English
Semantics
Language in Use
Table Of Contents
01. 02. 03.
Pragmatics Natural and Linguistics Signs
Conventional Signs
06.
04. 05.
. .
Utterance and Prosody Non-verbal
Sentence Communication
01
.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a person’s ability to derive meanings from
specific kinds of speech situations—to recognize what
the speaker is referring to, to relate new information to
what has gone before, to interpret what is said from
background knowledge about the speaker and the topic
of discourse, and to infer or ‘fill in’ information that the
speaker takes for granted and doesn’t bother to say
02. Natural and
Conventional
Sign
Natural Sign
They communicate to All sorts of sights,
someone who sounds and smells can
observes and can be natural signs
interpret
Their messages are
Eg: Foot print, smoke,
unintentional, the by-
a black cloud
products of various
events
Conventional
Signs Have human senders as
The auditory and visual devices
well as human
that people have created to
send routine messages to one
receivers; each one has
another an intention and an
interpretation
Humans produce not Eg: Whistle, traffic
only single symbols but light smoke, sirens
systems of symbols. Conventional signs can
have different meanings
in different contexts or
different circumstances.
Process of Getting
Information
1 Perception
The sign and the observer share a
context of place and time in
2 Identification which the sign attracts the 3 Interpretation
We identify any new thing either as a observer’s attention.
phenomenon
Meanings are often personal. The
previously observed or, more often,
meaning of any sign depends on
as something that is ‘identical’ with
phenomena we already know, a new the space-time context in which
we observe it.
token of a familiar type
Gallery Image
03. Linguistics
Sign
Words are linguistic signs, similar in certain
respects to natural and conventional signs. They
do not ‘have meanings’ but rather are capable of
conveying meanings to those who can perceive,
identify and interpret. Words go together to form
sentences which in turn are capable of conveying
meanings—the meanings of the individual words
and the meaning that comes from the relation of
these words to one another.
04
Utterance and Meaning
• An utterance happens just once; a spoken utterance happens and then, unless it is recorded electronically, it
ceases to exist; a written utterance is intended to last—for a short time in the case of a shopping list, for
instance, or much longer, as in the case of a book.
• Sentence is a construction of words (in English or whatever language) in a particular sequence which is
meaningful (in that language)
• The meaning of a sentence is determined by the language, something known to all people who have learned
to use that language.
• The meaning of an utterance is the meaning of the sentence plus the meanings of the circumstances: the time
and place, the people involved, their backgrounds, their relationship to one another, and what they know
about one another. All these circumstances we can call the physical-social context of an utterance.
• Linguistic meaning, what is communicated by particular pieces of language
• Utterance meaning, what a certain individual meant by saying such-and-such in a particular place, at a
particular time, and to certain other individuals
05 Prosody
• By making one syllable in a sense-group especially loud and long, usually where
the change of pitch occurs, we endow that word with a special prominence called
accent.
• Intonation and accent together constitute prosody, the meaningful elements of
speech apart from the words that are uttered.
Statement vs question (fall vs rise)
↑Yes. Yes?↓ This is the place. ↑ This is the place?
Information sought vs repetition requested
(fall vs rise)
↑ When? ↑ Where? ↓When? ↓Where?
Non Verbal
Communication
ps-st sh-sh huh? unh-huh m-m-m b-r-r tsk-tsk
nodding the head in response to an utterance
crossing one’s fingers
pretending to yawn, with finger tips in front of mouth
holding up a thumb from a closed fist
pinching one’s nostrils closed with thumb and forefinger
