Pragmatics studies language meaning in physical, epistemic, linguistic, and social contexts. Direct speech acts are literal, while indirect ones differ. Contexts include physical, epistemic, linguistic, and social. Grice’s Maxims help avoid confusion and include instructions for cooperation in conversation.
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics that studies the meaning of language in its physical, epistemic, linguistic, and social contexts. A person may perform a direct speech act, in which what is said is exactly what is meant, or an indirect speech act, in which the meaning differs from the words actually spoken. These differences are usually understood automatically due to context.
The four aspects of context can all influence pragmatics. Physical context refers to the environment of a conversation, such as a library, soccer field, or bedroom. Epistemic context refers to the basic knowledge shared by a speaker and his or her audience, such as who is president or the ground rules of basketball. Information that has already been shared in the discussion is known as linguistic context, including all antecedents, topics of conversation, and intonations. A sarcastic, sad, or joking tone of voice can easily change the meaning of a sentence.
Social context is the term for the relationship between a speaker and an audience. A man will communicate differently when he is with his boss than his friends. Neighbors sharing summer vacation photos, a teacher showing a documentary to his students, and teenagers watching a movie at the cinema are all examples of different social contexts. Each situation would require different communication styles.
Speech act theory, a subfield of pragmatics, studies the two different categories of speech, known as direct and indirect. Direct speech acts are sentences in which the literal meaning and the intended meaning coincide. The three types of direct speech acts are declarative, interrogative, and imperative.
Indirect speech acts are sentences in which the literal and understood meanings differ. This can occur for many reasons, such as implication, implicature, or happiness conditions. Engaging refers to a statement that, by its very nature, requires another statement to be true. A sentence that implies another fact but does not require it is known as an implicature. Happiness conditions are the context in which sentences make sense.
One of the founders of the field of pragmatics, Herbert Paul Grice, developed Grice’s Maxims to help avoid the confusion that can easily occur through implicature, ignoring happiness conditions, and other means. Gricean maxims are a set of instructions for cooperating in conversation, such as being relevant and avoiding ambiguity. People sometimes deliberately ignore these maxims for effects such as sarcasm.
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