文档介绍：Chapter 8 Pragmatics
Language in Use
I What is Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of language usage from a functional perspective and is concerned with the principles that account for how meaning municated by the speaker (writer) and interpreted by the listener (reader) in a certain context.
I What is Pragmatics
It can be also defined as the study of how speakers use the sentences of a language to effect munication.
Pragmatics is different from traditional semantics in that it studies meaning not in isolation but in context.
Example:
Cats drink the cream.
Semantic meaning: "Domestic felines consume the liquid fat of milk,"
Mike: What happened to that bowl of cream?
Annie: Cats drink cream.
Pragmatic meaning: "That bowl of cream was probably eaten by our cat."
I What is Pragmatics
In other words, semantics focuses on the meaning es from linguistic knowledge, while pragmatics concentrates on those aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account our knowledge about the physical and social world.
Sentence Meaning Utterance Meaning
It is the abstract context-independent entity called semantic proposition.
It is context-dependent. It is the product of sentence meaning and context. Therefore, it is richer than the meaning of the sentence.
I What is Pragmatics
Pragmatics also differs from syntax in that pragmatics is concerned with the appropriateness of naturally occurring utterances. For example, the four utterances in the following dialogue are all syntactically plete, but pragmatically they are all "appropriate" in the particular context.
I What is Pragmatics
Jane: Coffee?
Steve: Sure.
Jane: White?
Steve: White.
Like pragmatics, text analysis is also concerned with language used in particular contexts. It is the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected spoken or written texts. In other words, it is the study of linguistic units larger than sentences or clauses.