What Are Some Of The Factors That Influence The Meaning Of An Utterance

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context which refers to what the listener can physically see or hear and provides them with an understanding that somebody not physically present would be able to fully comprehend. For example, if somebody was the say “Be here at 9pm”, we can interpret that the listener is aware of where ‘here’ refers to. This may be because they are already physically ‘here’ and the speaker wants to meet up again at 9pm or the listener was made aware, prior to this statement, where the speaker is located. Without this piece of information, the statement is unclear. In terms of linguistic context, if the listener does not know the history of a conversation, this could also lead to misinterpretation. During a conversation between two people, if someone exclaimed suddenly “My mum would have scrubbed your mouth clean if she heard you speak like that!”, a third person entering the conversation at that point would most likely ask “Like what?” as they are oblivious to what has ...

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individual who can be uniquely identified as Daisy by the speaker and listener, that Daisy had stopped doing French before leaving university, that Daisy was doing French at some point in the past, that she had now left university and that she had once been at the university. The speaker is reliant on the assumptions that the addressee knows these factors which will make his utterance coherent. Without this information, the addressee must ask more questions to gain an understanding of the statement. According to George Yule, questions with built-in presuppositions are a useful device used beneficially by interrogators and trial lawyers in court (Yule 2010). If a prosecutor aims this ...

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