Andrey Velikanov’s course, devoted to analyzing various phenomena of contemporary culture, continues with a lecture on the linguistic concept of pragmatics.
Pragmatics is a branch of semiotics and linguistics that studies the principles behind our interpretation of language, as well as their value for the user. Apart from its literal meaning, any message is potentially loaded with hidden meanings and connotations. Those are the things the speaker might mean, as opposed to what he or she has actually said. Communication can be described according to the laws of pragmatics, which people, however, follow or break intuitively and without knowing them.
‘Language serves many important purposes besides those of scientific inquiry; we can know perfectly well what an expression means (and so a fortiori that it is intelligible) without knowing its analysis, and the provision of an analysis may (and usually does) consist in the specification, as generalized as possible, of the conditions that count for or against the applicability of the expression being analyzed. Moreover, while it is no doubt true that the formal devices are especially amenable to systematic treatment by the logician, it remains the case that there are very many inferences and arguments, expressed in natural language and not in terms of these devices, which are nevertheless recognizably valid.’ (Herbert Paul Grice. Logic and Conversation.)