On the afternoon of August 29th, 2014, Professor Stanford Goldberg, director of the Department of Philosophy of Northwest University in the USA, gave a lecture titled “Semantics and Pragmatics” in the Lecture Hall of School of Foreign Languages.
Starting from the function of language, Professor Goldberg first introduced semantics and pragmatics before further elucidating the distinction between the two in meaning studies. On the one hand, language, claimed the professor, has encoding and representational function. It enables language to maintain a relatively stable connection with reality, which can be termed as conventional meaning. The study of the conventional meaning falls into the domain of semantics. With its focus on the expression system of linguistic meaning, semantics aims to find out the regularities of expressing meaning, the verbal explanation, and the individuality and commonness of different languages regarding the expression of meaning. Semantics is customarily confined to the verbal meaning rather than the actual usage of language and thus it could be carried out de-contextually. On the other hand, claimed Professor Goldberg, language also has communicative function. In verbal communication, the speaker consciously passes his/her intention onto the hearer in a certain context via verbal expressions to achieve an expected effect while the hearer, by understanding the literal meaning of verbal expressions and inferring from certain contextual factors, will grasp the actual meaning the speaker has intended to deliver, thus guaranteeing the smooth completion of communication. Accordingly the study of meaning in this sense involves no less the communicators, the entangled cultural and social elements and other non-linguistic factors than the literal meaning of verbal signs. The interpretation of the meaning of language in use is within the domain of pragmatics, which includes the context-dependent studies of deixis, speech acts, presupposition and conversational implicature.
According to Professor Goldberg, semantics and pragmatics are actually complementarily interrelated. The communicative function of language is achieved by the conventionally-established semantic meaning, which is the basis of communication and the carrier of communication intention. Without the semantic meaning, no pragmatic meaning - either indirect speech acts or conversational implicature - could be obtained and no verbal communication could ever happen. Pragmatics, on the contrary, examines language from the perspective of its users and studies meaning in context. Pragmatically speaking, language is no longer a static system and the pragmatic meaning dynamically results from the interaction of communicators. The study of pragmatic meanings is undoubtedly the valuable development and supplement of meaning theories.
During the lecture, Professor Goldberg cited comprehensible examples and delineated effusively the fundamentals of semantics and pragmatics. Deeply impressed by his expertise and the clear yet profound lecture, the responsive audience heartily clapped Professor Goldberg.
After the lecture, Professor Goldberg discussed with some interested listeners and patiently answered their questions.
（2013MTIWYH)