Greater emphasis, however, is placed on the other modern areas of synchronic linguistics. These are pragmatics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, and the branch of synchronic linguistics that deals with the varieties of English. Furthermore, corpus linguistics has a major significance. Whereas phonology, morphology, and syntax study the system of language, the other areas mentioned focus on the use of language in concrete situations. They recognize that texts, written or spoken, cannot be adequately described in linguistic terms without considering speaker, listener, and context.
Pragmatics investigates a linguistic utterance as a communicative action.
In contrast to semantics, which studies the meaning of words and sentences without focusing on the extra-linguistic situation, pragmatics considers a statement's specific meaning and effect in a particular language situation. Thus, an important part of pragmatics is the analysis of conversations and, in addition, the attempt to decode the norms and rules guiding us when we encode and try to understand meanings that are related to context. Another aspect of pragmatics is the comparative study of communicative conventions in different societies, e.g., ways to express politeness. What is considered polite in German could be regarded as impolite in English. Sociolinguistics studies the influence of social variables on language usage.