Ilhamdi Hafiz Sofyan

1410731012

Pragmatics

The Difference between Semantics and Pragmatics

According to George Yule (1996), pragmatics can be defined as a study of meaning as

communicated by a speaker and interpreted by a listener in particular context. Pragmatics
explores how the listeners make inferences about the matter being said in order to arrive at
“an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning” (p. 3). Pragmatics can also be defined
as the study of how utterances have meanings in situations. According to Geoffrey Leech, the
nature of language can be understood by knowing how language is used in communication.

There is difference between semantics and pragmatics. While semantics mainly

covers the relationship between signifiers and what they stand for, Pragmatics studies how
context could affect the meaning of what is being said. Thus, we can say that Pragmatics is
the study of “how more gets communicated than is said” (Yule, 1996, p. 3). Semantics in the
other hand is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world.
According to Leech (1983), meaning in semantics is defined purely as a property of
expressions that come in abstractions from particular situations, speakers, or hearers, while
meaning in pragmatics is relative to a speaker (p. 6). Thus, from Leech’s explanation, we can
say that semantics deals with meaning as a dyadic relation, while Pragmatics deals with
triadic relation. Leech also noted three different views of the relationships between semantics
and pragmatics. Those views are ‘Semanticism,’ ‘Pragmaticism’ and ‘Complementarism.’
Leech argues that the third viewpoint is the one that best to view the relationships between
semantics and pragmatics. This viewpoint asserts that “any account of meaning in language
must (a) be faithful to the facts as we observe them, and (b) must be as simple and
generalizable as possible” (Leech, 1983, p. 7). Similarly, George Yule also asserts that the
principle of pragmatic is “interpret order of mention as a reflection of order of occurrence”
(Yule, 1996, p. 8). This principle is frequently used to make sense what we hear or read, but
we can also ignore it if it doesn’t apply in some situations. In short, we can also simplify the
principle in following fashion, that is the more two speakers have in common, the less
language they’ll need to use to identify familiar things.
 In conclusion, we can say that there are several differences between semantics and
pragmatics, but the main differences between both studies is, while semantics studies the
relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world, pragmatics in the other hand
studies the relationships between linguistics forms and the users of those forms.