LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 25:11 November 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

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Pragmatic Skills in Gujarati Speaking Children with Intellectual Disability

Shiv Shankar Kumar
Dr R Saranya, Ph.D.

Abstract

Pragmatics is defined as the ability to understand meaning as conveyed by a speaker and interpreted by a listener. It involves recognizing the speaker's intended meaning, assumptions, goals, and the types of communicative actions being performed through speech or writing. Pragmatic skills include aspects such as politeness and impoliteness, speech acts, conversational style, humor, sarcasm, teasing, cursing, discourse markers, conversational implicature and deixis. The aim of the present study was to assess the pragmatic skills in Gujarati Speaking children with intellectual disabilities by comparing with MA matched TD children in the age range of 4-6 years. This study describes the pragmatic skills provided by 4–6-year-old typically developing children based on caregiver child interaction, describing the performance on pragmatic skills by 4–6-year-old mental age children with intellectual disability with what is the comparison of the performance of the two groups.

Keywords:Pragmatic skills, Gujarati, intellectual disability

Introduction

Communication is an active process through which information and ideas are exchanged. It includes both understanding and expression. Expression can take many forms, including movements, gestures, objects, vocalizations, verbalizations, signs, pictures, symbols, printed words, and outputs from augmentative or alternative communication devices. Language serves as the primary medium of communication. It is a system of arbitrary, largely conventional symbols shared by a group of people to facilitate interaction. In essence, language performs the same function as communication. Just as communication operates through various modes, language consists of different components — content, use and form that contribute to effective communication.

The key elements of language are further divided into phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. The study of the relationship between language and its contextual use is known as pragmatics. It focuses particularly on conversational exchanges, where two or more individuals take turns constructing a dialogue. Pragmatics primarily explores communicative intent and the methods used to express that intent.

Pragmatics is defined as the ability to understand meaning as conveyed by a speaker and interpreted by a listener. It involves recognizing the speaker's intended meaning, assumptions, goals, and the types of communicative actions being performed through speech or writing. Pragmatic skills include aspects such as politeness and impoliteness, speech acts, conversational style, humor, sarcasm, teasing, cursing, discourse markers, conversational implicature and deixis.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Shiv Shankar Kumar
Ph.D. Scholar
Annamalai University,
Annamalai Nagar – 608002, Tamil Nadu
ss222kumar@gmail.com
&
Dr R Saranya, Ph.D.
Professor of CAS in Linguistics
Annamalai University,
Annamalai Nagar – 608002, Tamil Nadu
drsaranyaraja@gmail.com

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