Which term describes the study of how readers or listeners infer non-literal meaning from context?

• A. Pragmatics
• B. Pragmatic competence
• C. Intonation
• D. Notional-Functional Approach

Answer: (A)

Pragmatics examines how context shapes meaning beyond the literal words. It explains how readers and listeners infer what someone means from clues like the situation, tone, prior conversation, and shared knowledge. For example, when someone says, “It’s cold in here,” you often interpret that as a request to close the window rather than just a weather report; that inference comes from pragmatic reasoning about context and intention. This is exactly about understanding non-literal meaning such as implied messages, sarcasm, metaphor, and indirect requests in real communication.

The other options aren’t the study of how we infer meaning from context. The Notional-Functional Approach is about teaching language through ideas and functions rather than analyzing how interpretation works in context. Intonation is a feature of speech—the pitch patterns that can affect meaning—rather than the field that studies how we derive non-literal meaning. Pragmatic competence refers to a person’s ability to use language appropriately in social situations, which is a skill, not the academic study itself.