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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
A. Literature Review
1. Pragmatics
a. Definition of Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics study. According to Yule 1996:03, there are four definitions of pragmatics. First, he defines it as a
study which concerns with the meaning of speaker ’s utterances and how it is
interpreted by a listener. Second, it is a study of contextual meaning. In human communications, a single word can have multiple meanings. It means
that a particular context will influence how the speaker produces utterances and how the listener interprets them. Third, he states that pragmatics is the
study of relative meaning. A very short utterance may have multiple meanings and sometimes even a silence or an eye contact is meaningful. The
last definition is that it is the study of relative distance. In line with Yule, Leech 1983:6 argues that pragmatics is the study of
relative meaning since it is influenced by the context of communication. Similarly, Mey 2001:6 considers pragmatics as the study of human language
in use which is connected by the context in a society. Thus, it can be conluded that the study of pragmatics covers two main aspects in communication. First,
it concerns on how the speaker produces utterances. Second, it also concerns on how the listener interprets the speaker
’s utterances. In other words,
pragmatics is the study of meaning in communication which is influenced by the sociological context.
b. The Scope of Pragmatics
As a branch of linguistics study, pragmatics covers several domains. They are deixis, presupposition, implicature, speech acts and politeness.
First domain is deixis. The term deixis is taken from Greek word which has an original meaning of
“pointing or indicating” Levinson, 1983:54. In line with Levinson, Yule 1996:9 states that in pragmatics, deixis is an
expression which is used by by the speaker to point or indicate something. Yule 1996:9 adds that any utterance used to point is called a deictic
expression. Further, he classifies deixis into three types. The first type is personal deixis. It is a linguistic form used by a speaker to point or to indicate
the existence of a person such as the pronoun ‘he’ to indicate a male person or
‘she’ to indicate a female person. The second type is spatial deixis. It is a type of deixis used to point to a location such as
the term ‘here’ to indicate any places near to him. The last one is temporal deixis. It is an expression used to
indicate time is called as temporal deixis. Terms such as ‘now’, ‘today’, and
‘yesterday’ are the examples of temporal deixis because they are pointing something related to the time.
The second domain is presupposition. According to Yule 1996:25, a presupposition is something that the speaker believes to be the background in
making an utterance. Similarly, Caffi 2006:759, defines presupposition as a background knowledge which is owned by the participants in communication.
In this case, the speaker assumes that there is certain information which already known by the listener before he produces an utterance. Yule 1996:
26 gives the example, when the speaker says “Mary’s dog is cute” it means
that he assumes that the listener knows that Mary has a dog. The third domain is implicature. Grice in Chapman 2005:102 draws
important and clear distinctions between two points, a speaker meaning and a sentence meaning. There is a distinction between what a speaker means and
what a sentence or another expression means. For example, the speaker utters “Your book” then he puts the book on the table. The expression of “your
book” can mean that the book is the listener’s book. Yet, it is possible for the speaker to convey a meaning more than what he said. The expression of
“your book” can mean “this is your book, I give it back to you” or it can also mean something else. According to Yule 1996:36, implicature is defined as
p rocess of interpreting the speaker’s intention.
The fourth domain is speech acts. Communication is an inferential process. When a speaker produces utterances, the addressee will interpret
those utterances based on the speaker ’s reference. To speak a language is to
express ideas or thoughts in the form of utterances by following a set of linguistic rules. According to Capone 2006:1015, in communication, there
are expressions which have the function to change the current state of things known as speech act.
The last domain is politeness. According to Yule 1996:60, politeness means respecting the hearer’s public self image by being aware of their face
.
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