Hi! I’m Joel and this is The Glossary, a bi-weekly supplement to Learned. This week, we're saying what we mean and meaning what we say.
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This week is the last of my linguistics definitions. For the moment, anyway, I will most likely return to the subject at some point in the future. However, for now, I have one last word to define and it, like semiotics, semantics, and prosody before it, is concerned with what words mean: pragmatics.
In the field of linguistic pragmatics, context is everything. We know that words can have multiple meanings and multiple uses and forms. Pragmatics studies all the different ways we understand which meaning is being used at any given time, from simply asking for clarification, to identifying a tone of voice, to just knowing what a word means when it's used with this other word over here.
Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown of all things pragmatic. They include (but are not limited to):
What a speaker means based on their beliefs and intentions.
How understanding context requires specific knowledge of the speaker, the place, time, etc.
How much we can say without actually saying something.
How close, socially, or physically, speakers are and how that creates context.
How we can mean something that is the opposite of what the spoken words actually mean.
How form (i.e. grammar and structure) create meaning and context.
It's a fascinating field and plays nicely with all the other studies of meaning and intention that can be found in the fields of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. As always, this is an oversimplification and just a way of collating a group of basic definitions I can keep in my notes as a quick reference for students. So, if you're going to dive into the field, you can think of this as a good starting point, but only the barest tip of the iceberg.
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New Learned on Monday. Until then, stay strong, stay curious. Learn something.
Joel