Appunti pragmatica linguistica inglese

Truth-value and truth-conditions

–Truth-value whether a statement is true or false

–Truth-conditions conditions under which a statement is true

Grice: Natural vs non-natural meaning

– Arbitrary meaning

Sense – Reference change depending on context

– Sentence meaning literal meaning

– Speaker meaning the one intended by the speaker

Cooperative principle (CP)

Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

4 maxims

• Quantity maxim - scalar implicatures
  • Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange
  • Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
• Quality maxim rhetorical figures
  • Do not say what you believe to be false
  • Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
• Relation maxim
  • Be relevant
• Manner maxim
  • Avoid obscurity of expressions
  • Avoid ambiguity
  • Be brief = Quantity1
  • Be orderly

What is conveyed

What is said + what is implicated conventionally implicated/conversationally implicated (particularized/generalized)

Implicatures

• They don’t have to affect the truth-conditions of a sentence
• It has to be context-dependent
• Generalized conversational implicatures do not need a specific context to arise
• Particularized conversational implicatures context-dependent, depending on context it might mean different things
• Conventional implicatures hearer derives the implicature directly. Lexical items do not add anything to the truth-condition of the sentence. Not cancellable
• Conversational implicatures calculable, cancellable, nondetachable, nonconventional, not carried by what is said but only by the saying of what is said, indeterminate.

Neo-Griceans

Grice formulation of maxims criticized. We don’t need all these maxims to explain how implicatures are derived.

Horn

Brevity encouraged by Quantity2, Relation and Manner 3 BUT verbosity encouraged by Quantity1, Relation, Manner1-2.

2 principles

• Q-Principle say as much as you can (Quantity1). Lower bounding, it induces upper bounding implicatures. Hearer-based
• R-Principle say no more than you must (Quantity2). Upper limit on what has been said, lower bounding implicatures. Speaker based.

Levinson

3 heuristics: – the things that the speaker doesn’t say aren’t the case. What isn’t said, isn’t.

• Q-heuristic it subsumes Quantity and Q-Principle.
• I-heuristic the things that are described in simple manner are stereotypically exemplified. When we describe something in a simple way, it means that is the most stereotypical situation. Quantity2 and R-Principle.
• M-heuristic a message which is marked in the form indicates a marked situation, where marked situation means a situation that is not prototypical. Manner1-3

Similarity with Horn tension between speaker-based principle and hearer-based principle.

Relevance theory

Sperber and Wilson

Complain Grice centered on the speaker. Hearer acquires centrality. Theory based on human cognition. Eliminations of all maxims.

Main principle of Relevance

• Communicative principle every act of ostensive communication conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.
• Cognitive principle all human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance

Communication is ostensive-inferential. Relevance measured basing itself on positive cognitive effects. We should enrich our knowledge about the world. No calculations of implicatures. Context is more relevant. No implicatures but contextual implications (information derived by utterance+context). Intended meaning = literal sentence + background assumptions.

Contextual assumptions

• Implicated premises
• Contextual implications
• Implicated conclusions, Grice implicatures.

Path of least effort. The speaker stops when enough positive cognitive effects are reached.

Maximum relevance reached in 3 cases

• The contextual implication supports or strengthens an existing assumption
• If the implicated conclusions serve to contradict or rule out an existing assumption
• Contextual implications interact with existing assumptions