Friday, October 19, 2007

Paul Grice and his Maxims

Thank you very much for your help. It does give me a direction to head towards.
Doing a search on the net, I have found many interesting pages that not only define both Pragmatics and Semantics, but also talk about the distinctions between them.
Many of the papers tend to point at 'Paul Grice' contributing very much toward Pragmatics, in particular. I haven't explored the material too well yet, but it seems that according to Grice, there is a social element within pragmatics. Along with this are his so called 'maxims'. (Check out Wikipedia for a definition)
With my Semantics research, there seems to be a lot on various relationships between words, such as synonyms, antonyms, and all the rest that are mentioned within our text.
On the net, and in many of the articles I've accumulated, the writers tend to deal with either Pragmatics/Semantics separately or as I said previously, how they differ.
I’m trying to see the relationship between them both and how they influence each other, but I’ve yet to come to any striking conclusions that add to what I have already said. I guess I need some time to let it all soak in a little.
Yet having said this, I do realize that there is quite a striking difference in perspective, when it comes to dealing with this topic. Firstly, that of how individual phrases and words are interpreted individually, and that of how our social situation affects those words or phrases. Also, I never realized how much context and meaning are so interrelated, yet so defined as particular fields (albeit fairly new according to some writers). I’m sorry if I sound a little confused today. I’m in the process of sorting out what I know from what I read.

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