Ryan Schram's Anthrocyclopaedia

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# Semantics and pragmatics #

Semantics and pragmatics are two distinct aspects of communication
that pertain, in different ways, to the meaning of a linguistic
utterance or other form of communication. Meaning itself seems like a
fundamental aspect of communication, most likely because we don't have
to think about what something means. Yet upon closer inspection we see
it is more complex and this is where semantics and pragmatics become
relevant. 

## Natural and conventional signs ## 

If communication takes place by signs, then we can note, as
Augustine does, that it involves 'natural' and 'conventional' signs
(Meier-Oeser 2011). Dark clouds on the horizon are signs of rain and
flags, words, and many gestures are signs of nations and ideas because
the people communicating with them have learned their conventional
interpretations. This hints at the possibility that meaning has
several dimensions. Why clouds signify rain and flags signify nations
is different. Dark clouds in the sky are connected to the here and
now. They are materially part of the rain that will come, and one
could say that the rain itself causes clouds. Another example is a
foot print, which is a sign of someone walking in a direction because
it is the effect and the visible trace of someone's foot. Thus these
signs have meaning because of their relationship to a space and time,
a context, of their production. Flags, by contrast, and most words,
are meaningful because they represent or 'stand for' a particular
idea, and one can substitute for the other.

Here it is important to point out that many people probably would say
that semantics is the study of the meaning of words. Historically this
is true, in the sense that the study of semantics is a particular
approach to communication which attempts to understand why it conveys
meaning in the form of concepts by looking for an underlying abstract
logic. However, it is my view that this is not an adequate definition
of meaning itself, and for this reason, the field of semantics has
always run into its own limits. Many forms of communication derive
meaning from their context of use, and indeed one could argue that all
instances of communication get some of their meaning in their
context. Thus semantics as the study of meaning has always been
incomplete without some attention to the pragmatic aspect of
communication, that is, the degree to which every act of communication
is at some level both a flag and a rain cloud.

## Shifters ##

There are many lingusitic forms which have no meaning except for their
connection to the context of their utterance. Otto Jespersen calls
these words "shifters" (2013 [1922]: 123) because the same form with
shift in meaning depening on who is speaking and to whom one is
speaking, as well as when and where. Pronouns are the chief example of
this. The English words I and you, among others, depend on the context
of utterance to refer to something. Demonstratives (this, that) also
fall into this category.

## Indexicality ##

Another important example of pragmatic is the indexicality of
communicative form. This has been particularly influential in studies
of the social use of language and communication and the study of
culture's influence on language. An index is something which signifies
an idea because it is physically contiguous with it, or in some usages
of it, is simply associated with it. Hence, one's accent signifies
indexically the origin of the speaker without referring to it. Variant
sounds of an utterance, independently of the words they form, point to
or index the speaker and, in an extended sense, the context of the
utterance. Similarly, speaking styles (also known as registers) index
the background and social status of the speaker. Doctors index their
medical training by their habitual preference for polite-sounding
technical jargon for ailments, and so on.

The concept of an indexical sign comes from the work of Charles
Sanders Peirce and his trichotomy of signs: symbol, icon and
index. Although the index in some ways resembles a "natural sign,"
Peirce's aim was move beyond the binary opposition of natural and
conventional to a more general account of meaning as a process.

## Performatives ##

Philosophers of language have been concerned with semantic meaning as
part of a more general inquiry into the relationship between language
and truth. J. L. Austin (1962) observed that there was a limit to this
inquiry because there were many kinds of linguistic expressions which
were neither true nor false, but still had meaning. He argued that one
could, at least provisionally, separate truth-bearing statements,
called constatives, from another class of speech, in which speech was
an act. These he called performatives or speech-acts, because rather
than representing a fact about the world, they performed an
action. Performatives can be identified by their verbs: promise, bet,
name, decree. In uttering these verbs one is performing the action
they name. Thus the meaning of these statements is not whether or not
the correspond to reality. Rather, Austin proposes that such
speech-acts are either felicitous or infelicitous, that is to say,
whether they are accepted as valid in a particular context.

As he develops his concept of performatives, Austin comes to realize
that the distinct between constatives and performatives is not
absolute, because many statements seem to be both. Many statements
have an indirect meaning and so assessing them in relation to their
truthfulness leaves out the extent of their message. Thus, he
concludes that all statements have three different aspects:

* locutionary, the referential meaning of an utterance. 
* illocutionary, the action performed by the utterance. 
* perlocutionary, the effect of the speech-act. 

Suppose people are gathered in a classroom, and a teacher says to no
one in particular, "It's chilly in here." While the locutionary aspect
of the statement is eithe true or not, given the context, the
illocutionary force of the utterance is also clear. This statement is
also a type of speech-act, specifically, a *request* to 'close the
window.' Such a request, if felicitous, may lead to an effect, that
is, someone responding by closing a window.

## References and further reading ##

Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words: The William James
Lectures, 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Jespersen, Otto. 2013 [1922]. Language: Its Nature and
Development. London: Routledge.

Meier-Oeser, Stephan. 2011. “Medieval Semiotics.” In The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer
2011. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/semiotics-medieval/.

Parmentier, Richard J. 1994. Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic
Anthropology. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

Silverstein, Michael. 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories and
Cultural Description.” In Meaning in Anthropology. School of American
Research Advanced Seminar Series. Santa Fe, NM: University of New
Mexico Press.

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