#Linguistics Pragmatics and discourse (cross-cultural) variations in World Englishes.

 

In the field of linguistics, pragmatics can be defined as study of meaning based on context. It is process by which meaning of utterance can be interpreted from different context. Utterance is not independent, meaning shows in which context they have been used. Discourse can be defined as study of meaning of utterance whether it is spoken or written. So, in the field of world Englishes we have diversity of English language depend on the pragmatics and cross-cultural discourse. Pragmatics when simply put, it is a thought process working behind the senses (sub-consciously) in the minds of English variety speakers. It is all the characteristics of the community that is how they are as people, their tradition, cultures, economics, status, geographical and their L1 language system.

To further understand these variation, we must understand that a English variety is made only when the pragmatics are diluted in the discourse of their variety of English. Without pragmatics of the specific community, the variety is gone, and it is just an English language. Think of English as Biryani, now do we have a same biryani everywhere in the world. No because Hyderabadi biryani has different mixture of ingredients than that of Karachi or any other kind of Biryani. Different pragmatics of different communities are like ingredients and English and its discourse are like a Biryani. When mixed together we get various kinds varieties like Pakistani Englishes, Indian, Singaporean English. Every English is based on cultural and social perspectives. Language is influenced by community’s culture. For example, in our culture we have separate food, dress coat, some of discourse particles are changed from Indian English. Similarly, we have diversity of culture as well.

Cross-cultural pragmatics examines the field of study that is concerned with how languages have meaning through context based on social and cultural norms because meaning is not always attached to utterance, we must interpret the utterance with the lens of context.

Example, Speaker 1: hi, how are you?

                 Speaker 2: oh! Weather is lovely!

Thus, you can see the sentence of speaker2 is grammatically correct, but it doesn’t fit the context. Cross-cultural pragmatics is settlements between speaker utterance and hearer’s ability to construct the meaning of utterance based on contextual differences. Cross-cultural pragmatic explores the relationship of speaker’s utterance with its culture. Linguistic knowledge is one of the major concern of cross-cultural pragmatics, like knowledge of grammar and structure, but meaning cannot be constructed through only liberal manner rather it is depending on contextual factor in which it occurs. For example, in Indian English, one headline of Times of India 8 March 2006, like Terror Tandava in Varanasi. Now imagine the Tandava in your mind. Does it make sense to you? Probably no because of cultural variation. The local readers of new paper can construct the contextual meaning easily, but new readers might seek help of local reader to interpret the text in appropriate context. A kind of dance associated with their lord Shiva.