Pragmatics studies how social context influences language use and interpretation. It examines how meaning is determined by context, including social relationships between speakers. Pragmatics analyzes ambiguous language, implied meanings, and deictic expressions that depend on context. Understanding pragmatics is important for language teaching, as social context influences what people say and how they interpret messages.

1. Pragmatics

2. What are pragmatics?
Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our
choice of language in social interaction and
the effects of our choice on others

3. Pragmatic Meaning
Whereas ‘pragmatics 'is concerned with the
study of the meaning that linguistic
expressions receive in use. So one task of
pragmatics is to explain how participants in a
dialogue such as the one above move from
the decontextualized.

4. Assigning Reference in Context
The process of assigning reference also involves
the interpretation of ‘deictic expressions’.
These are linguistic items that point to
contextually salient referents without naming
them explicitly. There are several types of
deictic expressions in the dialogue: person
deictics.

5. Assigning Sense in Context
Sometimes the process of identifying pragmatic meanin
involves interpreting ambiguous and vague linguistic
expressions in order to assign them sense in context.
These observations show that contextual meaning is no
fully determined by the words that are used: there is
gap between the meaning of the words use dy the
speaker and the thought that the speaker intends to
express by using those words on a particular occasion

6. Working out implicated meaning
Make your conversational contribution such as is required
at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose
or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged.
Deriving an interpretation that satisfies the co-operative
principle is effected through four maxims which the
communicator is presumed to abide by:
o Truthfulness
o Informativeness
o Relevance
o Style

7. Explaining the impact of social factors
The pragmalinguistic perspective focuses on the
linguistic strategies that are used to convey a
given pragmatic meaning whereas the
sociolpragmatic perspective focuses on the
socially bases assessments.
A sociopragmatic perspective focuses on the social
judgments associated with such a scenario, what
the relationship between the participants in and
the social acceptability of reaching for food in
such a context.

8. The Role of Content
In social pragmatics, it's widely accepted that the
following features of the situational context have a
particularly crucial influence on people’s use of
language:
o The participant: their roles, the amount of power
differential between them, the degree of distance-
closeness between them, the number of people
present.
o The message content: how ‘costly’ or ‘beneficial’ the
message is to the hearer and speaker
o The communicative activity influence language
behavior such as right to talk or ask questions

9. Pragmatics Research: Paradigms
and Methods
There are two broad approaches to
pragmatics:
Cognitive-psychological
approach
Social-psychological approach

10. Cognitive pragmatics are primarily interested
in exploring the relation between the
decontextualized, linguistic meaning of
utterances, what speakers mean by their
utterances on given occasions and how
listeners interpret those utterances on those
given occasions.

11. Social pragmaticists, tend to focus on the ways
in which particular communicative exchanges
between individuals are embedded and
constrained by social, cultural and other
contextual factors.

12. The Importance for language
teaching, learning and use
Context is a crucial factor in pragmatic analysis it
influences what people say, how they say it, and how
others interpret what they say. When designing
language teaching materials and language learning
activities, it sis vital to clearly identify relevant
contextual information such as the following:
o The roles and relationships
o The number of people present
o The communicative setting of the interation
o What the communicative e3vent is and what the goals
are

13. The Impact of Speech Act Theory
Speech act theory has had a crucial impact on
foreign language teaching as it played a major
role in the 1970’s and in the subsequent
development of communicative language
teaching.