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Facts about relevant social institutions, such as promising, marriage ceremonies, and the like, which affect what a person accomplishes in or by
saying what he does. There may be question about the relationship between pragmatics and
semantics. Linguistically, the field of both sciences are the same. They study about meaning, but there are some reasons make them different. It would be discussed in
other sub-chapter.
2.2 The Relationship between Pragmatics and Semantics
Pragmatics and semantics are two branches of linguistics that discussed the same field namely meaning. Both deal with the meaning of words that uttered by
human being in their own language, but it is important to make a clear distinction between them so that there is no more misunderstanding about the study object of the
two linguistics’ branches. However, pragmatics sometimes contrasted with semantics. Pragmatics and
semantics can be viewed as different parts, or different aspects, of the same general study. As discussed before, Pragmatics is the study of how language is used to
communicate, while Semantics as the study of meaning is concerned with what sentence and other linguistics express, deals with the meaning of language unit,
lexically and grammatically. Semantics is the level of linguistics which has been most affected by
pragmatics, but the relation between semantics and pragmatics has remain a matter for fundamental disagreement. In its most general sense, pragmatics studies the relation
between linguistics expression and their users. The distinction between semantics and
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19 pragmatics, therefore, tend to go with the distinction between meaning and use, or
more generally, that between competence and performance. In the theory of linguistics, pragmatics is considered as the relation between
language and context of situation. Meaning of language is therefore not single relation, but involves a set of various relations holding between the utterance and its
parts and the relevant features and components of the environments. For more understanding about the distinction between pragmatics and semantics, let us see
some examples below. a.
“We have no any chalk here” Semantically, this sentence is a statement to inform that there is no chalk here.
But, pragmatically, it is a request. It means that the speaker asks someone as the hearer to take the chalk.
b. “ I want more sugar in my coffee”
Semantically, it is a statement or request in which the speaker request for the sugar, but, pragmatically, this means that the speaker wants the hearer to do the
action. c.
“your voice is too low” Semantically, the utterance means, the speaker inform that the hearer has
small voice. But, it would means opposite to the semantic meaning when it was happened in the class, when the teacher speaker asked one of student hearer to
read a text, the sentence “your voice is too low” means the teacher ask student to read the text loudly.
d. “this room is very clean and tidy”
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20 Semantically, it is a statement to inform the hearer that he room is very clean.
But, pragmatically, It may mean the opposite of what the words mean, “this room is very dirty”
2.3. Speech Acts
