Pragmatics In Linguistic Contextual Analysis

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Pragmatics is one of the crucial components in linguistics. LoCastro (2003) states that pragmatics is the capability of human being in understanding meaning of signals apart from its literal analysis (Peixoto, 2014). From my perspectives, pragmatics need to be learned in terms of politeness where pragmatics does not only focuses on the context but also the cultural background of its learners. Even so, there are some components in pragmatics that do not need to be learned such as deitic expression as they are universal in some languages such as in English Language and Iban Language.

According to Yule (2011), pragmatics is “the study of the relationships between linguistics forms and the users of those forms.” Politeness is one of the components in the linguistic field of pragmatics. Lackoff (1977) argues that the basic rules in our “linguistic or non-linguistic interactions” are to avoid ambiguousness and be polite (Elyased, 2014). Politeness is important in order to maintain …show more content…

For instance, in English, the deixis “here” is used for something or someone that is near and “there” for a distant object or person. In comparison to the English spatial deixis, Iban spatial deixis also has terms for something that is near or distant. The former is known as “ditu” and the latter is known as “din.” However, in Iban, there is an extra spatial deixis, “dia” which is used to refer to an object or someone that is near and not present at the moment of the speech. Other than that, spatial deixis can also be expressed using the motion verbs “come” and “go.” Again, I would say that deixis is universal and can also be found in Iban Language. In Iban it would be “kitu” and “kin.” Examples of usage, (a) “Kitu dulu” which means “Come here first” and (b) “Kin alai” which means “Go there”. These two examples prove that the usage of deixis is universal in

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