You are on page 1of 2

Semantics refers to the meaning of words in a language and the meaning within the

sentence. The field of semantics has three basic concerns:


the relations of words to the objects denoted by them, the relations of words to the
interpreters of them, and, in symbolic logic, the formal relations of signs to one
another.
Pragmatic meaning looks at the same words and grammar used semantically, except
within context. In each situation, the various listeners in the conversation define the
ultimate meaning of the words, based on other clues that lend subtext to the
meaning.
Examples to denote the difference:
She hasnt taken a shower.
He was so tired he could sleep for days.
In both of these examples, the context and pragmatic meaning really define the
sentence.
In the first, did the speaker really mean to say that the woman has not ever taken a
shower, not even once? Although the sentence says just that, the listener in the
conversation may understand, based on other factors, that the speaker means that
the woman they are referring to has not taken a shower ...today.
In the second example, we have a guy who is so tired he can sleep for days. Is he
really going to sleep for days? Semantically, we would need to take that sentence to
mean exactly that. But, in casual conversation, the listeners and speaker might tell
you that the guy was just saying he was really, really tired, and using those words to
convey that meaning, instead of saying, 'he was really tired'.
Similarities:
The only obvious similarity between the two branches is that they both deal with the
meanings of words and sentences but in different ways.
However, they are intricately linked, for instance, some categories in semantics
require the application of pragmatics in order to arrive at a satisfactory
interpretation as has been demonstrated in the above mentioned example.
Also, deictic words take some elements of their meanings from the context in which
they are uttered. As an example, the pronoun he cannot be fully interpreted unless
we know to whom the pronoun refers.
Differences:
The semantic dimension refers to the study of the relations of words to which they
refer whereas the pragmatic dimension refers to the study of the relationship
between words, the interlocutors and the context.
Semanticists adopt a narrow scope because they deal with only text and analyze the
meaning of words and how they are combined to constitute meaningful sentences.
In contrast, pragmatics adopts a wider scope beyond the text itself, they consider the
facts surrounding the utterance such as the contextual factors, knowledge of the
world surrounding the context of the message, the speakers intended meaning and
the hearers inferences in order to interpret that utterance.
For example, take the sentence "crack the window"

It could mean: to open the window


or, it could also mean: to make a crack/opening in a window
To understand what the speaker is talking about, it is essential to the context in
which it is being said. Hence, the need for pragmatics.
There are other differences which involve further study of:

the two theories of locution and illocution which clarify the importance of
and illustrate the difference between pragmatics and semantics in terms of their
approaches to analyzing sentences.

The principle of compositionality which claims that we do not need to know


anything other than the context to understand the meaning of the sentences.

Moreover, there are certain conjunctions such as "so" and "but" which can be studied
only within a pragmatic framework than a semantic one.
for instance, "So?" could mean multiple things depending on the context in which it
has been said.

You might also like