Pragmatics: saying what you mean

The hypothetical Martian visitor to whom we alluded briefly, would no doubt be bemused by many aspects of language: not least its complexity and diversity, and the amazing skill demonstrated by young humans in acquiring it. But perhaps most perplexing of all would be the very nature of interactions in which language is used. In spite of the fact that conversation is riddled with non-sequiturs, apparently uninformative contributions and blatant irrelevance, human beings appear to communicate very well.

The way in which meaning is produced and understood in context is the subject matter of pragmatics. As we will see, we all use conversational ‘short cuts’ to make interaction more efficient. Since these short cuts can only work if we share an assumption that conversation is a co-operative exercise, we will consider models of co-operation and politeness which help us understand how successful interaction takes place.

As we will see, there is much more to conversation than the simple communication of factual information. We use language to perform actions, too: I promise, or I bet you, for example, by their very utterance imply a commitment on the part of the speaker; many people find it difficult to say I’m sorry, because much more than mere words is involved. The model of speech acts we present later outlines the conditions required for such utterances to be successfully made.