Pragmatics

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The study of how context affects the meaning and interpretation of language, including things like presuppositions, implicature, and speech acts.

Speech Acts: The branch of pragmatics that focuses on the intended meaning of an utterance beyond its literal meaning.
Politeness and Face: The study of social norms and conventions involved in communication and how to communicate politely.
Presupposition: The assumption or presupposition made by the speaker that the listener understands without being explicitly stated.
Conversational Maxims – The four principles governing conversation: Quality, relevance, quantity, and manner.
Coherence and Cohesion: The study of how language is organized at a higher level beyond individual sentences to form coherent texts.
Grice's Theory of Implicature: The concept of conveying meaning indirectly without making specific assertions but relying on assumptions and shared knowledge.
Speech and Language Functions: The study of how language is used to perform various social functions, such as greeting, apologizing, complimenting, and criticizing.
Speech Act Classification: The categorization of speech acts based on their social functions.
Semantic Roles: The roles that participants in a sentence play, such as the subject and object, and how they affect the meaning of a sentence.
Cultural Differences in Communication: The study of how cultural background affects communicative behavior and conventions.
Pragmatics in Literature: The analysis of literary texts with a focus on the use of language to convey meaning beyond its literal sense.
Anaphora and Coreference: The study of how pronouns and other referring expressions are used in discourse to establish reference and cohesion.
Irony and Sarcasm: The use of language to communicate meanings that are opposite or contradictory to its literal sense for humorous or critical effects.
Speech Acts and Power: The analysis of how language is used to establish or reinforce power relations between speakers and their interlocutors.
Speech Disorders: The study of how the pragmatics of language can be affected by speech disorders such as autism or schizophrenia.
Speech Act Theory: It pertains to the study of how meaning is conveyed through linguistic acts such as promising, requesting, and apologizing.
Conversational Implicature: It refers to the implications or inferences that are made from a speaker's words or actions.
Politeness Theory: It is concerned with the ways in which speakers show deference and consideration towards their interlocutors through language use.
Cooperative Principle: It is the principle of conversation that states that participants in a conversation should make a cooperative effort to establish mutual understanding by adhering to certain maxims such as relevance, brevity, and clarity.
Relevance Theory: It posits that the meaning of a linguistic utterance is derived from its relevance to the listener's context or mental representation.
Critical Discourse Analysis: It is the study of the social, political, and ideological implications of language use.
Register and Genre: They refer to the different forms of language use that are specific to particular social, professional, or cultural contexts.
Face Theory: It is concerned with the ways in which speakers use language to present a certain image of themselves or to interact with others in ways that support their social identity.
Intercultural Pragmatics: It is the study of the ways in which cultural differences impact language use and communication in cross-cultural settings.
Speech Accommodation Theory: It describes how speakers modify their language use to accommodate their interlocutor's linguistic and social characteristics such as accent, dialect, age, and socio-economic status.
- "In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning."
- "The 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 go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships."
- "The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence."
- "Pragmatics emerged as its own subfield in the 1950s after the pioneering work of J.L. Austin and Paul Grice."
- "Pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning."
- "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 go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning."
- "Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians."
- "The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence."
- "Pragmatics emerged as its own subfield in the 1950s after the pioneering work of J.L. Austin and Paul Grice."
- "The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions."
- "The field has been represented since 1986 by the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)."
- "The field of study evaluates [...] as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted."
- "Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance and conversation, as well as nonverbal communication."
- "Syntax examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships."