LANGUAGE IN USE

RISMA AMALIAH (19 11 02 0 112 8 7 )

YAT M I K A L S U M R O H A N I A H ( 1 9 1 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 8 0 )
 PRAGMATICS

• Pragmatics is another branch of linguistics that is

concerned with meaning. Pragmatics and semantics
can be viewed as different parts, or different aspects,
of the same general study. Both are concerned with
people’s ability to use language meaningfully.
While semantics is mainly concerned with a speaker’s competence
to use the language system in producing meaningful utterances and
processing (comprehending) utterances produced by others, the
chief focus of pragmatics is a person’s ability to derive meanings
from specific kinds of speech situations to recognize what the
speaker is referring to, to relate new information to what has gone
before, to interpret what is said from background knowledge about
the speaker and the topic of discourse, and to infer or ‘fill in’
information that the speaker takes for granted and doesn’t bother to
say.
NATURAL AND CONVENTIONAL SIGNS

Natural Sign:

• A language is a system of symbols through which people

communicate. The symbols may be spoken, written, or signed
with the hands.
• A language is a complex system of symbols, or signs, that are
shared by members of a community. It will be useful to
consider other signs that we know and how we react to them.
 Robinson Crusoe, according to Defoe’s novel, was walking along
the beach one morning and suddenly saw a human footprint in the
sand made by the man who was later to be called Friday, as it turned
out. This experience, after twenty-seven years of living alone on his
island, so frightened poor Crusoe that he ran back to the cave that
was his home and would not venture out again that day.

“A footprint is a natural sign. It is the natural result of a foot treading on a soft surface,
and it can communicate a message that the owner of the foot was recently there to
anyone who observes it. “
We are all familiar with other natural signs, such as:

• We see smoke and know that there is a fire, or a fire has just
gone out.

• A black cloud informs us of the possibility of rain.

• Treetops moving tell us that the wind is blowing.

• Our own bodies provide such signs as earaches and hunger

pangs.
Conventional Sign:

• Unlike natural signs, conventional signs have human senders as

well as human receivers; each one has an intention and an
interpretation.

• The message may be personal, as when a friend rings your

telephone.

• Quite impersonal and general, like the warning siren on a speeding

ambulance.

• We can even use devices like smoke detectors and burglar alarms
to send messages to ourselves at a later time, in circumstances that
we really do not want to occur.
the process of getting information consists of three steps:

• Perception: The sign and the observer share a context of place and time in
which the sign attracts the observer’s attention (the process of using the
senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or
situation). e.g. Robinson Crusoe with footprint.

• Identification: is the action of identifying somebody or something, or an act

of recognizing and naming somebody or something.

• Interpretation: The meaning of any sign depends on the space-time context in

which we observe it. e.g. – cases Crusoe’s reaction and footprint was due to
the circumstances of his life; the whistle of a policeman directing traffic, the
whistle of a hotel doorman summoning a taxi, and the whistle of the referee
in a soccer game.
 LINGUISTIC SIGNS

• Words are linguistic signs, similar in certain respects to natural

and conventional signs. In order to grasp what somebody says,
we must first of all perceive the utterance.
• Clark (1996:92 – 121) Identification of the elements in an
utterance requires speaker and hearer to share ‘common
ground’.
• The peculiarity of the linguistic sign is its asymmetricality,
that is, the capacity of one signifier to convey various
meanings (polysemy or homonymy) and the tendency of the
signified to be expressed by various signifiers (heterophony or
homosemy).
 UTTERANCE AND SENTENCE

• An utterance is an act of speech or writing; it is a specific

event, at a particular time and place and involving at least one
person, the one who produces the utterance, but usually more
than one person.
• A sentence, on the other hand, is not an event; it is a
construction of words (in English or whatever language) in a
particular sequence which is meaningful (in that language).
• 
 The meaning of an utterance is the meaning of the sentence
plus the meanings of the circumstances : the time and place,
the people involved, their backgrounds, their relationship to
one another, and what they know about one another. All these
circumstances we can call the physical-social context of an
utterance.
Why distinguish between sentence and utterance?

• Because it is important to recognize what meanings are

communicated to us in language and which meanings we derive
from the contexts in which language is used.

• Because it is important to distinguish between linguistic meaning,

what is communicated by particular pieces of language, and
utterance meaning, what a certain individual meant by saying such-
and-such in a particular place, at a particular time, and to certain
other individuals.
 PROSODY

• Prosody is an intonation and an accent with pause, elements of speech that

are meaningful and separate from the spoken word.

• Within each sense-group one word (more accurately, the stressed syllable
of one word) is more prominent than the rest of the group, giving special
attention or focus to that word.
 
• Intonation is achieved by different vibrations of the vocal cords. Greater
frequency of vibration results in what we call higher pitch. Intonational
changes of pitch may occur at various places in an utterance, but
observation shows that changes at or near the end of the utterance have
more prominence and are more likely to be meaningful than utterance-
internal changes.
Here are some common distinctions made with intonation in utterances thatmhave
the same verbal material.

• Statement vs question (fall vs rise)

⬇️Yes. ­⬆️Yes? ⬇️This is the place. ­⬆️This is the place?

• Information sought vs repetition requested (fall vs rise)­

⬆️When? ­⬆️Where? ⬇. ️When? ⬇️Where?
 
• Parallel structure vs antithesis (fall vs fall and rise)
This is my sister, ⬇️Ellen. This is my ⬇️sister, ­⬆️Ellen
 
• Open question vs alternative question (rise vs rise, fall)
Do you have a ­⬆️pencil or a pen?. Do you have a ­⬆️pencil or a ⬇️pen?
 
• Full statement vs reservation (fall vs fall-rise)
⬇️That’s true, (or That’s ⬇️true.) That’s ⬆️⬇️true.
 
 NON- VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Non- verbal communication is a process of communication in

which a message is conveyed without the use of words. A
sample of nonverbal communication is the use of gestures, body
language, facial expressions and eye contact.
Thus a face-to-face communication event contains linguistic and
non-linguistic elements like these :

• Linguistic :
vocal and verbal: words put together to form utterances
(representing sentences).
vocal and non-verbal: prosody, the intonation and accenting with
which utterances are spoken.

• Non-linguistic :
Vocal: paralanguage, the “tone of voice”
non-vocal: distances maintained; appearance; gestures; silence
 
Thank you!