Cultural Contexts as Determinants of Speaker’s Meaning in Culture-Specific Pragmatics

The speaker’s meaning in pragmatics will never run out to explore. The speaker’s meaning is embedded in the complex contexts surrounding the utterances and it keeps changing over time. One of the contexts is the cultural context, which plays a dominant role in the culture-specific pragmatics. This research is meant to explore the roles of cultural context in the culture-specific pragmatics. The research problem is then formulated as follows: (1) What are the elements found in the cultural context of the culture-specific pragmatics?; (2) What are the contextual functions embedded in the culture-specific pragmatics? The research data source is the utterances spoken in various domains within the culture-specific scope which includes elements and functions of cultural contexts. The research results show that cultural contexts in the culture-specific community have the following elements: (1) the speaker's cultural background, (2) the hearer's cultural background, (3) the prevailing cultural norms, (4) instruments and the cultural genres. The functions of cultural contexts found in this research are: (1) cultural contexts as determinants of the speaker's meaning; (2) cultural contexts as indicators to determine the speaker's meaning; and (3) the cultural contexts to affirm the speaker's meaning. This research is theoretically beneficial to develop the study of pragmatics, especially the culture-specific pragmatics.