14
relationship with the participants, by what they know and they assume the sender knows.
The example of the situational context is presented by Cutting 2002 as follows. The conversation in the example occurs in the classroom situation. A
male lecturer from London is explaining a mathematical problem to a male pupil from London whose name is Berkam:
Lecturer : Forty-nine? Why you say forty-nine?
Pupil :
Cos there’s another one here. Lecturer
: Right, we’ve got forty-nine there, haven’t we? But here there’s two.
Okay? Now, what is it that we’ve two of? Well, let me give you a clue. Erm, this here is forty, that’s four tens, four ten are forty.
In reference to the conversation above, the situational context is obviously the classroom. Moreover, the lecturer and the pupil are presumably pointing to
either the blackboard or an exercise book. The word ‘here’ and ‘there’ are
demonstrative adverbs indicating a figure in an equation. Meanwhile, ‘this here’ is
a demonstrative pronoun and adverb indicating what is being puzzled over. Without the surrounding situation, the exchange makes little sense.
In reference to the explanation above, it is obviously known that context is an important concept in discourse and pragmatics. Context is the decisive factor
influencing a deeper meaning of an utterance.
c. Aspects of Speech Situation
According to Leech 1983, pragmatic function is how language is used in communication. It focuses on a goal-oriented speech situation in which the
speaker uses language in order to produce particular effect in the mind of hearer. He says that since pragmatics studies meaning in relation to speech situation, there
15
are five aspects of situation to be considered namely, addresser and addressee, the context of an utterance, the goal of an utterance, the utterance as a form of act, .
and the utterance as a product of verbal act deals with language at a more concrete level than grammar. Each is elaborated as follows.
The first aspect is addressers or addressees. There is a significant difference between a receiver and an an addressee. According to Lyon in Leech 1983, a
receiver is a person who receives and interprets the messages while an addressee is a person who is an intended receiver of the message. A receiver might be a
bystander or an eavesdropper, rather than an addressee. This distinction is relevant to the present inquiry, in that the analyst of pragmatic meaning is best thought of a
receiver who tries to make sense of the content of a discourse according to whatever contextual evidence is available. The second aspect is context of an
utterance. Context has been understood in different ways. It may include ‘relevant’ aspects of the physical or social setting of an utterance. Leech 1983
considers context to be any background knowledge assumed to be shared by speaker and hearer and which contributes to hearer’s interpretation of what
speaker means by a given utterance. The third aspect is the goal of an utterance.
The term “goal” is more neutral than intention because it does not commit its user to deal with conscious
volition or motivation but it can be used generally of goal-oriented activities. The next aspect is the utterance as a form of act. In this case, Grammar deals with
abstract static entities for example sentences in syntax and propositions in semantics. Meanwhile, pragmatics deals with the verbal acts or performances
16
which take place in a particular situation, in time. The last aspect is the utterance as a product of verbal act deals with language at a more concrete level than
grammar. With regard to this utterances may refer to the product of a verbal art, rather than to the verbal acts itself. The words ‘Would you be quite please?’
spoken with a polite rising intonation, might be described as a sentence, or as a question, or as a request. However, it is convenient to reserve term like sentence
and question for grammatical entities, identified by their use in a particular situation. In this sense, utterances are the element whose meanings are studied in
discourse analysis. In fact, it can be described that discourse analysis deals with utterances in relation to the context.
3. The Scope of Pragmatics
