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In other words , meaning in use is based on sentence meaning, but it is the realization of sentence meaning in a context of situation, which means something more than the conceptual meaning or literal meanning. Let’s take the following famous English advertisements for example, think not only about what the words might mean, but also about what the advertiser intended them to mean. In fact the advertisers mean to advertise products for them.
Good to the last drop．滴滴香浓，意犹未尽。（麦斯威尔咖啡） Poetry in motion，dancing close to me. 动态的诗，向我舞近。（丰田汽车）
The taste is great. 味道好极了。（雀巢咖啡） Just do it. 只管去做。（耐克运动鞋）
In terms of the contexts or situations, the following sentences can be also understood in different ways. Discuss how many ways you can suggest to understand them。
---- My watch has stopped again.
----Do you know the meaning of earthquake？
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1.1.3 concept
1.2 Dissimilarity between Semantics and Pragmatics
Semantics Pragmatics study of meaning in abstractness Study of the meaning in
context or use
word and sentence meaning Utterance meaning Decontextulization Contextualization
Let’s take the following sentence for example. ----He went to the town yesterday
We can first analyze the sentence grammatically, examing its conceptual meaning, but after grammtical and semantic ananlysis of a sentence, there still seems to be something unsaid about it such as Who is “he”？ Where is the “town”？ What day is “yesterday”？ In other words, in a pragmatic inquiry, we deal with an ever-unfolding process—as the discourse goes on and on, the extra meaning of some words become clearer and clearer.
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Pragmatics
can
be
defined
by
this
formula:
PRAGMETICS=MEANING—SEMNTTICS, that is, pragmatics takes care of the aspect of meaning that is not accounted for by semantics.
2 Theories
2.1Speech act theory proposed by Austin 2.1. 1 Origin of Austin’s theory
The theory was first proposed by J. Austin in 1962 in his famous book How to do Things With Words , and later developed by J. Searle in 1969. Grice, Levinson and Leech also have made contributions to the development of the theory. Language is not only used to inform or to describe things; it is often used to “do things”, to perform acts.
2.1. 2 What is speech act
Speech act refers to an utterance as a functional unit in communication.（言语行为指交际过程中作为一个功能性单位的语句）According to his theory, we are performing various kinds of acts when we are speaking, thus linguistic communication is
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composed of a succession of acts. we can also conclude that actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts. In speech act theory, Austin first claim that utterances have two kinds of meaning(acts),（两分法）or there are two types of sentences: perfomatives and constatives. In the latter part of How to Do Things with Words, in speech act theory, utterances can also divided into three kinds of meaning(acts).(三分法)
2.1. 3 Key arguments in his theory
1) In speech act theory, utterances have two kinds of meaning(acts)
According to this theory, we are performing various kinds of acts when we are speaking, thus linguistic communication is composed of a succession of acts. Austin proposed the assumption: Language is not only used to state, describe, inform, but to “do things or perform actions”. Thus, he made two classifications: a) constatives—utterances which are intended for narration, description etc;
b) performatives—utterances which perform acts such as apology,complaint, compliment, invitation, promise,warning or a request. Let’s discuss the following examples.
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