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1.1. A definition to “pragmatics”
—The study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used.
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“He went to the town yesterday”
Eg. Who is “he”？ Where is the “town”？ What day is “yesterday”？
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If we divide meaning into two major sides: the side more closely related to the words used, the more constant, inherent side of meaning (which is studied under the heading of semantics) and the side more closely related to the context, the more indeterminate side, or something extra ( which is studied under the heading of pragmatics). that is, pragmatics takes care of the aspect of meaning that is not accounted for by semantics
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Non-linguistic context
Situational context
background
Time Speaker (age/experience/education/sex) place
common sense culture context
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Language is not only used to inform or to describe things; it is often used to “do things”, to perform acts. According to this theory, we are performing various kinds of acts when we are speaking, thus linguistic communication is composed of a succession of acts.
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Later, Austin realized that such distinction is not scientific, because all sentences can be used to do things. “saying is performing”. In some senses, constatives are also performatives. “ I state that I’m alone responsible.”
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Pragmatics includes the study of : （a）How the interpretation and use of utterances depends on knowledge of the real world. （b）How speakers use and understand speech acts b How （c）How the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and the hearer.
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Performatives 施 为 句 —an utterance which performs an acts
eg. “Do you take this man/woman to be your lawful wedded husband/wife？” “I do ” is uttered in response to the priest’s question in the course of a marriage ceremony.
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2. ConIt would be impossible to give an adequate description of meaning without considering the context of language use. Context determines the speaker’s use of language and also the hearer’s interpretation of what is said to him.
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The cat is on the mat. (implicit performatives) --- I tell you that the cat is on the mat. (explicit performatives) I’ll be there at two o’clock. (implicit performatives) --- I promise to be there at two o’clock. (explicit performatives)
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1.
An introduction to pragmatics
There are two aspects to sentence meaning: grammatical meaning and semantic meaning. But after we have analyzed the sentence grammatically, we find there is still something unsaid.
Chapter Eight
Pragmatics
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Teaching focuses:
1. The difference between pragmatics and semantics 2. Sentence meaning and utterance meaning. 3.Speech act theory. 4.The theory of conversational implicature 5.The cooperative principle and its four maxims
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The broader social situation in which a linguistic item is used. 【Jack Richards : 60】
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Linguistic context
Phonetic context
Grammatical context
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In terms of Austin, a speaker might perform three acts simultaneously when speaking.
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（a） a locutionary act发话/言内行为 the act of uttering words, phrases, clauses, the act of conveying literal meaning by means of syntax, lexicon and phonology 我们说话的时候，要移动发音器官，发 出按照一定方式组织起来，并被赋予了 一定意义的声音。
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Utterance meaning is based on sentence meaning, it is the realization of sentence meaning in a context of situation.
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1.3. Dissimilarity between Semantics and Pragmatics Semantics Study of meaning in abstractness Sentence meaning Decontextulization Answer: What does X mean？ Pragmatics Study of the meaning in context or use Utterance meaning Contextualization Answer: What do you mean by X？
Semantic context
Stress Tone Intonation
morphological context phrasal context syntactic context
phrasal context sentence context paragraph context text context
语用学中研究的意义，与我们语义学中研究的意义不 同，对它更多的解释更多地依赖于说话人是谁，听话 人是谁，什么时候在什么地方说这句话。总之就是取 决于语境。
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1.2. Sentence meaning and Utterance meaning