In linguistics, pragmatics is the study of what a speaker wishes to convey in a given context or situation. The actual utterance does not always correspond to what is actually intended.
For example, in Could you do me a favor? , the speaker isn’t asking if you can do it for him: he’s actually asking for a favor. Therefore, this interrogative utterance hides a request, which is the speaker’s real intention: what he truly wants to convey.
To understand pragmatics, a general knowledge of the world and the speaker’s culture is necessary . When we see a sign in a store that says ” I’ll be back in five minutes ,” it can’t be interpreted literally. We understand that five minutes is a way of saying that it’s a short time.
Likewise, there are cultural and contextual situations that help us decipher the message. To achieve this, it’s important that the speakers are on the same communicative level.
As an example, let’s take the famous joke:
— Good morning. Could you give me something good for cockroaches?
— A poison?
— I said something good , a poison kills them!
Here, the misunderstanding occurs because the speakers are not on the same communicative level: they are not talking about the same thing.
Key concepts to understand Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a very broad field encompassing several concepts. For simplicity, we’ll focus on the most important ones: context and situation, inference, and deixis .
Context and situation
The linguistic context and the situation are essential for correctly interpreting a statement. Let’s imagine the following situation:
“I went to the bank this morning, but they were painting it.
” “So you couldn’t sit down?
” “Why would I sit down? I wanted to get a loan.”
The previous misunderstanding could have been avoided by using more words: by providing context. There would have been no confusion if the speaker had started by saying, ” I went to the bank to ask for a loan .”
If, for example, the speakers were in a park and someone said they were painting the bench, there would also be no misunderstanding. The location or place where they are (a park) makes “bench” interpreted as the object to be sat on.
Therefore, indicating a context or being in a certain place are factors that must be taken into account to correctly interpret the statements.
Inference
“You know the fire by the smoke.” This proverb makes an inference. If there’s smoke, there’s fire. We can know there’s a fire, even if we don’t see it, because we see the smoke.
An inference is a deduction . Speakers of a language share common knowledge that allows us to deduce a speaker’s intentions: what they really mean.
Let’s put this situation in a restaurant: a customer has ordered a steak, but the cook has not put salt on it, and he says:
—The meat is bland.
Obviously, the waiter wouldn’t say, “Thank you for the information.” What he would do is deduce that the customer is asking for salt . The waiter infers that the customer doesn’t want to inform him, but is requesting a salt shaker.
We’ve noticed how, through inference, we interpret non-explicit statements. Let’s see what can be inferred from the following three sentences:
- Phew! It’s hot (implying that the air conditioning needs to be turned on)
- This month I have had many expenses (it is assumed that an extension is being requested on some payment)
- I just brushed my teeth (which means I’m not going to eat what’s being offered)
Deixis
Deixis consists of locating or placing something in space and time . For example, in I like this shirt , the word “esta” indicates proximity in space ( aquel would indicate distance). Similarly, in ” Por aquel luego nos diversionábamos mucho ” indicates a reference in time.
Why is this a key concept in Pragmatics? Let’s imagine we’re going on a week-long vacation. When we return to work, there’s a note on the desk that says:
The deadline for submitting the presentation is three days away.
When is that three days ? The employee doesn’t know when the grade was posted, so they have no spatial reference by which to count three days. Therefore, communication breaks down: the employee doesn’t know whether or not they’re on time to deliver the presentation.
See also: Semantics and Morphology (linguistics)
Main theories and authors
Pragmatics is a very broad and complex field. In recent decades, various authors have contributed through mutually reinforcing theories.
Below, we present the main theories in this field and their respective authors.
Speech acts (Austin and Searle)
John L. Austin proposed his theory of speech acts. He states that when we make a statement, we commit three acts: the occlusive (what we say), the illocutionary (what we mean to say), and the perlocutionary (the effect or consequences of what is said).
As an example, let’s take the sentence Come with me to the party . In this sentence, we find the three acts:
- Locutionary . It’s what is said, just like that: Come with me to the party . Because of its form, because of how it is said, it is an exhortative sentence (command).
- Illocutionary . This is what the speaker really means: Would you like to come with me to the party? It’s an invitation.
- Perlocutionary . The consequences of the announced: Of course! or No, sorry, I can’t.
Therefore, a statement that appears to be an order ( Come with me to the party ) hides a request to which a response is expected.
John Searle, taking illocutionary acts as his starting point, proposes a series of conditions . These four conditions relate to the adequacy of the utterance.
They are the following:
- Propositional content . How the statement used is structured. For example, if someone is thanking someone for something, that thanking them can’t be in the form of a question.
- Preparatory . These are the preconditions for the speech act to make sense. If you ask for a fork in a restaurant, it’s necessary that there isn’t one on the table or that it’s dirty.
- Of sincerity . It expresses the speaker’s feelings. If one asks for forgiveness, it is necessary to be repentant.
- Essentials . This involves saying the right thing at a given moment. For example, at a wedding, a priest would say, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Searle continues with two other concepts: direct and indirect speech acts .
Direct acts of speech are what Austin calls performative . They consist of an act being performed when an utterance is made. For example, in ” I promise you that I bought you that shirt ,” not only is the act of promising spoken, but the act of promising is also performed. These utterances have performative verbs, such as promise, swear, apologize, forgive, threaten, insult, etc.
Indirect speech acts are those whose grammatical form and intention do not match. That is, there is a discrepancy between the locutionary and illocutionary acts, as we saw in the example above. A sentence like “Could you tell me the time?” has a question as its locutionary act and a request as its illocutionary act.
The principle of cooperation (Grice)
Herbert Paul Grice analyzed the logic and mechanisms that govern conversation. He used Searle’s four conditions as a basis to develop his principle of cooperation.
In his development, he established a series of categories, divided into maxims , which are found in conversation (even in human behavior).
The categories are quantity, quality, relation , and modality . These, in turn, are divided into maxims. They are as follows:
1. Quantity (on the amount of information to be given). It has two maxims:
a) That your contribution be as informative as necessary
b) That your contribution be no more informative than necessary
2. Quality (trying to make the contribution true). It has two maxims:
a) Don’t say anything you consider false
b) Don’t say anything for which you don’t have sufficient evidence
3. Relationship Only has one maxim: Say relevant things .
4. Modality (how things are said). It has four maxims:
a) Avoid obscurity of expression
b) Avoid ambiguity
c) Be brief, but not unnecessarily wordy
d) Be orderly
Of course, these categories aren’t mandatory: a person can lie. However, they reflect expected behavior in a conversation.
Rules of courtesy (Lakoff)
George Lakoff uses Grice’s categories and maxims to establish his principles of politeness. Since politeness is understood as a set of social conventions or norms , it cannot be removed from conversation.
There are only two rules, the second one has three possibilities:
