07 Pragmatics
Learn how context, speaker intention, conversational inference, and speech acts shape the meaning and effects of language.
Meaning in
examines how people use and understand language in . It explains how a speaker’s words, the situation, shared knowledge, and communicative goals work together to convey meaning. concerns conventional meanings of words and sentences; helps explain what a speaker means by using them in a particular situation.
The same sentence can communicate different things in different circumstances. includes the surrounding conversation, who is speaking to whom, where and when an exchange occurs, and what participants take to be shared knowledge. In “I’ll meet you here tomorrow,” the helps identify “I,” “you,” “here,” and “tomorrow.”
A hearer combines a sentence’s conventional meaning with contextual clues to work out the speaker’s likely intention. At dinner, “Can you pass the salt?” literally asks about ability, but is ordinarily understood as a request. Understanding the utterance involves recognizing that likely request, not merely answering “yes.”
Intentions are inferred rather than read directly from a speaker’s mind. Hearers use wording, , shared assumptions, and expectations about communication, so different hearers or circumstances can lead to different interpretations.
and indirect meaning
An is a conclusion a hearer draws from an utterance and relevant contextual information. A is an inferred meaning communicated without being stated directly.
For example, when one person asks, “Are you coming to the picnic?” and the other replies, “I have to work,” the reply states that work is required. The hearer may infer that the speaker will not come because the answer is relevant and work commonly prevents attending a picnic. That conclusion is not part of the sentence’s literal meaning: the speaker might finish work early and still attend.
Conversational implicatures differ from logical entailments. If someone says, “Some of the guests arrived,” a hearer may infer “not all,” since the more informative word “all” was available. But the can be canceled without contradiction: “Some of the guests arrived—in fact, all of them did.” and conversational expectations, rather than the word “some” alone, support the usual .
Conversational expectations
The describes the expectation that speakers generally make contributions suited to a conversation’s purpose. It is associated with four conversational maxims:
: Give enough information, but not more than needed.
: Aim to say what is true and supported by evidence.
: Be relevant.
: Be clear, orderly, and reasonably concise.
These are expectations that help explain how hearers draw inferences, not rules that speakers must always obey. A speaker may deliberately appear to break a maxim so that a hearer searches for an implied meaning. For example, saying “Wonderful weather!” during a downpour can suggest irony.
Speech acts and their purposes
People use language not only to describe the world but also to perform actions. distinguishes three aspects of an utterance:
A is producing a meaningful expression. For example, someone says, “The door is open.”
An is the communicative act performed in saying it, such as stating, warning, requesting, or promising. In a cold room, “The door is open” might function as a request to close it.
A is an effect the utterance has on a hearer, such as persuading, surprising, or prompting someone to close the door.
The intended and the actual effect need not match: a warning may fail to persuade. Some speech acts also depend on appropriate social circumstances and conventions. Saying “I pronounce you married” has the force of a declaration only when the speaker is authorized to do so under the relevant procedure.
Speech acts can also be grouped by communicative purpose. present something as true, as in a report. try to get someone to act, as in a request. commit the speaker to an action, as in a promise. convey a feeling or attitude, as in an apology. bring about a status change when the right conditions are met, as in a formal appointment.