Authored by: dio gratia on Thursday, January 03 2013 @ 05:38 AM EST |
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which
context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory,
conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language
behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics and anthropology. Unlike
semantics, which examines meaning that is conventional or "coded" in a given
language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on
structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the
speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any preexisting
knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other
factors. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to
overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time
etc. of an utterance.
The ability to understand another speaker's intended
meaning is called pragmatic competence.
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Authored by: dio gratia on Thursday, January 03 2013 @ 06:00 AM EST |
pragmatics: a branch of semiotics that deals with the relation between signs
or linguistic expressions and their users. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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