Pragmatics, Syntax, and Semantics

1. What is Pragmatics?

The definition of Pragmatics According to Yule (1996, pp. 3-4):  

• Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. Pragmatic is the study of speaker meaning.
• This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they are talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances. Pragmatic is the study of contextual meaning.
• This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning. This type of study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is communicated. We might say that it is the investigation of invisible meaning. Pragmatic is the study of how more meaning gets communicated than is said.
• This perspective then raises the question of what determines the choice between the said and the unsaid. The basic answer is tied to the notion of distance. Closeness, whether it is physical, social, or conceptual, implies shared experience. On the assumption of how close or distant the listener is, speakers determine how much needs to be said. Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance. 

Reference: Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1.1. Semantics, Syntax , and Pragmatics

"Syntax is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well formed". (Yule, 1996, p.4)

"Semantics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world." (Yule, 1996, p.4)

"Pragmatics is the study of the relationship between linguistic form and the users of those forms."  (Yule, 1996, p.4)

Q: Which of the aforementioned allows human in analysis? 

A: only pragmatics. 

Reference: Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1.2. Areas of differences

Areas of differences between Semantics and Pragmatics 

1.3. Sentence meaning vs. Utterance meaning.

 A sentence is a linguistic expression, a well-formed string of words, while an utterance is a speech event by a particular speaker in a specific context. When a speaker uses a sentence in a specific context, he produces an utterance. 

the term sentence meaning refers to the semantic content of the sentence: the meaning which derives from the words themselves, regardless of context. The term utterance meaning refers to the semantic content plus any pragmatic meaning created by the specific way in which the sentence gets used. 

 Reference: Kroeger, P. R. (2018). Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Textbooks in Language Sciences 5. Berlin: Language Science Press.