Week 1: UNIT 2: Pragmatics

2.1 Pragmatics: general overview

Bauer (2012):
•What is the purpose of language? This is a very difficult
question to answer / many answers have been offered:
communicate / lie
•The cat sat on the mat tells us something about the cat
and about the mat; it makes explicit the relationship
between the two at some time in the past. In that sense, it
appears to be communicating information.

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If you say: Close the door!

You may unintentionally communicate that the door is

open, but you are really attempting to make other people
behave in a particular way.
Language allows us to communicate information (among
other things).
Instances where what we say does not appear to match
the message that we impart.
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Suppose someone walks into a room and says: It’s a bit
cold in here.
Depending on who else is present, and what the relationship
is, this could mean:

Should I close the window?

I’d like you to close the window.

Relationship between what we say and what we mean.

Instances where saying is doing, when we do not answer
questions, and when an important bit of what we mean is
hidden away.
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 Week 1: UNIT 2: Pragmatics
2.2 Defining Pragmatics
Pragmatics: another branch of linguistics / the study of
meaning which relates to the context.
Levinson (1985): Pragmatics is concerned solely with
performance principles of language usage and the
disambiguation of sentences by the contexts in which they
are said. The study of the relation between language and the
contexts that are basic to an account of language
understanding.
Parker (1986): the study of how language is used to
communicate.
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Through pragmatics, one can understand the real meaning
of an utterance, the motivation of someone to say something
by its relation to the context.

Facts with which pragmatics deals:

•Facts about the objective facts of the utterance: who the

speaker is, when the utterance happened, and where.
•Facts about the speaker’s intention. What language the
speaker intends to use, and what meaning he intends to
express.
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• Facts about the beliefs of the speaker and those to
whom he speaks and what are they talking about.
• Facts about relevant social institutions, such as
promising, marriage ceremonies, etc, which affect
what a person accomplishes by saying what he
does.

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