Ani Sapira Poetri

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AG1

Discourses and Pragmatics

Pragmatics focuses on the effects of context on meaning, and Discourse Analysis studies
written and spoken language in relation to its social context.
The basic difference between pragmatics and discourse is that while pragmatics analyzes
individual utterances (organized set of words) in context, discourse focuses on an organized
set of utterances.
Pragmatics assumes that when people communicate with each other they normally follow
some kind of cooperative principle; that is, they have a shared understanding of how they
should cooperate in their communications. The ways in which people do this, however, varies
across cultures. What may be a culturally appropriate way of saying or doing something in
one culture may not be the same in another culture.
An understanding of how language functions in context is central to an understanding of the
relationship between what is said and what is understood in spoken and written discourse.
Different views of pragmatic appropriateness, then, can easily lead to misunderstandings and
inhibit effective cross-cultural communication.
Two further key notions in the area of pragmatics and discourse are politeness and face
It is important to point out that the specific nature of face and politeness varies from society
to society and from culture to culture. For example, in some cultures the idea of personal
space and independence may vary. In some societies, parents have more right to interfere in
the domestic affairs of adult children than in others. In some cultures a bedroom is private
and cannot be entered and in others it is not. In some cultures refusal of an offer may be
merely polite
Politeness strategies have also been shown to vary according to gender. discusses this at
length, showing differences in the use of politeness strategies between men and women.
Clearly, the ways in which politeness is expressed is not the same across languages and
cultures and might mean different things in different linguistic and cultural settings. Even
though people may draw on similar notions such as face, there may be gradations of
politeness in terms of the importance of involvement, independence, tact and modesty, etc. in
the particular setting. The interpretation and linguistic encoding of these, however, can
sometimes vary enormously across languages and cultures
the importance of pragmatic competence, much of the research in the area of pragmatics and
language learning has examined pragmatic development in terms of the acquisition of
particular speech acts or issues of politeness, rather than some of the other issues discussed in
this chapter. What research there is, however, shows that language learners have difficulties
in the area of pragmatics, regardless of their level of grammatical ability.