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---
layout: linguistics
title: linguistics/pragmatics
---
# pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of **context**.
How do we convey meaning not explicitly expressed?<br>
How can we unambiguously understand ambiguous sentences?<br>
How does the listener *reconstruct* the speaker's intended meaning?
## Basic Principles
### Cooperation
The *Principle of Cooperation* states that **language is a fundamentally collaborative action**. When we speak to one another, we attempt to convey the pure notion of meaning through the fallible medium of words. Success of such speech requires both the speaker and the listener to operate under shared assumptions, in order to reconstruct intentions not explicitly communicated.
The Principle of Cooperation is composed entirely of several sub-principles.
- **quantity**: Say as much as necessary. Do not say more than necessary.
- **quality**: Do not say that which you believe false. Do not say that which you lack evidence.
- **relation**: Be relevant.
- **manner**: Avoid obscurity. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief. Be orderly.
These principles are also referred to as *Grice's Maxims* (named such after Paul Grice, a strong candidate for being the single most influential person on the field of pragmatics) can be arguably all bundled up into one core notion of **relevance**. (This is a hot topic of debate in the philosophy side of pragmatics, though).
As in all of linguistics: The Cooperative Principle is an *observation*, meant to *model* language's implicatures. It is not a hard and fast rule (in so much as hard and fast rules even exist in a descriptive framework), but even as rules go, it's not particularly strict: it can be violated, and indeed, often is.
The ways in which speakers can behave in a conversation, relative to the Principle of Cooperation, fall into the following categories:
- One can **observe** the principle, directly conforming to it
- One can **violate** the principle, subtly and misleadingly violating it
- One can **flout** the principle, clearly and straightforwardly violating it
- One can **opt out** of the principle, directly expressing an intention to not play by the rules of conversation.
## References
- Introduction to Pragmatics
- [Analyzing Meaning](https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/231)
- [Invitation to Formal Semantics](https://eecoppock.info/bootcamp/semantics-boot-camp.pdf)
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