Concept
Pragmatics
Overview
In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. This field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA).
Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance and conversation, as well as nonverbal communication. Theories of pragmatics are closely linked to theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax, which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships. Pragmatics, together with semantics and syntactics, is a part of semiotics. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. In 1938, Charles Morris first distinguished pragmatics as an independent subfield within semiotics, alongside syntax and semantics. Pragmatics emerged as its own subfield in the 1950s after the pioneering work of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It may be said to be, at once, both what the logicians call, a singular, and what they call, a common term; and to join, in its signification the seemingly opposite qualities of the most precise individuality and the most extensive generalization. This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first formers of language. What are called the…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Pragmatics is.
"If a guardian is bound to behave with good faith, and a partner, and any one to whom you have entrusted anything, and any one who has undertaken a trust then so ought an agent." This argument, arriving at the point at which it aims by a comparison of many instances, is called induction, which in Greek is called [Greek: _ipago_]. and it is the kind of argument which Socrates employed a great deal in his discourses.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
States what Pragmatics is.
And, since we are concerned with what is called "thought," we must pay more attention than we otherwise should do to the private as opposed to the social use of language. Language profoundly affects our thoughts, and it is this aspect of language that is of most importance to us in our present inquiry. We are almost more concerned with the internal speech that is never uttered than we are with the things said out…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Pragmatics is.
Philosophers who discussed Pragmatics
- Karl-Otto Apel
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Paul Grice
- Robert Stalnaker
- Jerry Fodor
- C. I. Lewis
- Nathan Salmón
- Richard Milton Martin
- Kent Bach
- Robert Stainton
- François Recanati
Related ideas
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Artificial intelligence
- Gilles Deleuze
- Anaphora (linguistics)
- Philosophy
- Hate speech
- John Searle
- Judith Butler
- Charles W. Morris
- Truth value
- Jürgen Habermas
- Censorship
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Reference
- Noam Chomsky
- Linguistics
- Psychology
- Philosophical Investigations
- J. L. Austin
- Psychotherapy
- Syntax
- Semantics
- Semiotics
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.