PRAGMATICS CONTRASTED WITH SEMANTICS

PRAGMATICS CONTRASTED WITH SEMANTICS

Semantics, as we have already seen, is a branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning. Since both semantics and pragmatics deal with 'meaning', the question that can be raised is then: What is meaning?

Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in semantic theory.

1. Semantic meaning is truth conditional, whereas in pragmatics there are felicity conditions.

Example: The sentence 'Sam is a man' has to fulfill the following conditions to be true:

a.       Sam is a person.

b.      Sam is an adult.

c.       Sam is a male.

d.      Sam is an adult male person.

Notice that semantics is interested in the conditions that make the sentence 'true'.

In pragmatics, the utterance 'I promise to be back early' means a promise on condition a future action is involved:  'I'll come back early' (SEE the Speech act theory). In this case we are interested in those conditions which make the promise 'felicitous', i.e, be a promise and not a threat for instance.

2. In semantics, meaning is a dyadic relation: "X means Y"; in pragmatics, meaning is a triadic relation: "Speaker means Y by X".

Example:

Shall we see that film tonight?

I have a headache.

The speaker means NO (Y) by saying I HAVE A HEADACHE (X).

3. In semantics we refer to sentence meaning; in pragmatics we refer to utterance meaning.

Sentence meaning is predictable from the meaning of the lexicon items and grammatical features of the sentence. Utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the sentence plus considerations of the intentions of the Speaker (the speaker may intend to refuse the invitation to go to the film), interpretation of the Hearer (the Hearer may interpret the utterance as a refusal, or not), determined by context and background knowledge.

4. Semantics deals with meaning out of context; pragmatics deals with meaning in context.

Traditionally there are three categories of context referred to in the literature:

a.       setting or spatio-temporal location of U (utterance): that is, the particular moment and place at which Speaker utters U, and the particular time and place at which H (hearer) hears or reads U.

b.      the world spoken of in U: that is, the world evoked in the utterance.

c.       The textual environment (the utterance is the result of what has been said before).

It is particularly important to remember that meaning, as a defining feature of what pragmatics is concerned with, is not seen as a stable counterpart to linguistic form. Rather, it is dynamically generated in the process of using language (see Thomas, 1995, Verschueren, 1999). Also, pragmatics as the study of 'meaning in context' does not imply that one can automatically arrive at a pragmatic understanding of the phenomena involved just by knowing all the extralinguistic information, because 'context' is not a static element.

For example, here is a short dialogue (taken from Mey, 1993:8-9) with contextual information in brackets, where the classical concept of 'context' does not help.

(Two linguists, call them Jacob and Mark, are coming out of a lecture hall at a university which is neither's home territory, but where Jacob has been before; so he thinks he knows the campus, more or less)

Jacob: Do you know the way back to the dining hall? We can go in my car.

(Marks gets into the car; after the first turn, he starts giving directions, which greatly amazes Jacob, and irritates him a little - he was under the impression that 'he' needed to guide the other, not the other way round. After several more turns - which Jacob is taking at greater and greater speeds, so the other doesn't get a chance to interfere - Marks says:)

Mark: Oh, I thought you didn't know the way to the campus.

Jacob: I thought you didn't know!

(whereupon they both start laughing)

Clearly (cf. Mey's interpretation), in this case Mark takes Jacob's original utterance not as a 'real question', but as a 'pre-request' (preparing the ground for the request to be given instructions on how to get to the dining hall). Jacob. On the other hand, who really wanted to know if Mark was familiar with the campus, because otherwise he wanted to give him directions, or a ride, doesn't understand the other's reaction. The moment the situation is resolved, we can look back and understand what has happened. But the function of the first utterance, or its 'illocutionary force' could not be predicted on the basis of what had happened before.

If the concept of 'context' is established independently of the ongoing interaction between interlocutors, it is completely useless. It is precisely the dynamic development of the conversation that gives us a clue to understanding.

Pragmatics serves as a point of convergence for interdisciplinary fields of investigation. Thus, pragmatics, as a notion, was proposed by Morris (1938), in his endeavour to outline a consistent theory of signs (semiotics); philosophy and the sociological tradition of ethnomethodology have provided fertile ideas in pragmatics. In the field of philosophy, Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations (1958) has had an important influence on pragmatics through the suggestion that understanding a language involves knowing the nature of the activity in which the utterances play a role (See chapter on Activity types). This is part of the doctrine of 'language games', which produced two of the main theories in pragmatics: Speech Act Theory (Austin and Searle) and Logic of Conversation (See chapter on Conversational Principle: Cooperation). The main idea in Speech Act Theory is that utterances have certain functions, so when we speak we ask for information, give information, make requests, apologise, make suggestions, etc.

The sociological tradition of ethnomethodology produced the wider field of Conversation Analysis (See chapters on Conversation Analysis). Though conversation analysis focuses on the minute details of interactions, it has shown how face-to-face interaction can become the subject of investigation in order to provide an understanding of human experience and behaviour.

As a conclusion, pragmatics serves as a latch between interdisciplinary fields of investigation and the components of language resources.

III. SUMMARY

Pragmatics is:

'the science of language in relation to its users' (Mey, 1993)

'meaning in interaction' (Thomas, 1995)

'the study of language in use' (Verschueren, 1999)

Meaning, as a defining feature of what pragmatics is concerned with, is not seen as a stable counterpart to linguistic form. Rather, it is dynamically generated in the process of using language (Thomas, 1995, Verschueren, 1999).

Pragmatics is the study of those aspects of meaning which are not captured by semantics:

meaning is a triadic relation: speaker means Y by X

utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the sentence plus considerations of the intentions of the Speaker, interpretation of the Hearer, determined by context and background knowledge.

for an utterance to mean something it has to fulfill certain 'felicity conditions'.

1. Examine the description of a part of a linguistic day in Langford's life (as a university teacher) and identify the situations in which he is a producer (speaker) of language, the situations in which he is a consumer (hearer) of language, and the situations in which he is both. (Source: Langford, 1994:2-7)

'I wake with my alarm. I say to myself, but not out loud, a word or two that should perhaps not be printed here. I stagger to the bathroom, shave and generally prepare myself for the first phase of the day. [.]

Having prepared myself for the day, I go down to the kitchen and there, in the process of preparing my breakfast, encounter yet more written messages as they silently scream at me from food manufacturers packets, bottles and cartoons. I turn on the portable television set, strategically placed on a worktop so as not to miss any vital bit of breakfast television whilst standing guard over slowly simmering porridge. I now encounter not my language, but the language of other people specifically produced by them as a means of communicating something to me along with several million others.

The language these people produce is mostly spoken language and whilst sometimes it is directed at me as if I were a partner in a conversation they are holding, at other times the language is directed at actual conversational partners, either present in the studio or linked by microphones, TV monitors and other electronic wizardry. But the odd thing is that whilst the talk is produced, for example, as part of a conversation involving just those who are indeed in the studio, I nevertheless get the impression that the conversation is being produced specifically for me, and millions like me, as a potential overhearing audience. Furthermore, the participants in such talk somehow make it clear through the way that they talk, that this is precisely the sort of impression they want me to be having.'

2. Imagine a continuation of Langford's linguistic day in which he is a producer and consumer of language.

3. Describe a similar linguistic day in your life.

4. Provide different contexts for the following utterances to have

different functions:

It's hot in here.

Can you pass me the salt?

There's a pencil on the table.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.

It's a beautiful day today.

Try to interpret the functions of the following utterances recorded during a basketball game (Levinson,, 1994:67):

Alright Peter

Here!

C'mmon Peter.

Beautiful tip!

Read the following excerpt from Morris's Foundations of the theory of signs (1938:6) and explain in your own words what you have understood:

'In terms of the three correlates (sign vehicle, designatum, interpreter) of the triadic relation of semiosis, a number of other dyadic relations may be abstracted for study. One may study the relations of signs to the objects to which signs are applicable. This relation will be called the semantical dimension of semiosis [.]; the study of this dimension will be called semantics. Or the subject of study may be the relation of signs to interpreters. This relation will be called the pragmatical dimension of semiosis, [.] and the study of this dimension will be named pragmatics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mey, L. J., 1993, Pragmatics. An Introduction,

Blackwell

Thomas, J., 1995, Meaning in Interaction, Longman

Verschueren, J., 1999, Understanding Pragmatics, Arnold,

London

Yule, G., 1996, Pragmatics, Oxford University Press