Pragmatics
Edited by Christopher Gauker (University of Salzburg)
About this topic
Summary | Topics in the philosophy of language tend to fall into two main branches, pragmatics and semantics. Roughly, semantics deals with conventional meaning. Theories in formal semantics for natural language attempt to pair meanings with sentence-context pairs in some systematic way. A primary test of correctness for a semantic theory is whether it allows us to define the logical properties of sentences (such as whether one sentence logically implies another). The term “pragmatics” covers both a part of formal semantics, so defined, and also the study of the ways in which utterances effect communication. The first kind of pragmatic theory deals with the way in which the extensions of terms and the truth values of sentences depend on features of the situation in which the sentence is spoken. The second kind of pragmatic theory studies the nature of speech acts, such as asserting or asking, and also the ways in which speakers manage to convey more than the conventional meaning of the sentence uttered. It is not always clear where in this taxonomy a given phenomenon should fall. The topic of presupposition, for instance, has been located under all of these headings. |
Key works | The classics of pragmatics include Austin 1962, Searle 1969, Grice 1989, Kaplan 1989, Stalnaker 1973, and Lewis 1979. More recent contributions that have drawn considerable attention include Bach 1994, Recanati 2002, Cappelen & Lepore 2005, and Stanley & Szabó 2000. |
Introductions | An excellent but now somewhat dated collection of classics is Stephen Davis, ed., Pragmatics: A Reader, Oxford University Press, 1991. For a short overview of some current issues, see Gauker 2012. |
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Related categories
Subcategories:
Assertion (910 | 154)
Context and Context-Dependence (961 | 279)
Character and Content* (98)
Epistemic Contextualism* (955 | 129)
Semantic Minimalism (85)
The Nature of Context (120)
Discourse (434 | 339)
Implicature (315 | 26)
Linguistic Communication (290)
Linguistic Focus (59)
Linguistic Force (71)
Metaphor (901)
Presupposition (342)
Relevance Theory (107)
Speech Acts (990 | 894)
Pragmatics, Misc (394)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |