Pragmatics studies language use in context: how an utterance is interpreted and what a speaker does or conveys by producing it. The boundary with semantics is debated. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes near-side questions about determining what is said from far-side questions about what is accomplished or conveyed beyond saying it 1.
Meaning in context
Resolving a reference such as “that file” requires more than a dictionary meaning. Interpreting “Can you close the window?” as a request rather than only a question about ability also depends on the circumstances. These are hypothetical illustrations of different pragmatic tasks; context can settle an interpretation without another explicit instruction.
Ambiguity, vagueness, and missing detail are not interchangeable. An ambiguous expression allows different readings; a vague expression has borderline cases; an instruction can leave details unspecified without having two distinct linguistic readings. Nor does an unstated requirement automatically count as communicated: an inference about speaker meaning needs contextual support.
Common ground concerns what participants treat as shared. Conversational grounding concerns how they establish sufficient understanding. Theory of mind concerns attributing mental states. Each can matter for interpretation, but none is a synonym for pragmatics. Likewise, the conversational situation is broader than the tokens in an LLM’s Context window.