The part of the theory of signs, or semiotics, that concerns the relationship between speakers and their signs. The study of the principles governing appropriate conversational moves is called general pragmatics; applied pragmatics treats of special kinds of linguistic interaction, such as interviews and speech-making. A pragmatic treatment of a feature of the use of a language would explain the feature in terms of general principles governing appropriate utterance, rather than in terms of a semantic rule. For example, the difference between ‘she had a baby and got married’ and ‘she got married and had a baby’ would be treated semantically if it were put down to the meaning of the term ‘and’, but pragmatically if it were put down to a general regularity that people relate events in the order in which they suppose them to have happened. See also implicature.