“Pragmatics has as its topics those aspects of the meaning of utterances which

cannot be accounted for by straightforward reference to the truth conditions of the

sentences uttered” ( Gazdar 1979:2). Discuss.

Pragmatics focus on the implicated meaning, while semantics focus on explicated

meaning. There is overlap section of pragmatics and semantics; they are
complementary to each other.
Traditional semantics focus on the internal relation of language components,
regardless of the context. Because Language has the communication function;
speakers can achieve the expected intention in certain kind of communication. This
kind of communication has not only literal meaning, but also contextual
meaning .In view of pragmaticism, meaning is not static but dynamic. So
pragmatics is complementary to semantics.
On the other hand, semantics is also complementary to pragmatics. Language, as
a tool of communication, firstly expresses the conventional meaning of words,
phrases and sentences. Without the conventional meaning, communication cannot
continue. The study of conventional meaning is the starting point of the study of
speaker’s intention or contextual meaning.
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Some scholar argues that: “Pragmatics studies all the aspects of meaning which
semantics does not involve.” If the semantics is restricted to the study of truth
conditions, this definition can be simply expressed as: Pragmatics = Meaning -
(minus) Truth Conditions. If so, the definition is seemed to be too broad, because
there are actually many overlapping parts between the content of pragmatics and
semantics.
In my opinion, different from the literal meaning, the meaning which pragmatics
studies is contextual meaning. Context is the environment in which people use
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language to communicate with each other, it can determine or limit every kinds of
pragmatic meaning in language. It mainly depends on the situation in which
language is used, and language users’ knowledge, experience, and cultural
background.
From the perspective of communicative subject -- the speaker (or writer) and the
hearer (or reader), pragmatics should involve two kinds of meaning, namely the
meaning which the speaker hopes to express and the meaning which the hearer
understands. In other words, they are the production and comprehension of
discourse. Some scholar holds that pragmatics should pay more attention to the
communicative information (i.e., the speaker’s meaning) which the speaker
transfers by means of discourse, rather than focusing on the partial vocabulary or
structure in the discourse. The study on the speaker’s meaning is inseparable from
the context, otherwise it is not appropriate to understand the speaker’s
communicative information in the certain context. In a certain context, the speaker
hopes to transfer the message or intention by means of discourse to make context
give an impact on the said content (i.e. literal meaning of the discourse itself). The
speakers often need to construct the contents or information which they hope to
express, according to the object, time, place and other contextual factors of
communication. Therefore, pragmatics needs to study the speaker’s meaning in a
certain context.
Pragmatics is the dynamic description and explanation of language, thus it
strongly depends on context. It is widely accepted point of view that language
communication is a dynamic process which is subject to a variety of contextual
factors. British scholar Thomas holds that language communication and the
generation of meaning are both dynamic processes. Meaning is neither the literal
meaning nor generated by the speaker or explained by the hearer. Thus, Thomas
emphasizes the dynamic study of pragmatics, including speaker’s transmitting the
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meaning and hearer’s understanding of the meaning. The process involves the
coordination among consultations of meaning between the speaker and hearer,
context (including material, social and lingual factors) and potential meaning of the
discourse. Dynamic meaning is restricted by the static meaning to some extent, in
other words, dynamic meaning is generated by the static meaning in certain
context.
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The meaning which goes to pragmatics is not the literal meaning of a sentence
or speech, but the implied meaning. For example, suppose someone says to you
“You’re a fool”, you would more often than not retort “what do you mean?” It is
not that you do not know the meaning of any word in the sentence, or the words
are combined in a too complicated way for you to understand. What you do not
know is the speaker’s intention in uttering this sentence. Or rather, you do know
the speaker’s intention, but you want to use “What do you mean?” as a denial of
what he has asserted. You use your own sentence with a meaning other than the
literal. This kind of meaning is sometimes referred to as speaker’s meaning,
utterance meaning, or contextual meaning. In a word, it depends more on the
context. The discipline which concentrates on this kind of meaning is called
pragmatics.