Pragmatics

Communication clearly depends on not only recognizing the meaning of

words in an utterance, but also recognizing what speakers mean by their
utterances in a particular context. The study of what speakers mean, or
“speaker meaning,” is called pragmatics.

Invisible Meaning In many ways, pragmatics is the study of “invisible”

meaning, or how we recognize what is meant even when it is not actually
said or written. In order for that to happen, speakers (or writers) must be
able to depend on a lot of shared assumptions and expectations when they
try to communicate. The investigation of those assumptions and
expectations provides us with some insights into how we understand more
than just the linguistic content of utterances. From the perspective of
pragmatics, more is always being communicated than is said.

Context
It must be the case that we use the meanings of the words, the context in
which they occur, and some pre-existing knowledge of what would be a likely
message as we work toward a reasonable interpretation of what the
producer of the sign intended it to convey. Our interpretation of the
“meaning” of the sign is not based solely on the words, but on what we think
the writer intended.

to communicate. There are different kinds of context. There is obviously

the physical context, which can be the location “out there” where we
encounter words and phrases (e.g. the word BANK on a wall of a building is
understood as a financial institution). There is also the linguistic context, also
known as co-text. The cotext of a word is the set of other words used in the
same phrase or sentence. If the word bank is used with other words like
steep or overgrown, we have no problem deciding which type of bank is
meant. Or, when someone says that she has to get to the bank to withdraw
some cash, the co-text tells us which type of bank is intended.

Deixis

There are some very common words in our language that can’t be
interpreted at all if we don’t know the context. These are words such as here
and there, this or that, now or then, yesterday, today or tomorrow, as well as
pronouns such as you, me, she, him, it, them. Some sentences of English are
virtually impossible to understand if we don’t know who is speaking, about
whom, where and when. For example, what is the meaning of: You’ll have to
bring it back tomorrow because she isn’t here today? Out of context, this
sentence is really vague. It contains a large number of expressions (you, it,
tomorrow, she, here, today) that rely on knowledge of the local context for
their interpretation. In context, we are expected to understand that the
delivery driver (you) will have to return on February 15th (tomorrow) to 660
College Drive (here) with the long box (it) labeled “flowers, handle with care”
addressed to Lisa Landry (she).

Reference

In discussing deixis, we assumed that the use of words to refer to people,

places and times was a simple matter. However, words themselves don’t
refer to anything. People refer. We have to define reference as an act by
which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader) to
identify something. To perform an act of reference, we can use proper nouns
(Chomsky, Jennifer, Whiskas), other nouns in phrases (a writer, my friend,
the cat) or pronouns (he, she, it). We sometimes assume that these words
identify someone or something uniquely, but it is more accurate to say that,
for each word or phrase, there is a “range of reference.” The words Jennifer
or friend or she can be used to refer to many entities in the world. As we
observed earlier, an expression such as the war doesn’t directly identify
anything by itself, because its reference depends on who is using it. We can
also refer to things when we are not sure what to call them. We can use
expressions such as the blue thing and that icky stuff and we can even invent
names. For instance, there was a man who always drove his motorcycle fast
and loud through my neighborhood and was locally referred to as Mr.
Kawasaki. In this case, a brand name for a motorcycle is being used to refer
to a person.

Inference
As in the “Mr. Kawasaki” example, a successful act of reference depends
more on the listener/reader’s ability to recognize what the speaker/writer
means than on the listener’s “dictionary” knowledge of a word that is used.
For example, in a restaurant, one waiter can ask another, Where’s the
spinach salad sitting? and receive the reply, He’s sitting by the door. If you’re
studying linguistics, you might ask someone, Can I look at your Chomsky? and
get the response, Sure, it’s on the shelf over there. And when you hear that
Jennifer is wearing Calvin Klein, you avoid imagining someone called Calvin
draped over poor Jennifer and recognize that they are talking about her
clothing. These examples make it clear that we can use nouns associated
with things (salad) to refer to people, and use names of people (Chomsky,
Calvin Klein) to refer to things. The key process here is called inference.

An inference is additional information used by the listener to create a

connection between what is said and what must be meant. In the Chomsky
example, the listener has to operate with the inference: “if X is the name of
the writer of a book, then X can be used to identify a copy of a book by that
writer.” Similar types of inferences are necessary to understand someone
who says that Picasso is in the museum, We saw Shakespeare in London,
Mozart was playing in the background and The bride wore Giorgio Armani.
Anaphora We usually make a distinction between how we introduce new
referents (a puppy) and how we refer back to them (the puppy, it). We saw a
funny home video about a boy washing a puppy in a small bath. The puppy
started struggling and shaking and the boy got really wet. When he let go, it
jumped out of the bath and ran away. In this type of referential relationship,
the second (or subsequent) referring expression is an example of anaphora
(“referring back”). The first mention is called the antecedent. So, in our
example, a boy, a puppy and a small bath are antecedents and The puppy,
the boy, he, it and the bath are anaphoric expressions. There is a much less
common pattern, called cataphora, which reverses the antecedent–anaphora
relationship by beginning with a pronoun (It), then later revealing more
specific information. This device is more common in stories, as in this
beginning: It suddenly appeared on the path a little ahead of me, staring in
my direction and sniffing the air. An enormous grizzly bear was checking me
out. Anaphora is, however, the more common pattern and can be defined as
subsequent reference to an already introduced entity. Mostly we use
anaphora in texts to maintain reference. The connection between an
antecedent and an anaphoric expression is created through a pronoun (it), or
a phrase with the plus the antecedent noun (the puppy), or another noun
that is related to the antecedent in some way (The little dog ran out of the
room). The connection between antecedents and anaphoric expressions is
often based on inference, as in these examples: We found a house to rent,
but the kitchen was very small. I got on a bus and asked the driver if it went
near the downtown area. In the first example, we must make an inference
like “if X is a house, then X has a kitchen” in order to interpret the connection
between antecedent a house and anaphoric expression the kitchen. In the
second example, we must make an inference like “if X is a bus, then X has a
driver” in order to make the connection between a bus and the driver. In
some cases, the antecedent can be a verb, as in: The victim was shot twice,
but the gun was never recovered. Here the inference is that any “shooting”
event must involve a gun. We have used the term “inference” here to
describe what the listener (or reader) does. When we talk about an
assumption made by the speaker (or writer), we usually talk about a
“presupposition.”
 Presupposition
When we use a referring expression like this, he or Jennifer, we usually
assume that our listeners can recognize which referent is intended. In a more
general way, we design our linguistic messages on the basis of large-scale
assumptions about what our listeners already know. What a speaker (or
writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or reader) can be described as
a presupposition. If someone tells you Hey, your brother is looking for you,
there is an obvious presupposition that you have a brother. If you are asked
the question When did you stop smoking?, there are at least two
presuppositions involved: you used to smoke and you no longer do so. There
is a test for presuppositions that involves comparing a sentence with its
negative version and identifying which presuppositions remain true in both.
This is called “constancy under negation.” Whether you say My car is a wreck
or the negative My car is not a wreck, there is an underlying presupposition (I
have a car) that remains true.