What is pragmatics?

Pragmatics is the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, the addressee and other features of the context of utterance, such as the following:

• The effect that the following have on the speaker’s choice of expression and the addressee’s interpretation of an utterance:

  • Context of utterance
  • Generally observed principles of communication
  • The goals of the speaker

• Programmatic concerns, such as

  • the treatment of given versus new information, including presupposition
  • deixis
  • speech acts, especially illocutionary acts
  • implicature, and
  • the relations of meaning or function between portions of discourse (see interpropositional relation) or turns of conversation (see conversation analysis).

• What is meaning and pragmatic function?

Levinson 1983 5–34

Crystal 1985 240

Leech 1983 2, 5–6

Context for this page:

• Concept module: pragmatics
• In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): P
• In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
• In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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