Blurb:

This chapter focuses on ways of describing language which help us understand how we make sense of the world and communicate through language in spoken contexts. Thus, the chapter discusses pragmatics, or the study of meaning in use, with a focus on speech act theory, conversational implicature, politeness, and conversation analysis. Spoken discourse markers, vague language, ellipsis and intonation are further analyzed, as well as phonetics and phonology, two traditional areas of study within modern linguistics, which help us focus on the ways in which we make meaning based on the physical sounds which we produce and string together in significant ways.