Chapter 8: Pragmatics

In this chapter, we look at sentential meaning from the perspective of how it is influenced by and how it influences the context. The study of how context affects meaning is called pragmatics. In the previous chapter, we learned that sentences can create certain implicatures based on the discourse context. In the first half of this chapter, we will look at the conversational logic of how implicatures arise. We will look at the foundational work of philosopher Paul Grice — the Cooperative Principle — and evaluate it as a theory. We will look at the basic principles of conversational logic, and examine what differences various languages and cultures exhibit in terms of conversational rules. In the latter half of the chapter, we will look at illocutionary meaning: what “happens” to the context when you make utterances. We will focus on the formal analysis of what it means for us to make an assertion versus ask a question in discourse. In doing so, we will sharpen our understanding of what a “context” is by introducing formal notions such as the Common Ground and the Question Under Discussion. These tools will be helpful for analysing illocutionary meaning and what we mean by what “happens” to the context when we make utterances.