pragmatics

pragmatics
/prag mat"iks/, n. (used with a sing. v.)
1. Logic, Philos. the branch of semiotics dealing with the causal and other relations between words, expressions, or symbols and their users.
2. Ling. the analysis of language in terms of the situational context within which utterances are made, including the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker and the relation between speaker and listener.
3. practical considerations.
[1935-40; see PRAGMATIC, -ICS]

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In linguistics and philosophy, the study of the use of natural language in communication; more generally, the study of the relations between languages and their users.

It is sometimes defined in contrast with linguistic semantics, which can be described as the study of the rule systems that determine the literal meanings of linguistic expressions. Pragmatics is then the study of how both literal and nonliteral aspects of communicated linguistic meaning are determined by principles that refer to the physical or social context (broadly construed) in which language is used. Among these aspects are conversational and conventional "implicatures" (e.g., "John has three sons" conversationally implicates that John has no more than three sons; "He was poor but honest" conventionally implicates an unspecified contrast between poverty and honesty). Other aspects include metaphor and other tropes and speech acts.

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Universalium. 2010.

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