Pragmatic inference and argumentation in intercultural communication

Abstract

The paper addresses intercultural variability in argumentation, and, more specifically, the variation in the judgments concerning the reasonableness of arguments across cultures. Such variability represents a key issue in intercultural communication, and, at the same time, has been taken as an argument for logical relativism. A brief review of the contrastive discourse analysis literature, and, in particular, of the Contrastive Rhetoric tradition, shows that there is considerable vagueness with respect to whether cultural variation in argumentation concerns the logic proper or other levels of discourse organization. The paper argues that a conceptual framework based on argumentation theory and inferential pragmatics allows for the identification of two likely sites for cross-cultural variability of pragmatic, extra-logical, origin: (1) the reliance of natural enthymematic argument on the recovery of implicit premises from a common ground of culturally shared assumptions (endoxa); and (2) the functioning of the dialogue games in which argumentation appears and their embedding in culturally specific social contexts. In order to account for (1), in particular, a model of the interplay between argumentation and inference is presented, which introduces a key distinction between pragmatic (communicative) inferences and argumentative (commmunicated) inferences.