thus pervades the field of
linguistic anthropology. Because pragmatics describes generally the forces in play for a given utterance, it includes the study of power, gender, race, identity, and their interactions with individual speech acts. For example, the study of
code switching directly relates to pragmatics, since a switch in code effects a shift in pragmatic force.
[6]According to
Charles W. Morris, pragmatics tries to understand the relationship between signs and their users, while
semantics tends to focus on the actual objects or ideas to which a word refers, and
syntax (or "syntactics") examines relationships among signs or symbols. Semantics is the literal meaning of an idea whereas pragmatics is the implied meaning of the given idea.
Pragmatics in philosophy
In
Excitable Speech she extends her theory of
performativity to
hate speech and
censorship, arguing that censorship necessarily strengthens any discourse it tries to suppress and therefore, since the state has sole power to define hate speech legally, it is the state that makes hate speech performative.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/pragmatics#ixzz190LFgh49
