Pragmatic is the linguistic field that explores how context influences meaning. It is a subfield of linguistics, the study of language, and it studies how speakers use and interpret words, as opposed to syntax (word order), semantics (meaning), and semiotics (the study of signs). Linguistics experts distinguish pragmatics from these other fields by describing it as “the study of what speakers actually mean in their speech” rather than its “specific meaning or the objects that they may or may not denote.”
Some pragmatic concepts are universally agreed upon, such as the importance of observing social norms when communicating with others. These social norms might include maintaining eye contact, speaking at an appropriate volume and using nonverbal cues such as hand gestures to show interest. These skills are critical for normal child development, but children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger’s Syndrome or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified have difficulty with pragmatics. Understanding the importance of pragmatics and how to facilitate communication in these children can help them develop more quickly and effectively.
The main branch of pragmatics is conversational implicatures. This theory of meaning derives from Grice’s work on politeness, which argues that speakers often intend to communicate more than they explicitly say in a conversation. Other branches of pragmatics include speech act theory, meaning-directed action, and relevance theory. The Blackwell Dictionary of Linguistics describes the term “pragmatics” as a generalization of the significance conventionally or literally attached to utterances, and the additional significance that can be worked out by more general principles, taking contextual information into account.
A major concern in pragmatics is the issue of reference resolution, which refers to how a speaker resolves the meaning of an utterance. One approach to this problem comes from Bach and Harnish’s Sainsbury and Stark Scale of Reference, which breaks down a sentence into its components, including its meaning and its semantic and grammatical structure. This allows researchers to see how the meaning of an utterance is determined, and can be used to identify the elements that are considered by a listener to determine its meaning.
Another important area in pragmatics is computational pragmatics, which focuses on how a computer can understand a human user’s intention and behavior by tracking syntactic clues in natural conversation. This is particularly helpful for computers that are designed to assist in interpreting human languages. The main challenge is to ensure that a computer understands the meaning of an utterance without losing its context, which is a difficult task. Computational pragmatics can help to achieve this, but further research is needed to ensure that the resulting technology is accurate and reliable. This research will also improve the ability of computers to interact with humans in natural language, and will help the field of artificial intelligence become more advanced. This will allow the computers to better mimic and even exceed human abilities in many ways, such as in the areas of understanding context and communicating an intent.