A View of Pragmatics in a Social Semiotic Perspective

Authors

  • Ruqaiya Hasan Macquarie University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v5i3.251

Keywords:

context, culture, individual, instantiation, intelligi-ble, language user, linguistic form as resource, linguistic variation, metafunctions, realization, semantic potential, sens-ible, sign, situational parameters, social semiotic, strata, social practice

Abstract

The constrained and constraining conception of ‘linguistics proper’ in the 1970s dominant linguistics encouraged the recognition of several sub/disciplines concerned in some way with the study of language. Viewed at first as optional extra to ‘doing real linguistics’, these disciplines have struggled under the weight of their origin to gain a legitimate status: on the one hand, they are said to concern areas of language study which just cannot be ignored if one’s interest is in understanding the nature of language, on the other, their exclusion from the field of ‘linguistics proper’, raises doubts: these claims cannot both be upheld. The dilemma faces pragmatics as much as it does sociolinguistics; the resolution seems to turn on ideas about language. In one of its definitions, pragmatics claims to be ‘the science of language as seen in relation to its users’ (Mey 1993: 5). This suggests the idea of language as a social semiotic. In this paper I attempt to bring pragmatics face to face with language as a social semiotic by spelling out what might be implied by ‘language as seen in relation to its users’.

Author Biography

  • Ruqaiya Hasan, Macquarie University

    Ruqaiya Hasan retired as Emeritus Professor (linguistics) from Macquarie University, Australia. She is indebted to Angus McIntosh, John Sinclair and Michael Halliday for her introduction to the field, and she has taught the subject in many parts of the world. Her initial linguistic research concerned the relations of linguistics and verbal art, which provoked interest in semantics, context of culture and situation, and discourse. Hasan directed a major research on Semantic Variation in relation to Bernstein’s ‘code theory’, synthesizing the ideas of Bernstein, Vygotsky and Halliday. She has published in all these areas. Seven volumes of her Collected Works (edited by J. J. Webster) are to be published by Equinox.

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Published

2012-02-07

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How to Cite

Hasan, R. (2012). A View of Pragmatics in a Social Semiotic Perspective. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 5(3), 251-279. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v5i3.251

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