Social Pragmatics

by Bridget Lowery
Main Line Rehab

Social Pragmatics is an area where most of our clients have trouble. It’s the ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning. We know that we communicate in many ways – not just with the words that we use. Social Pragmatics includes non-verbal communication, conversational skills, language content and language organization.

Pragmatics is one of the most challenging aspects of language to grasp, and can only truly be learned through experience. This makes it important for us to repeatedly address these skills with our clients.

Many of our clients have trouble with one or more of these areas. Their ability to “tune in” to non-verbal communication may include their ability to recognize the meaning of

  • Intonation of the voice
  • Facial expression
  • Eye contact
  • Gestures

It is often hard for them to realize the true meaning of what’s being said because they miss/don’t process a sarcastic tone or an eye wink or a smile indicating that the speaker is joking. If a client struggles with this, statements like “Oh, ok” may be interpreted to mean that’s fine, despite being said sarcastically.

Conversational skills are often a problem too. They may struggle with one of these parts of conversational speech
  • Initiation (starting up a conversation)
  • Turn taking
  • Verbosity (tangential, response length)


Language content is an area that includes

  • Topic maintenance (ability to stay on the subject you are speaking about)
  • Presupposition (able to omit redundant info or info already known to both parties)
  • Referencing skills (appropriate use of pronouns or other references to previous info within a dialogue or upcoming info within a dialogue such as I will make three points…)

Language organization
  • Organization of thoughts and words (logical order, unified theme)
  • Completeness

Problems with these skills can lead to a person being seen as “odd”, rude, “slow” or egocentric. It can lead to social isolation because it is hard to form and maintain friendships with this type of behavior.