Lexicology and Pragmatics

Related fields

Related to semantics and, therefore, lexicology is the field of pragmatics, which studies the relation between what is said and those who say it. Pragmatics, or pragmatic semantics, studies the meaning of utterances in context. Pragmatics analysis considers how the meaning of words can vary depending on the context of use. For example, an utterance can change from being a question to a threat if the context warrants that interpretation. An otherwise innocuous question such as 'Are you going to give me the money?' could easily be understood as a threat in certain contexts even though its interrogative form and the words on their own do not necessarily carry that meaning. It is crucial to understand that it is the context which determines the most acceptable meaning of the utterance. It has to be said that quite a few factors are responsible for ways in which the contexts affect the meaning of a word, let alone an utterance.

A word or group of words may be correct in so far as it observes the syntactic and lexical rules of English, but it may be unintelligible because the constituent elements do not combine to produce a meaningful statement in the English language. The sentence proposed by N.Chomsky which we discussed earlier, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, is an apt illustration of this point. But the reverse is also true. An utterance may be seemingly nonsensical, but, in fact, make perfect sense, i.e. be meaningful in the context of its use. If we stumbled across the sentence: If you have some liniment, I'll put it on my dignity, for most of us it would make little or no sense, since in no human culture we know do people heal their hurt or offended dignity by putting liniment on it. Liniment is a fluid medication that is normally rubbed into skin when it feels sore or stiff and is, therefore, used to relieve a physical, but not psychological, condition. For the utterance to make some sort of sense, there would have to be a suspension of disbelief on the part of the addressee. Particularly if s/he tries to imagine a situation in which this might be possible. Like, for instance, in certain genres. So, if the utterance is to be understood as meaningful, it must belong to such a genre. The most likely is that of children's literature, which makes extensive use of fantasy and defeats expectations. And sure enough, the sentence is taken from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle [Madeleine L’Engle, 1973: 20], a children’s science fantasy which has typically sci-fi elements like travel through time and space, magical beings, and other worlds and where the main characters – three children – are transplanted to fantastic new planets in far-off galaxies. The utterance itself is produced by a celestial creature, one of the main characters in the book. This is the kind of context where improbable things, like healing dignity with liniment, can happen and they are intrinsic to the genre of children’s sci-fi literature. So meaning and interpretation of words and especially strings of words are closely bound up with the context, type of text and genre in which they are found.

What all of this means is that words – as linguistic signs – possess not only semantic characteristics and certain syntax but also pragmatics. Signs of language can make, and usually do, a certain impression, which can have positive, negative, neutral and a whole range of other effects in between positive and negative on those who use them. Many scholars have drawn attention to differing ways of conveying the same message (Cf. Ukrainian Чом ти побиваєшся? vs. Чого ревеш? or a similar opposition in Russian between Златокудрая дева, чего ты трепещешь? and Рыжая девка, чего ты трясешся?, which was famously suggested by K.Chukovsky to indicate a marked difference between the two utterances which in terms of information are basically the same[4]). The speaker makes a choice of language means when formulating a message in accordance with his or her intention of producing a certain communicative effect. Thus, we can safely say that a message – which naturally consists of individual words – always possesses a pragmatic potential, which can be realized in all sorts of ways in different acts of communication. Thus, a study of words and word groups cannot avoid an analysis of form and content of texts which, ultimately, brings out their meanings in those contexts. Only through this kind of approach can we expect to gauge the word’s real and projected pragmatic potential and the effect it may have on the listener.