INTRODUCTION
Traditional
language analysis contrasts pragmatics with syntax and semantics (See
Widdowson,1996,for a general introduction to linguistic). Syntax is the area of
language analysis that describes relationships between linguistic forms, how they
are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well formed and therefore
grammatically acceptable Chapter 4 focuses on this type of linguistic knowledge
and its relation to discourse.
Semantic
is the area of language analysis that describes how meaning is enouded in the
language and is therefore concerned mainly with the meaning of lexical items.
Semantic is also concerned with the study of relationship between language
forms and entities in real or imaginary worlds (Yule,1996). Chapter 5 focuses on
vocabulary and thus deals with some areas of semantic in relation to discourse.
Whereas
formal analyses of syntax and semantics do not consider the users of the
linguistic forms that they describe and analyze, pragmatics deals very
explicitly with the forms. As such, pragmatics is concerned with people’s
intentions, assumptions, beliefs, goals, and the kinds of actions they perform
while using language. Pragmatics is also concerned with context, situation, and
settings within which such language uses occur.
A
language user’s lexicogrammatical competence is his/her knowledge of syntax and
lexical semantics in the target language. In describing such competence we need
to present the rules that account for the learner’s implicit formal knowledge
of grammatical and vocabulary. Pragmatic competence, on the other hand, is a
set of internalized rules of how to use language in socioculturally appropriate
ways, taking into account the participants in a communicative interaction and
features of the context within which the interaction takes place.
