Pragmatics and Text Analysis

Chapter 6

concerned with the how meaning is communicated by the speaker (writer) and interpreted by the listener (reader) in a certain context.

Introduction

Pragmatics also differs from syntax in that pragmatics is concerned with the meaning of sentence and depends on the context, syntax concerned with structure of the sentence

For example, the four words in the following dialogue are all syntactically incomplete, but pragmatically they are all "appropriate" in the particular context.

Introduction

Semantics: the study of meaning that can be determined from a sentence, phrase or word.

Pragmatics: the study of meaning, as it depends on context (speaker, situation)

pragmatics is needed if we want a fuller, deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior.

Differences

Pragmatics is also concerned with language used in particular contexts. It is the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected spoken or written texts.

In other words, it is the study of linguistic units larger than sentences or clauses.

Differences

Physical context: where the conversation is taking place, what objects are present, what actions are occurring

Linguistic context: what has been said already in the sentence.

For example, if I begin a discussion by referring to Al Majmaa and in the next sentence refer to “it" as being our university, the linguistic context lets me know that “it" is Al Majmaa

Contexts

Social context: the social relationship among speakers and listeners.

Contexts

Two people come into a library and they are talking loud

Someone said: “Excuse me, could you please speak up a bit more? I missed what you said.”

What do we know pragmatically about his words?

Example

Physical context: the conversation occurs in a library

linguistic: tone of voice social context: asking someone to be quiet in

a place where people are supposed to be quiet

Example