Discourse and pragmatics

By:
Debby Natasya
Putri Indah Lestari
Rahmadian Harianti
Refni Yenti

What is pragmatics?
Pragmatics from the Greek pragma means deed
Pragmatics: the study of meaning in relation to
the context in which a person is speaking or
writing
Includes: social, situational, textual context and
also background knowledge context

 Pragmatics assumes that when people

communicate with each other they normally
follow some kind of co-operative principle
The way of using language across cultures in
order to share understanding of how should
co-operate in communications is called crosscultural pragmatics

 Linguistic form and communicative function

is of central interest in the area of pragmatics
and it is relevant to the field of discourse
analysis
What it is doing in the particular setting , in
order to assign a discourse label to utterance in
the place of the overall discourse

ex: if someone says The bus was late

- They may be complaining about the bus
service (so labeled the stage of conversation
complaint)
- They may be explaining why they are late as a
follow up to an apology (so labeled the stage
of the conversation explanation)

Language, context and discourse

An understanding of how language functions in context is
central to an understanding of the relationship between what
is said and what is understood in spoken and written
discourse
The context of situation of what someone says is crucial to
understanding and interpreting the meaning of what is being
said
Includes: the physical context, the social context and the
mental worlds and roles of people involved in the interaction

 The linguistic context:

What has been said and
what is yet to be said in the
discourse, also has an impact
on the intended meaning and
how someone may interpret
this meaning in spoken and
written

Interpreting Discourses
Key aspects of contexts crucial to the production
and interpretation of discourse
1. Situational context: What people know about what they can
see around them (social, political, cultural understanding)
2. Background knowledge context: What people know about
each other and the world (cultural knowledge, interpersonal
knowledge, knowledge about life, norms, and expectations
of particular discourse community)
3. Co-textual context: What people know about what they
have been saying

How is meaning produced?

Meaning is produced in interaction
Meaning is jointly accomplished by both the
speaker and the listener, or the writer and the
reader
- meaning involves social, psychological and
cognitive factors
Discourse is a collaborative social action in which
language users jointly collaboration in the
production of meanings and inferences