This chapter discusses what pragmatics is and what it aims to explain. The term âpragmaticsâ has been used in many ways and to cover a very wide range of things. This book focuses on pragmatics understood as being about how we work out (or âinferâ) what to say, write, sign (in sign languages), and do when communicating, and how we work out (âinferâ) what others are intending to communicate to us. The chapter looks at some things (not everything) which pragmatic theories have attempted to explain. We begin to consider possible explanations in Chapter 2.
Communicating and Understanding
Have you ever misunderstood something? Or been misunderstood? Have you ever wondered why some interactions make you feel happy or frustrated? Maybe you notice that you always feel good after youâve had a conversation with one friend and not so good after youâve spoken to another? Or maybe that you sometimes annoy or offend somebody without meaning to? Have you ever noticed that some people have a knack for getting what they want from other people in everyday interactions or in workplace contexts? Or that things often go wrong for somebody else? Understanding these things usually involves some consideration of pragmatics. This is because pragmatics is about what we do when we communicate and how we respond to other peopleâs communicative acts.
There are many approaches to pragmatics, and they focus on a very wide range of topics. Pragmatics as understood in this book aims to account for how we produce and understand acts of verbal and nonverbal communication. Most current work on pragmatics developed from work on language which focused initially on how contextual factors affect the interpretation of linguistic utterances. In particular, the focus was on how we work out or âinferâ meanings in specific contexts. Later work broadened the discussion to consider a wider range of aspects of verbal and non-verbal communication and to production and interaction as well as interpretation.
We infer, or âmake inferencesâ, all the time. I made several today. I saw bright light in the window and inferred that it was a sunny day. I heard the letterbox open and close and inferred that the post had arrived. I saw a flattened empty cereal packet and inferred that the cereal was finished. And I made many more inferences as I went about my day.
We also make inferences when communicating. Here is an example to illustrate this (the part in italics represents some contextual information):
- (1) A man (Adam) walks into a room where a TV is switched on. He picks up the remote and turns the TV off. He then turns around and sees a woman (Bella) sitting in an armchair.
Bella:I was watching that!
What happens next? A reasonable guess is that Adam might turn the TV on again and (probably) apologise, maybe also saying something intended as an explanation (e.g. âSorry, I didnât see you.â)
How do we explain what happened in (1)? At first glance, this probably seems straightforward. Bella is upset that Adam turned the TV off and makes this clear by pointing out that she was watching it.
However, what I have just written does not explain things. It just describes them using different words. An explanation would need to tell us more about what both Adam and Bella did, including how they decided what to do and say, and how they each understood what the other had said and done. A full account of what happened would involve a large number of things, including accounts of:
- (2) a.what Adam thought (and inferred) when he entered the room
- b. how Adam decided to turn off the TV
- c. what Bella thought when Adam turned the TV off
- d. how Bella decided what to say
- e. how Adam worked out what Bella intended
If we stayed in the room, weâd have more to consider, including how Adam decides what to do next (e.g. realising his mistake and offering an explanation), and so on.
Pragmatics usually focuses on the last of these, i.e. on (2e). More specifically, it usually focuses on how Adam got from the linguistic meaning of what Bella said to an understanding of what she intended in this context, i.e. on how Bellaâs utterance led Adam to work out that Bella was saying (directly) that she was watching the TV programme and (indirectly) that she was upset that Adam had turned it off and that she would like it turned back on again. When we list what we need to explain, itâs quite a long list. We might summarise by saying that it aims to explain how Adam recognises the following things (among others):
- (3) Understanding I was watching that:
- a. linguistic form
- I was watching that
- b. linguistic meaning
- The person referred to as I was watching the thing referred to as that at some point before the time when she said it
- c. contextual assumptions
- Bella is the speaker
- Adam has turned off the TV in the room he just came into
- Bella was sitting opposite the TV Adam turned off
- d. directly communicates
- Bella was watching the programme which was showing on the TV which Adam has just turned off
- e. indirectly communicates
- Bella is not happy about what Adam has done
- Bella would like the TV turned on again
An account of how utterances are understood in this way has been at the core of pragmatics since it took off as an area of study in the mid to late twentieth century.
More recently, there has been increased focus on how we decide what to say or do when we produce communicative acts as well as on how we interpret them. There has also been increased interest in the notion that what is communicated involves communicators working together to âco-createâ or ânegotiateâ what is communicated. On this view, the overall meaning of this interaction is constructed by Adam and Bella working together rather than just Adam thinking about what Bella has (done and) said. This also involves not simply treating each turn in an interaction separately but instead considering how communication extends across all of the interactive behaviour and, for some approaches, beyond this.
We will see also that pragmatics now also focuses on other things, including on nonverbal communication and on âprosodyâ, which is about the way utterances sound or are signed when theyâre produced, including pitch movements, rhythm, pace, volume, voice quality, duration of signs, use of signing space, and so on. In this example, Bella might, for example, produce an utterance which gets louder and more high-pitched towards the end. Or she might say it in a more monotone way. There are lots of possibilities, and these would affect how Adam understands her. There are also things Bella might have done other than speaking which affect Adamâs understanding, e.g. raising her eyebrows, opening her eyes wide, or raising her hands outwards to her side.
The rest of this book considers some of the ways in which pragmatic theorists have tried to explain how we communicate and understand each other, including in nonverbal as well as verbal communication. This rest of this chapter considers a number of questions (not all) about Bellaâs utterance and the wider interaction which we might expect pragmatic theories to provide answers for. We might evaluate pragmatic theories by considering to what extent they provide answers to each of these.
