Let’s explore the different ways we can interpret the sentence “I never said she was boring.” Depending on where the emphasis is placed by the speaker, the meaning of the sentence can vary quite a bit.

Even though the words are consistent and follow the same order, making them semantically identical, multiple potential meanings can be inferred from this simple six-word phrase. We can successfully decode the intention of the speaker thanks to pragmatics, the study of how linguistic utterances are typically used to convey meaning beyond the literal words and grammatical structures of phrases.¹ It contrasts with semantics, which looks at the literal meaning of words and sentences. 

While words and grammar can be thought of as the building blocks of language, pragmatics is the blueprint that tells us how to build a meaningful conversation. Things like context, emphasis, tone, facial expressions, and body posture can all transform the meaning of a phrase. Pragmatics helps us read between the lines and decode if someone is asking a question, being sarcastic, is annoyed with us, or is excited. Pragmatics can be explored in spoken speech, written text, and even digital forms of communication like text messaging, making it an integral aspect of navigating our everyday interactions.

Semiotics: The study of signs and symbols, such as words, and how they are used or interpreted. 

Speech Act Theory: A prominent theory in pragmatics that states that our use of language is often about actions rather than just uttering facts or describing the world, contrasting semantic theories. Speech act theory focuses on what we do with language—the acts that are being performed—not just what we say. For example, the sentence “I will call you” implies the act of a promise.³

Conversational Implicature: An approach to pragmatics that explores what is being implied indirectly or implicitly (without literally being said). For example, if someone says, “What time do you call this?” after you break a curfew, annoyance or anger is implied.⁴ 

Grice’s Maxims: A set of guidelines, developed by philosopher H.P. Grice, that speakers are expected to follow in order to communicate effectively with one another. The four maxims are: quality, quantity, relevance, and manner. However, pragmatics acknowledges that people often break these maxims. That’s why conversational implicature is important, as we often have to read between the lines to understand a statement’s intended meaning.⁵ 

Semantics:The study of meaning in language, exploring how words, phrases, and sentences are used in language to convey meaning. While semantics looks at what is literally written or spoken, pragmatics is concerned with how meaning is expressed in other ways beyond literal wording, taking context into account.

Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle have long pondered the relationship between language and reality, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that the term pragmatics entered our vocabulary. In 1938, American philosopher Charles W. Morris published his article “Foundation of the Theory of Signs,” in which he introduced his theory on semiotics. Semiotics views language as a system of signs and symbols used to communicate meaning. Morris outlined a three-part framework for studying these signs that involved three branches of linguistics: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.⁶ 

Morris defined syntax as the formal relation of signs to one another. In other words, how words are structured in a sentence, including their order and what grammatical rules they follow. He defined semantics as the formal relationship of signs to the objects they refer to. For example, in the sentence “The cat is sleeping on the couch,” semantically, the word “cat” refers to a small furry animal that meows. Lastly, he coined the term pragmatics to refer to the relationship of signs to the interpreter, indicating that meaning depends on use and interpretation. For example, if the person who says “The cat is sleeping on the couch” is smiling, they may be thinking fondly about their pet. However, if they roll their eyes while saying it, or emphasize the word “couch,” they may be expressing their frustration that their cat has no regard for the furniture.

Morris felt that all three branches, which each focus on a different layer of meaning, had to be explored to truly analyze language and how we communicate. Morris further distinguished between pure studies and descriptive studies. Pure studies is an approach to semiotics that explores the rules and systems behind how language works. For example, in English, one rule is that a complete sentence requires a subject and a verb. Descriptive studies, on the other hand, are about exploring how a language is actually used. For example, someone may drop the subject “I” and say the sentence “Went to work.”⁷

With a broader theory of semiotics and pragmatics now in place, British philosopher John Langshaw Austin developed the speech act theory in the mid-1950s. The speech act theory suggests that words are not merely about expressing facts and opinions but also actions. He categorized speech acts into locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Locution is what you say and how you say it, illocution is what you mean or intend by saying it, and perlocution is what happens as a result of the words spoken. For example, if you say “It’s cold in here,” the locutionary act is just uttering the words, the illocutionary act may be that you’re hoping the person you are speaking to will turn down the air conditioning or close a window, and the perlocutionary act is that the listener gets up and turns the air conditioning off.¹ 

Later, Austin’s student and American philosopher John Searle further developed the speech act theory. He classified speech acts into five different possible categories: assertives (e.g., statements and descriptions), directives (e.g., orders and requests), commissives (e.g., promises), expressives (e.g., greetings and congratulations), and declarations (e.g., pronouncing someone married). Searle’s categories provided a toolkit for analyzing language.⁸

In 1975, British philosopher H.P. Grice introduced conversational implicature and the four maxims of language. Grice understood that people often say one thing, but mean something else—yet people are still able to understand one another most of the time. This is because we recognize that when someone breaks a maxim, they are doing it intentionally to convey meaning.

Grice’s maxims and his theory of conversational implicature show us how people cooperate in conversation by reading between the lines when someone uses or breaks unspoken rules, enabling understanding even when we are not being literal.¹

Today, pragmatics plays a central role not just in linguistics and philosophy, but also in fields like psychology, anthropology, and artificial intelligence, helping chart a path toward understanding the complex nature of meaning.

Charles W. Morris

An American philosopher who is thought of as the father of pragmatics. Morris was interested in semiotics—how signs and symbols in language contribute to meaning—and developed a three-part framework for analyzing semiotics in his 1938 paper “Foundation of the Theory of Signs.” The framework focused on three different layers of meaning: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, the latter first being coined by Morris in this paper.⁶

John Langshaw Austin 

A British philosopher who developed the speech act theory, which suggests that expressing language is not just about describing facts but also carries within it certain acts. He categorized speech acts into three categories: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. Austin developed the theory because he was opposed to logical positivists who stated a sentence can only have meaning if you can prove it to be true or false through evidence. Logical positivists therefore dismissed statements about ethics, religion, and feelings, such as “God is powerful,” because there was no way to test them.¹

John Searle

A British philosopher who studied under John Langshaw Austin and further developed his speech act theory to allow for a systematic analysis of language by classifying five different speech act categories: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.1 He also emphasized the need to understand the mental states of people issuing speech acts, which can both intentionally and unconsciously impact the meaning of an utterance. Searle is also well known for the “Chinese room argument,” which demonstrates that artificial intelligence is, in fact, artificial. The thought experiment suggests that someone who does not understand Chinese characters, if stuck in a room with a rulebook for matching Chinese symbols to appropriate responses, would be able to provide answers to native speakers without actually understanding the language. Searle suggested this showed how computers just manipulate symbols instead of understanding meaning.⁹ 

H.P. Grice

A British philosopher who contributed to pragmatics by introducing four maxims of language and conversational implicature. The maxims—quantity, quality, relevance, and manner—are expected guidelines that allow people to communicate effectively. However, people often break or bend these maxims to imply something indirectly, known as conversational implicature. To study pragmatics through this approach is to read between the lines and look beyond what is literally said.¹ Grice’s other philosophical interests included the metaphysics of personal identity, logical paradoxes, and ethics.¹⁰

Pragmatics plays a vital role in how we interact with others, interpret meaning, and navigate everyday communication. When pragmatic skills are strong, they support social success, cultural understanding, and even technological innovation.

Social communication skills

Pragmatics recognizes that much of what we communicate goes beyond words. Through tone, timing, body language, and implied meanings, we exchange information with one another.  From a young age, we develop the ability to decode these cues to better analyze our social environment and ensure that we respond in an appropriate manner. 

For example, as a teenager, you learn to adjust the way that you speak depending on the situation you are in. If you are chatting with friends, you are likely to purposefully use slang or speak in a similar manner to your peers to demonstrate solidarity and try to fit in. When you speak to your parents, however, you are more likely to follow more formal speech patterns to show respect. Our ability to use pragmatics to effectively shift between varieties of language allows us to build bonds with different groups.¹¹ 

The link between pragmatics and social adaptation is also highlighted by the fact that children with autism often struggle to pick up on social cues. In a 2015 study, researchers tested 25 children with high-functioning autism compared to 25 children without autism. Pragmatic skills were tested through a Children’s Communication Checklist, which identifies how well a child can understand implied meaning and stay on topic in conversations, and whether they adjust their language depending on the context. 

In the experiment, children had to listen to words and comment on whether the utterance sounded happy, sad, or angry. The researchers found that children with high-functioning autism found it more challenging to correctly identify the emotion, especially with regard to happy tones. These children also showed weaker pragmatic communication skills, as revealed by the checklist.  As children with autism often struggle to identify others’ emotions, this study shows that these difficulties may also contribute to a broader challenge of understanding implied meaning and being able to read between the lines.¹² 

Improving cross-cultural communication

In an increasingly globalized world, we regularly communicate with people from different cultures and backgrounds. Pragmatics can help improve our communication across cultures, allowing us to translate not just what someone says, but what they mean by it. It is an essential component for avoiding miscommunication and conflict and helps bridge the gap between cultures. 

A famous example where miscommunication occurred due to a lack of awareness about pragmatic differences between cultures happened during U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Nixon asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to comment on the French Revolution’s impact. Zhou responded with a diplomatic but indirect answer that emphasized harmony. For Nixon, this reply was seen as evasive, yet for Zhou, Nixon’s blunt question was interpreted as confrontational.¹³ This pragmatic mismatch illustrates how conversational styles—such as the Western preference for explicitness versus the Chinese preference for indirectness and “saving face”—can cause frustration and miscommunication in international politics.

Improving artificial intelligence

Although John Searle’s “Chinese room argument” suggests that artificial intelligence merely manipulates symbols to provide responses, artificial intelligence (AI) has greatly evolved since he first proposed the thought experiment in the 1980s. Today, artificial intelligence relies on pragmatic competence to properly assist people: if AI systems like chatbots or translation tools simply analyzed the literal meaning of people’s queries, they wouldn’t be very helpful.

To be effective, AI needs to apply pragmatics to be able to recognize, understand, and respond to human emotions. For example, customer service bots need to gauge whether a customer is frustrated and be able to pick up on nuances like sarcasm. Imagine you’re using a customer service bot because you’re not happy with a purchase, and the AI tool only analyzes your conversation semantically:

You: I received my order #1234 and I am disappointed by the quality. I would like a refund.

AI Chatbot: We can process a return in the form of store credit. Please let me know if you would like to proceed.

You: Oh yeah, I definitely want to buy more low-quality items from this store.

AI Chatbot: Great, the return has been processed!

Here, AI hasn’t acknowledged your disappointment, expressed empathy for your situation, or picked up on your sarcasm. Thankfully, many AI tools are now pragmatically aware and can offer better customer service.¹⁴  Although AI language-learning models may not understand pragmatics in the human sense, through training on vast amounts of data, they become better at recognizing patterns about how language is commonly used beyond literal interpretation.

While pragmatics is a crucial part of understanding language, its boundaries and applications are often debated. Scholars have long disagreed on how to define, isolate, and measure pragmatic abilities—raising important questions about its scope, cultural relevance, and scientific validity.

Rudolf Carnap’s semiotic theory

Shortly after Morris introduced the three-part framework to semiotics, German-American philosopher Rudolf Carnap suggested that the scope of pragmatics should be limited to the thoughts, beliefs, and intentions of the user of language, rather than including the context or listener.

However, Carnap’s theory was criticized for being too narrow. If we only analyze an exchange through the lens of the user of language, we may miss important information that changes the meaning of an utterance. For example, if someone says “We can meet here,” the word “we” necessarily involves the listener as well, and the word  “here” refers to a particular place in which the conversation is happening. This shows that to understand meaning fully, we must consider all participants and the situational context. The narrow scope of Carnap’s theory led to it being largely rejected by linguists.⁷

Can we isolate semantics and pragmatics?

A common debate in linguistics is whether we can clearly separate semantics, which explores the literal meaning of words and sentences, from pragmatics. In both semantics and pragmatics, context matters, which can sometimes blur the boundaries.¹⁵

In semantics, the relevant context includes how words are combined together and how sentence structure affects meaning. For example, to understand the literal meaning of the word “book,” it would be important to know if it was used in the sentence “Should we book our flights?” or “I loved Stephen King’s latest book.” However, sometimes, semantic analysis is also dependent on context, like who is speaking and when, similar to pragmatics. Indexicals—words that have different meanings depending on context—like “I” or “now” make it unclear whether we can truly ever analyze an exchange purely semantically, or if pragmatics always comes into play.¹⁶ Indexicals show the difficulty of clearly isolating the roles of semantics and pragmatics in understanding language.

Measuring pragmatic capabilities

It is difficult to measure pragmatic language abilities because, by definition, pragmatics is context-dependent. Truly understanding pragmatics requires us to understand real-world situations, but this isn’t always possible in standardized testing, where participants are removed from the natural context of an exchange.

For example, a test like the Children’s Communication Checklist might ask a child how they would respond in a situation where a friend got a bad haircut and asked them if they liked it. The question is meant to test whether a child can respond in a socially appropriate manner, but it is difficult for a child to express the nonverbal cues that may accompany their response. Moreover, as children know they are in a test, they may not answer truthfully. They may think the researcher is testing whether they would lie, so they may give an overly “correct” answer instead of what they would actually do in real life. 

Additionally, what is considered an appropriate response is often biased toward Anglo-Western cultural norms, which may lead to skewed scores for children from other cultures. Dutch culture, for example, tends to value openness and directness, so the appropriate response to the aforementioned example would be to tell their friend they didn’t like the haircut. However, in a standardized test, this would likely be recorded as an inappropriate response, as in other contexts it may be considered blunt or impolite.¹⁷

Improving healthcare through linguistics

Bedside manner plays a key role not only in creating a positive healthcare experience but also in promoting favorable health outcomes. Effective communication between patients and healthcare providers is essential for the proper diagnosis of conditions and the development of treatment plans, but often, providers are only taught general communication skills, like “be empathetic” or “ask open-ended questions,” that are not based on the analysis of real-life conversations. 

Dr. Anna Udvardi, a Hungarian physiotherapist and linguist, proposed that linguistic analysis and specifically pragmatics, could be integrated into healthcare communication to improve patient outcomes. In her paper, she suggests that through the lens of pragmatics, healthcare providers can be more effective communicators.

For example, Dr. Udvardi describes a situation where there could be a mismatch between the speaker’s intention and a listener’s inference, which could lead to an incorrect diagnosis. Healthcare providers should therefore try and establish common ground in patient interactions, confirming that a patient is interpreting their speech correctly. One way they can do this is by asking perspective checking questions that allow the provider to understand a patient’s knowledge and understanding. 

Additionally, instead of just following the advice of asking “open-ended questions,” doctors should realize that the way they ask the question can impose certain constraints on a patient. For example, if a doctor asks, “Can you tell me about any pain you’ve experienced lately?” a patient may be led to only discuss symptoms relating to pain, but not bring up what they consider more minor symptoms, as they are inferring the doctor is only concerned about pain. If the doctor instead asks, “How are you feeling overall?” the patient may feel more free to talk about their general health and other concerns beyond just physical pain. 

Udvardi argues that analyzing real patient-doctor interactions using tools from linguistics (like conversation analysis and pragmatics) gives us stronger evidence about what works and what doesn’t, which can lead to improved patient outcomes.¹⁸

Understanding politeness in different cultures

You may have heard that in some Asian countries, like China and Taiwan, burping after a meal is a sign of politeness. In many Western cultures, however, burping out loud in public is disrespectful. If we take a burp as an utterance, its literal meaning is that we’ve swallowed air while drinking or eating, but this doesn’t reveal some of the nuanced meaning behind it. Understanding pragmatics can therefore help us to better understand different cultures.

In general, politeness varies from culture to culture, but it is an important aspect of managing relationships and maintaining harmony. In some countries, like Japan or Korea, indirect speech indicates politeness. This means bending Grice’s maxims, specifically quantity and manner. For example, a Japanese person may say, “Perhaps it would be a good idea to open the window,” if they felt hot indoors, a statement that’s longer than necessary and a little ambiguous. Yet in other countries, like Germany, direct communication is seen as a sign of respect for the listener’s time and intelligence. It would be more polite in Germany to directly say “Open the window,” which may seem blunt to others.¹⁹

However, you wouldn’t be able to gauge the level of politeness from semantic analysis alone. Understanding the culture the speaker is from, as well as the context in which the conversation is taking place, is vital, as both carry implicit meaning and can change an utterance from polite to disrespectful.

Cognitive Grammar

Pragmatics suggests that the meaning of language is not fixed, and instead, depends on the context in which it is used. Similarly, cognitive grammar proposes that meaning is usage-dependent. Cognitive grammar suggests that the way we speak is reflective of our cognitive processes, and the way we structure sentences differently might reflect our mental schemas. Check out this article to learn more about this linguistic approach!

Political Persuasion: Rethinking the Rhetoric That Resonates

When we analyze an exchange, semantically, we may be communicating clearly, but through a pragmatic lens, the user and speaker may have very different interpretations of a conversation. Our age, culture, and political party all impact how we use and respond to language. In this article, our writer Kaya Foster explores how important it is for politicians to use words that resonate with others if they want to reach or persuade an audience.

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