Revisiting the typology of pragmatic interpretations
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Mira Ariel
Mira Ariel is Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University. Her main interest is the semantics-pragmatics interface. She is the author of
Accessing noun phrase antecedents (Routledge, 1990),Pragmatics and grammar (Cambridge University Press, 2008), andDefining pragmatics (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her recent projects on scalar quantifiersand argue for a usage-based analysis instead of a logic-based one.and or
Abstract
Pragmatic inferences are essential to understanding speakers’ communicative intentions. I here revisit the typology of pragmatic inferences and minimally revise it by incorporating into it additional distinctions. Inspired by Recanati’s (1991 [1989]) availability principle, I develop Bach’s (1994b) indirect-quote test into a battery of faithful-report tests, distinguishing between inferences on discoursal grounds. The result is that what were initially analyzed as conversational implicatures by Grice are split not only into the relevance-theoretic (Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]) explicated and implicated inferences but also into strong implicatures, background assumptions (Searle 1978), and truth-compatible inferences (Ariel 2004). In addition, Grice’s (1989) “as if to say” representations, which I define as provisional explicatures, are restricted to what I term two-tier uses (as in ironic and playful uses, but not in “normal” nonliterality cases).
About the author
Mira Ariel is Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University. Her main interest is the semantics-pragmatics interface. She is the author of Accessing noun phrase antecedents (Routledge, 1990), Pragmatics and grammar (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and Defining pragmatics (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her recent projects on scalar quantifiers and and or argue for a usage-based analysis instead of a logic-based one.
Appendix: Explicated single-tier nonliterality
Just like two-tier uses, metaphors also involve a nonliteral interpretation. Indeed, for Grice, the literal meanings of metaphorical utterances are cases of “as if to say,” just because they cannot be speaker meant. Nonetheless, I do not consider utterances containing (nonextended) metaphors as two-tier uses. According to Recanati (1995), although metaphorical constituents do have literal meanings, which are accessed before their nonliteral meanings, the sentence as a whole does not receive a unified representation where all of its constituents are interpreted literally (see also Carston 1988: 57, 72). Recanati argues that there may very well be a decision to reject the literal meaning of one constituent in favor of a nonliteral interpretation, before the complete literal meaning of the sentence as a whole has been computed. Thus, the literal meaning of the part (e. g., a metaphor) may not play a role in the literal interpretation of the whole proposition. Indeed, typically, it is the nonliteral that is explicated. In fact, Grice (1989: 54) too notes a difference between metaphors and ironies in that speakers can announce ahead of time that they are making a metaphorical use, but this is not the case for ironies, where the effect would be spoiled. Indeed, the special effect depends on the addressee processing the first tier as potentially explicated.
Here is a relevant case, where Joan of Arc is integrated into the explicature, contributing something like “brave fighters” (note the explicated plural, missing from the literal meaning):
The expectation that women, who are violence victims, will suddenly turn intoJoan of Arcand come forward to testify and put their brothers in jail is unreasonable. (Hebrew version)
Metaphorical and hyperbolic interpretations are often locally adjusted then. The incongruence is encountered during the online construction of the compositional meaning, and no explicated layer is created that incorporates the unadjusted literal meaning. Rather, as argued in Carston (2002), Sperber and Wilson (2008), and Wilson and Carston (2006), metaphors are quite similar to nonfigurative loose uses, which require a contextual adjustment of the lexical item. Consider the hyperboles in (2a), which are most likely explicated, as in (2b):
Women are murderedrepeatedlyhere andnobodycares. (English version)
‘Women are murdered much too often here, and most of the people in power don’t care.’
Metonymies are similarly locally resolved, so they do not count as two-tier uses. Consider the original built-in application of the that-is test in the following case of metonymy (not taken from the newspaper article discussed here throughout):
In your economic world, what makes you angry? What is the one thing that frustrates you most? Some will point to Milky, that is (to say), the prices of food. (Originally Hebrew; The Marker, 4 December 2014)
Milky, a specific Israeli yogurt that, it was discovered, costs less in Berlin than in Israel (where it is produced), was the focus of protests against the unreasonably high food prices in Israel. This is why Milky can stand for ‘the (high) price of food in Israel’. Crucially, as we see in (3), the speaker can explicate the intended meaning when she uses a metonym. The same is true for metaphor and hyperbole, which is why the following is a faithful report of (2a):
That-is test: The speaker said that women are repeatedly murdered here, that is (to say), much too often, and nobody cares, that is (to say), most of the people in power don’t care.
Two-tier uses as in ironies (playful talk and optimal innovations) pattern quite differently. The two relevant readings are not reconcilable into a single explicature, as they are in (local) metaphoric and hyperbolic cases. This is why I analyze them as two-tier uses where the first tier is a provisional explicature and the second a strong implicature. The tests proposed above testify to the differential discourse status carried by explicatures, provisional explicatures, and strong implicatures.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my two anonymous referees, as well as to the editor, for their valuable criticisms and suggestions. The research here reported was supported by ISF 431/15. I dedicate this paper to the Abu Ghanem women, who live and die with their enemies, in the hope that the brave woman who finally did come forward and testify against the murder suspects (Abu Ghanem’s husband, her ex-husband, and his brother) will live to see a world in which such murders no longer take place.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Revisiting the typology of pragmatic interpretations
- Internal e-mail communication in the workplace: Is there an “East-West divide”?
- The negotiation of discourse relations in context: Co-constructing degrees of overtness
- Forum
- Topics in the linguistics of lying: A reply to Marta Dynel
- Book Reviews
- Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen: English historical pragmatics
- Kasia M. Jaszczolt and Louis de Saussure: Time: Language, cognition and reality
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Revisiting the typology of pragmatic interpretations
- Internal e-mail communication in the workplace: Is there an “East-West divide”?
- The negotiation of discourse relations in context: Co-constructing degrees of overtness
- Forum
- Topics in the linguistics of lying: A reply to Marta Dynel
- Book Reviews
- Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen: English historical pragmatics
- Kasia M. Jaszczolt and Louis de Saussure: Time: Language, cognition and reality
