Talk:Pragmatics

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Contents

[edit] Vague name references

According to Morris, Pragmatics tries to understand ...

Which Morris is referred to here? Do we have an article on him/her? Can we put his/her full name here and link to the article? --Jim Henry 18:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some google searching on my part suggests this probably refers to someone named Charles Morris. There's also the question of who "Leech" and "Sperber and Wilson" are. These are probably references to specific works of theirs and it would be nice to know which those were as well. --Taak 21:20, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pragmatics != pragmatism

Pragmatics is a philosophical movement founded by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James - this article seems more than a little confused. Steven Zenith 01:38, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Are you sure you aren't thinking of pragmatism, Steven? -Seth Mahoney 06:47, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
Seth's right. Pragmatism is the philosophical movement - I am not sure what confused me here. Someone editing this page might consider relating pragmatics, to logic, syntax and semantics - and adding an explanation of pragmatics in the context of Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. --Steven Zenith 08:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moves and merges

Shouldn't the co-operative principle and conversational maxims pages be integrated? --shudder 20:24, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, maybe they should be; there's a lot of redundancy between them. But which should be the primary article into which the other article's content is merged?
Also, I suspect that Implication (pragmatics) might should be moved to Implicature. If you knows more about this than I do (as you probably do), please comment on Talk:Implication (pragmatics). --Jim Henry | Talk 18:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
No, it really shouldn't. Grice's theory is only ONE pragmatics theory, and furthermore one considered outdated by many. The articles should certainly be linked, but definitely not merged into one - otherwise we'd also have to merge in Relevance Theory, Speech Acts, and all other pragmatics topics. It'd become unmanagable. Yamx 00:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

the speech act link at the bottom of the page seems a little outt place. Kɔffeedrinksyou 15:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Why? Speeach Act Theory is definitely a topic in Pragmatics - or wasn't that what you meant? Yamx 00:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Someone put that a pragmatist scholar was poke-master at the top of the origins section. I dont know what it said before that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sjcarlin (talk • contribs) 23:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Examples please!

This article is singularly lacking in illustrative examples, which makes it hard for non-experts to understand. (Unfortunately this is an increasing trend with Wikipedia, it seems.)

It would be nice to have a few examples, with explanations, following Sentence meaning is the literal meaning of the sentence, while the speaker meaning is the piece of information (or proposition) that the speaker is trying to convey.

For example,

What are you drinking? (in a social context) means What would you like to drink, and can I buy it for you?

Would you like to sweep the floor? (said by boss to worker) means I command you to sweep the floor

I really love my mother-in-law may well mean the exact opposite, depending on context.

--84.9.95.214 21:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] linking Austin's acts to the Jakobson's uses of language

having looked at Austrin's Illocutionary, locutionary, perlocutionary acts I really can't see how they link to referential, poetic and connative functions at all. Poetic certainly seems unrelated to locutionary, and I think we need an expert to reconsider this...

Yeah, you're right. I added that originally, but it was kind of dumb. There is sort of a correspondence (and indeed, I used "sort of" to describe the connection) but that's not really encyclopedic. I should probably delete all those. Superabo 00:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can we make this article really good?

Yes, we can! This seems like the best place to overview a bunch of topics at the intersection of linguistics and philosophy/theory: speech acts, performativity, indexicality, etc. are all related. Superabo 00:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Messy ending

There are a ton of different sections, and I feel compelled to add one for references.

  1. 5 Significant works
  2. 6 Topics in pragmatics
  3. 7 Bibliography
  4. 8 See also
  5. 9 External links

Can these be collapsed a little?

[edit] Definition of Pragmatics

There was no definition of pragmatics, so I took a stab at it (first two paragraphs at top). I know this will need refining and correcting, but hopefully it will be a start. I wonder whether the three paragraphs/sentences following the first two paragraphs belong up at the top... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Viverechristus (talk • contribs) 20:45, August 29, 2007 (UTC)