pragmatics

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the branch of linguistics concerned with how context, speaker intention, and social conventions shape the interpretation of utterances beyond their literal semantic content; pragmatics investigates phenomena such as implicature, speech acts, deixis, presupposition, and politeness, examining how listeners infer meanings that are implied but not explicitly stated; the field draws on philosophy of language, particularly the work of J.L. Austin, John Searle, and H.P. Grice