Definitions and Background

CHAPTER 01 04 Goals
In this lesson, you will learn:
Definitions
Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics
Regularity
The Pragmatics Wastebasket

OBJECTIVES 4 Goals
Definitions

PART 1
 YULE’S DEFINITION 1

 Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as

communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by
a listener (or reader).
→ The analysis of what people mean by their utterances.
→ Not what the words or phrases mean by themselves.

Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning.

 KEY TERMS

 sentences vs. utterances

 communicated vs. interpreted
 speakers vs. listeners
 writers vs. readers
 meaning
 meaning of speakers
 meaning of words and phrases
 SENTENCES

 a group of words that expresses a complete thought

 a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate
 an independent linguistic form, not included by virtue of
any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic
form

English Teaching Forum, Vol. 7

 SENTENCES

 a group of words, usually containing a verb, that

expresses a thought in the form of a statement, question,
instruction, or exclamation and starts with a capital letter
when written

Cambridge Dictionary
 UTTERANCES (FRIES)

 The language is used in everyday social situations.

 Fries uses recordings of speech in real conversations.
→ utterance unit (*) = each speech by one person

English Teaching Forum, Vol. 7

 UTTERANCES (FRIES)

→ (*) is a stretch of speech that has silence at both ends.

→ (*) might also mark a change of speakers.
→ (*) contains one sentence or more than one, any one of
which may be composed of one or more words.

English Teaching Forum, Vol. 7

 UTTERANCES

 something that someone says

Cambridge Dictionary
 COMMUNICATED

 to share information with others by speaking, writing,

moving your body, or using other signals

Cambridge Dictionary
 INTERPRETED
 to decide what the intended meaning of something is

 to change what someone is saying into another

language

Cambridge Dictionary
 NOTE

 interpret (v)
→ be interpreted (v)
→ interpretation (n)
PARTICIPANTS

 A  B
1. speaker 1. listener
2. writer 2. reader
 MEANING
 The meaning of one thing is what it expresses or
represents.
1. flight has two different meanings:
a. a plane journey
b. the act of running away

Cambridge Dictionary
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
 TWO KINDS OF MEANING

 meaning of speakers  meaning of words and phrases

= what the speaker = meaning of word A + meaning
wants to share with you of word B + meaning of phrase C

It is hot. It is hot.
→ I want you to open → The weather is hot. (because it
the door or turn on the is an empty subject, it = weather)
fan.
 YULE’S DEFINITION 2

 This study of meaning involves the interpretation of

what people mean in a particular context and how the
context influences what is said.
→ How do speakers organize what they want to say?
→ who, where, when, and under what circumstances

Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.

 EXAMPLE

 Do you know where Mr. Trung is?

 The black motorbike is in front of the door.

→ The black motorbike must be Mr. Trung’s vehicle.

→ Mr. Trung must be here because of the presence of his bike.
 CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT

 Without a context, sometimes the meaning we are

looking for is invisible. In other words, it seems as if
the two speakers were talking about different things
in the previous example.
 YULE’S DEFINITION 3
 This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can
make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an
interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning. This type of
study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is
recognized as part of what is communicated.
→ the investigation of invisible meaning

Prag. is the study of how more gets communicated than is said.

 INFERENCE

 a guess that you make or an opinion that you form

based on the information that you have

Cambridge Dictionary
WHAT IS UNSAID
WHAT IS UNSAID
 YULE’S DEFINITION 4

 This perspective then raises the questions of what

determines the choice between the said and the unsaid.
→ The basic answer is tied to the notion of distance.

Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative

distance.
THE SAID AND THE UNSAID
 DISTANCE

 the amount of space between two places or things

Cambridge Dictionary
 WHY DISTANCE MATTERS?

 closeness = shared experience

1. physical closeness
2. social closeness
3. conceptual closeness
 WHY DISTANCE MATTERS?

 The listener can be either close or distant, which

leads to the question of how much should be said.
Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

PART 2
 SYNTAX

 Syntax is the study of the relationships between

linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and
which sequences are well-formed.
→ no world of reference mentioned
→ no information about users needed
 LINGUISTIC FORM

 a meaningful unit of speech (also, speech form)

1. morpheme
2. word
3. sentence

Merriam Webster
 SYNTAX

 the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence

Cambridge Dictionary
 SYNTAX

 the study of how words and morphemes combine to form

larger units such as phrases and sentences

Wikipedia
EXAMPLES
PROBLEM
 SEMANTICS

 Semantics is the study of the relationships between

linguistic forms and entities in the world; that is, how
words literally connect to things.
→ the relationship between verbal descriptions and states of
affairs in the world established as TRUE or FALSE
(regardless of who produce the descriptions)
 ENTITY

 something that exists apart from other things, having

its own independent existence

Cambridge Dictionary
 ENTITY

 something that exists as itself, as a subject or as an object,

actually or potentially, concretely or abstractly, physically or
not

Wikipedia
 LITERAL

 The literal meaning of a word is its original, basic

meaning:
1. television = seeing from a distance

 A literal translation of a text is done by translating each

word separately, without looking at how the words are
used together in a phrase or sentence.
 TRUE OR FALSE

 Sentences are either true or false (in conformity with the

reality of things or denying it), or they are nonsensical
(outside language).

Dictionary of Untranslatables
 PRAGMATICS

 Pragmatics is the study of the relationships between

linguistic forms and the users of those forms.
→ We talk about humans in these analyses.
1. people’s intended meanings
2. their assumptions
3. their purposes or goals
4. kinds of actions performed
 PRAGMATICS

A: So, did you?

B: Hey. Who wouldn’t?

A and B know what they are talking about and who

they are referring to. We somehow know what they
said, but what are being communicated here? What is
going on? What (the hell) are they talking about?
 COMPARISON

 Syntax: the relationships between linguistic forms

 Semantics: those between linguistic forms and entities
 Pragmatics: those between linguistic forms and users
 CONCLUSION

 Pragmatics studies how people make sense of each other

linguistically, but it can be a frustrating area of study
because pragmatics requires us to make sense of people
and what they have in mind.
Regularity

PART 3
 REGULARITY 1

 People tend to behave in fairly regular ways when it

comes to using language. Some of that regularity
derives from the fact that people are members of social
groups and follow general patterns of behavior
expected within the group.
→ a familiar social group: say appropriate things
→ a new, unfamiliar social setting: say the wrong thing
 REGULAR & REGULARITY
 regular = often (happening or doing something often)
1. a regular customer
2. I'll need regular updates on your progress.

 regularity = the fact of something happening often

1. Attacks on highways and bridges have occurred with
increasing regularity in recent months.
 PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR
 a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group
toward a given object or in a given situation

Collins Dictionary

 recurrent = happening again many times

SAYING “HI”
 NOTES

 My first type of answer wasn’t wrong. My vocabulary

and pronunciation weren’t inaccurate.
→ not wrong, but not right too
 NOTES

 It did convey the meaning that I was a social outsider

who answered in an unexpected way. In other words,
more was being communicated than was being said.
→ should learn the pragmatics of how those forms are
used in a regular pattern by social insiders
 REGULARITY 2

 Another source of regularity in language use derives

from the fact that most people within a linguistic
community have similar basic experiences of the
world and share a lot of non-linguistic knowledge.
 EXAMPLE 1

 I found an old bicycle lying on the ground. The

chain was rusted and the tires were flat.
→ Is there any connection between an old bicycle
and the chain and the tires?
 EXAMPLE 2

 I found an old bicycle. A bicycle has a chain. The

chain was rusted. A bicycle also has tires. The
tires were flat.
→ Everyone will assume that all of us will make the
inference that a bicycle must have a chain and tires.
 NOTES

 In both examples, it is clear that more is being

communicated than was being said.

 Speakers are sometimes being treated as someone

with no basic knowledge (as in Example 2).
 NOTES

 Nothing in the use of the linguistic forms is inaccurate,

but getting the pragmatics wrong might be offensive.
The Pragmatics Wastebasket

PART 4
 WHY A WASTEBASKET?

 Linguists and philosophers, for a long time, placed the

abstract features of language in the center of their work tables.
However, there was not enough space, so notes on ordinary
language in use were put in the wastebasket.
→ notes = not easily handled within the formal systems of
analysis
→ tables = devoted to the analysis of language structure
 SYNTACTIC APPROACH

 The duck ran up to Mary and licked her.

→ rules that determine the correct structure
→ rules that exclude any incorrect orderings
 PROBLEM 1 (ELLIPSIS) (STILL SYNTAX)

 The duck ran up to Mary and … licked her.

→ … = the duck = it
 PROBLEM 2 (SUBJECT)

 The dog ran up to Mary and … licked her.

→ Can ducks lick?
 PROBLEM 3 (SUBJECT)

 The bottle of ketchup ran up to Mary.

→ Is this sentence well-formed from a syntactical
perspective?
 SEMANTIC APPROACH

 In the first example, duck refers to a meaning feature

animate because ran up to requires the subject to be
something animate.

 animate = having life

 SEMANTIC APPROACH

 A proposition corresponding to the basic literal meaning of

the example is conventionally represented by p, q, and r.
→ The proposition is either True or False.
 SEMANTIC APPROACH

 p = The duck ran up to Mary.

 q = The duck licked Mary.
→ The duck ran up to Mary and licked her. = p & q
FORMAL SEMANTICS

p q Value
true false false
false true false
false false false
true true true
 PROBLEM

 In the case p & q is true, one may ask whether q & p is

true. In Formal Semantics, it is logically that when p &
q is true, an opposite order of q & p must be true as
well.
 PROBLEM

 The duck licked Mary and ran up to her. = q & p

→ The noticeable wrong thing here is the reverse
sequence of the two actions. Hence, in this case, it is not
and that helps to link the two actions. Instead, and then is
a better choice. In other words, the symbol & cannot
represent the order of the two events (what comes first).
 NOTE
 Remember this pragmatic principle: Interpret order of
mention as a reflection of order of occurrence.
→ Which can be ignored if it doesn’t apply in some
cases.
→ Which is used to make sense of what is heard or read.
SUM UP

Today, what we have learned are:

Definitions
Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics
Regularity
The Pragmatics Wastebasket