Pragmatics

In this chapter we continue the analysis which we started in the last chapter on semantics, since it is natural, in the search for an understanding of meaning, to move into a study of the behaviour which signs engender, and which in turn engenders signs.One way of understanding meaning is to see transactions between people and observe the effect that the elements of meaning - behaviour itself, involving gestures, facial expressions, etc. — have in the behavioural context. The very context from which the refinements of language both emerge and are embellished.To look at the written word alone, as Hodges (1977) and others have said again and again, is to look at an impoverished language. Similarly, to look at the spoken word alone still remains an impoverishment of total human communication. It is with this conviction that we are now at the very source of mean­ing that we turn to pragmatics. 194

Pragmatics (Morris, 1946) is the study of the inter-behavioural responses within which discourse occurs. Semantics is a special case of pragmatics concerned with meaning (the relation of language to beliefs and facts) and syntax is a special case of semantics concerned with the formation rules used in a language, or stating what is acceptable in grammatical terms.These three disciplines are closely inter-related, and pragmatics is, in one sense, a study of psychology and in another sense a study of cybernetics. What distinguishes these two senses is whether or not the approach is primarily simulatory (con­cerned with methods as well as results) or primarily synthetic (concerned only with the results.)It has also been argued that pragmatics (as well as syntax and semantics) can occur in either of two modalities, pure or des­criptive (Carnap, 1939; Sellars, 1947a, 1947b). There is little doubt that syntax and semantics can be thought of as either pure or descriptive (‘applied’ is a synonym for ‘descriptive’) since we can have a normative approach to each and we can study each as a science. How do people actually use words and what do they mean by them? Pragmatics has been a source of some discussion in this context since it has been suggested that it can never be other than descriptive. We feel that anything that can be described can be formalised and that anything that can be formalised can also be the subject of a description (interpretation).Although working under the name semantics, the work of Ogden and Richards (1923) and Korzybski (1933) are really in the Carnap-Morris sense of the term offering a theory of mean­ing which is in the field of pragmatics. The Ogden and Richards view is closely associated with conditional response theory and first saw the light of day in the early 1930’s. They were setting out in effect a theory of signs or perhaps in their case more ac­curately a theory of symbols. We can at this stage roughly distinguish a symbol from a sign by saying a symbol is something like x when used in an algebraic equation or a letter of the alphabet, say, and therefore can be made to signify anything we like, whereas a sign is something which specifically signifies something; natural signs are things like smoke which signifies

fire, and language signs are words (in themselves symbols) or sentences which have specific meaning, however difficult it is to define what that meaning is.Ogden and Richards attempted to make a distinction between what can and what cannot be intelligently talked about. They recognised, as many writers had before them, that language is in some ways a barrier to understanding and they tried to supply a theory of meaning which was in effect a scientific theory. Ogden and Richards were primarily concerned with what they called interpretation; acts of interpretation are involved whenever you read a book or hear words spoken, and the process of interpre­tation is a sort of decoding process where the statements heard are translated into concepts or ideas.The term ‘basic interpretation’ is used by Ogden and Richards to refer to interpretations that cannot be broken down any further. They are the equivalent in the world of meaning of the smallest particles of physics. Let us look at an example of how Ogden and Richards saw the process of meaning take shape. Consider a man who strikes a match; the striker has an expectation of seeing a flame on striking the match; the interpreter, who of course may be the same person as the striker, but is in any case an observer in his role as interpreter, watches expectantly and thinks of, or certainly may think of, the flame emanating from the match. The actual striking of the match is a referent, the conceptual process of thinking about it or expecting something to happen is the reference (the having of the concept) and an adequate reference refers to a referent which actually happens that can be symbolised by a word. Let us take another example; a referent can be a dog, say, and the thought of the dog is the reference and the symbol which refers to the referent is the word ‘dog’.Ogden and Richards, as far as they went, gave a fairly convincing theory of meaning, but it seems that they did not go far enough. They certainly did not go far enough to include the subtleties of meaning encountered in the more sophisticated uses of language. It might be said though that the meaning o f‘mean­ing’ in Ogden and Richards’ terms saw the beginning of the modern semantic/pragmatic movement.