Text Semantics and Text Pragmatics: On the Study of Meaning and Use in Language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69760/fazyz636Keywords:
text semantics, text pragmatics, meaning, implicature, presupposition, discourse analysis, coherence, speech act theory, relevance theory, linguistic contextAbstract
This article examines the intersecting domains of text semantics and text pragmatics as two fundamental and complementary dimensions of linguistic inquiry. Text semantics is concerned with the systematic study of meaning encoded within textual structures — how words, sentences, and larger discourse units convey propositional content, referential relations, and conceptual information. Text pragmatics, by contrast, investigates how that meaning is deployed, interpreted, and negotiated in context, foregrounding the role of communicative intention, social convention, and situational knowledge in shaping utterance interpretation. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from structural linguistics, discourse analysis, speech act theory, relevance theory, and cognitive semantics, this paper argues that neither dimension can be fully understood in isolation: semantic content provides the linguistic scaffolding upon which pragmatic inference operates, while pragmatic context continuously shapes and constrains the activation of semantic meaning. The article traces the historical development of both fields, maps their theoretical boundaries and points of convergence, and illustrates key concepts through textual analysis. Special attention is given to the phenomena of implicature, presupposition, coherence, cohesion, and intertextuality as zones where semantic and pragmatic processes are most visibly intertwined. The study concludes that a unified, integrated approach to text meaning — one that treats semantics and pragmatics as mutually constitutive rather than opposed — offers the most productive framework for understanding how language achieves its communicative function in real-world use.
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