The Pragmatics of Discourse

Abstract

Doing discourse analysis entails doing syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Contrary to the two levels of language analysis which concentrate, respectively, on the constituent structure of sentences, syntax, and on the meaning that comes from linguistic knowledge, semantics, pragmatics focuses on the aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted by only linguistic knowledge which means it also considers the physical and social world (Peccei, 1999). However, English as a foreign language students do not distinguish between pragmatic analysis and semantic analysis. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the distinction between pragmatic analysis and semantic analysis. This research was handled at the department of English language at University of Ghardaia. Sixty second year Licence students were involved in this study. The main tool for collecting data was a test about extracting both pragmatic and semantic analyses of the sentences, and a qualitative approach was selected, in the main, to analyse the obtained data. The findings revealed that the majority of students failed to detect both the semantic and pragmatic meanings of the sentences, which reflected the lack of comprehension and distinction between the two meanings and the inability to read at the deep level. Some recommendations were suggested.
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