xxiii word, Levinson emphasizes that pragmatics is the study the relations between
language and context. Leech 1983 states that’ pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study
of how utterances have meanings in situation’. This definition notices that situation or context is the important thing to understand the meaning of those
utterances. The researcher agrees that in understanding the meaning of utterance, it is
important to see the relation between language and its context. The researcher uses this definition as the approach of analysing the data.
F. Context
Context is important aspects in understanding meanings of utterances. Interpretation of utterances relies on the situation in which the utterances occur.
Levinson states that context is understood to cover the identities of participants, the temporal and spatial parameters of the speech event and beliefs, knowledge
and intentions of the participants in that speech event and no doubt much besides. For examples, the interpretation of the words I and you depends on the
identification of participants or ‘users’ and their role in speech event, so the words here and now rely for the interpretation on the place and the time of the
speech event. According to Leech, context is relevant aspects of the physical or social
setting of an utterance. Moreover, context is a background knowledge, which is shared by the speaker and the hearer in understanding language.
xxiv The involvement of context in understanding language is proved by an
anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied Kriwinian language in Tobiand Island. To understand the Kriwinian language, he suggests that we
should know what was going on and the cultural background of the people. Malinowski divides context into two notions, which are important to
understand the meaning of utterances and great deal of the words uttered. Firstly, context situation is the situation in which the context is uttered. It is environment
of the text including the verbal environment. Another one, context of culture is the cultural background or history behind the participants. In studying language one
should know and understand the cultural background of language. It can include participants or people who are involved in speech, time, place, social
environment, political condition, etc. Firth in Halliday and Hasan 1985 gives description of context of
situation. It consists of: 1.
the participant in the situation referred to as person and personalities or the statuses and roles of the participant;
2. the action of the participants referred to what they are doing including their
verbal action and nonverbal action; 3.
the relevant features of the situation referred to the surrounding object and events;
4. the effect of the verbal action referred to the changes, which were brought
by what the participants in the situation had to say.
xxv In conversation, the function of the context is important to help the
speaker and the hearer exchange messages each other including meanings and a great deal of utterances. It has an important role in determining the meaning of
language. For example, the utterance of ‘I’m hungry’ has various meanings. It can be interpreted as an utterance, which is used by a starving beggar to request
food. Besides, it can be interpreted as an utterance, which is used by a petulant child to delay going to bed. It is important to see its context to determine what is
meant by the utterance.
G. Scope of Pragmatics
