Pragmatics in Linguistics: Definition and Examples

In linguistics (the study of language), pragmatics is a specialized branch of study, focusing on the relationship between natural language and users of that language. Pragmatics focuses on conversational implicatures—or that which a speaker implies and which a listener infers. To define pragmatics, experts sometimes compare and contrast it with linguistic semantics (the meaning of a sentence) or compare it to syntax (word order) or semiotics (the study of symbols), all of which are distinct terms.

Pragmatics dates back to antiquity when rhetoric was one of the three liberal arts. The more modern idea of pragmatics arose between 1780 and 1830 in Britain, France, and Germany. Pragmatism saw a rise in popularity between 1880 and 1930 when linguists studying the philosophy of language agreed on a point of view that language must be studied in the context of dialogue and life, and that language itself is a kind of human action. Today, linguistics is a multidisciplinary realm of study spanning the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

People often associate pragmatics with other areas of linguistic study, such as semantics, syntax, and semiotics, but these terms have different definitions. Semantics is the study of rule systems that determine the literal linguistic meanings of expressions; syntax describes how we combine words to form sentences with specific meaning; and semiotics is concerned with the use and interpretation of signs and symbols.

In contrast to semantics, syntax, and semiotics, the study of pragmatics revolves around both the literal and nonliteral aspects of language and how physical or social contexts determine the use of those linguistic expressions.

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics—the study of language—that focuses on implied and inferred meanings. This branch of linguistics involves many concepts, including these major areas:

• Conversational implicature: This concept is based on the idea that people in a conversation are cooperating to reach a common conversational goal; therefore, implications can be derived from a speaker’s responses to questions. For example, if a parent asks a child whether they finished their homework and the child responds that they’ve finished their math homework, the parent might infer that the child still has homework in other classes to finish. Philosopher Paul Grice is credited with developing both the term and concept of implicature around 1975, and other scholars have since refined his ideas.
• Cognitive pragmatics: This area focuses on cognition or the mental processes (also called cognitive processes) of human communication. Researchers studying cognitive pragmatics may focus on language disorders in those with developmental disabilities or those who have suffered head trauma that affects their speech.
• Intercultural pragmatics: This area of the field studies communication between people from different cultures who speak different first languages. Similarly, interlanguage pragmatics works with language learners who are acquiring a second language.
• Managing the flow of reference: In conversation, listeners track syntactic (relating to syntax) clues to understand what happened or who performed an action—this is called managing the flow of reference. For example, if someone were to walk up to you and say, “John is inside. He told me to greet you,” you will likely understand that John is the person who told the speaker to greet you.
• Relevance theory: One major framework in pragmatics is relevance theory, which Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson first proposed. The theory, inspired by Grice’s ideas about implicature, states that a speaker’s every utterance conveys enough relevant information for it to be worth the addressee’s effort to process the meaning of an utterance.
• Sociolinguistics: Sociolinguistics focuses on how native speakers of the same language may speak differently from one another simply because of the different social groups to which they belong.
• Speech acts: In linguistics, the phrase “speech acts” is more philosophical in concept and is not related to phonology (the branch of linguistic study concerned with the specific phonetic sounds or dialects of a language). Speech act theory states that people use language and the rules of language to accomplish tasks and goals. While a physical act would be drinking a glass of water, and a mental act would be thinking about drinking a glass of water, a speech act would include things like asking for a glass of water or ordering someone to drink a glass of water.
• Theory of mind: David Premack and Guy Woodruff originally proposed this theory in the 1970s. Theory of mind centers on how understanding someone’s mental state may also help explain their use of language. Some scholars see overlap between the theory of mind and pragmatic competence, which deals with language and its use in a given linguistic context.

The definition of pragmatics and the use of pragmatics can be tricky to grasp without studying examples. Here are three examples that can help illustrate pragmatics in use in everyday conversation:

1. 1. “How are you?” This everyday greeting is rarely met with a response that involves discussing every medical and personal detail that may affect how the person is feeling on a given day (which would make up a literal response to the question). Instead, you might respond to the question with: “Fine, how are you?” This would be a pragmatic response since you are making a presupposition that the speaker’s intention was for the question to be an implied greeting and not a literal question about how you are doing at that exact moment.
2. 2. “Luggage must be carried on the escalator.” This sentence on a referential sign in an airport is linguistically ambiguous, although not usually pragmatically ambiguous. Someone who has never gone to an airport before might misinterpret the semantic, literal meaning as a command that everyone must rush over to the escalator while carrying their luggage. But thanks to pragmatics (the inclusion of context with the sign), you know that the sign only applies to people who are actively taking luggage onto the escalator, not to everyone. The context of the situation determines the sentence’s meaning.
3. 3. “I have two sons.” While not necessarily ambiguous, this sentence contains an implication that the speaker has no more than two sons; however, it’s possible the speaker could have more than two sons and the statement would still be truthful. Pragmatics incorporates the context of an utterance to determine meaning. Therefore, a preceding question of “Do you have any children?” would change the response’s implication to be that the speaker only has two children—two sons. Furthermore, a preceding question of “Do you have any sons?” would change the response’s implication to be that the speaker might have one or more daughters in addition to having two sons.

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