Editing Pragmatics (section)

==Related fields==
There is considerable overlap between pragmatics and [[sociolinguistics]], since both share an interest in [[linguistic meaning]] as determined by usage in a speech community. However, sociolinguists tend to be more interested in variations in language within such communities. Influences of philosophy and politics are also present in the field of pragmatics, as the dynamics of societies and oppression are expressed through language<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080448542003163|doi = 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00316-3|chapter = Social Aspects of Pragmatics|title = Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics|year = 2006|last1 = Rajagopalan|first1 = K.|pages = 434–440|isbn = 9780080448541}}</ref>

Pragmatics helps anthropologists relate elements of language to broader social phenomena; it thus pervades the field of [[linguistic anthropology]]. Because pragmatics describes generally the forces in play for a given utterance, it includes the study of power, gender, race, identity, and their interactions with individual speech acts. For example, the study of [[Code-switching|code switching]] directly relates to pragmatics, since a switch in code effects a shift in pragmatic force.{{sfn|Duranti|1997}}

According to [[Charles W. Morris]], pragmatics tries to understand the relationship between signs and their users, while [[semantics]] tends to focus on the actual objects or ideas to which a word refers, and [[syntax]] (or "syntactics") examines relationships among signs or symbols. Semantics is the literal meaning of an idea whereas pragmatics is the implied meaning of the given idea.

[[Speech act|Speech Act Theory]], pioneered by [[J. L. Austin]] and further developed by [[John Searle]], centers around the idea of the [[performative]], a type of utterance that performs the very action it describes. Speech Act Theory's examination of [[Illocutionary act|Illocutionary Acts]] has many of the same goals as pragmatics, as outlined [[#Areas of interest|above]].

Computational Pragmatics, as defined by [[Victoria Fromkin]], concerns how humans can communicate their intentions to computers with as little ambiguity as possible.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Introduction to Language|last=Fromkin|first=Victoria|publisher=Wadsworth, Cengage Learning|year=2014|isbn=978-1133310686|location=Boston, Ma.|pages=508}}</ref> That process, integral to the science of [[natural language processing]] (seen as a sub-discipline of [[artificial intelligence]]), involves providing a computer system with some database of knowledge related to a topic and a series of algorithms, which control how the system responds to incoming data, using contextual knowledge to more accurately approximate natural human language and information processing abilities. Reference resolution, how a computer determines when two objects are different or not, is one of the most important tasks of computational pragmatics.