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The previous chapter discussed the general knowledge that people have about the language they speak.While semantics is mainly concerned with a speaker's competence to use the language system in order to produce meaningful utterances and to understand the utterances that others produce, the chief focus of pragmatics is a person's ability to get meaning(s) from specific situations - to recognize what a speaker is referring to, to Introducing English Semantics relate new information to what has gone before, to interpret what is being said from background knowledge about the speaker and the topic, and to infer or 'fill in' information that the speaker takes for granted and doesn't bother to say.Robinson Crusoe, to use our first example, walked where the footprint was, looked in the right direction, Introducing English Semantics when there was enough light for visibility and before the print had been obliterated by rain, wind, tide, or the movement of other creatures.Our culture includes, for example, eating with a fork, wearing neckties, knowing at least some of the same proverbs, using at least some of the same gestures for the same purposes, celebrating the arrival of a new year, believing in law and democracy, and hundreds of other major and minor customs and beliefs.The whistle of a policeman directing traffic, the whistle of a hotel doorman summoning a taxi, and the whistle of the referee in a soccer game may all sound exactly the same; their different meanings are due to the context in which the signal occurs.It is easy to illustrate dialect differences: vocabulary differences such as petrol versus gasoline, lift versus elevator; alternative ways of framing certain questions: Have you a pencil?In spoken discourse meanings are partly communicated by emphases and melodies that are called prosody.All sorts of sights, sounds, and smells can be natural signs; they communicate to someone who observes and can interpret, but their messages are unintentional, the natural by-products of various events.Day after day we hear such signals because someone intends for us to hear them: horns, whistles, sirens, buzzers, and bells.We have conventional ways of indicating a slippery road, a bicycle path, the location of men's and women's lavatories, where there is access for the handicapped, where smoking is prohibited, and much more.Native speakers of English belong to the so-called Western culture, which has developed from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans of the ancient world.The pop of a gun starts competitive runners, swimmers, and jockeys on their respective races.Observing any such sign and getting information from it seems like a simple matter and can take place in an instant, and yet the process of getting information consists of three steps: Perception The sign and the observer share a context of place and time in which the sign attracts the observer's attention.If it is hard to specify just what constitutes a dialect, it is equally difficult to specify what is included in one culture.Robinson Crusoe, according to Defoe's novel, was walking along the beach one morning and suddenly saw a human footprint in the sand - made by the man who was later to be called Friday, as it turned out.In other people we notice and interpret shivering, perspiration, or a head nodding with drowsiness.The human mind cannot deal with an infinite number of separate things; we classify an entity as a new instance of the class of footprints or trees or sirens or lights.An utterance is typically part of a larger discourse.Pragmatics and semantics can be viewed as different parts, or different aspects, of the same general study.When people who have the same native language can understand one another but notice consistent differences in each other's speech, they speak different dialects of that language.The totality of common activities, institutions, and beliefs make up the culture of that society.Different ringtones, different numbers of toots on a whistle or flashes of light can form a repertory of messages.Unlike natural signs, conventional signs have human senders as well as human receivers: each one has an intention and an interpretation.We can even use devices like smoke detectors and burglar alarms to send messages to ourselves at a later time in circumstances that we really do not want to happen.To recognize something means that we match this experience with previous experiences stored in our memory; this new experience is another token of a familiar type.(a) ... pain ... clinic ... doctor ... examine ... surgery ... hospital ... nurses ... surgeon ... successful operation ... quick recovery (b) ... rocket ... preparation ... countdown ... blastoff ... orbit ... splashdown ... quick recovery ... successful operation The term successful operation occurs in both stories.Introducing English Semantics This may look strange on the printed page because in written English we are used to seeing the result of careful planning and polishing but conversational speech is scarcely ever planned and polished.Listeners - and to a lesser extent readers - often have to fill in information that the speaker or writer takes for granted.

The previous chapter discussed the general knowledge that people have about the language they speak.While semantics is mainly concerned with a speaker's competence to use the language system in order to produce meaningful utterances and to understand the utterances that others produce, the chief focus of pragmatics is a person's ability to get meaning(s) from specific situations - to recognize what a speaker is referring to, to Introducing English Semantics relate new information to what has gone before, to interpret what is being said from background knowledge about the speaker and the topic, and to infer or 'fill in' information that the speaker takes for granted and doesn't bother to say.Robinson Crusoe, to use our first example, walked where the footprint was, looked in the right direction, Introducing English Semantics when there was enough light for visibility and before the print had been obliterated by rain, wind, tide, or the movement of other creatures.Our culture includes, for example, eating with a fork, wearing neckties, knowing at least some of the same proverbs, using at least some of the same gestures for the same purposes, celebrating the arrival of a new year, believing in law and democracy, and hundreds of other major and minor customs and beliefs.The whistle of a policeman directing traffic, the whistle of a hotel doorman summoning a taxi, and the whistle of the referee in a soccer game may all sound exactly the same; their different meanings are due to the context in which the signal occurs.It is easy to illustrate dialect differences: vocabulary differences such as petrol versus gasoline, lift versus elevator; alternative ways of framing certain questions: Have you a pencil?In spoken discourse meanings are partly communicated by emphases and melodies that are called prosody.All sorts of sights, sounds, and smells can be natural signs; they communicate to someone who observes and can interpret, but their messages are unintentional, the natural by-products of various events.Day after day we hear such signals because someone intends for us to hear them: horns, whistles, sirens, buzzers, and bells.We have conventional ways of indicating a slippery road, a bicycle path, the location of men's and women's lavatories, where there is access for the handicapped, where smoking is prohibited, and much more.Native speakers of English belong to the so-called Western culture, which has developed from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans of the ancient world.The pop of a gun starts competitive runners, swimmers, and jockeys on their respective races.Observing any such sign and getting information from it seems like a simple matter and can take place in an instant, and yet the process of getting information consists of three steps: Perception The sign and the observer share a context of place and time in which the sign attracts the observer's attention.If it is hard to specify just what constitutes a dialect, it is equally difficult to specify what is included in one culture.Robinson Crusoe, according to Defoe's novel, was walking along the beach one morning and suddenly saw a human footprint in the sand - made by the man who was later to be called Friday, as it turned out.In other people we notice and interpret shivering, perspiration, or a head nodding with drowsiness.The human mind cannot deal with an infinite number of separate things; we classify an entity as a new instance of the class of footprints or trees or sirens or lights.An utterance is typically part of a larger discourse.Pragmatics and semantics can be viewed as different parts, or different aspects, of the same general study.When people who have the same native language can understand one another but notice consistent differences in each other's speech, they speak different dialects of that language.The totality of common activities, institutions, and beliefs make up the culture of that society.Different ringtones, different numbers of toots on a whistle or flashes of light can form a repertory of messages.Unlike natural signs, conventional signs have human senders as well as human receivers: each one has an intention and an interpretation.We can even use devices like smoke detectors and burglar alarms to send messages to ourselves at a later time in circumstances that we really do not want to happen.To recognize something means that we match this experience with previous experiences stored in our memory; this new experience is another token of a familiar type.
?since we are interested in language use and words are not ordinarily used alone, we should direct our attention to whole utterances and how we perceive, identify, and interpret them In order to grasp what somebody says, we must first of all perceive the utterance - hear a spoken utterance, see a written one.Compare "I'd never say THAT" with one focus and "I / would NEVer / say THAT" with three. Typically, when speech is represented in print, italics are sometimes used to indicate the accent, but this is done only sporadically and unevenly; our  writing system largely neglects this important element of spoken communication. A written transcript of a speech can be highly misleading because it is only a partial rendition of that speech. In speech there is always an accent in some part of an utterance, and placement of accent in different parts of an utterance creates differences of meaning. In the English language accent is mobile, enabling us to communicate different meanings by putting the emphasis in different places. The usual place is on the last important word, for instance: My cousin is an ARchitect. If the utterance is broken into two or more sense groups, each group has its own accent. The last accent is ordinarily the most prominent of all because the pitch changes on that syllable. My COUsin is an ARchitect. My cousin EDward, who lives in FULton, is an ARchitect. Thus the speaker can highlight one word or several words in an utterance and give special focus to that word or those words. The placement of accent on different words ties the utterance to what has been said preciously. For example, in reply to the question "What does your cousin do?," one might say My cousin's Edward's an ARchitecht.As speakers we typically hesitate as we figure what we intend to say; we put in 'fillers' ("Well"; "As a matter of fact..."); we repeat; we correct ourselves ("I mean"); we appeal to the addressee's understanding ("You know"). So even a short utterance like the one above can come out this way: Well, I'll uh let you know (pause) the answer (pause) as soon - as soon as I get the information (pause) from a friend of mine (pause) who lives in Winchester. Introducing English Semantics This may look strange on the printed page because in written English we are used to seeing the result of careful planning and polishing but conversational speech is scarcely ever planned and polished. Practice 2.1 Context and meaning The meaning of any language symbol depends to some extent on the context in which it occurs. Here are two 'narratives' that are rather vague because a lot of details are missing, but in each group the mere collocation of the words that are there tells a sort of story. (a) ... pain ... clinic ... doctor ... examine ... surgery ... hospital ... nurses ... surgeon ... successful operation ... quick recovery (b) ... rocket ... preparation ... countdown ... blastoff ... orbit ... splashdown ... quick recovery ... successful operation The term successful operation occurs in both stories. Does it seem to have the same meaning in both of them? The phrase quick recovery also occurs in both stories. Does it have the same meaning in both? Listeners - and to a lesser extent readers - often have to fill in information that the speaker or writer takes for granted. For example, suppose that A and B are standing somewhere and A says to B, "This was the site of the old Stanwick Theater.The stage was over here on the right and the lobby over there on the left." B will probably understand well enough, but his understanding is due to the fact that he inserts, between the two utterances, the information that the Stanwick Theater had a stage and a lobby - A has not told him so, or has not exactly told him so. The English definite article the is used in some proper names like 'the Stanwick Theater,' 'the Hudson River,' 'the Alps,' and it is used with ordinary nouns such as stage and lobby when these have already been introduced into the discourse. Since they are just now entering the discourse, B must relate the new information to what has been said, and he will probably do so without even recognizing that his comprehension is due to his own contribution. A bit of information inserted in such a context is called an implicature - a conversational implicature, to be precise. An implicature is a bridge constructed by the hearer (or reader) to relate one utterance to some previous utterance, and often the hearer or reader makes this connection unconsciously. In this case the bridge is easy to construct; our knowledge of the world lets us take for Has the Winston Street bus come yet? D: Oh? What did you say? I'm afraid Fred didn't like the remark I made. And you? What did you say? Some of my partners said they wouldn't accept these terms. H: Oh? What did you say? You're misquoting me. I didn't say anything like that. Language in use granted the fact that a theater has a stage and a lobby. If the speaker were to say "This was the site of the old Stanwick Theater.Individual speakers may vary somewhat in just what they pronounce, but the four renditions can be represented as follows, where the most prominent syllable is indicated with capital letters and the rising or falling We produce all our spoken utterances with a melody, or intonation: by changing the speed with which the vocal bands in the throat vibrate we produce rising or falling pitch or combinations of rise and fall.