Introducing English Linguistics

Grammatical vs. pragmatic meaning
Introduction
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

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pragmatics, according to which it is possible to factor out of the full
description of linguistic activities those purely symbolic aspects which
concern linguistic knowledge independently of notions of use or pur-
pose.” The problem with making a clear divide between grammar and
pragmatics, Fillmore argues, is that this view ignores the role that con-
ventionality plays in language, i.e. that our interpretation of a sentence
such as Could you please pass the salt? as a polite request is as much a mat-
ter of the social context in which this sentence is uttered as the fact that
in English, yes/no questions with verbs such as can or could have been con-
ventionalized as markers of polite requests (e.g. Can you spare a dime? Could
you help me with my homework?).
Even though the boundary between grammar and pragmatics may be
“fuzzy,” most linguists do accept that certain elements of language are best
studied under the rubric of grammar, others within the realm of pragmat-
ics. Some linguists, such as Noam Chomsky, do not study pragmatics, main-
ly because they see the study of grammar as the primary focus of linguistic
analysis and the investigation of pragmatics as a source of irregularities not
amenable to systematic linguistic description. Others see the study of prag-
matics as crucial to understanding human language, since the study of lin-
guistic competence is no more important than the study of communicative
competence: Dell Hyme’s (1971) notion that human communication
involves not just knowledge of how to form linguistic structures but knowl-
edge of how to use these structures in specific communicative contexts. To
appreciate this perspective, an individual need only have the experience of
studying a foreign language in a classroom and then traveling to a country
in which the language is spoken and discovering how little he or she truly
knows about the language: that its use among speakers in differing social
contexts involves more than simply “knowing the rules.”
Because this chapter will focus on both spoken and written language, it is
important to define the basic unit of structure – the utterance – that will
serve as the basis of discussion.
Many people mistakenly think that complete sentences are the norm in
both speech and writing. However, as Carter and Cornbleet (2001: 3) cor-
rectly observe, “We do not set out to speak in sentences – in fact, in infor-
mal speech we rarely do that – rather, we set out to achieve a purpose
which may or may not require full, accurate sentences.” To illustrate this
point, consider the short excerpt below taken from an actual conversation:
Speaker A: Lots of people are roller skating lots of people do rollerblade
Speaker B: Just running around the city
Speaker A: Uh mainly in Golden Gate Park 
(ICE-USA)
Speaker A’s first turn contains two grammatical sentences: construc-
tions consisting of a subject (lots of people in both sentences) and a finite