Chapter 7 Pragmatics: The Analysis of Meaning in Context

7.1 The pragmatic analysis of meaning

　 The foregoing five chapters are concerned with analysis of sound, structure and meaning, the three aspects of language as a system. In linguistic communication, these aspects of language are merely resources. The speaker/writer uses these to express and create meaning. How to create meaning and understand created meaning is an important aspect of language use. This pragmatic perspective was clearly delineated by Charles Morris (1938). He distinguished three kinds of relationship involved in signs: 1) the relationships between linguistic forms; 2) the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; 3) the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms. The last kind of relationships is the subject matter of pragmatics.

　 Though useful in understanding the distinction between pragmatics in relation to semantics and syntax, the above generalization of relationships between linguistics and the users may overshadow the complexity of language use. Actually, the word users here includes both the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader. The meanings communicated through language are of two types: conventional meanings and intentional meanings. The former is studied in semantics and the latter in pragmatics.

　 Pragmatic analysis of meaning is first and foremost concerned with the study of what is communicated by a speaker/writer and interpreted by a listener/reader. It focuses on what people mean by their utterances rather than what the words, phrases and sentences mean by themselves. Put most generally and simply, pragmatic analysis is concerned with speaker meaning.

　 Analysis of intentional meaning necessarily involves the interpretation of what people do through language in a particular context. When people communicate with each other, they want to fulfill their purposes. In order to achieve their goals they make choices from the linguistic system in accordance with who are talked to, and where, when and under what circumstances. The interpretation of the intended meaning is also dependent on context. In this sense, pragmatic analysis is concerned with contextual meaning.

　 Intended meaning may or may not be explicitly expressed. Pragmatic analysis also explores how listeners/readers make inferences about what is communicated. A great deal of meaning communicated in every day conversations is implied. So we might say that pragmatics also investigates invisible meaning. Creating or understanding intended meanings in particular contexts necessarily raises the question of what determines the choice of whether to say or not to say, what to say and how to say it. There are principles underlying conversations. Pragmatics in the past three decades has explored principles and regularities of conversations.