Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The study of language as it is used in a social context, including its effect on the interlocutors.
  • noun The branch of semiotics that deals with the relationship between signs, especially words and other elements of language, and their users.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun linguistics The study of the use of language in a social context.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the study of language use

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The valuation of pragmatics is an aesthetic valuation.

    Archive 2007-02-01 Hal Duncan 2007

  • The valuation of pragmatics is an aesthetic valuation.

    The Art of Life Hal Duncan 2007

  • We can attribute to the Laozi the next development in Chinese pragmatics of language, how language shapes action.

    Taoism Hansen, Chad 2007

  • With potentially sensitive words, everything depends on the phonology and the pragmatics - in other words, how they're said and what the intentions are.

    Archive 2009-01-01 DC 2009

  • With potentially sensitive words, everything depends on the phonology and the pragmatics - in other words, how they're said and what the intentions are.

    On insults, or not DC 2009

  • My students are always interested in lessons which deal with what linguists call pragmatics †all those things about using a foreign language which go beyond grammar and vocabulary, and have more to do with nuance of meaning, casualness vs. formality, manners, inference, etc.

    Rambles at starchamber.com » Blog Archive » Teaching Tricks to Sea Lions 2007

  • … Considered from the standpoint of their "pragmatics," they are the record of a long and tentative exercise that needed to be revised and corrected again and again.

    Foucault and the Hedgerow History of Sexuality 2006

  • Kaplan does not call what he is doing "pragmatics" but the semantics of indexicals and demonstratives.

    Pragmatics Korta, Kepa 2006

  • Language is more than words – it’s also pragmatics, which is the cultural context in which our speech acts are framed.

    When people insist on "good grammar," why is that grammar always their dialect? - 22 Words 2008

  • To the "pragmatics" Haiti's problems have always been it's population and poverty.

    chicagotribune.com - 2010

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