Analysis of Semantics and Pragmatics in Two Texts :: Compare Contrast Linguistics

Analysis of Semantics and Pragmatics in Two Texts Linguistics is the science of a language. Linguists depend on the use of certain aspects in order to analyse, describe and explain a human language; these aspects include semantics and pragmatics. Semantics can be defined as the study of "meaning" of lexical words and expressions independently of context. Where pragmatics is the process of recognising the "invisible meaning" of lexical items and expressions; taking into account the speaker's/ addressee's intention, the status of hearer/ receiver and the actual situation. This paper will explain the process we, as humans usually follow to understand a certain text or utterance. This explanation would be achieved through the analysis of two journal articles from semantics and pragmatics perspective, taking into account a range of techniques associated with each of the two concepts including: Semantics Aspects: Synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, prototypes, homophones and homonyms, polysemy and ambiguity. Pragmatics Aspects: Deixis and Distance, reference and inference, conversational implicature, anaphoric and cataphoric reference, presupposition, entailment, direct and indirect speech acts and speech events, cultural context and cross cultural pragmatics, conversational analysis and background knowledge, denotation and connotation meaning, the four maxims and hedges. Analysing Article One We will begin by observing the semantic and pragmatic features in article 1 being "Men are sulks say surveys" .This article is taken from the hot topics section of the popular msn website. The main topic of this article is a medical concept being flu/cold, where the unspecified writer of this article discusses the reaction of men, compared to women when it comes to having flu. The article also lists a number of readers' comments on the subject topic. As a whole, article one is rich with lexical items that belong to the medical lexical field, such as cold, flu, Panadol, tablets, sick, suffer, diseases, chicken pox, depression, doctor, coughs, headache etc. The extensive use of these terms throughout the article was a necessity since the main topic is about a medical condition. Another lexical field was elaborated in this article being the family relationships such as mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children etc. Antonymy or the use of two lexical items that represent the opposite meaning appear in this article such as men and women, males and females, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, vent and defend etc. The use of these terms in this article is more likely for the purpose of comparison. Most of these antonyms are relational opposites; these opposites indicate two ends of a relationship between persons.