Beyond Meaning

Despite the fact that they are often crucial to our understanding, the vague, ineffable elements of language use and communication have received much less attention from linguists than the more concrete, effable ones. This has left a range of important questions unanswered. How might we account for the communication of non-propositional phenomena such as moods, emotions and impressions? What type of cognitive response do these phenomena trigger, if not conceptual or propositional? Do creative metaphors and unknown words in second languages and other ‘pointers’ to ‘conceptual regions’ communicate concepts learned from language alone? How might the descriptive ineffability of interjections, free indirect speech etc. be accommodated within a theory of communication? What of those working on the aesthetics of artworks, music and literature? What can evolution tell us about ineffability? The papers in this volume address these fascinating questions head-on. They represent a range of different attempts to answer them and, in so doing, allow us to pose exciting new questions. The aim, to bring the ineffable firmly within the grasp of theoretical pragmatics.

Anaïs Augé, University of Lorraine, on Linguist List 33.3703 (2 December 2022).:
This volume offers an original view on pragmatic theories applied to cases where language cannot account for one’s experiences of the world. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars studying the vagueness and ambiguity associated with language and communication (e.g., metaphor scholars, psycholinguists, scholars interested in pragmatic implications and cognitive effects). [...] The volume would be of interest to scholars who want to learn about approaches that can be adopted in linguistic research where the focus is on instances of meaning that cannot be explained, paraphrased, or explicitly inferred and decoded. [...] I acknowledge the editors’ and contributors’ remarkable work in addressing such a complex topic (i.e., writing about what cannot be expressed). From a general viewpoint, the provided examples and illustrations are highly convincing and helpful to reflect on the phenomena described in each of the contributions.