Pragmatics

Meaning that a speaker implies and a listener infers from an utterance without it being explicitly stated, relying on shared assumptions about cooperative communication as described by Grice's Cooperative Principle.

The theory, developed by J.L. Austin and John Searle, that utterances are not merely statements about the world but actions performed through language, classified into locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.

The principle that participants in a conversation are expected to cooperate by making their contributions as informative, truthful, relevant, and clear as required for the current purposes of the exchange.

Background information or assumptions that a speaker takes for granted as already known or accepted by the listener when making an utterance, and which remain constant whether the statement is affirmed or negated.

Expressions whose meaning depends entirely on the context of the utterance, including the identity of the speaker, the time and place of speaking, and the gestural or discourse context. Categories include person, spatial, temporal, social, and discourse deixis.

A framework developed by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson describing how speakers manage 'face' -- the public self-image that every person wants to maintain -- through positive politeness, negative politeness, indirect speech, and off-record strategies.

A cognitive approach to pragmatics proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, which argues that human communication is driven by the search for relevance and that listeners interpret utterances by maximizing cognitive effects while minimizing processing effort.

The intended communicative function of an utterance -- such as asserting, questioning, commanding, promising, or apologizing -- which may differ from its grammatical form.

A type of conversational implicature that arises from the use of a weaker term on an informational scale, implying that the speaker is not in a position to use a stronger term.

The totality of background conditions relevant to interpreting an utterance, including the physical setting, the participants' identities and shared knowledge, preceding discourse, social norms, and cultural conventions.