The Constituents of Pragmatics

Pragmatics is an indispensable factor of communication and consequently it is a category of the discourse – the utterance, the dialogical unity and the text (written form of discourse). One can distinguish several constituents in pragmatics such as:

1) pragmatics as the global category and an inalienable feature of any communicative unit;

2) the communicative complex, addresser – addressee;

3) pragmatic goal (purpose, intent, force);

4) pragmatic content;

5) intended pragmatic effect.

1. Discourse pragmatics as a global category is omnipresent . (The term discourse was introduced by Ю. Хабермас). It manifests the addresser’s attitude towards the act of communication, towards the message conveyed and the addressee; it also comprises the addresser’s communicative intention and the ultimate aim of producing the desired effect on the addressee, - all this as an integral aspect of communication, as opposed to semantic content.

2. The addresser and the addressee are obviously indispensable constituents of a speech act.

The emphasis on the addresser as the corner-stone of a pragmatic theory of language is based on the assumption that the essence of pragmatics is the category of the subject, the ego, the addresser generating discourse (Y. S. Stepanov, 1981) revealing his attitude towards what he says and how he says it, including such factors as truth value, certainly, doubt or supposition, sincerity or insincerity, evaluation, etc. The addresser is the source of all forms of appraisal.

The addresser’s plane is represented by elements of deixis, such as “I”, “here”, “now”, “this” and other “ego-centric words” (Stepanov’s term) and also by lexical units possessing evaluative connotations and some other linguistic means.

The pragmatics role of the addressee is not as obvious as that of the addresser. However, there are two ways the addressee’s influence on the addresser and his massage are manifested.

The addressee’s position may be either totally passive or active. In the former case the addressee still has to be taken into account, if the addresser wants to succeed in producing an adequate effect. So, the addresser has to make a careful choice of the most effective language means and resort to specific means of addressing direct (“Dear friends!”, “Ladies and gentlemen!”) or indirect (“My honorable colleague knows very well”… etc.).

The active position of the addressee shows him as a much more crucial factor, because the addresser has to take into consideration the addressee’s specific features and qualities – his social status, his standard of education, his age, his background, his politics, etc. So, through the medium of the addresser the addressee is reflected in the text. The speaker (or writer) must adapt himself to his audience, which is immediately reflected in his speech. Here is how Jimmy Carter addressed an audience of common voters (Daily Mirror): “Hi. Mah name is Jimmy Carter an ‘Ah’m runnin” for President of th’US. Ah’d sure appreciate yer vote!”

The manner of speaking resorted by the orator is purely pragmatic – to pose as if he were one of them, to win their favour and thus to win their votes. Both the addresser (directly) and the addressee (indirectly) play a significant role in shaping discourse pragmatics, and this role of both is materialized in the verbal structure of discourse.

3. Another constituent of pragmatics is the pragmatic goal or the pragmatic force. This aim is not stated explicitly but is materialized in the verbal texture of the text or utterance. It manifests the addresser’s position as to the act of communication itself, the specific angle at which semantic content is expressed to be decoded. The pragmatic goal is built into the message in such a way so as to make sure that the addressee does not fail to see it, otherwise communication fails.

4. Linked with pragmatic goal is pragmatic content. Pragmatic goal indicates the aim, pragmatic content is concerned with, the means to achieve it, being a further elaboration of pragmatic goal. Pragmatic content is different from semantic content, which is that part of the utterance (text) that carries information about real life; pragmatic content specifies semantic one, showing how it should be understood and interpreted.

5. The ultimate point of communication is the intended pragmatic effect. This is the recognition by the addressee of what the addresser means and intends. So, in the final analysis, discourse pragmatic means the assessment of the effectiveness of communication. Let’s us consider the following dialogical unity:

- Would you please water the flower-beds?

- It’s raining.

What is the communicative meaning of the utterance “It’s raining”? There is a wide gulf between the prepositional content and the communicative content of the utterance. The true sense of the utterance is “It’s no use watering the flowers-beds while it’s raining.” One can see that the global content of the utterance is made up of semantic and pragmatic components closely knit together, and the pragmatic component plays a crucial role. It is pragmatics alone that is capable of elevating an isolated sentence (a language unit) to the status of utterance, i.e., a unit of communication.