Discuss How Semantics and Pragmatics Differ in Their Approach to the Study of Meaning, Drawing on Examples from French, German or Spanish
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Abstract
Linguistics is the science of language. Linguists rely on many different areas and aspects to be able to examine and clarify a language; one of these areas contains semantics and pragmatics. The aim of this paper is to discuss how semantics and pragmatics differ in their approach to the study of meaning. I will look at defining both of these terms and try to explain their approach to understanding meaning. I will be giving examples of each in French.
Introduction
Semantics is the area of linguistics looking at the study of meaning of words, expressions, phrases and sentences. Of course the word “meaning” is an extremely vague and ambiguous term but there are many different ways of looking at meanings in semantics. These are then further broken down into the relationship between words such as homonymy, polysemy, synonymy, Hyponymy/ hyperonymy, antonymy and metonymy.
Pragmatics is the last stage of investigation where the understanding of the meaning of the word/ sentence is based on knowledge. Pragmatics relies on knowledge, it could be from the previous sentence (written or spoken) or this could be general knowledge about the person or world, effectively bridging the gap between what is said and what is implicated. In reality this is commonly explained by “does knowing a words literal meaning give you the referent?” Just like semantics, pragmatics is broken down into deixis, implicatures and maxims.
Understanding the similarities and differences between semantics and pragmatics.
Semantics has a logical way of looking at things because in theory it looks at the meaning encoded in the language. Pragmatics looks at meaning in context whether that be, language use or previous sentence. So is it possible to completely separate the two in their approach to the study of meaning? Well, according to Kenesei, Istvan, the best way to separate the two is to look at semantics as “what is said” and pragmatics as “what is implied or implicated”. So by highlighting their similarities as well as differences we should be able to look at their two different approaches to understand “meaning”.
Outlining the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.
To understand the distinction between the two is some what easier to show rather than to explain. Now, I will try and show the path in which we, as people take to understanding certain texts or utterance, looking at various techniques we apply.
A. je reviendrai
Looking at this in a very semantic way we would not be concerned with why it was said, who it was said by or in what context it was said. As we would be limited to the literal meaning of the words said or written. In other words we would merely use the words as they would appear in the dictionary to understand the meaning. However looking at this from a pragmatical point of view, using “person deixis” we realise by designating basic roles that someone in first person is coming back. Then also going beyond linguistic knowledge using other contextual knowledge we know that this is said by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 implying that he will back and not leave john alone for too long.
Conversational Maxims and Implicatures.
Pragmatics includes conversational implicatures.
In theory this is the understanding of what is said vs. what is meant. Again this is much easier to show than to explain.
A. Jai même fait mes devoirs.
B. Il est un pilote, mais il est aveugle.
Both of these sentences include assertions and implications that are triggered by certain words. Firstly lets look at A. Here the assertions is that someone (we dont know who) has done their homework. However because of of the word “même” the sentence is implicating that the person had many other things to do. Looking at B. the assertion is that the pilot is blind. Whereas the implication here because of the word “mais” that pilots are not normally blind. This is why in french words like “même” and “mais” trigger conversational implicatures.
Conversational implicatures do not necessarily need have trigger words. These could be a response to question that have a completely different implications to assertions. For example:
A. Vous voulez venir jouer au foote ?