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If pragmatics deal with how the extralinguistic environment affects the interpratation of an utterance, which branch of linguistics deals with how the paralinguistic environment affects the interpratation of an utterance?

An example of paralinguistic feature (maybe the most prominent) would be prosody.

An example of extralinguistic environment would be the situational/social context. I.e the fact that The 2 persons communicating are housemates.

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  • Could you give some examples of what you're asking about? The "paralinguistic" label covers a lot of different things that can fall under different subfields.
    – Draconis ♦
    Commented Feb 26, 2023 at 4:21
  • That’s a great question, which may need a small amount of reformulating. ”Extralinguistic” arguably is not the closest term for what “pragmatic” features of language correspond to, because “pragmatic” forms are regular; grammatically structured, like other components of language. “Paralinguistics” or “paralanguage” may encircle that former idea, though, which would be something adjacent to, instead of constitutive of, what we are calling “language”. You can contemplate if there are any things you think meet that definition. I think body language, gestures, facial expression and tone of voice.
    – Julius Hamilton
    Commented Feb 26, 2023 at 9:58
  • Because they do not have the rigorously determining effect on language or communication that we may say things like pronunciation, sometimes intonation, grammar, and choice of word do; but they are clearly language’s sidecoach, enhancing or stylizing such expression but not central. Maybe it is entertainable to draw a comparison to symbiont-host relations, in which one thing exists on top of or attached to a fundamental thing; but not the reverse. nature.com/articles/ncomms15973 Kind of related is a term use by Chomsky - “linearization is an ancillary feature of language”.
    – Julius Hamilton
    Commented Feb 26, 2023 at 10:07
  • ^*socsci.uci.edu/~lpearl/courses/readings/… And here we have the definition as per common, current, convention: “Paralanguage: the non-lexical component of communication by speech, for example intonation, pitch and speed of speaking, hesitation noises, gesture, and facial expression.“ (Oxford Languages, via Google, languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en). And of course, to at least be an entry point to more ideas, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralanguage.
    – Julius Hamilton
    Commented Feb 26, 2023 at 10:15
  • @Draconis I gave a examples for both paralinguistic and extralinguistic
    – George Ntoulos
    Commented Feb 26, 2023 at 15:32

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