 Now, in the previous modules, we discussed paycheck, lightness, face work, positive, negative face, etc. All these notions come from pragmatics. And what is pragmatics? It is that branch of linguistics which deals with the study of communication. Or in other words, it deals with how our language gets meaning from context beyond words. And these meanings beyond words are never seen, they are always hidden, they are always conveyed. So that's why sometimes we say the study of conveyed meaning is called pragmatics. So all these notions were from this discipline. Now here the term is feminist pragmatics. So it means this time there would be some additional dimension to the field of pragmatics. What is that? We would explore it in this module. Feminism has no common pool of theories, first of all. Common pool of theories means they are now agreed upon theories in this discipline, if we call it a discipline. It is open to study its concerns, taking help from various disciplines because feminists focus on gender. And gender is complex of variables. You are men and women, you also belong to a profession, you also belong to an age group, you also belong to some ethnic group. So gender study is related with all of these social categories. And this is not possible that you define gender with the help of only the views of feminists. Feminists who are not usually considered academics or researchers, they are usually taken as political activists because they in fact raise voice against violence and discrimination and injustices in political way, in form of movements etc. And academics usually they do not launch movements in these terms. So we are saying that because feminist concern is gender, gender is complex, involves so many social categories and notions. So these notions have roots in different disciplines, we have to take help from different disciplines, which is also an interdisciplinary field. Here when we say feminist pragmatics, it means we are combining views of feminism with views of pragmatists. This is called feminist pragmatics. A piece of feminist research can draw upon cultural studies. If you are studying gender with reference to conventions, social norms, then you have to go to cultural studies. And if you talk about gender as part of our psychology, thinking, our cognition, part of our belief, perceptions, beliefs and perceptions are in mind, ideology, then you will take help from psychology. And if you talk about gender as social action, something that is performed, something that is done, something that is constructed in society, it is a social category, it is a social action, definitely you have to take help from sociology. And if you want to understand gender by analyzing language, especially conversation and speech, etc., then you have to take help from linguistics. So this is how different aspects of gender take help from different disciplines. It depends on which aspect you focus on. Now, if we see relation between language use and feminism, it is again a complex affair. So first of all, feminism is complex. Then we come to pragmatism, the study of language use. The study of language use itself is very complex. It too is a multidisciplinary field of study. Language use is not studied only by linguistics or pragmatics. There are many other disciplines which are involved which have interest in language use. For ease of our study, to make things simple, we just see our relation between gender and language use, language use I mean, is studied with the help of pragmatics. We keep our focus confined to this. Why do we need pragmatics to conduct feminist research? This is the question before us. Language use has two main dimensions, our functions. Language use, language is used to reinforce genre, ideology as it is done in media. So here language functions as a medium as a tool. When, for example, through media, people talk about gender, they use language. And what they are doing, they are expressing thoughts and views about gender. They are reinforcing existing ideologies and gender order, etc. So this is how language functions as medium, our tool to convey our thoughts and ideas. Here language has a very passive role. It itself doesn't do anything. It just like a postman receives ideas and transfers them to the audience. But the second aspect of language use is language as discourse. When we use language in this way, it makes and shapes gender identity. And even a new ideology, new narrative that we these days call. So here language is very much active and it has a role of construction. It creates something. So this role is very active. In both cases, pragmatics can help the feminist researchers, whether we are using language as medium to express our thoughts, whether we are using language as discourse to shape, change or transform our thoughts. In both cases, we can take help from pragmatics. We means feminist. The discourse analysis focus on content and language and what it conveys. This is discourse analysis that is conducted by feminist to understand relationship between language and gender. But what they do? They just focus on what is given on the page or what is recorded. What is language content? Without involving the background or context in which the language was used. Unless we know the intention of the speaker or writer, who has produced that discourse, that content, that language, the presuppositions about gender. What that person presupposes has set ideas in his or her mind. Unless we know that and the cultural and situational context, where that talk, that content, that discourse, that language content was used. What was the immediate context? What was the broader cultural context? Immediate context was classroom or court or some other place like that. What was the time? Who was the audience? What was the purpose? All these things constitute the immediate context. And then broader cultural context, whether the discourse was, the language content was produced in Pakistan, in Punjab, in Balochistan, in some other country, in some other culture. So unless this whole information is not added to the language content, we cannot understand what language use is. Critical discourse analysis. This is a procedure. They have combined discourse and pragmatic. Because pragmatics adds all that background information, which we need to understand language content. So these people, they have combined pragmatics to understand language use, to understand discourse. And that's why we differentiate them from general discourse analysts. We call them critical discourse analysts. Pragmatic tools are used to analyze discourse in critical discourse analysis. And when we say pragmatic tools, it means these things, which we have already discussed in our previous modules. For example, these tools may be speech acts, these tools may be lightness, face work. These tools may be our implication. All these notions which come from pragmatics, they would help us to analyze discourse at utterance level. And when you understand utterances, you will understand the stretch of utterances, longer piece of text that consists of those utterances. So the sum total, the sum total of the meaning of utterances would help you to understand the meaning of the entire talk, entire discourse, entire text. This is a task to understand this whole process, which I have been talking about. Here, this is a dialogue. Now, you see clearly that background information is provided. After that, we see there is a dialogue. And this dialogue is between a little girl and her dad. And in this dialogue, they are part of some ad, some TV commercial. During this start, the dad gives some expression regarding girl's mother. He was working in kitchen and the girl says that mama doesn't chop things like this. He was preparing breakfast. And he says that, I don't prepare breakfast like your mother. This is dad's way of preparing cooking. These expressions and the background to these expressions, they together would help you to understand the relationship of language, use, and gender. And these things come when you take help from pragmatics. Because pragmatics understands meaning of any talk or discourse with the help of context, beyond words. So, you should do this task to understand all these ideas and concepts which we have discussed in this module.