pragmatic linguistics»

«PRAGMATIC LINGUISTICS»

Definition• “Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our

choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others.” David Crystal

• In contrast to Phonetics and Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and so forth, which describe different levels of language structure; Pragmatics deals with language use. Pragmatics is mostly used in connection with the relationship between linguistic signs and their users. It investigates how context (both situational and linguistic) affects the meaning of utterances.

"You have a green light.”

• It could mean that you have green ambient lighting.

• It could mean that you have a green light while driving your car.

• It could mean that you can go ahead with the project.

• It could mean that your body has a green glow.• It could mean that you possess a light bulb that is

tinted green.

Sherlock saw the man using binoculars.

Utterance

• It’s a smallest unit of speech and it’s the object of study in Pragmatic analysis.

• Pragmatic Linguistics focus on the study of the speaker's meaning, not focusing on the phonetic or grammatical form of an utterance, but instead on what the speaker's intentions and beliefs are.

Utterance versus Sentence

• Utterance:

• Speech unit.• The interpretation

depends on the semantic content and the enviroment.

• Sentence:

• Grammar unit.• The semantic content

depends on the structure but not on the possibles uses.

Utterance Elements (Physical)• Source or Sender: Objects which encode message

data and transmit the information, via a channel (Written / Orally).

• Receiver or Observer: The one who receives decoded messages/information from the sender, who first encoded them.

• Utterance: Linguistic information produced by the sender.

• Space-time Context: Physical background in which the utterance is going on.

Utterance Elements (Immaterial)

• Pragmatic information: A set of knowledge, beliefs, opinions, and feeling of a person.

• Purpose: The relationship between the source and the information.

• Social background: the relationship between iterlocutors.

Utterance Characteristics

• It’s an individual, single and unique action.• It’s an psychophysiological activity.• It’s bounded by pauses. (Beginning/ End)

Discourse Background

• A set of extra linguistic factors that conditionate both the production and the

meaning of the utterance.

• Social: Belong to a certain social group and it’s understood by that group.

• Situational: Here and now. It can be understood only by the source and the observer.

• Linguistic: It’s the linguistic enviroment in which a word can be found.