Definition of "pragmatics" []

• The study of language as it is used in a social context, including its effect on the interlocutors. (noun)
• The branch of semiotics that deals with the relationship between signs, especially words and other elements of language, and their users. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The valuation of pragmatics is an aesthetic valuation."
• "We can attribute to the Laozi the next development in Chinese pragmatics of language, how language shapes action."
• "With potentially sensitive words, everything depends on the phonology and the pragmatics - in other words, how they're said and what the intentions are."