The study of pragmatics is divided
into two big schools British-America school and European school which can be
subdivided into France
schools, Prague school, and Copenhagen school. British-America school is
traditionally centering on studying the sentence structures and grammar, and
their studies of pragmatics is also restricted to several definite topics such
as deictic expressions, conversation implicature, presupposition, speech and
conversation structure. The Anglo America perspective delineates narrower
borders. Their component view of pragmatics sees the field at par with
morphology, syntax and semantics, which are core component of a theory of language and excludes for instance psycholinguistics and other field. Their studies
belong to micro-pragmatics.morphology, syntax and semantics, which are core component of a theory of language and excludes for instance psycholinguistics and other field. Their studies
The European school has a wide range
of understanding. The European continental point of view stresses linguistic
phenomena in relation to their usage in the form of behaviour. The so called
perspective view focuses on presenting a functional perspective on every aspect
of linguistic behaviour, which comes closer to the original view of pragmatics
by Morris. Their studies even include
conversation analysis, cultural anthropology, social linguistics and
psycholinguistics during intercommunication.
This school was criticized for declaring every thing as a subject of
pragmatics which made the subject too vague. Their studies belong to macro
pragmatics.
There are three stages in the
development of pragmatics. They are:
The
first stage occurred in 1930s, when the term pragmatics was first used.
Pragmatics was seen at this level as a branch of semiology/semiotics (the study
of sign). In 1938, Carnap suggested that pragmatics should focus on the relationship
between users, words and reference relationship. In 1940 Charles Morris divided
semiology into three parts: syntax, semantics and pragmatics.
The
Second stage ranges from 1950 to 1960, and three philosophers, Austin, Searle
and Paul Grice established their theory of speech act and implicature.
The
third stage involves the work of Mey who, in 1977 edited and published the
first Journal of Pragmatics in Holland.
In 1983, Levinson wrote his book, Pragmatics, while Geoffrey Leech wrote
Principles of Pragmatics, the same year. He proposed a theory of differentiating
between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. He observed that pragmatic
competence can be classified into pragmalinguistic competence which is based on
grammar rules, including the applying principle of grammar, and social
pragmatic competence which refers to the competence of using the language in
appropriate terms by following the social rules to language use.
In 1988, the International Pragmatics
Association (IPrA) was set up. This year was noted as when pragmatics turned
into an independent discipline.