Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Pragmatics

Definition: 

Pragmatics is the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on thespeaker, the addressee and other features of the context of utterance, such as the following:

  • The effect that the following have on the speaker’s choice of expression and the addressee’s interpretation of an utterance:
    • Context of utterance
    • Generally observed principles of communication
    • The goals of the speaker
  • Programmatic concerns, such as
    • the treatment of given versus new information, including presupposition
    • deixis
    • speech acts, especially illocutionary acts
    • implicature, and
    • the relations of meaning or function between portions of discourse (seeinterpropositional relation) or turns of conversation (see conversation analysis).
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