Goals and Methods
Universal pragmatics is associated with the philosophical method of rational reconstruction.
The basic concern in universal pragmatics is utterances (or speech acts) in general. This is in contrast to most other fields of linguistics, which tend to be more specialized, focusing exclusively on very specific sorts of utterances such as sentences (which in turn are made up of words, morphemes, and phonemes).
For Habermas, the most significant difference between a sentence and an utterance is in that sentences are judged according to how well they make sense grammatically, while utterances are judged according to their communicative validity (see section 1). (1979:31)
Universal pragmatics is also distinct from the field of sociolinguistics. This is because U.P. is only interested in the meanings of utterances if they have to do with claims about truth or rightness, while sociolinguistics is interested in all utterances in their social contexts. (1979:31,33)
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