Pragmatics
/præɡˈmætɪks/noun
The branch of linguistics that studies how context decides what an utterance actually conveys.
The Greek roots
Literally: “matters of things done”
The story of the word
Charles Morris drew the boundary in 1938: syntax handles sign to sign, semantics sign to object, pragmatics sign to interpreter. The Greek root means a thing done, which fits a field concerned with what saying something accomplishes rather than what the words denote. Answer the question can you pass the salt with a simple yes and the semantics are satisfied while the pragmatics have failed.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1938
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Sarcasm is a pragmatics problem, since nothing in the words themselves flags the reversal.
Her thesis in pragmatics looked at how Greek speakers soften a refusal.