Understanding Pragmatics

Pragmatics: Understanding Context and Meaning

• Pragmatics examines how context influences or alters the meaning of utterances.
• An utterance's meaning can vary significantly based on the situation, such as a birthday, funeral, or meeting, and the speaker's emotional state.
• Relationships between speakers play a crucial role in determining respect, formality, and interpretation of utterances.
• Semantics focuses on literal meanings, while pragmatics involves implied meanings and listener inferences.
• Pragmatic understanding is essential for comprehending true meanings of utterances.

Importance of Pragmatics in Language Development

• Children must learn to incorporate contextual aspects into their communication as they engage with diverse people and situations.
• Lessons on appropriate expression and interpretation of context occur largely subconsciously but can also be explicitly taught.
• Communication conventions and politeness vary by culture, influencing children's pragmatic skills based on their geographical and cultural context.
• Awareness grows that language use shifts across different social relationships and contexts, leading to adaptiveness in communication.

Cultural Variations in Pragmatics

• Different cultures instill unique pragmatic skills; for example, children in France learn different conventions than those in Namibia.
• Children learn specific language forms, topics to discuss, and socially acceptable responses based on context, affecting interactions with peers, teachers, and strangers.

Halliday’s Functions of Language

• Michael Halliday's concept: "language development is learning how to mean."
• Halliday identified seven language functions: first four are pragmatic (instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal) focusing on fulfilling physical and emotional needs.
• The remaining three functions (representational, heuristic, imaginative) relate to understanding and processing information about the environment rather than action or interaction.