On the borderlines and the scope of pragmatics

Abstract
The paper elicits the questions concerning the borderlines of pragmatics, and analyzes some ways of resolving these questions. Contemporary pragmatics seems to be a distinct area of investigation, bringing together different, often conflicting theories and putting them under the same name; this makes it difficult to develop pragmatics on the whole, as an integral part of linguistics. Presumably, the cause of it lies in an unreasonably high degree of abstractness that is characteristic of the investigative area outlined by the founders of semiotics, primarily by Charles Pierce and Charles Morris. The paper suggests that pragmatics is one unified field, and the branches within it – as having stemmed from different strategies applied to specify the under-defined field. Each step of the way was began with conceiving some theoretical opacity, followed by posing the corresponding question, searching for an answer, and reaching the most appropriate solution. Since pragmatic phenomena are rather complicated, the process of further specification seems to be step-like. It presumably starts with primary questions about the borderlines, and then passes over to more specific notions and theories. This means that considering the borderlines of pragmatics is inseparable from considering its scope; one cannot speak about the former without taking into account the latter because every scientific borderline is inevitably drawn along some conceptual traces of previous research. Therefore, the question about the scope is also important, but only as far as it is substantial for discussing the borderlines. No doubt, the scope of pragmatics needs a more detailed analysis; so, it is necessary to study the links between different research areas in pragmatics.

Keywords: pragmatics, borderlines of pragmatics, pragmatics research areas, schools of pragmatics,
teaching pragmatics