6.2 The Beginning of Pragmatics

Introduction

Language is a tool of human interaction. Via language the speaker conveys his or her intended information to the addressee who receives it and responds to it by providing the requested information and asking the speaker, now the addressee, for the information he or she is interested in. Communication, then, is a two-way interaction: it involves the speaker and the addressee. This holds good for both dialogues and monologues, the only difference being that the addressee in a dialogue turns into the speaker while in the monologue the addressee is the reader or the listener, only: this type of addressee never turns into the speaker.

Pragmatics, as a branch of linguistics, came into existence as a reaction to an autonomous language approach, an approach initiated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1917) and carried to extremes by linguists in the United States. Linguists gradually came to understand that language cannot only be studied as a closed system: time came to look at language from the outside, i.e. to see what the speaker does with language. 

Pragmatics, or, to be more exact, linguistic pragmatics, is a branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in the situation. Many works have been written on general and specific problems of pragmatics since the time of C. W. Morris, the father of modern pragmatics.  Linguistic pragmatics focuses on the speaker,  his or her intended meaning, and the addressee and his or her interpretation of the speaker’s meaning. Paul Grice (1913–1988) distinguished between two types of meaning used by the speaker: literal (propositional) and implicative (non-propositional).

Through language the speaker achieves his goals. In doing it, the speaker must see to it that the addressee’s public image is not to be threatened. Pragmaticists’ interest in this aspect of communication brought about illuminating research on the principle of politeness by Brown and Levinson (1978), Leech (1983), and others. Other areas of pragmatics were focused on conversation structures (Atkinson and Heritage (1984), Craig and Tracy (1983), Sacks (1974, 1992)), discourse and culture (Blum-Kulka, House, Kasper (1989), Gumperz (1982), Wierzbicka (1991)).

Linguistic pragmatics is a relatively new branch of linguistics and judging from the large number of works published and problems they raise, holds great promise for the future. We do hope that those who will familiarize themselves with the problems of linguistic pragmatics will not remain in different to this fascinating subject and will contribute to it by doing their own research into the subject: what can be more fascinating than research into how language works in an actual situation?

Pragmatics starts out from an active conception of language as being used. Pragmatics is where the action is. A further question, of course, is what do we need pragmatics for? What does pragmatics have to offer that cannot be found in good old-fashioned linguistics? What do pragmatic methods give us in the way of greater understanding of how the human mind works, how humans communicate, how they manipulate one another, and in general, how they use language, in all the ways, and with all the means, and for all the end is they
traditionally have done.



Sources
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  2. Austin, J. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blum-Kulka, S. & G. Kasper. (1990). Journal of Pragmatics. 14/2 (special issue on politeness).
  3. Brown, P. & S. Levinson. (1978). Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena, in Gooky, E. (ed.) Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 56–311.
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  11. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation. Volume 1. Blackwell.
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