What are Pragmatics?

Pragmatics is the study of meaning behind the words, dependent on their context. What this means is that the meaning of a word and the word itself are two separate things; by saying a word in two separate contexts, it can have two totally separate meanings. For example, when we say 'It's a lovely day' and the sun is shining, we might be expressing our admiration for warm weather and can go on to analyse the utterance at word level. 

However, saying the same line on a day when there's stormy weather may mean a multitude of other things: the person speaking might love thunder and lightening, in the same way that the first context relates to the sun, but the person may also intend to be ironic by means of making their interlocutor laugh. 

It is also worth suggesting that we have based our pragmatic reading on the weather - a usual conversational point when we make small talk about our day - but if the speaker has just come from a day out with his or her friends, they may be referring to that, or perhaps something else outside of the context. 

Pragmatic readings can be applied to many different sentences in many different contexts, most of which can be very entertaining and interesting to look at.