Rajarata University of Sri Lanka Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Department of Languages Pragmatics

Branch of linguistics dealing with language in use and the contexts in which it is used, including such matters as deixis (A deictic expression (or deixis) is a word or phrase (such as this, that, these, those, now, then) that points to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking. Deixis is expressed in English by way of personal pronouns, demonstratives, and tense. The taking of turns in conversation, text organization, presupposition (For example, when a speaker says "Tom's car is new", we can presuppose that Tom exists and that he has a car. 2-Factive presupposition: it is the assumption that something is true due to the presence of some verbs such as "know" and "realize" and of phrases involving glad, for example), and implicature.

1.  Presupposition

In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:

·         Jane no longer writes fiction.

·         Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.

·         Have you stopped eating meat?

·         Presupposition: you had once eaten meat.

·         Have you talked to Hans?

·         Presupposition: Hans exists.

2.  Deixis

·         A deictic expression (or deixis) is a word or phrase (such as this, that, these, those, now, then) that points to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking. 

·         Deixis is expressed in English by way of personal pronouns, demonstratives, and tense.

Here are examples of deictic expressions:

• I
• You
• Now
• There
• That
• The following
• Tenses

Etymology: from the Greek, "pointing, show" 

The analysis of language in terms of the situational context within which utterances are made, including the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker and the relation between speaker and listener.

Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in social contexts and the ways in which people produce and comprehend meanings through language. The term pragmatics was coined in the 1930s by the philosopher C.W. Morris. Pragmatics was developed as a subfield of linguistics in the 1970s.

·         Study of the practical aspects of human action and thought.

·         Study of the use of linguistic signs, words and sentences, in actual situations.

·         It looks beyond the literal meaning (linguistic meaning) of an utterance and considers how meaning is constructed as well as focusing on implied meanings. It considers language as an instrument of interaction, what people mean when they use language and how we communicate and understand each other.

·         The literal meaning of a word is its original, basic meaning:

·         The literal meaning of "television" is "seeing from a distance".

3.  Implicature

Implicature is a technical term, which refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though neither expressed nor strictly implied. Example: John is meeting a woman this evening. The woman John is meeting this evening is not his mother, his sister or his wife.