How context supplies meaning that the words alone do not carry.
In precise terms
The study of utterance meaning in context — implicature, presupposition, speech acts, politeness and deixis. Pragmatics concerns what is communicated beyond what is literally said.
An example
Can you pass the salt?
What is going on here
Literally a question about ability; used as a request. Nothing in the words says so — the request is inferred from context and convention. A language learner who answers 'yes' and does nothing has understood the sentence and missed the utterance.
Why this matters when you are learning a language
Pragmatic failure is the kind of mistake that reads as rude rather than foreign, because listeners attribute it to intention rather than to imperfect grammar. It is also rarely taught explicitly.
Across languages
Directness norms vary sharply: a bare imperative is neutral in some languages and brusque in others. Politeness may be grammaticalised in honorific systems, as in Japanese and Korean, or left to lexical choice, as in English.
Related terms
- DeixisAdvanced — Words whose meaning depends entirely on who is speaking, where and when — 'I', 'here', 'yesterday'.
- Information structureAdvanced — How a sentence packages what is already known against what is new.
- Grammatical moodIntermediate — Verb marking showing whether something is stated as fact, wished for, commanded or hypothetical.
- EvidentialityAdvanced — Grammatical marking of how the speaker knows what they are saying.
- RegisterAdvanced — A recurring way of using language associated with a situation, purpose, participants or channel.
- Style (sociolinguistics)Advanced — A pattern of linguistic choices through which speakers create or signal social meaning in an interaction.
- Honorifics and speech levelsAdvanced — Conventional words or grammatical forms that index a social relationship involving the addressee, a referent or another participant.
Where to go next
- Language guides — See grammatical and lexical categories used in context.
- Terminology quiz — Test the terms on this page.