A. Definition of Pragmatics
The term of modern pragmatics was first introduced by Charles Morris who concerned with semiotics, the study of signs. Morris distinguished three
branches of inquiry within semiotics. They are syntactic, the study of formal relations of signs to one another, semantics the study of relations of signs to
the objects to which the signs are applicable and pragmatics, the study of the relations of signs to interpreters Levinson 1983: 1. Then, there has been a
tendency to use pragmatics exclusively as a division of linguistics semiotics.
“Pragmatics is the study of those theories and anything that relation between language and context that are gramaticalized, or encoded in the structure
of language” Levinson, 1983: 9. Referring to this statement, pragmatics is the study of those aspects of the relationship between language and context that are
relevant to the writing of grammars. Further he states that ‘pragmatics’ can be usefully defined as the study of how utterances have meanings in situations’.
From this definition, it can be seen that pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.
Leech argues that one cannot really understand the nature of language itself unless he understands pragmatics, how language is used in communication.
Pragmatics has become a more important branch of linguistics 1983: 1. Based on the definition previously cited, it can be inferred that pragmatics
is the study of meaning that is contained in the utterance in term of the context. Meaning here, does not refer to the lexical or grammatical meaning but it does to
the speaker meaning, a meaning that the speaker intends to evoke in his or her utterance.
Therefore, in pragmatics view, to appreciate and to interpret the meaning of an utterance, one has to consider the relation between the language and its
context. The writer needs to involve the interpretation of what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said.
B. Context
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