What's wrong with Gricean pragmatics (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Critique of H. P. Grice's Pragmatic Theory
Pragmatic theories are either classical (e.g. those of Austin 1962, Searle 1969, Bach and Harnish 1979) or contemporary (e.g. those of Adegbija 1982 and Mey 2000). The contributions of Hubert Paul Grice to the literature of pragmatics remain epoch-making. This explains why most contemporary pragmatic theories make reference to Grice"s Cooperative Principle of Conversation; hence, they are said to be neo-Gricean. In this paper, we investigate, locate and situate the place of Grice"s pragmatic theories via a critique which hinges on the Pragma-crafting Theory. Conclusively, a major finding of this paper is that Grice"s Cooperative Principle is indeed, not an attempt to legislate "what" and "how" human interaction should operate, but an attempt to elucidate "what" makes human interactions violate the basic principles of natural communication and "how" such violations produce meanings that can always be calculated or worked out.
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2000
In his book and article Cognitive Pragmatics, Bruno Bara presents a "unified" theoretical account of the mental processes involved in communication (Bara 2010,2011). Through its inclusion of different strands of research, this account is broader than that advanced by any of its predecessors (e.g. Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory 1995 [1986]). In this way, the centrality of behavior games-a notion that echoes Wittgenstein's concept of a language gamebrings a much-needed social dimension to a cognitive explanation of communicative processes. The emphasis on the validation of key claims through the study of how pragmatic skills develop in children and become disrupted through disease and injury places the somewhat neglected areas of developmental pragmatics and clinical pragmatics, respectively, at the center of theoretical work in pragmatics. The use of modern brain imaging techniques (e.g., fMRI) to establish the neural correlates of communicative processes introduces the nascent discipline of neuropragmatics into pragmatic theorizing. As this list demonstrates (and it is not an exhaustive list by any means), there is plenty to engage the reader in Bara's cognitive pragmatics. The issues I want to address are the role of theorizing in pragmatics and whether a "theory" of the mental processes involved in communication is even intelligible. To this extent, while applying to Bara's proposals, my comments are also relevant to theory construction more widely in pragmatics.
(Re)Visiting Pragmatics Through the Lenses Of Communication Skills
International Journal of Languages' Education, 2017
The studies conducted on pragmatics suggest that defining the borderline of pragmatics has always been a challenging task for scholars. Demarcating the definition of the term itself only to 'the study of the relation of signs' to interpreters has proved ineffective in interpreting the term from a wide variety of perspectives. On the other hand, removing the boundaries leads to varying interpretations on pragmatics. As a subfield of linguistics and somewhat semiotics, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener but also on the context of the speech, the pre-existing knowledge and the values of receiver and sender as well as the implicit or explicit intent of the speaker among many other factors. Accordingly, this paper firstly attempts to identify and demarcate the borderlines of pragmatics. Secondly, it attempts to uncover the semantic pace of discourse that is a closely knitted term with pragmatics. Thirdly, it analyses pragmatics in terms of aforementioned communication skills through a wide range of examples by considering the principles of George Yule (1986), which are narrated and exemplified in his notable work entitled Pragmatics, particularly in interpreting the 'use of language' concerning speech acts and events; the 'change of language' concerning cooperation and implicature, and 'following rules in language' concerning politeness and interaction.
Philosophical Insights into Pragmatics
2019
I return to Davidson's "anti-conventionalism" papers to assess his famous arguments against the sufficiency and necessity of conventions for successful linguistic communication. Davidson goes beyond the common contention that the basic conventional layer of meaning, one that is secured by interlocutors' shared competence in their common language, must often be supplemented in rich and inventive ways. First, he maintains that linguistic understanding is never exclusively a matter of mere decoding, but always an interpretative task that demands constant additional attention to the indeterminately various cues and clues available. More radically still, Davidson denies that linguistic conventions are even needed. In particular, he argues against the fairly consensual thesis there is some essential element of conventionality in literal meaning. This still represents a very distinctive contribution to the persistent and tumultuous discussion over the relative natures and limits of semantics and pragmatics. I maintain that Davidson is only partially right in his claims. I agree with him about the general insufficiency of conventions for linguistic communication. I develop an argument supporting the thesis that genuine pursuit of linguistic understanding can never take the form of uncritical conformity to a fixed norm. I am also convinced that Davidson is right about the occasional dispensability of conventions. Often enough, as Davidson's examples show, literal meanings are improvised on the go-that is, interlocutors manage to coordinate on the meaning of some exchanged expression without the benefit of a shared convention governing that use. I reject, however, general non-necessity. I consider in some detail Davidson's argument from radical interpretation and conclude that it fails.
Pragmatics, Discourse, and Cognition
2013
While the field of pragmatics includes a great variety of approaches to language use, most pragmatic research can be related to two fairly broad traditions and one recent development : linguistic-philosophical pragmatics (or so-called Anglo-American pragmatics), sociocultural-interactional pragmatics (or so-called European-Continental pragmatics) and intercultural pragmatics. Linguistic-philosophical pragmatics seeks to investigate speaker meaning within an utterance-based framework focusing mainly on linguistic constraints on language use. Sociocultural interactional pragmatics maintains that pragmatics should include research into social and cultural constraints on language use as well. The link between classical philosophically-oriented pragmatics and research in intercultural and inter-language communication has led to the development of intercultural pragmatics, focusing on the roles and functions of language and communication within a world-wide communication network. Intercul...
Pragmatics and Theory of Mind: A Problem Exportable to the Origins of Language
The Evolution of Language, 2008
According Pragmatics, the speaker's intention in the declarative speech is to complete or correct the hearer's belief. But the age in which children begin to produce this type of communication is prior to their success in the 'false belief' test. Here, after proposing a solution to the problem's hard version-i.e., to early declarative replies-, I will pose it at the level of language origin. A threat of vicious circle and a basic dilemma will be encountered.