“Pragmatic: The Study of Invisible Meaning” — An Article

In my everyday life, I have never thought that having a conversation with someone can be a complex thing to learn.

In the article that was published by the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, pragmatic deals with the effects of the context. What someone says can have different meanings, it can be less or more. For instance, Andy’s mom says, “Finish your homework now,” when Andy asks whether she can have a sleepover at her friend’s house or not. It can be interpreted as (1) Andy’s mom gives her permission to do a sleepover as long as Andy finishes her homework in the first place, or (2) Andy’s mom does not give the permission and demands her to do her homework now.

Another example, Mark mentions that he is full when Peter offers him pizza for dinner. There are many possible meanings based on Mark’s statement. (1) Mark just has had his dinner so that he is full now, (2) Mark does not like the topping of the pizza that Peter has; he afraid to tell him straightforwardly, or (3) Mark does not like to have dinner together with Peter.

See? Communication happens when two parties (the speaker and the listener) are on the same page of context.

When we are trying to comprehend what the other interlocutor is trying to say, the influence of physical context and literarure context is important. In short, the location where the words or phrases exist, and what words come after and before (co-text) help us to get the idea of what is meant.

‘Trolley Section’ sign is written inside a baby shop.

Because the word “trolley” is in the baby shop, it must be trolleys for the baby, not trolleys for carrying things. This is what we called physical context. While the word “baby shop” does not mean that the shop sells babies. It means that it is the place to buy the baby’s needs.

“That mean girl cheats on him. It was very unfortunate of him to see his girlfriend together with the other man in the stadium; watching rock,” says Sandra to Mia.

From the literature context, we can know that “mean” refers to an adjective, not a verb. The word “rock” refers to a music band, a genre, not a stone. Now, that you get the overall concept of pragmatic, let’s jump deeper and study pragmatic rules.

Deixis

Deixis (Greek word) or deictic expression is the key of conversation that cannot be understood at all if the listener does not know the context that the speaker is talking about. Deictic expressions can be in the form of pronouns, and adverbs of time and place. It’s your fault that I told him everything. If the listener does not understand the context; why the sentence is made, on what condition did the speaker say that, and so on, it is impossible to interpret the sentence correctly. The sentence ‘It’s your fault that I told him everything’ contains a lot of expressions: your fault, him, everything.

There are three kinds of deictic expressions: person deixis (e.g: me, us, this boy, them, that person, those people), spatial deixis (e.g: there, here), and temporal deixis (e.g: now, then, today, yesterday, next week, last semester, that time). These deictic expressions can be used to tell the listeners about the position of the speaker. “Come to the library, Anne!” and “Go to the library, Anne!” have two different meanings. Even though both sentences tell Anne to be in the library, the position of the speaker is not the same. The first sentence shows that the speaker is in the library, while the second shows that the speaker is not in the library.

Reference

Cambridge English Dictionary describes reference as a mention of something. But what is ‘reference’ in the pragmatic? A reference is an act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader) to identify something (Yule, 2020:153). Speakers can refer to things with another word, for example instead of saying Mrs. Johnson, we can say she; or when we do not know what to call something, we can use phrases to refer to it, such as that cheap book or the blueish thing that I saw this morning.

Whether the reference is well delivered or not is based on the ability of the listeners to use all of the ‘knowledge’ that they have to build the meaning of the reference. This is called inference, the act of reaching a conclusion.

Peter and Tom are working in a bank which director is Mr. Thompson, or the know-it-all. When Peter asks Tom, Where is Wikipedia? and Tom replies, Having a meeting in his room. It is not necessarily mean that the Wikipedia that you see on your laptop has a meeting in his office. Both use Wikipedia as the reference of Mr. Thompson.

In addition to inference, there is anaphora. Merriam-Webster describes anaphora as the use of a grammatical substitute (such as a pronoun or a pro-verb) to refer to the denotation of a preceding word or group of words. The word that the grammatical substitute refers to is called the antecedent.

Suzy bought herself a cup of Starbucks. The word ‘herself’ is the anaphor while ‘Suzy’ is the antecedent.

Presupposition

A presupposition is an assumption that the speaker makes with the thought that the listeners know. The speaker, in his sentence, implicitly states that he knows about the listeners’ background.

“Don’t you like Oolong tea, Janet?” means that the speaker knows Janet’s favorite tea is Oolong.

In the presupposition, there is a term called constancy under negation which means whether the form of the sentence is positive or negative, the presupposition will always be true. In both sentences “Rachel brings her favorite Channel purse” and “Rachel doesn’t bring her favorite Channel purse”, the presupposition is the same: Rachel’s favorite purse is Channel.

Pragmatic Markers

The words that speakers use to indicate the mood of their utterances or how they want their words to be perceived are called pragmatic markers. Words like you know, well, I mean, God forbidden, etc.

“I mean, I don’t hate him, but I’m not in love with him. You know, right?”

There are two pragmatic markers that the speaker uses in the example above: I mean and you know right. Before making a statement about her feeling, the speaker emphasizes that she is making a clarification (I mean…). After that, she wants to make sure that her listener completely understands her point (You know right?).

Politeness

Politeness can be defined as showing awareness and consideration of another person’s face (Yule, 2020:156). The face is referred to someone’s public self-image (negative face and positive face). There are two types of acts in politeness, face-threatening act, and face-saving act.

“Bring me the tea!” — Face-threatening act.

“Could you please bring me the tea?” — Face-saving act.

Like what has been stated above, the two kinds of faces are negative and positive. A negative face indicates someone that needs to be independent and free from all imposition. For instance, I know you are tired, but… While in the positive face, there is this need of belonging as if the person is in the same group. Like, Oh, I was there too. I know what it’s like to be you. [chtrn]