Week 4 ~ Visual Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics: Structure, meaning and context.

'Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others." - David Crystal.

Why is pragmatics an important consideration when examining visual communications?

Pragmatics is the study of hidden meaning.  The study of its includes a lot of interpretations from speakers and listeners which depends on different circumstances.  It is also the study of the origin, common uses and communicative effects of signs.

Pragmatics allows the consumers like us to check how a meaning is beyond the words.  The words can be interpreted without ambiguity.  Well the extra meaning is always there.  This not because of the semantic aspects of the words themselves.  We do share contextual knowledge with the author or speaker of the text.  

Sometimes, illustrations are inserted to create the pragmatic meaning in various situations.  Human like to apply different wordings to build-up their identity, create a particular atmosphere when they have conversations or want to attract others' attention.

Consider a sign outside a department store in our area.  “Back To school Sale, Big Discount”.  A person without enquiring that there are not schools are for sale – that what is for sale are stationery used for students at school, such as bags, pencil cases, pens and etc..  Indeed Pragmatics is way of investigating how sense can be made of certain texts.  The text seems to either not complete or to have other meaning to what is really intended.

'Communication clearly depends on not only recognizing the meaning of words in an utterance, but recognizing what speakers mean by their utterances.  The study of what speakers mean, or "speaker meaning," is called pragmatics.' (Yule, 2010)

The pragmatic principles people abide by in one language are often different in another. Thus there has been a growing interest in how people in different languages observe a certain pragmatic principle. Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies reported what is considered polite in one language is sometimes not polite in another. Contrastive pragmatics, however, is not confined to the study of a certain pragmatic principles. Cultural breakdowns, pragmatic failure, among other things, are also components of cross-cultural pragmatics. Westerners tend to speak directly which is different from Chinese culture, one used to speak indirectly.  It would be rude if one contravenes either one custom.  Based on the study of "invisible" meaning within the words which include verbal communication, advertisement, sentences and also signs appearing in the environment speakers and hearers must be able to familiar with lot of assumptions and expectations when they are trying to communicate with each other.  This can be seen in the following pictures below.

Can't sleep???

Fitness

Healthy Diet

Boring class

In the first two pictures above, we can see that if a person wants to sleep well, one requires to exercise and eat healthily. But in the picture on the left, we may have two interpretations which mean you may easily fall asleep in the a class because of the dullness. In other word, if you follow two suggestions in the pictures, you could sleep anytime and anywhere.

I agreed that pragmatics is an interesting aspect of studies in linguistics. It will be studied as long as there is human speech.

'Pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters' (Morris 1938, 6-7).

References:

• Griffiths,P. (2006). Studying meaning. Introduction to English semantics and pragmatics (pp. 1-­‐22). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 
• http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/bamhurst-et-al-mapping_visual_studies_in_com- journalofcom-54.pdf 
•  http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/viscomtheory.html  
•  http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html  
•  https://sites.google.com/site/2010introlangstudies2/marketing-docs