Pragmatics is the study of those
relations between language and context that are grammaticalized and encoded in
the structures of a language. Kempson (1975.56) sees pragmatics as “---- the
study of the general principal involved in the retrieval of information from an
utterance----" In essence the goal of pragmatic theories should be to
explain how utterances convey meaning in contexts and how meaning is decoded
from utterances in contexts and how people respond to meaning.
Pragmatics is also viewed as the study of
those aspects of meaning not captured in the semantics theory. It is the study
of the ability of language users to pair sentences with the contexts in which
they would be appropriate.
Every pragmatic analysis
is geared towards certain investigations. Adegbija (1999:198) and Osisanwo
(2003: 57) observe that the goal of pragmatics include knowing;
- how utterances convey
meaning.
- the roles of context
in encoding and decoding message.
- how meaning is decoded
from utterances in context and situations.
- how deductions are
made in context with respect to what meaning
has been encoded in a particular utterance.
The identified goals are
accounted for in the theories and elements of pragmatics. The core objective of
pragmatic study is “language use and language users”. (Haberland and Mey 2002:
1673). Language use, understood as a universal human capacity and activity
necessitates recourse to non-linguistic elements to be properly interpreted
because it makes use of inferences and needs interlocutors to have knowledge of
the world. To sum it up Reboul and Moeschler 1998: 35) say that, “the study of
language use has to explain how it is that sentences produced are successfully
interpreted by interlocutors.”