Pragmatics VS Semantics

What is meaning?
 Meaning covers a variety of language aspects,
and there is no general agreement about its
nature.
 Looking at the word itself, the dictionary will
suggest a number of different meanings of the
noun ‘meaning’ and the verb’ mean’.
 In our course, The word ‘mean’ can be applied
to people who use language,i.e. to speakers, in
the sense of ‘intend’.
And it can be applied to words and sentences in
the sense of ‘be equivalent to’. i.e What
something expresses or represents.
To understand what meaning is, one has to keep
in mind whether we are talking about what
speakers mean or what words( or sentences)
mean.
 Utterance meaning( speaker meaning) is what a
speaker means( i.e.intends to convey) when he uses a
piece of language. It includes the secondary aspects
of meaning especially those related to context.
 Sentence meaning( or word meaning) is what a
sentence (or a word) means, i.e. what it counts as the
equivalent of in the language concerned.eg : « Nice
day »
 This sentence is equivalent to something like ‘ this is
a lovely day’ ; However, depending on the situation;
tone of voice, facial expressions, or relationship
between speaker/hearer, it might mean the exact
opposite, i.e. ‘This is not a nice day’
What is Meaning?
 It is clear that there is a distinction between
what would seem to be the usual meaning of a
word or a sentence, and the meaning it has in
certain specific circumstances or contexts. It is
this distinction that allows us to say one thing
and mean another. This is the primary
difference between pragamatics and semantics
 Utterance VS Sentence
An utterance is an event that happens just once;
a sentence is a construction of words in a
particular meaningful sequence.
The meaning of a sentence is determined by the
meanings of the individual words and the
construction in which they occur
The meaning of an utterance is the meaning of the
sentence + the meaning of the circumstances:
the time and place, the people involved( the
physical-social context). Eg/ our visit to the
factory was wonderful
What is Semantics
 Semantics is the study of the relationships
between linguistic forms and entities in the
world; that is how words literally connect to
things. Semantic analysis also attempts to
establish the relationships between the verbal
descriptions and states of affairs in the world
as accurate (true) or not, regardless of who
produces that description.
 What is pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of the relationships
between linguistic forms and the users of those
forms. In this disctintion, only pragmatics
allows human into the analysis. The advantage
of studying language via pragmatics is that one
can talk about people’s intended meanings, their
assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the
kinds of actions that they are performing when
they speak. The main disadvantage is that all
these very human concepts are extremely
difficult to analyze in a consistent and objective
way.
 What is pragmatics
 Pragmatics is the study of meaning that a
sentence has in a particual context in which it
is uttered. As we mentioned earlier, the
difference between semantics and pragmatics is
that the study of semantics is independent of
context.
 Eg/ There’s a car coming
 This sentence out of context simply gives
information that a car is coming, but in a
specific context it can be understood as a
warning.
 What is pragmatics
 Pragmatics is appealing because because it’s
how peoplemake sense of each other
linguistically, but it can be a frustrating area of
study because it requires us to make sense of
people and what they have in mind.
 Principles distinguishing pragmatics from semantics
 For Chierchia and McConnell(1990): « semantics
deals with those aspects of meaning that remain
constant whenever a given expression is uttered ». Thus
semantics covers what expressions mean,while
pragmatics covers what speakers mean in using the
expression.
 According to Green(1989) It is standard to distinguish
between what a sentence means and what a speaker
intends to convey by the utterance of the sentence, and
to restrict the role of semantics to explaining the
meaning of sentences in terms of conditions that must
be fulfilled for the sentence to be used to truthfully
describe a situation.
 Pragmatics Vs Semantics
 Therefore, aspects of the interpretation of
utterances that do not involve truth conditions are
commonly considered outside the domain of
semantics, whther an utterance is a promise, a
request, a predition and how these ewpressions
are understood are matters of pragmatics, not
semantics.
 Moreover, Semantics is compsitional: The
meaning of a complex expression relates in a
predictable way to the meaning of the parts from
which it is contructed. The meaning of the whole
is a function of the meaning of the parts.
 Pragmatics Vs Semantics
 Both semantics and Pragmatics are concerned
with peoples’ ability to use language
meaningfully.
 While semantics is mainly concerned with a
speaker’s competence to use language systems,
the chief focus of pragmatics is a person’s
ability to derive meanings from specific kinds
of speech situations. In other words, to
recognize what the speaker is referring to; to
‘fill in’information that the speaker takes for
granted and doesn’t bother to say.
 Eg: I’m hungry
 Said by a beggar who has not eaten all day
 Said by a child who hopes to put off going to bed
 Said by a man who wants to have lunch with his co-
workers.

 The 3 events obviously have something in common’

the same words) and yet, they indicate different
intentions and are liable to be interpreted
differently because the situations and the
participants are different.
 To summarize: Pragmatics involves how
speakers use language in contextualized social
interractions, how they do things with words
as austin nwould say.

 Semantics invites a focus on meaning and

truth conditions without regard to
communication context.
 Implicature
 An additional meaning or a bridge contructed by
the hearer to relate one utterance to some
previous utterances( Unconsciously)
 Eg1/Barbara: How did you do on the
examination?
 Adam: I think I’ll just drop this course.
 Eg2/ Jim: Would you like to go shopping
tomorrow night?
 Laura: We have guests coming from out of town.
 Non-verbal communication
 There are some ways of using the voice including
for instance laughing, giggling, and crying that
are vocal but not verbal. These are called
paralanguage
 Similarly, there are visible signs, gestures, body
language which possibly creates an effect on the
interpretation of a spoken message for eg,
nodding the head in response to an utterance,
shrugging shoulders( moving shoulders upward
and down again),