Communication and Expression

Pragmatics deals with language use in context. In contrast to language used intrapersonally for thinking, pragmatics deals with language used interper-sonally for communication. Moreover, expression (affect) may be superimposed on language to alter a message. Bruner summarized the importance of pragmatics by saying “Everything is use” (Bruner, 1986, p. 87) and “Context is all” (Bruner, 1981, p. 172).