Pragmatics
Pragmatics arises within the language, in Oxford. The starting point of the Pragmatics were two lectures given at the Harvard University given by J. Austin and P. Griece. Austin introduced the Speech Act, for him language does not serve to describe the world but to carry out actions. For Grice, everyday conversation addresses a rational principle of organization that is that of cooperation. The maximum conversational determine in turn the relationship of inference and communication. Thus, Pragmatics would be the study of the principles that regulate the use of language in communication, that is, the conditions under which a speaker uses the statement and how the recipient interprets this statement.
Problems
When faced with specific cases we see that the question is not so simple. An individual speaker cannot change the meaning, but over time if it is a group of individuals who have changed, this change may be established forever. On the other hand, the word order is very relevant from the pragmatic point of view as it represents the difference between known or new info. In English, the latter is known as phonological emphasis.
Reference and deixis
One thing is to retrieve meanings and another is to assign referents. In eg »If you don’t close the door, Kiko will escape» we can retrieve the meanings of each word and this gives us a kind of information, that is, knowing what “ you close ”, “ door ”, etc. means. However, what about the situation do I mean? Kiko has no meaning, but a reference. If I do not identify him, I will not understand what he means because it depends on him that I understand “ he will escape ” and the “ door ”. If I do not understand what Kiko (bird or cat) is, I will not know what door means, whether the door of the cage or the door of the house.
The need for Pragmatics
Two important consequences at the moment: 1) That much of what we communicate cannot be reduced to the model of a code that conventionally matches meanings and signifiers. 2) That to characterize what we communicate we have to resort to extralinguistic elements such as the issuer , recipient, extraverbal context, etc.
Basic concepts of Pragmatics
Material components: directly noticeable. Relationship components: more important, more abstract in nature and account for the relationships between the former.
Transmitter
It is not an absolute category but rather a position, since in the usual communicative interaction sender and recipient are constantly exchanging roles.
Addressee
Person or persons to whom the issuer directs his statement. The sender builds his message taking into consideration a specific recipient.
Enunciated
Linguistic expression produced by the issuer. The statement will last as long as the issuer is in the use of the word. Therefore, it is a discursive unit that has no grammatical limits. On the contrary, for Escandell, this point of view is problematic since it considers only those structures with sentence form. This point of view has the following disadvantages: – First, it uses a grammatical concept to define a pragmatic one. -Secondly, it complicates the terminology because other terms should be searched for sentences that are not sentences. -Thirdly, segment in sentences what the issuer considers as a whole.
Environment
Situation or spatio-temporal context. Some authors use the concept ” context ” in a much broader sense, which goes beyond the strictly physical.
Relational components
Pragmatic information
Set of knowledge, beliefs, assumptions, opinions and feelings of an individual at a particular moment of verbal interaction. Pragmatic info constitutes everything that is our mental universe. Simón Dik considers three sub-components: -Info. Prag. General: knowledge of the world. -Info Prag Situational: what they perceive directly during the interaction. -Info Prag. Contextual: linguistic expressions that are exchanged in the speech.
Intention
What relates to the issuer and its pragmatic information on the one hand, and on the other, the recipient and the environment. Some authors have criticized the psychological and subjective nuance that the term “ intention ” has. Leech proposes talk about ” goal ”. However, Escandell considers that it is interesting that in ” intention ” the idea of effort, tendency towards an end. We can distinguish between intention (subjective and private) and intentional action (external manifestation of an intention) . Silence can also obey an intention when it is an alternative to communication. In Pragmatics it is very important that the recipient can recognize the intention of the issuer.
Social relationship
The issuer builds its statement taking into account what its recipient will be. The relationship established with the recipient is very important, as this will lead to some elections and not others.
Semantics and Pragmatics
Two positions regarding the relations between semantics and pragmatics, this is the Integrated Pragmatics and the Radical Pragmatics . The first is defended by Anscombre and Ductort. For them, the pragmatic depends on the semantics because the statements express actions and the meaning of a statement is a reflection of its statement. They have developed the Argumentation Theory : the use of language we argue and the statements are oriented from an argumentative point of view. »Even Maria has bought a Christmas lottery» / »María has even bought a lottery
