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The Definitions Of Pragmatics

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Pragmatics is a field of study appeared in the late sixties and early seventies. It is the branch of linguistics concerned with language use, which deal with the form and meaning of sentences respectively (Ninio and Snow, 1996, p.9). Hence, pragmatics is usually associated with utterance and speaker meaning. Some definitions of pragmatics stress different views and perspectives will help us to understand this field.
Mey (2001), pragmatics is the use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society (p.6). Blum-Kulka and Kasper (1993) are defined that as the study of people’s comprehension and production of linguistic action in context. As for Leech (1983), described pragmatics as the study of how utterances have …show more content…

Inference is the reasoning, which leads to a conclusion drawn from a premise. There are different types of inferences. Firstly, semantic inferences relate to the decoding of utterances by the application of phonological, syntactic, morphological, lexical rules, and propositions. These inferences are classic forms of reasoning based on rules of formal logic and can be demonstrated (Allwood et al., 1977, Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Secondly, pragmatic inferences are based on the notion of implicatures. Grice (1975), emphasized the distinction between what words mean, what a speaker literally says when using them and what the communicative intention of the speaker is when using the words, which often goes beyond what is said.
Culpeper and Haugh (2014) address the notions of “inferences” and “meaning in interaction”, they explain two views on the scope of pragmatics. First view originates from the studies of the American philosophers Peirce (1839-1914) and Morris (1901-1979) and the German-American philosopher Carnap (1891-1970). Morris (1938) based on Peirce and Carnap’s studies, proposed three ways distinction for sign …show more content…

The continental view would also covers broader cognitive notions as the knowledge of situations, social institutions and cultures among others would be influenced by language. Culpeper and Haugh (2014) indicated that some issue such as “politeness” can be addressed in both Anglo-American and the continental views hence it purposes of describing not only some aspects of linguistic structure but also some aspects of social function and context. Moreover, many of the topics addressed in both views extracted of three major pragmatic theories: speech acts (Austin, 1962, Searle, 1969-1975), conversational implicatures (Grice, 1975), and politeness (Brown & Levinson,

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