Talk:Pragmatics

Citations?

This article is missing a lot of citations. In some places, such as the section at the end on literary theory, there are direct references to works by Butler, Derrida, and Benveniste, without any page numbers or a formal citation to cross-reference any of the work to. There is only one citation in the Ambiguity section (ambiguity being one of the easiest ways to demonstrate pragmatics and pragmatic failure) and the link is broken. It brings up a 404 message. I was also looking for some sort of citations when discussing honorifics and the T-V distinction. -Barnyard sand (talk) 22:28, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Deictic Expressions

This article contains a lot of allusions to deixis, and "the rooting of utterances in the speech situation". Indeed, this is more or less what the study of pragmatics is- how context and speech situation relates to meaning. Despite being central to the subject, deixis is referenced only once in the article, and then incorrectly. "The autumn leaves have all fallen now" is said to be deictic, yet not a single word or word combination of that sentence is a relative pronoun that could differ based on context. The article could be made much clearer with description and accurate examples of deictic words, including "you", "here", and "tomorrow". -Barnyard sand (talk) 22:43, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Citations

This needs a lot of citations. Please help! Bearian (talk) 01:12, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

The Ambiguous section on the Pragmatics topic does not seem to have sufficient references are more citations needed to make the information reliable? --LesleyMich1 (talk) 19:34, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Misleading Information

In the section Referential uses of Language there is reference to Peircean Semeiotics, specifically, the Peircean Trichotomy. The section states that,"A second way to define the signified and signifier relationship is C.S. Peirce's Peircean Trichotomy," yet this is directly contradictory to Peirce's project. The signifier/signified relatioship is dyadic while the Peircean is triadic, that is, Icon, Index, and Symbol are not founded on Signifier/Signified, they are in fact another theory on the same level as Signifier/Signified. Specifically, Peirce ground this triad--Icon, Index, and Symbol--on another triad: Representamen, object and interpretant. This is backed up by Thomas (T). L. Short's book Peirce's Theory of Signs (pg xiii, 16-21), "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs" from Philosophical Writings of Peirce (pg 89-95) Selected and Edited by Justus Buchler (pg 98-119), and An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy by James Feibleman. Thus it is misleading to consider Peirce's semeiotic as "a second way to define the signified and signifier relationship." However, how should this edit be made? A simple clarification? A separation from the Saussurean model? A separate subsection? Garland41 (talk) 00:06, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Garland41

Class Project

Hello! I added 3 new sources, various hyper links, a link to a journal about Referential Expressions, as well as a sub heading section about Referential Expressions. My edits were completed for a class project in a Linguistics course I am taking. Thank you!! Agebauer (talk) 01:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Etymology

That might be the etymology of the world "pragmatics" as a whole, but I don't think that's really relevant. The origin of the term "pragmatics" specifically as a subfield of linguistics would be more suitable, if you're gonna have a section on the etymology at all. Farleigheditor (talk) 18:51, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Pragmatics

Movement of pragmatics from philosophical pragmatics threading cognitive pragmatics to neo-gricean pragmatics 197.156.137.151 (talk) 09:15, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Watzlawick is a mistaken reference

The 1967 book "Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes" by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick Beavin, and Don D. Jackson, is not a book about the linguistics field of pragmatics. Instead, it is a book about psychotherapy that happened to use the word. This was not confusing at the time it was published, since it predates the development of linguistic pragmatics as a settled field: Grice's "Logic and Conversation" was only published in 1975. The book could be simply removed from the reference list here, but it would be ideal to add something to the article text about this historically interesting early use of the word "pragmatics", and potentially misleading title. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 00:26, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I have written a new History section which includes a paragraph which is an aside on this book. It's probably worth it, to avoid people mistaking the book for something else. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 16:08, 7 June 2025 (UTC)