The field of Pragmatics encompasses the study of contextual and idiomatic language use. It has several broad branches, including the theory of how linguistic context influences the interpretation of sentences; the theory of how one sentence can express different meanings or propositions in different contexts (due to ambiguity or indexicality); and speech act theory and the theory of conversational implicature.
A major problem in pragmatics is the question of what constitutes a context. For example, there is a debate about whether the fact that an utterance occurs in a certain time or place, or that it is accompanied by other utterances or other events, makes it a relevant context for its interpretation. In addition, there is a wide variation among pragmatic theorists in how they view the role of context in resolving ambiguity and reference.
The most common view is that of a pragmatic theory of ambiguity resolution. It involves the premise that ambiguity in a speech is generally caused by the fact that the words in an utterance are susceptible to multiple interpretations, and that this ambiguity is resolved when the listener knows other facts about the context of the utterance. This view is a generalization of Grice’s original notion of conversational implicature.
Another approach is to view the linguistic context as a set of utterances and other extra-linguistic circumstances surrounding an utterance. This view is sometimes referred to as a context-centered approach. The most well-known proponent of this view is David Lewis. A number of other philosophers, most notably Richard Hogg and Charles Travis, have also endorsed this view.
It is possible to combine the two views, in which case we say that the linguistic context of an utterance consists of all the utterances that precede and follow it, and that the idiomatic context consists of all the extra-linguistic circumstances surrounding it.
Some scholars have distinguished between what they call “near-side pragmatics” and what they call “far-side pragmatics.” The former is concerned with the nature of certain facts that are relevant to determining what an utterance means or says; the latter is concerned with what happens beyond saying: how a speaker uses an utterance in the process of conveying some information to some listener.
There is some controversy about the degree to which the near-side and far-side theories overlap, and a further debate about the extent to which semantics and pragmatics are related to each other. For example, some scholars argue that pragmatics must take into account the semantics of expressions if it is to be an acceptable scientific discipline. Other scholars, however, disagree with this assertion.
In a recent development in the field, some have sought to reduce the amount of semantics that is involved in pragmatics by focusing on conventional implicatures and other factors that are not determined by meaning, and by treating contextual facts as more important than grammatical rules. These theorists are sometimes referred to as minimalists. They are in part motivated by the belief that conventional semantics has become too bloated by the addition of various lexical items that are supposedly pragmatically significant, such as anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns and deictic demonstratives.