Pragmatics Practice
Pragmatic meaning
1. Discuss about semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning as shown in the following. Say
what this child still needs to know about using language:
A little boy comes in the front door.
Mother: Wipe your feet, dear.
He removes his muddy shoes and socks and carefully wipes his clean feet on the
doormat.
In this sentences we can notice a misunderstanding between semantic meaning; that is,the
literal meaning of the utterance
Semantic meaning: a mother tells her son to clean the lower part of his body used for
walking. Pragmatic meaning: a mother tells her son to clean his shoes because they might
be dirty
2. Give a semantic paraphrase (SP) or a pragmatic paraphrase (PP) for Anne’s meaning:
Mike: What happened to that bowl of milk?
Anne: Cats drink milk.
SP: an animal has consumed the product placed in the recipient
PP: Anne´s cat drank the milk that was in the bowl
3. Provide three different contexts in which the utterance “I’m cold” would have three
different
pragmatic meanings even though the underlying semantic meaning would remain the same.
It can be used to request someone to close a window or lend a jacket, and it also can be
used as a refusal to open a window
4. Provide three alternatives for the underlined utterance. Each alternative should potentially
have a similar pragmatic meaning, even though the semantic meaning would be
different.
1. Matt: Do you want some cake?
Chris: I’m on a diet
The pragmatic meaning is “No, I don't want (rejection)”. Another way of pragmatically
rejecting could be “I want to try eating healthier”
2. Ed: How was the party?
Faye: Don’t ask!
The pragmatic meaning is: It was horrible. It could be substituted by “I should've stayed at
home”, “I would've rather not been invited” and “I won't ever go to a party again”.
3. Dan: Lend me a pen.
Sid: Here. But it’s running out of ink.
It could be substituted by “I haven't brought my case”, “My pen run out of ink”, “I don't have
anything to write with”.
5. “Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning”. Discuss the following:
1. A mother cooking spaghetti for her family, who are impatiently waiting for their dinner,
utters:
A: They are done whether they are or not.
In this case, , due to the impatience of her family for eating, themother, out of annoyance,
ends up saying that she will serve them the spaghetti in thatmoment despite not being done
cooking yet. So, in this particular case, “they re done”means that she won´t make the effort
to finish cooking
6. “Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning”. Discuss this taking as reference this joke:
1. You never tell me you hate me anymore
In this case, the speaker feels ignored by the lack of communication in a relationship.
Usually, the utterance is more likely used in the opposite way, that is, it is more common that
the speaker says “Younever tell me you love me anymore” as a complaint for
not feeling romantically appreciated by the other person.
