Definition Of pragmatics

Definition Of pragmatics | Pragmatics Theory -- Pragmatic is another broad approach to discourse: it deals with three concepts (meaning, context, communication) that are themselves extremely vast and unwieldy.

This chapter focuses on one particular type of pragmatics - Gricean pragmatics – not only because some other definitions of pragmatics cover much of “the hub of pragmatics research” (Fasold 1990:128).

Defining pragmatics

Pragmatics was defined by Morris (1938) as a branch of semiotics, the study of its of signs ( but see give).

In addition to defining different aspect of the semiosis process, Morris identified three ways of studying signs, syntax is the study of formal related to the objects to which they are applicable  (their designata), pragmatics is the study of how interpreters.  Thus, pragmatics is the study of how interpreters engage in the “taking-account-of” designate (the construction of inter pretans ) of sign-vehicles.

Speaker meaning

The firs concept important to Gricean pragmatics is speaker meaning.  As we will see, speaker meaning not only a distinction between two kinds of meaning (and hence, a division between semantic and pragmatic meaning), it also suggest a particular view of human communication that focuses on intentions.

Strawson ( 1964: 155) separates not two, but three, intentions in Grice’s formulation. In Strawson’s to mean something by x , s must intend the following:

(a)    S’s utterance of x to produce a certain response r in a certain audience a;

(b)   A to recognize S’s intention (a);

(c)    A’s recognition of S;s intentional (a) to function as at least part of A’s reason for A’s response r.

v  The cooperative principle.

In order to understand the cooperative principle (CP), it is helpful to first describe Grice’s view of logical meaning in relation to natural language.  Our discussion will also focus on the concept of implicature : an inference about speaker intention that arises from a recipient’s use of both semantic (i.e logical ).

Referring Terms :  Pragmatic Processes In discourse

Grician pragmatics provides a way to analyze the inference of speaker meaning : how hearers infer the intentions underlysis of discourse, i.e.

Our sample analysis in section 4 focuses on the organization of referring terms in a narrative. Before beginning this analysis, I introduce several terms to be use in section 4 and in the other chapter (7 and 8 ) dealing with similar issues (3.1).

 Referring as a pragmatic process in discourse

Although reference and referring terms have been analyzed through many different perspectives in philosophy and linguistics, scholars often view the process of referring to entities in the universe of discourse as pragmatic-simply because it is a process involving speakers, their intention, actions, and knowledge.  Givon (1989:175), for example, states that.

A preliminary gricean analysis : quantity and relevance

Differences in both definiteness and explicitness referring terms can be associated not just with pragmatics in general, but with the gricean maxims of quantity and relevance. As I noted above, for example, I may refer to the very same person in numerous ways: definite descriptions ( my husband, Louis, he, Dr Scavo, the man I live with ) and indefinite descriptions ( an adult I live with, someone I met in college).

Referring as  process

Referring maybe seen as a  problem.  Rather than analyze referring terms per se. focusing on referring sequence also allows us to clearly differentiate first mentions of a referent. (cf. [slot 1]) from next-mentions (cf. [slot 2[). As noted earlier, fitrst-mentions are often indefinite noun phrases (e.g. a + NP) and explicit (e.g nominals rather than pronominlas).

The importance of method and data

Before going on to play gricean pragmatics to some of the issues raised above, it is important to make some observations about method and data. Although I am applying Gricean pragmatics to discourse, the application that I propose does not always adhere to the typical methodology of Gricean analyses. Contemporary pragmatics is certainly a part of linguistics ( Levinson 1983), but this is part of a linguistics that takes as date a hypothetical sentence, adds to it a hypothetical context, and calls it an utterance ( e.g. Cole 1981).

Sample analysis:  referring sequences in narrative

The simple analysis in this a section is based upon the referring expressions in one particular discourse- a narrative.  After presenting the narrative.

The data

Stories are useful texts in which to analyze referring sequence. In telling a story, a speaker constructs a story world in which a limited number of entities act and interact with one another in a defined location and for a limited period of time. In addition, although stories are situated within conversation, a story world can be somewhat independent of that world and can involve distinct time ( and information state) shifts away form that word. 

The analysis

We see in this section that maxims of quantity and relation work together in a very general way to guide H’s interpretation of S’s referential intention. We will use the story in (4) as a source of information ( the quantity maxim ) to which successive referents in the story are relevant ( the relation maxim).

Referent 1 : passenger’

The referring expressions used for referent I raise several important issues.  The first issues concerns the la belling of the referent ass ‘passenger’  and the use of the word fare to evoke that referent.

v Referent 2: friend.

v Referent 3 : they

v Referent 4 : ‘ guy up front’

v Referent 5 : other cab drivers

v Referent 6 and , and 6a: ‘a cop’ and ‘cops’

v Summary :  referring sequences, relevance, and quantity

I have been suggesting in this section that one way that gricean pragmatics applies to discourse analysis is by providing a description of the pragmatic conditions during which different referring terms are interpreted.  The maxim of quantity helps to guide H toward information that can provide clause about the identity of a referent.

Gricean pragmatics as an approach to discourse.

In this chapter, we describe about speaker meaning and the cooperative principle ( section 2 ) and than applied these ideas to a particular problems: we used the CP ( specifically, the maxims of quantity and relevance) to describe the conditions under which people use different expressiona to communicate referential intentions in discourse ( section 4 ).

We saw that Gricean ideas about information quantity and relevance (cf. Horn 1985b; Levinson 1983,1987; Sperber and Wilson 1986) can help solve problems of utterance interpretation that hinge on assessing the contribution of various kinds of contexts to such interpretations.

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