新编简明英语语言学教程：Linguistics-2015-6-17-chapter_6_pragmatics_handout_and_exercises.docVIP

Chapter 6 Pragmatics 6.1 Some basic notions 6.1.1 Definition Pragmatics: Pragmatics can be regarded as a kind of meaning study. A general definition is that it is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication. As the process of communication is essentially a process of conveying and understanding meaning in a certain context, pragmatics can also be regarded as a kind of meaning study. 6.1.2 Pragmatics vs. semantics As pragmatics and semantics are both linguistic studies of meaning, then how are they related, and how do they differ? Semantics: The context is not considered in the study of meaning. Pragmatics: The context of use is considered in the study of meaning. 6.1.3 Context The situational context: Every utterance occurs in a particular spatiotemporal situation, the main components of which include, apart from the place and time of the utterance, the speaker and the hearer, the actions they are performing at the time, the various objects and events existent in the situation. The linguistic context, sometimes known as context, is concerned with the probability of a word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another word, which forms part of the “meaning” of the word, and also with the part of text that precedes and follows a particular utterance. 6.1.4 Sentence meaning vs. utterance meaning A sentence（句子）: As has been said before, a sentence is a grammatical concept, and the meaning of a sentence is often studied as the abstract, intrinsic property of the sentence itself in terms of predication. The meaning of a sentence is abstract, and decontextualizd. An utterance(话语): But if we think of a sentence as what people actually utter in the course of communication, it becomes an utterance, and it should be considered in the situation in which it is actually uttered (or used). The meaning of an utterance is concrete, and context-dependent. The features of meaning of utterance: 1) The meaning of an utterance is based o