1. Natural and conventional signs
Language in Use
Pragmatics
Natural and conventional signs
Prof. Walid Amer

2. Pragmatics: a branch of linguistics that is concerned with meaning.
What is correct in a particular instance is pragmatically appropriate.

3. Pragmatics and Semantics:
They are different aspects of the same general study. Both are concerned with people’s ability to use language meaningfully.
Semantics: is concerned with a speaker’s competence to produce meaningful utterances.
Pragmatics: is concerned with a person’s ability to derive meanings from speech situations.

4. Natural and conventional signs:
Language: a complex system of symbols or signs that are shared by members of a community.
Dialects: consistent differences in speech of a certain language that people who have the same native language use.
Vocabulary differences:
Petrol vs gasoline, Lift vs elevator
Ways of framing certain questions:
Have you a pencil? vs Do you have a pencil? vs Have you got a pencil?
Cultural features are almost always more widespread than any one language.

5. Natural signs: it’s a natural unintentional sign that communicates a message.
Footprint: it’s the natural result of a foot treading on a soft surface.
It communicates a message that someone was recently there.
Other examples:
Smoke, black clouds, and all sorts of sights, sounds, and smells.

6. Conventional signs:
It’s like horns, whistles, siren, buzzes and bells.
Also visual signs like signs to indicate a slippery road, or a bicycle path, etc.
Humans produce not only single symbols but systems of symbols.
For example, different bell tones can form a repertory of messages.
Conventional signs have human senders as well as human receivers.
The message can be personal or impersonal.

7. The process of getting information consists of three types:
1. Perception:
The sign attracts the observer’s attention, so the observer sees or hears something.
For example, in this stage, a person hears some sound, or reads something, or sees a certain image.

8. 2. Identification:
When we recognize the phenomenon that we have a previous experience about, that is stored in our memories.
We observe a sign and derive some meaning from it. This means that we have seen a similar sign before.

9. 3. Interpretation:
To interpret the meaning of a sign and form a reaction to it.
Meanings are often personal, that depends on the space-time context in which we observe it.

10. Conventional signs can have different meanings in different contexts.
The whistle of a policeman directing traffics, and the whistle of the referee in a soccer game sound exactly the same, but they convey different meanings due to the difference of contexts in which the signal occurs.

11. Thanks