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    BARBARA PAULINA ZUNIGA STUARDO
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    Pragmatics is the study of language use and communication in context. It examines how people understand messages based on context, presumptions, and inferences. The document contrasts a message model, which focuses on the literal meaning, with an inferential model which recognizes that meaning depends on context and the speaker's intentions. It also discusses how context, both linguistic and social, allows conversations to be understood, and covers speech acts, meaning, implicature, and presuppositions.

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    Pragmatics is the study of language use and communication in context. It examines how people understand messages based on context, presumptions, and inferences. The document contrasts a message model, which focuses on the literal meaning, with an inferential model which recognizes that meaning depends on context and the speaker's intentions. It also discusses how context, both linguistic and social, allows conversations to be understood, and covers speech acts, meaning, implicature, and presuppositions.

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    37 views3 pages

    Pragmatics: 2. Message Model

    Uploaded by

    BARBARA PAULINA ZUNIGA STUARDO
    Pragmatics is the study of language use and communication in context. It examines how people understand messages based on context, presumptions, and inferences. The document contrasts a message model, which focuses on the literal meaning, with an inferential model which recognizes that meaning depends on context and the speaker's intentions. It also discusses how context, both linguistic and social, allows conversations to be understood, and covers speech acts, meaning, implicature, and presuppositions.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    Pragmatics

    1. What is Pragmatics?

    Pragmatics is the study of language use and linguistic communication in context.

    Objectives

    1. Central uses of language.


    2. Specify conditions for linguistic expressions.
    3. Uncover general principles of language use.

    2. Message model

    Problems with message model

    -Ambiguity
    -Underdetermination of reference
    -Underdetermination of communicative intention
    -Nonliterality
    -Indirection
    -Non-communicative act

    3. Inferential Model
    Through presumptions, and inferential strategies successful linguistic communication is
    possible.

    Presumptions:

    1. Linguistic presumption: The hearer is able to determine the meaning and reference in
    context.
    2. Communicative presumption: The speaker speaks with an identifiable communicative
    intention.
    3. Presumption of literalness: The speaker is speaking literally.
    4. Conversational presumption: There are four elements:
    a. Relevance: Speaker’s remarks are relevant.
    b. Sincerity: Speaker is sincere.
    c. Truthfulness: Speaker is telling the truth.
    d. Quantity: Speaker utters the appropriate amount of information.
    e. Quality: Speaker has evidence of what they’re saying.

    Inferential strategies: Provide inference patterns in order to understand what the speaker is
    saying. These are:

    Message model vs. Inferential model:


    Message model uses the literal message the speaker is expressing.
    Inferential model by a series of inferences connects the message with the meaning of the
    expression. It also recognises the speaker’s intentions.

    4. Discourse and conversation

    The study of discourse is the study of connected sequences of sentences produced by a single
    speaker.

    Conversations: (Or talk-exchange) are structured as sequences of expressions by more than


    one speaker.
    Conversations must have 3 main properties:
    1. Any reasonable number of people can participate.
    2. Greeting and leave-taking are obligatory principles in order to be polite.
    3. Answering questions or justifying refusals are principles that contribute the conversation to be
    relevant for each participant.
    5. Language and Context

    Context is an expandable notion that precedes the sentence and gives the basis for other
    participants to understand the message successfully. We can find 2 main sorts of Context:
    Linguistic Context: It considers just the previous discourse or conversation that precedes the
    phrase or sentence.
    Social Context: It considers every non-linguistic element in the immediate physical or social
    environment of the speaker.
    There are 3 aspects of the structure that will make a conversation more understandable and
    friendly:
    -Openings -Turn-
    taking -Closings

    6. Special Topics

    Performatives: Are expressions which not only report something but perform an action.
    Explicit performatives: Sentences that make explicit what one is doing with words.

    Speech acts: These acts are performed in uttering an expression. Speech acts can be divided
    into four categories:

    -Utterance act: Utters sound, syllable, words, phrases, sentences.


    -Illocutionary act: Performed by uttering a performative sentence explicitly and getting one’s
    illocutionary intentions recognised.
    -Perlocutionary act: It’s concerned with the effects of the illocutionary act.
    -Propositional act: It refers to something, and then characterises it.

    Meaning, saying and implicating:


    Speakers can mean what they say, mean something totally different from the literal message, or
    they can even express more than they say. These three branches are:

    Meaning: The communicative intention has for purpose to be understood.


    Saying: The notion of what is said would involve three ideas: the operative meaning of the
    expression uttered, the time of utterance, and the references made in the utterance.
    Implicating: Speakers mean more than they say.

    Pragmatic presupposition:
    To assume something or take it for granted in advance without saying it.

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