ABSTRACT
Pragmatics is the study of the effect of context on meaning. In fact, as the name suggests, it is about the practical use of language. It includes the study of how people use language to perform speech acts with performative sentences, establish their identities through social meaning, express their emotions through affective meaning, and carry on conversations with others. Speech acts are actions performed by an utterance, such as daring, questioning, or betting. Discourse markers are words that are not a grammatical part of the sentence, but are used by speakers for multiple reasons, such as to begin a conversational turn, indicate their attitude, or indicate a need for a moment to think about what was said and how to respond. Greeting rituals are a special kind of discourse that are not at all important for the information they convey but are important for their social function.
