PRESENTATION ON PRAGMATICS

1. PRAGMATICS
Presented by
Amal Assadawy
1
Roll No 31351038

2. Introduction
Theterm“pragmatics”wasfirstcoinedinthe1930s
bythephilosopherC.W.Morris;developedasa
subfieldoflinguisticsinthe1970s.
Pragmaticsisneededifwewantafuller,deeper,and
generallymorereasonableaccountofhuman
languagebehavior
2

3. Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics
which studies the ways in which context
contributes to meaning.
Pragmatics studies the factors that govern
our choice of language in social interaction
and the effects of our choice on others.
(David Crystal)
Definitions
3

4. - “The study of contextual meaning communicated
by a speaker or writer, and interpreted by a listener
or reader.” (G.Yule)
“The study of the relation of signs to their
interpreters.” (Charles Morris)
- “The study of the relations between linguistic
forms and its users(…)Only pragmatics allows
humans into the analysis: their assumptions,
purposes, goals, and actions they perform while
speaking.” (G.Yule)
Continue…
4

5. 1- THE STUDY OF SPEAKER MEANING
WHAT PEOPLE MEAN by their utterances
rather than what the words or phrases
might mean by themselves.
Pragmatic Meaning
5

6. 6

7. 7
2- The study of contextual meaning
Importance of the CONTEXT: the circumstances and the
audience or public.

8. 8
3-The study of how more gets communicated
than said.
• The INFERENCES made by listeners or readers in
order to arrive at an interpretation of the intended
meaning.
• A great deal of what is UNSAID is recognized as part
of what is communicated.
• The study of “invisible meaning”

9. 9
4-The study of the expression of relative
distance
The CLOSENESS or DISTANCE of the listener or
reader determines how much needs to be said.
For example:
A: there is a store over there (Let‘s go inside)
B: no (I don‘t want to go inside)
A: why not? (why do you not want to go
inside?)
B: I‘m tired. (I don‘t want to because I‘m tired.)

10. 10
IN OTHER WORDS …
PRAGMATICS studies HOW PEOPLE MAKE SENSE OF
EACH OTHER LINGUISTICALLY.
For example:
A: So_ did you?
B: Hey_ who wouldn’t?
Two friends in a conversation may imply some things
and infer some others without providing any clear
linguistic evidence. So, pragmatics requires us to make
sense of what people have in mind.

11. pragmatics is the study of the contribution
of context to meaning.
Context of an utterance consists of-
speaker, the sentence which is uttered, the
act performed in the uttering of sentence,
and the hearer.
In pragmatics four types of context can be
differentiated :
Context
11

12. 12

13. 13
Continue…
Physical context: The physical context is the location of a
given word, the situation in which it is used, as well as
timing, all of which aid proper understating of the words
Epistemic context: the epistemic context refers to what
speakers know about the world. For example, what
background knowledge is shared by the speakers is part of
your epistemic knowledge.

14. 14
Continue ..
Linguistic context: the linguistic context refers to what
has been said already in the utterance. For example, if I
begin a discussion by referring to Jane Smith and in the
next sentence refer to "her" as being a top notch athlete,
the linguistic context lets me know that the antecedent
of "her" (the person "her" refers to) is Jane Smith.
Social context: the social context refers to the social
relationship among speakers and hearers.

15. 15
DEIXIS
DEIXIS: “pointing via langauge”
To accomplish this pointing we use deictic
expressions or indexicals.
i.e: “What’s that?” (used to indicate sth. in the
immediate context.)
Deictic expressions depend on the speaker and
hearer sharing the same spatial context, in face-to
face spoken interaction.

16. 16
Types of deictic expressions :
Person deixis: used to point people. (me,
you)
Place deixis : used to point location in time
(now, then).
i.e: “I’ll put this here, ok?”
Time deixis: used to point to a time " now,
then, tonight, last week "

17. 17
REFERENCE AND INFERENCE
REFERENCE: an act in which a speaker or writer, uses
linguistic forms to enable a listener or reader, to identify
something.
Words in themselves do not refer anything. People refer.
REFERRING EXPRESSIONS: linguistic forms like proper
nouns, definite or indefinite noun phrases, and
pronouns.
The choice of one type of these expressions rather than
another is based on what the speaker assumes the
listener already knows.

18. 18
FOR EXAMPLE:
“Look at him” (use of pronoun)
“The woman in red” (definite article)
“A woman was looking at you” (indefinite article
and pronoun)
 So, reference is tied to the speaker’s goals
and beliefs about the listener knowledge in the
use of language.

19. 19
INFERENCE
For successful reference to occur, we must recognize
the role of INFERENCE and COLLABORATION between
speaker and listener in thinking what the other has in
mind.
Sometimes we use vague expressions relying on the
listener’s ability to infer what referent we have in mind:
i.e: “The blue thing”, “That stuff”
We sometimes even invent names.

20. 20
THE ROLE OF CO-TEXT
Co- text: the linguistic environment in
which a word is used.
The co-text clearly limits our range of
possible interpretations we might have for
a word.
i.e: “Brazil wins World Cup”
Brazil would be the referring expression,
and the rest of the sentence the co-text.

21. 21
CO- TEXT CONTEXT
Just a linguistic
part of the
environment in
which a referring
expression is
used.
The
physical
environme
nt in which
a word is
used.

22. 22
ANAPHORIC REFERENCE
The expressions used to maintain reference to something
or someone already mentioned.
i.e: “A man was looking at us. He then disappeared.”
The initial reference is often indefinite (A man…) and is
called the ANTECEDENT.
The subsequent reference is definite or a prononun
(He…) and is called ANAPHORA.

23. 23
SPEECH ACTS and EVENTS
Actions performed via utterances are called
Speech Acts.
In English they are commonly known as:
apology, compliment, complaint, invitation,
promise, or request and apply to the speaker’s
communicative intention.
The circumstances surrounding the utterance
are called the Speech Event and it’s their nature
that determines the interpretation of an
utterance as performing a particular speech act.

24. 24
POLITENESS
“Polite social behaviour” within a culture. We assume
that participants in an interaction are generally aware
of such cultural norms and principles of politeness.
Face: the public self-image of a person. It refers to that
emotional and social sense of self that everyone has
and expects the other sto recognize.
Politeness in an interaction can be defined as the
means employed to show awareness of another
person’s face.

25. 25
Examples of social distance:
respect or deference
“Excuse, Mr. Buckingham, can I talk to you for a
second?”
Social closeness:
friendliness, camaraderie, or solidarity.
“Hey, Bucky, got a minute?”

26. 26
Face Wants: A person’s expectations that their pulic
self-image will be respected.
If a speaker says sth. that represents a threat to
another individual’s expectations, regarding self-
image, it’s described as a face-threatening act.
When someone says an utterance that avoids a
potential threat t a person’s face, it’s called face-
saving act.
Example

27. 27
A: “I’m going to tell him to stop that awful noise right
now!!” (Face-threatening act)
B: “Perhaps you could just ask him if he’s going to stop
because it’s getting late and we need to sleep…” (Face-
saving act)

28. 28
References
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to
Pragmatics. London: Longman
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

29. 29
Thank You…