utterance meaning

language in context

interaction of sentence meaning, speaker intentions, discourse context,common ground, world knowledge

Pragmatics

Grice (1967):

1. sentence meaning (what is said) vs. speaker meaning (what is meant)2. speaker meaning consists of conversational implicaturesin addition to sentence meaning

(1) Al: What time is it?Trixie: Some of the guests are already leaving.It's late.

(2) Al: Is the party fun?Trixie: Some of the guests are already leaving.The party is boring.

(3) John: Do you want to go skiing?Mary: It's snowing!a. No. (because Mary only skis when it's sunny)b. Yes. (because the snow is better and there are less peopleon the slopes)

(4) a. John: Do you want to go skiing?Mary: It's snowing ( no): : : but I didn't mean to say that I don't want to go skiing. In fact, I love skiing when it snows.b. John: There's a red cube on the table (! there is a cube onthe table): : : but there is no cube on the table.strange

How do we infer what the speaker meant?

“Pragmatics is an important area of study for your course. A simplified way of thinking about pragmatics is to recognise, for example, that language needs to be kept interesting - a speaker or writer does not want to bore a listener or reader, for example, by being over-long or tedious. So, humans strive to find linguistic means to make a text, perhaps, shorter, more interesting, more relevant, more purposeful or more personal. Pragmatics allows this. ”

Steve Campsall