Volume 4, Issue 4

This paper proposes a new analysis of indirect speech in the framework of game theory, social psychology, and evolutionary psychology. It builds on the theory of Grice, which tries to ground indirect speech in pure rationality (the demands of efficient communication between two cooperating agents) and on the Politeness Theory of Brown and Levinson, who proposed that people cooperate not just in exchanging data but in saving face (both the speaker's and the hearer's). I suggest that these theories need to be supplemented because they assume that people in conversation always cooperate. A reflection on how a pair of talkers may have goals that conflict as well as coincide requires an examination of the game-theoretic logic of plausible denial, both in legal contexts, where people's words may be held against them, and in everyday life, where the sanctions are social rather than judicial. This in turn requires a theory of the distinct kinds of relationships that make up human social life, a consideration of a new role for common knowledge in the use of indirect speech, and ultimately the paradox of rational ignorance, where we choose not to know something relevant to our interests.

This paper appraises Brown & Levinson (1987 [1978]) from a utilitarian perspective. Rather than assess the veracity, validity, or applicability of their model as a whole, or its relevance to politeness, it identifies and examines several of the claims contained in the model individually, to see which ones can help to illuminate interaction across cultures. Its main contention is that the concepts of positive face(work) and negative face(work) are particularly useful in this context, being applicable to a wider range of interactive moves than the model in which B&L cage them allows. (By way of example, one such interactive move is analyzed in detail.) This potential, however, only becomes clear when (1) these concepts are freed from the constraints of the B&L model as a whole, (2) they are defined in a manner which returns to the original inspiration for the positive-negative opposition and (3) it is understood that this opposition is just one among many aspects of face, so that it is not made to do too much, inappropriate, work. (Examples of these limits are also discussed.)

The communicative act of non-acceptance expresses the speaker's intention to deny, reject or disagree with a communicative act. Regarding its sequential status, a non-acceptance is a responsive act par excellence, and from an interpersonal perspective it can be assigned the status of a face-threatening act. While its responsive format does not seem to cause any severe communicative problems in intercultural communication, its face-threatening potential makes it a prime candidate for intercultural miscommunication. The goal of this paper is to systematize the contextual constraints and requirements of a non-acceptance in a dialogue frame of reference based on the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim (Fetzer 2002, 2004), which is anchored to the Gricean cooperative principle (Grice 1975), Habermas' theory of communicative action (Habermas 1987), and Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987). The pragmatic premises of intentionality, rationality, and cooperation are supplemented by the interactional-sociolinguistic universal of contextualization (Gumperz 1996). The dialogue framework allows for a comprehensive examination of culture-preferential modes for the realization and contextualization of nonacceptances and possible perlocutionary effects, illustrated by excerpts from German, British and intercultural German-British political discourse.

Jackendoff's rejoinder to my response to his comments on NSM in Intercultural Pragmatics 4(3) is entitled “Conceptual semantics and natural semantic metalanguage theory have different goals.” The second paragraph of his article goes a little further: “The two theories, although they overlap on some issues of word meaning, are ultimately asking different questions and setting different standards for answers.” Here, the hint appears to be that when the questions overlap, Jackendoff's “Conceptual Semantics” (which, he says, is embedded in the broader theory of “Parallel Architecture”) sets higher standards for answers than the NSM theory does.

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to N. J. (Nick) Enfield's review of the Ethnopragmatics volume, recently published in this journal. Although the review begins with some welcome positive statements, the tone soon shifts and the approach to cross-linguistic semantics which underlies the project (the NSM approach, which will be well familiar to readers of this journal) is presented by turn as unreasonably critical of other work, narrowly focused on lexical semantics, and uninterested in the big issues. Moreover, Enfield makes no attempt to give a realistic picture of the book as a whole. He spends most of his time objecting to the introduction (“Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm”), while his content summary of the seven following chapters runs to six lines in total.

Sampson, Geoffrey. 2005. The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate. Revised edition. With a foreword by Paul M. Postal. London/New York: Continuum. Reviewed by Enrique Bernárdez Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain