Pragmatics: It is the study of the various factors involved in the appropriate

use of understanding language, such as the following: the speaker’s

intentions and how they are surmised by the addressee, the speaker and
addressee’s background attitudes and beliefs, their understanding of the
context in which the utterance is made, and their knowledge of how
language can be used for a variety of purposes.

Pragmatics is also defined as language in use.

Context: Context is an element with which words and sentences cannot

despense.The meaning of a word or expression is very much a matter of
context. In isolation, most words and sentences are ambiguous. That is, they
are ambiguous out of context. Thus, context is the only way to determine the
meanings of ambiguous word and sentences.

Context is of two types: linguistic and non-linguistic. Linguistic context is

usually referred to as the co-text, i.e. the textual environment of a linguistic
item. It refers to the relationship between the elements of a sentence. Thus, it
consists of lexi and grammar.

Non-linguistic context is also called context of situation, situational

context or extra-linguistic context. It refers to all aspects of situation in
which language event takes place. It consist of lexi and grammar besides
other factors such as time, place, the speaker’s intentions, Implicatures,
presuppositions, inferences, etc.

Deicitcs (Deixis): Etymologically, deixis is a Greek word meaning to point

to, to indicate. It was introduced into language in order to serve face-to-face
interaction. Most, and perhaps, all languages have deictics , which identify
objects, persons, and events in terms of their relation to the speaker in space
and time. There are five types of deictics:

1. Person deixis: The speaker must br able to identify the participants in

the discourse(himself and the person(s) to whom he is speaking. The
forms which which hwe achieve this are the first and second
pronouns(I/we and you respectively in English). The choice of
pronouns, however, often involved with other social factors.
2. Spatial deixis: English has here and there, this and tha to distinguish
between the position of the speaker or closeness to it., and other
positions or greater distances. The exact spatial relationship indicated
by such words will vary according to the language. Moreover, spatial
relations may often determine more than simply such words as here
and there, this and that. English has the pair of verbs come and go.
Come is restricted in a way that go is not, in that it indicates direction
towards the speaker or hearer. If the reference is to motion away from
the position of the relevant person, go would be much more normal.
3. Time Time (temporal) deixis: Time relations are indicated in English
not only by general adverbs such as now and then, but also by more
specific ones like yesterday and tomorrow. In English the present/
past distinction is more central than the distinction that is made by
inflection of the verb(like, liked), the future has to be indicated by the
use of periphrastic forms such as will like, or is going to like. Even the
adverbs now and then have no single-word counterpart to refer to the
future.
4. Social deixis: social deixis encodes reference to speech participants
relative to the situation. , here taken to be social rank or status of the
speaker at coding time, e.g.(employer/employee).For example, in the
following example: Sir, you have a meeting at 9 a.m., the use of sir
indicates that the addressee is superior in status to the speaker at
coding time. One of the best examples of social deixis is honorifics. It
is realized by means of pronouns of respects or by titles of address as
in the example above.
5. Discourse deixis: In both spoken and written discourse, there is a
frequent reference to earlier or forthcoming segments of the discourse.
As discourse unfolds in time and space, it includes both temporal and
spatial deixis.