Between the lines - sometimes

Pragmatics is an area of linguistics that deals with the semantics of words when people speak them. People come to a conversation with different backgrounds or value systems, so the listener doesn't always make the same interpretation of a statement as the speaker. Of course, people can have more than one meaning in mind when they speak. That's the stuff puns are made of, and comedians love the pun. Great irony can be created when more than one meaning is derived from a statement. Beyond humor, though, people can be confused or have different ends in mind based on the interpretation of a word or phrase. For instance, one friend can tell another friend that his uncle is coming to town. Visiting relatives can be good or bad. If the friend doesn't know the uncle, then he might say, "Oh you're in for a great weekend." But, if the friend knows that the uncle is always sarcastic when he talks, then he might say, "Oh, you're in for a long weekend." "My uncle is visiting" is neutral. It's the background brought to the conversation that makes for meaning.

Mafia movies also capitalize on pragmatics. Ordinary words are used to mean something different from the normal meaning of the word. For example, "The package has been delivered" might mean a bundle of money or explosives or a person of interest. Something was delivered, but not a package in the usual sense of the word. The military is famous for this as well because it is important to communicate in code. Anything people want to be vague or clandestine about, they derive words for with special or out-of-the-ordinary meanings.

Another way for pragmatics to work is for a person to quote one line of a work of poetry or a sentence from a book or a line from a song and mean the whole poem. The rabbis of the Jewish faith do this with the Psalms all the time. They will quote one line and really mean the rest of the stanza or the rest of the psalm in the case of short ones. I've heard comics do this with lines from songs as well. Sometimes song lines or song titles capsulize what is going on in a situation so well. So, around quitting time, the secretary I work with will get in a mood to leave early and one of us will quip, "It's five o'clock somewhere." She gets off before 5, but the song title fits the mood. At times I grow nostalgic and hear the chorus to a Zucchero Fornaciari song repeating itself in my mind, "I wanna take a trip back in time, I wanna take a trip back in time." If I share that feeling using that line, others are clueless unless they know the song. If others don't know the song, they just smile and say,"He'll be back in the present momentarily." Ditties are catchy and become representative of situations for us. If everyone understands the situation, life is beautiful. If everyone doesn't, confusion and misunderstanding reign.

Many times communication is a chess game. What does the other person mean by moving his/her piece to that square? What move should I counter with? Is (s)he trying to take as many pieces as possible before striking at the king? Or is (s)he trying to strike straight for the king? Somehow the game gets played as the two reveal their strategies. Perhaps, one difference in communication is that there's not a winner and loser usually. One person wants to understand the other one. It's just that the negotiation of meaning gets bogged down on occasion. There's no sure-fire way to communicate with clarity. Knowing how, when, and where to ask for clarification is the key to clearing the air.