Linguistic Pragmatics: Its Domains and Instruments for Muslim Scholars

Pragmatics is the study of meaning expressed by the author or speaker. It addresses the role of extra-linguistic factors and the situations and contexts influencing the speaker and audience, in a bid to analyze the relationship between intra-linguistic meaning and extra-linguistic factors. The goal of the pragmatics is to determine the meaning or purpose of the speaker or author. Pragmatics presumes that the use of language by humans represents a form of social behavior and social action and explores it from this perspective. The goal of this article is to partially revive the scientific heritage of logic in Islamic period through a comparative research. It posits that Muslim scholars, instead of considering pragmatic domains and instruments independently, have addressed it in their logical views. In this manner, a novel reading of subjects debated by Muslim thinkers can be achieved based on pragmatics. The observations of Muslim scholars about this subject could be discussed in five domains: pragmatic analysis of declarative sentences, generally accepted premises, judicial implication, liar paradox, and speech acts. Muslim scholars have approached pragmatic solutions in each of these domains. Further emphasis and reflection of Islamic thinkers on this approach could have developed pragmatics into an independent and growing debate. Today, the importance of linguistic discussions, the desirability of adopting a comparative approach in understanding and exploring issues, and the necessity of revisiting the views of ancient theorists underscore the importance of these studies.