The Scope of Pragmatics Patrick Blackburn

The Scope of Pragmatics

Patrick Blackburn

A presentation of: “The Scope of Pragmatics”, Chapter 1 ofPragmatics, by Stephen Levinson, Cambridge University

Press, 1983.

“Language and Cognition Seminar”, LORIA, 29th June 2009.

About the next few sessions

I I will be introducing certain themes in (Anglo-Saxon style)pragmatics.

I Roughly speaking, today I will painting a very broad picture ofwhat pragmatics is; in later lectures I will be introducing the lineof work initiated by Paul Grice.

I To be more precise, in subsequent session, I will introduce thebasics of Paul Grice’s concept of conversational implicature,Luciana Benotti will link the concept with clarification questions,David de Vault will link it with current work and dialogue, andthen I will elaboration of the basic ideas in Brown andLevinsons’s classic work on politeness theory, an extension of theGricean paradigm.

I But Grice, though important, is only one thread in pragmatics;for today, let’s concentrate on the bigger picture.

Blackburn: Language and Cognition c©INRIA

Is Pragmatics relevant to “Language and Cognition”?

It certainly is relevant, and for at least two reasons:

I A scientific reason: one of the key themes in pragmatics isthe key role played by inference, and the way it impacts onlinguistic structure. Indeed, one might say that pragmaticsoffers important views on what inference — a fundamentalcognitive ability or collection of abilities — actually is, andperhaps even where it comes from.

I A sociological reason: as we shall see, pragmatics (in theAnglo Saxon tradition) partly developed as a reactionagainst the Chomskyan view of language. Roughlyspeaking, pragmatics takes a broader view, or perhaps analternative view, of what is “cognitive” about language.

















Stephen Levinson an important figure here . . .

Stephen C. Levinson is director of the Language and Cognitiongroup at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics inNijmegen, The Netherlands. He received a BA in Archaeologyand Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge anda PhD in Linguistic Anthropology from the University ofCalifornia Berkeley His most influential original research isprobably Politeness: Universals in Language Usage,co-authored with Penelope Brown.


The Pragmatics textbook . . .

But he also wrote one of the earliest textbooks on Anglo-Saxonstyle pragmatics. This text not only drew together and madeexplicit what the key themes were, it also broadened what wasstudied under the heading of pragmatics within theAnglo-Saxon tradition. Let’s take a look. . .


Levinson drew together four classic themes

I Deixis: I’ll be back here in about an hour, with a stickabout this big.

I Conversational Implicature: A: Can you tell me thetime? B: Well, the milkman has come.

I Presupposition: Jean regrets Marie is pregnant VERSUSJean does not regret that Marie is pregnant

I Speech Act theory: I hereby christen this ship theH.M.S. Flounder.


But he did more

I He carefully discussed the deficiencies and shortcomings ofthe four themes mentioned on the previous side ideas, andhow they might be related, and how they could beintegrated.

I He gave a firm philosophical basis to the study ofpragmatics: he explicitly related Paul Grice’s work onmeaning-nn not merely to Grice’s work on conversationalimplicature, but to the broader pragmatics enterprise.

I He insisted on the important of studying real worldconversational data in a chapter on conversationalanalysis. He thereby anticipated, and helped initiate, themove towards corpora-based work. And, most interestinglyof all, he linked pragmatic inference to real world actions.


Exploring the older literature

I So this is not an introduction to state of the art work inpragmatics.

I Rather, it is an introduction to certain big themes which Ibelieve are:

I Relevant to the theme of “Language and Cognition”I Relevant to the research themes I am interested inI And that fit together naturally, both technically,

philosophically, and methodologically.

I As I said earlier, we’re going to work under what Levinsontermed “the Gricean umbrella”: the basic theme exploredwill be conversational implicature, and its elaboration inBrown and Levinson’s work on politeness.


Today’s talks

I’m basically going to work my way through Chapter 1 ofLevinson’s book Pragmatics. That is, I will discuss thefollowing themes:

I The origin and historical vagaries of the term pragmaticsI Defining pragmaticsI Current interest in pragmaticsI Computing context: an example


The origin and historical vagaries of the termpragmatics

The major steps are perhaps:

I The work of Charles Morris, Rudolf Carnap, and RichardMontague; after Charles Morris we already have a split into thecontinental tradition and something else, but what thesomething else is is not really clear (neither Carnap norMontague go far enough).

I The work of the British school of natural language philosophy:Grice, Austen, Searle, and Strawson.

I The synthesis by generative grammarians, Montaguesemanticists and others, of natural language philosophy with theCarnap/Montague insights, thereby creating the Anglo-Saxonapproach to pragmatics.

I Which becomes articulated as a “normal science” with thepublication of Levinson’s textbook.


Charles Morris

Charles W. Morris (1903 – 1979) was an American semioticianand philosopher. During the 1930s, Morris helped a number ofGerman and Austrian philosophers immigrate to the UnitedStates, Rudolf Carnap in particular; they were colleagues from1936 to 1952. He was close to the Vienna Circle and its logicalpositivism, and developed an original form of pragmatism.


Morris and semiotics

I Influenced by Peirce, defined the science of semiotics andits famous three way distinction:

I Syntactics: relation of signs to one anotherI Semantics: relation of signs to the objects to which they are

applicableI Pragmatics: relation of signs to interpreters

I But uses this in extremely broad sense, still current on thecontinent (see Journal of Pragmatics).

I Covers, among other things, biological, psychological, andsociological phenomena.


Rudolph Carnap

Rudolf Carnap (1891 - 1970) was an influential German-bornphilosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in theUnited States thereafter. He was a leading member of theVienna Circle and a prominent advocate of logical positivism.He did pioneering work in formal semantics of natural languageand in modal logic.


Carnap’s influence

Carnap is inconsistent in his definition of pragmatics, but one ofhis definitions remains influential:

If in an investigation explicit reference is made to thespeaker, or to put it in more general terms, to the users ofthe language, then we assign it to the field ofpragmatics.. . . If we abstract from the users of the languageand analyze only the expressions and their designata, we arein the field of semantics. And, finally, if we abstract fromthe designata also, we are in (logical) syntax.

This definition led to a narrowing of the scope of pragmatics inAnglo Saxon analytical philosophy.


Pragmatics as indexicality

I The idea that pragmatics was the study of those aspects oflanguage that required reference to users of language led to afurther natural restriction in philosophy.

I In particular, indexical or deictic words such as I and you,require such reference, and words such as here and now requirereference to speech time and speaker location.

I Such words are of logical and philosophical interest becausesentences containing them can violate generally valid schemes ofreasoning: I am Madonna. Madonna is a woman. Therefore I ama woman is valid only if in addition to the first two sentencesbeing true, we know that the speaker of the last sentence is thesame as the speaker of the first.

I Thus Bar-Hillel (1954) proposed identifying pragmatics withdeictical/indexical phenomena, and Richard Montague exploredthe idea in depth. . .


Richard Montague

Richard Merett Montague (1930 1971) was an Americanmathematician and philosopher. His Ph.D. dissertation, written underthe supervision of Alfred Tarski, contained the first proof that allpossible axiomatizations of the standard axiomatic set theory ZFCmust contain infinitely many axioms. He pioneered a logical approachto natural language semantics which became known as Montaguegrammar, and supervised the dissertation of Hans Kamp.


Montague’s approach

I Montague invented a number of second-order intensionallogics, showed that they could be successfully applied to awide variety of contextual inferences.

I So he solved his philosophical problems. But is this“reduction” interesting to linguistics? No. All naturallanguages have indexical terms, hence (as Gazdar once putit) identifying “pragmatics” with “indexicality” isessentially to eliminate semantics leaving only syntax andpragmatic.

I To put it another way, we might say that Montaguesuccessfully showed how to deal with a wide range ofcontextual phenomena in semantics. But this still leaves(as we shall see) the most interesting pragmatic phenomenauntouched. In short, his definition is too narrow.


The Big Four

I The turning point was the work of the British naturallanguage philosophy. It was analytical philosophy, butunlike the American tradition (best exemplified by Quine)it did not view natural language as something that neededlogical regimentation.

I Rather, it was sensitive to the vagaries of natural language,and this attitude led to key insights: Strawson revitalizedpresupposition theory, Austin and Searle created speechact theory, and Grice initiated the study of implicature —and arguably gave pragmatics one of its key foundationalconcepts, meaning-nn.


The Anglo Saxon tradition emerges

I Generative semanticists (such as Lakoff) in the 1960s, busyfighting the linguistics wars with Chomsky, foundsemantics (broadly construed) a key weapon in the battle.The insight of the big four were eagerly picked up on andeveloped.

I In time this tradition partly merged with Montague’ssemantic tradition, thereby gaining an undercurrent oftechnical sophistication which still exists.

I And then Levinson, put it all together, rounded it out, andnow it’s there . . .


Defining pragmatics

I It is difficult to define academic fields — and indeed it isarguable that having a definition of such a field is notparticularly useful.

I But the process of searching for a definition can beinteresting and revealing in its own right, especially for afield as nebulous as pragmatics which lives (somewhere) inthe neighbourhood of semantics and sociology.

I Levinson devotes a large part of Chapter 1 to examining(and rejecting) definitions of pragmatics. I won’t repeat hisjourney here, but will go straight for some of the key ideas.

I Perhaps the single most important idea is the important ofmeaning-nn


A bad definition

I A number of researchers used to view pragmatics asessentially the tool which fills the gap between Chomsky’snotion of competence and performance.

I That is, on this conception, linguistic theorizing providesthe abstract model of language competence, and the role ofpragmatics is simply to explain how speakers make use ofthis mechanism in the world.

I But this is a highly unsatisfactory definition of pragmatics,and it is important to understand why. . .


Why it is inadequate

I For a start (as we shall discuss later) the gap between anabstract model of grammar (even one including semantics) andreal world communication is vast.

I It also misses a crucial fact — often semantic interpretationcannot begin (or is rendered, more difficult) without pragmaticinput (for example, in determining contextual parameters).

I But it goes deeper than that; it is clear that pragmaticinformation is often grammaticalised. For example the pairsdog/doggy and rabbit/bunny internalize in the lexicon apragmatic distinction — in both cases the second item in thepair is used with or children.

I That is, the very notion of linguistic competence requiresknowledge of pragmatics. Pragmatics is not a performativeafterthought.


An aside

I Incidentally, some researchers have insisted on precisely thereverse definition — the domain of semantics is, or shouldbe, precisely those parts of language that have beeninternalized into the grammar!

I This is equally unsatisfactory. In misses out on theinteractive phenomena that seem to lie at the heart ofpragmatic inference.


A much better definition

Gazdar once wrote:

Pragmatics has as its topic those aspect of the meaningof utterances which cannot be accounted for bystraightforward reference to to the truth conditions ofthe sentence uttered. Put crudely: PRAGMATICS =MEANING – TRUTH-CONDITIONS

This is an interesting. Its strong point is that it emphasizesthat pragmatics is about “semantic excess”, the extra meaningsthat give rise to inference.


Two weak points

I But the definition needs strengthening in two respects.First, it is unclear what MEANING is; Gazdar is not veryexplicit on this subject. One of the most interestingtheoretical points of Levinson’s book is that he is: he offersGrice’s notion of meaning-nn as the missing piece.

I This is something of an aside, but I would like to add thatin my view Levinson is wrong to equate conventionalsemantic meaning with truth conditions, indeed wrong on anumber of levels. Cutting a long story short, I think weneed to substitute MODEL-THEORETIC-MEANING fortruth conditions. I don’t want to hammer this point intothe ground, but I will return to it briefly.

I Anyway, let’s take a closer look at these points. . .


Meaning-nnThe concept of non-natural meaning or meaning-nn can be defined asfollows:

S meant-nn z by uttering U if and only if:

1. S intended U to cause some effect z in recipient H2. S intended (1) to be achieved simply by H recognising

that intention (1).

That is, communication consists of the sender intending to cause thereceiver to think or do something, just by getting the receiver torecognise that the sender is trying to cause that thought or action.Simply put: meaning-nn is that which is intended to be recognised ashaving been intended.

That is, the sender’s communicative intention becomes mutualknowledge. Attaining this state of mutual knowledge constitutessuccessful communication.


Why is this important?

I For a start, because the idea applies to all communication,not just linguistic communication.

I More importantly, it shows how any behavior (and inparticular, regular linguistic behaviour) can be exploited toadd on a level of meaning.

I That is, it shows that there can be an excess of meaningover regular semantic meaning; the linguistic channel canbe exploited.

I Note: it is not about a convention — it is something farmore like a cognitive ability, and arguably a fundamentalone.


Speaker meaning versus sentence meaning

I To put it another way, it shows how there can beinteresting differences between speaker meaning andsentence meaning.

I For example, Linguistics is fascinating, said ironically, maymean that linguistics is boring.

I Note that it even opens the possibility of viewingpragmatics as prior to semantics — semantics, and indeed,other levels of language, are simply a (admittedly very richresource) that can be exploited in the way!


My preferred definition, version 1

And to come back to my objection to Levinson/Gazdar: I preferto substitute model theoretic meaning for truth conditions.

Pragmatics has as its topic those aspect of the meaningof utterances which cannot be accounted for bystraightforward reference to to the model theoreticmeaning of the sentence uttered. Put crudely:PRAGMATICS = MEANING-NN –MODEL-THEORETIC-MEANING

Model theoretic meaning need not, and generally is not, truthconditional. It encodes all our ontological assumptions, such asthe existence of abstract entities (possible worlds, pluralobjects, events, . . . ).


Why is this better?

I Some pragmatic phenomena seem to lie on one side oranother of the semantics/pragmatics. Deixis, for example,since the work of Montague, is pretty squarely onsemantics side. Conversational implicature, in contrast, ispretty squarely on the pragmatics side.

I But some pragmatical phenomena seem to lie smack on theborder between semantics/pragmatics.

I Presupposition is a key example. Arguable it has a largelysemantic component (resolution) and a largely pragmaticcomponent (accommodation). The interplay of these twoconcepts is precisely why presupposition is so fascinating.



Actually, my preferred definition can be made a little smoother.

Pragmatics has as its topic those aspect of the meaningof utterances which cannot be accounted for bystraightforward reference to to the model theoreticmeaning of the sentence uttered. Put crudely:PRAGMATICS = MEANING-NN –MODEL-THEORETIC-MEANING

That is what I gave before.



So let’s change it to this. . .

Pragmatics has as its topic those aspect of the meaningof utterances which cannot be accounted for bystraightforward reference to to the model theoreticmeaning of the sentence uttered. Put crudely:PRAGMATICS = MEANING-NN –NATURAL-LANGUAGE-METAPHYSICS

Here I use “natural language metaphysics” in the sense ofEmmon Bach. But this is an aside, and I will not explore itfurther here.


Current interest in Pragmatics

I Let’s turn to why pragmatics is found interesting.I We’ll look at a wide variety of reasons, some better than

others.I The reasons I find most interesting is the one I shall discuss

last, namely Levinson’s insistence on looking for functionalexplanations of face-to-face conversational interaction.

I As we’ll see, this raises a number of interesting issues,including a possible identification of the cognitive abilitiesunderlying pragmatic inference with the abilitiesunderlying real world actions.


Reaction to Chomsky

I One reason for the growth of interest in pragmatics ishistorical: it’s a reaction (or antidote) to Chomsky’streatment of language as an abstract device, or mentalability, dissociable from the uses, users, and functions oflanguage.

I As we’ve already mentioned, in looking for ways toundermine Chomsky’s position, the generative semanticistswere drawn to the the work of Austin, Strawson, Grice andSearle.

I Once the more general scope for linguistics that theseapproaches implied were established, pragmatics took on alife of its own.


Other levels need contextual concepts

I As knowledge of phonology, morphology, and syntax hasgrown, it has become clear that there are concepts whichcan only be naturally described by recourse to tocontextual concepts.

I For example, various syntactic rules, and matters ofintonation and stress, only seem to be properly constrainedif one refers to pragmatics conditions.

I The option of not referring to such conditions, andallowing unconstrained generation of unacceptablesentences, and relying on a pragmatic theories to later filterout such material means that the relationship betweenperformance and competence becomes highly abstract andunconstrained. Allowing interaction seems bettermotivated.


New phenomena

I Perhaps the simplest motivation for interest in pragmaticsis simply the fact that developments in semantics showthat there seem to be a host of semantically intractablephenomena.

I For example, presupposition, speech acts, and coping withdiscourse particles seem to requires pragmatic ideas. At thevery least they have inspired radically new semanticmethods, such as DRT and Dynamic Semantics.

I And work on the nature of the lexicon (such as “what is apossible” lexical?) item has made it clear that pragmaticinformation is required to answer such questions.


Radical simplification of semantics

I In addition to explaining particular phenomena involvingmeaning, pragmatics seems to hold out the prospect ofradically simplifying the task of the semanticist.

I The hope is that pragmatic principles can be shown to“read in” to utterances more than they they conventionallyor literally mean.

I That is, it is hoped that pragmatics will allow thesemanticist to avoid postulating massive semanticambiguity. Let’s take a closer look. . .


Example: what does Some mean?

I Seems natural to say that the quantifier some in Some tencent pieces are rejected by this vending machine meanssome but not all.

I But if we can’t get the machine to accept any ten centcoins, we might say Some, and perhaps all, ten cent piecesare rejected by this vending machine. And this would notbe a contradictory thing to say.

I So: must a semanticists postulate that some is ambiguous?That is, does it have both a some but not all and a someand perhaps all reading?

I It turns out that we can simply semantically interpret someby the existential quantifier ∃ (some and perhaps all) andrely on general pragmatic principles to “read in” the otherpossibility.




















From linguistic theory to communication

I There is a substantial gap between linguistic theories oflanguage and accounts of linguistic communication.

I When linguists talk of of the goals of linguistic theory asbeing the construction of an account of the sound-meaningcorrespondence for the infinite set of sentences in anylanguage, you might expect that this theory would give usthe essentials of a theory of communication.

I But this is far from clear. Phenomena such as hints,implicit purposes, assumptions, social attitudes that areeffectively communicated by language, and the usesmetaphor, irony, rhetorical questions, and understatementseem to go way beyond standard semantic output.


Example (I)

A: I could eat the whole of that cake implication: I complimentyou on that cake

B: Oh thanks

A: Do you have coffee to go? implication: Sell me a coffee to goif you can

B: Cream and sugar? (Starts to pour)


Example (I)

A: I could eat the whole of that cakeImplication: I compliment you on that cake

B: Oh thanks

A: Do you have coffee to go?implication: Sell me a coffee to go if you can

B: Cream and sugar? (Starts to pour)


Example (II)

Moreover, the location of a verbal event in a specific kind ofactivity seems to warrant specific inference. For example,consider the following exchange made at the start of atelephone conversation:

Caller: ((Rings))

Receiver: Hello

Caller: Hello implication: I know who you are, and you can tellfrom my voice who I am

Caller: Oh hi implication: Yes, I know who you are


Example (II)

Moreover, the location of a verbal event in a specific kind ofactivity seems to warrant specific inference. For example,consider the following exchange made at the start of atelephone conversation:

Caller: ((Rings))

Receiver: Hello

Caller: HelloImplication: I know who you are, and you can tell from myvoice who I am

Caller: Oh hiImplication: Yes, I know who you are


Towards functional explanations

I Pragmatics also offers the possibility of significantfunctionalist explanations for linguistic facts.

I That is, instead of explaining facts of linguistics byreference to other linguistic facts (something typical of theChomskyan tradition) perhaps we can explain significantportions of linguistic data by appealing to non-linguisticfacts.

I Some languages have elaborate ways of referring ofencoding relative social status; a functional explanation interms of universal principles of social organisation seemscalled for. Politeness theory.

I And perhaps syntactic construction such as topicalisationand passivisation can be explained by appeal to pragmaticaccounts in terms of foregrounding and backgrounding.


How could this be done?

I Might turn to traditional accounts of functions of speech:e.g. referential, emotive, conative (speaker’s wishes),metalinguistic, phatic (establishment and maintenance ofcontact) and poetic (how the message is encode).Questionable, however, whether such traditional schemesare really of interest to pragmatists.

I Another way might be empirical: look at the languages ofthe world to establish the perimeters. Much of the datainteresting, indeed (to Europeans) exotic. For examplepronouns in Australian languages which take differentforms depending on kinship relations: you-in-same-moiety(kinship division) you-in-different-moiety. This work, ifseriously done, could take us well beyond traditionalapproaches.


But why not think dynamically?

I Interesting as this is, Levinson suggest there is a moreexciting possibility: instead of cataloging static features, godirectly to to the most important aspect of dynamiclanguage use, namely face-to-face conversation.

I The centrality of such interaction hardly needs to bestressed: it is the context for language acquisition, anduntil recently (in historical terms) it was the only kind oflanguage use that existed.

I But how could such an investigation be done? Levinsonsuggests there are two main possibilities analysis bysynthesis and empirical analysis.


Empirical approaches

I In fact, one of the most interesting development inLevinson’s book was how seriously he took this possibility.

I The longest chapter of the book is devoted toconversational analysis, an approach which comes toethnomethodolgy (members of society must have someshared methods that they use to mutually construct themeaningful orderliness of social situations).

I This approach uses approaches alien to traditionallingusitics but which reveal the intricate and delicatenature of conversation.

I Was also prescient in it’s advocacy of empirical methods.I But Levinson’s other suggestion has perhaps proved even

more interesting. . .


Analysis by synthesis

I Levinson views this as an interesting possibility: why notanalyse what is involved in interaction?

I That is, why not build and experiment with, models of thephenomenon of interest?

I Interaction, in the abstract sense intended here, can beunderstood as the sustained production of chains ofmutually dependent acts, constructed by two or moreagents each monitoring and building on the actions of theother.

I He argues that Goffman’s distinction betweensystems-constraints and ritual-constraints may be useful


Example

I Suppose we had the task of programming two robots sothat they could systematically help each other in a range oftasks.

I First question to ask is: what are the system constraints?I That is, what are the ingredients that are essential to

maintaining this kind of interaction (over and above theability to perform the required tasks).

I One quickly comes up with six desiderata . . .


Example (continued)

I Mutually oriented; aware of what other doing. deixisI Aware of interactional domain, and how it changed.

possibilities. presuppositionI Capable of producing acts conditional on other producing

acts. implicatureI Specific relation between goals. For example, cooperative

versus antagonistic. speech actsI Rational; effective means-end reasoning, or planning. Basic

assumptionI Know that the other had these properties. Basic

assumption

That is, perhaps pragmatics reflects same cognitive abilities asreal life actions


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Ritual constraints

I The system constraints need to be augmented with ritualconstraints; these are the social and societal constraints oninteraction.

I Among these are constraints on social decorum, on specificinteractional events, or specific kinds of cultural events.

I It might be thought that the cultural variability eliminatedall that might be useful to pragmatics.

I This is not the case. Clear cross cultural constraints onpolite behaviour.

I In fact, Brown and Levinson’s approach to politeness takesthe Gricean Maxims as its systems theory, and then showshow a general theory of face saving between agents handlesthe ritual constraints.


Bearing fruit

I When Levinson proposes the idea of analysis by synthesis,he viewed it pretty much as an interesting but largelyunexplored idea.

I But this idea lies at the heart of much recentcomputational modelling — for example, work onenlightened update, Benotti’s FROLOG system, . . .

I Moreover, underlies much current psychological work onlanguage (for example Herbert Clark).


Computing context: an example

I Our previous discussion has been rather abstract.I To conclude, we shall look at the kinds of inferences that

can be found in a simple (three sentence, two participant)interaction.

I Hopefully this will make some of the general themesdiscussed this week more concrete, and will also prepare forthe next session’s discussion of Grice’s theory ofconversational implicature.



(i) A: So can you please come over here again right now?(ii) B: Well, I have to go to Edinburgh today sir.(iii) B: Hmmm. How about this Thursday?

In the following slides we shall study (some of) the inferencesthat can be drawn form this little dialogue, and their source.

Incidentally, Levinson also remarks that while A and B may notactually compute all the inferences we shall discuss, in order forthe dialogue to make sense, we must assume they are able to.That is, we shall be discussing what the speakers presume tohold about this conversation — and speakers may be expectedto correct errors in such presumptions.




It is not the end of the conversation, nor the beginning.

I First, (iii) does not end the conversation because it demands aresponse form B. We have strong expectations aboutconversation structure, and it is clear that neither A not B wouldregard (iii) as the natural close of the conversation.

I Moreover, (iii) is not a conventional closing form. And indeed,the So in (i) explicitly shows it is not the opening (thoughpresumably A and B know this; they don’t need to presume it).




















Computing context: an example(i) A: So can you please come over here again right now?(ii) B: Well, I have to go to Edinburgh today sir.(iii) B: Hmmm. How about this Thursday?

With (i), A is requesting B to come to A at or soon after the time ofspeaking.

I The temporal and locative inferences are easily explained by thewords here and now.

I But how do we know that item (i) is a request? The fact that itis an interrogative doesn’t give us this. Viewed simply as aquestion, an adequate response would be say a “yes”. But if Bresponded yes and did not come, B would be beinguncooperative. Thus request are attempts to elicit not merely anappropriate verbal response, but also appropriate accompanyingbehaviour.

I B’s clue that this is what A wants is the word please.



























With (ii), B implies that he can’t (or would rather not) comply.

I This inference is not obvious. Note that there is no overtrelation between the semantic content of (ii) and its function.

I Rather (as we shall we see next session) the inference depends ona general expectation of interactional co-operation. Thusassumption is so strong, so that even when an utterance seemssemantically irrelevant we seek to interpret it cooperatively.

I Given that A and B are far from Edinburgh (and that they bothknow this), B is indirectly giving a reason why he can’t meet A.

I The particle Well serves as a warning that inference is going tobe called for.






































With (iii), A repeats his request for another time.

I This is not an obvious inference either. It depends on tow facts.The first is that the form how about VERBing is more or lessrestricted to usage in suggestions. So A is suggesting somethingfor Thursday. But what?

I Seeing what A is suggesting for Thursday again requires theassumption of interactional co-operation. A seems to beexploiting an assumption of topical coherence: utterance (ii) canbe ‘heard’ as being about the same topic as (i).

I The particle Hmmm serves as a way of “holding the turn”,insisting that the the previous round of exchange was notcompletely satisfactory to A.



























A assumes B knows where A is; A and B are not in the sameplace; neither A nor B are in Edinburgh; A thinks B has beento A’s place before.

I This is easier to account for. By using the deictic particle here,which denotes the speaker location, A must believe that B knowsor can find out A’s location — for if not, A would be violatingco-operativity.

I The word come indicates that they are not in the same place.The word go indicates that they are not in Edinburgh.

I The use of the word again, a presupposition trigger, licenses the(pragmatic) that a visit of B to A has happened before.




























The day on which the exchange takes place is not Thursday, norWednesday (or at least so A believes). .

I The utterance to Thursday is being used in a deictic way; itrefers to the Thursday of this week. But by convention thiscannot be done on that same Thursday.

I Not can it be Wednesday, as then cooperative speakers would beexpected to say tomorrow.






















A is male (at least so B believes); A is acknowledge by B tohave higher social status that B (or to be playing the role of B’ssuperior).

I The word sir justifies both inferences.

I Note that, intuitively, sir adds nothing to the semantic contentof the utterance; it is more like a background assumption. Forexample, we would not say that B’s assertion (that he was goingto Edinburgh) was wrong if A turned out to be a woman.




















Conclusion

I Pragmatics is a field of study lying somewhere betweensemantics and sociolinguistics that impinges on many levelsof language.

I Arguably, the cognitive abilities it makes use of arefundamental to meaning; Grice’s theory of meaning nn isthe clue here.

I Pragmatics and inference are two closely linked words. Soare pragmatics and context. But what links these pairs?

I Here Levinson’s links between real world actions andpragmatic influence are highly suggestive. Perhaps we havethis three way linkage because pragmatics is the projectionof the cognitive abilities underlying actions in the realworld into the the space of language and linguistics.


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Documents

The Scope of Pragmatics Patrick Blackburn