PRAGMATICS IN LINGUISTICS: SEARCHING FOR DEFINITION

Abstract

The communicative-pragmatic turn in linguistics signaled a shift in researchers’ interests from studying the internal properties of the language system to analyzing the functions of language in the complex structure of human communication, and it also drew attention to the term “pragmatics”, which was virtually unknown in the context of linguistics until the middle of the twentieth century. The point of this study is for the author to identify and analyze current interpretations of the term “pragmatics” to describe possible options for pragmatic relationship with other scientific disciplines. For this purpose, the author employs and compares the opinions of various scholars via using descriptive, conceptual and contrastive methods.