Rationality, Cooperation and Conversational Implicature

Conversational implicatures are usually described as being licensed by the disobeying or flouting of a Principle of Cooperation. However, the specification of this principle has proved computationally elusive. In this paper we suggest that a more useful concept is rationality. Such a concept can be specified explicitely in planning terms and we argue that speakers perform utterances as part of the optimal plan for their particular communicative goals. Such an assumption can be used by the hearer to infer conversational implicatures implicit in the speaker's utterance.Comment: Presented at the Ninth Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence (1997

Kinds of conversational cooperation

The Cooperative Principle was the organizing principle in Grice’s pragmatics. More recently, cooperation has played a reduced role in pragmatic theory. The principle has been attacked on the grounds that people are not always or generally cooperative. One response to that objection is to say that there are two kinds of cooperation and Grice’s principle only applies to the narrower kind, which concerns linguistic or formal cooperation. I argue that such a distinction is only defensible if it is accepted that linguistic cooperation can be determined by an extra-linguistic goal. To make distinctions among types of cooperation is helpful but this strategy does not remove all concerns about speakers who are not fully cooperative and in particular the operation of the principle needs to be qualified in situations of conflict of interest. I propose that the principle, once qualified, can have a significant continuing role in pragmatic theory

Assertion, Lying, and Untruthfully Implicating

This chapter explores the prospects for justifying the somewhat widespread, somewhat firmly held sense that there is some moral advantage to untruthfully implicating over lying. I call this the "Difference Intuition." I define lying in terms of asserting, but remain open about what precise definition best captures our ordinary notion. I define implicating as one way of meaning something without asserting it. I narrow down the kind of untruthful implicating that should be compared with lying for purposes of evaluating whether there is a moral difference between them. Just as lying requires a robust form of assertion, so the kind of untruthful implicating to be compared with lying requires a robust form of implicating. Next, I set out various ways of sharpening the Difference Intuition and survey a range of approaches to justifying one class of sharpenings. I finish by sketching an approach to justifying an alternative sharpening of the Difference Intuition, which is inspired by John Stuart Mill's discussion of lying

A Conversational Implicature Analysis on the Split Movie

Every conversation made between two parties or more must have arisen from specific contextual matters. Effort has become the case in achieving the wanted contextual rationality from the carried-out conversation which is connected to people’s strong will in creating ways to overcome the problem. In many attempts, movies, as a visual communication tool, have been used many times as a depiction of how real-life conversations are performed. Hence, this study which uses a descriptive qualitative method aims to investigate the use of maxim violation, maxim opt out, the types of conversational implicature, and their meaning of occurrence in the Split (2016) movie. To analyze the data, Grice’s (1975) theory on Conversational Implicatures and Yule’s (1996) theory on Cooperation and Implicature were used as the main theoretical frameworks. The data were taken from the movie script downloaded from the Scripts.com website while the movie was downloaded from the streaming-service platform, YouTube Movies. This study discovered that the violation of the maxim of manner, opt out of the maxim of quantity and quality, and particularized conversational implicature to be the mostly used ones in the conversations of the Split movie’s characters. The high occurrence of those implicatures demonstrates its purpose which is to make meaning of the characterization of the characters as their personalities and intentions are revealed. In line with the psychological feature that the movie as the data has, the findings also participate in the idea of people’s capability in interpreting the characteristic of others to be easily done

Lexical Pragmatics : Relevance Theory and Generalized Conversational Implicatures

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The universal pragmatic principle of cooperation in the light of empathic communication

The article focuses on the realization of the universal pragmatic Principle of Cooperation in modern English discourse. This subject is relevant in the context of the growing interest in the pragmatic aspects of empathic communication. The Gricean paradigm of Cooperation was analyzed through the exploitation mechanism on the material from modern English literary and political discourses. The research has proved that to provide empathic communication the Cooperation maxims ideally work as follows: to achieve a coordinated interaction an interlocutor should try to make his/her conversational contribution truthful (the maxim of QUALITY), as informative as it is required (the maxim of QUANTITY), relevant (the maxim of RELATION), brief and orderly (the maxim of MANNER). The relation of reciprocal determination is established among the postulates of the Cooperative maxims with the further dominance of several of them in determining the direction of a communicative act to its goal (mutual understanding and empathy through the least cost spent). To achieve empathic communication the speaker can: 1) adhere to a certain postulate; 2) avoid it in some way; 3) consciously violate a postulate, exploiting its absence according to the chosen tactics of the discursive act conduct, which generates speech implicatures.Статья посвящена реализации универсального прагматического «принципа кооперации» в современном английском дискурсе. Эта тема актуальна в контексте растущего интереса к прагматическим аспектам эмпатического общения. Проанализировано использование парадигмы кооперации Грайса на материале литературного и политического дискурсов.Стаття присвячена реалізації універсального прагматичного «принципу кооперації» в сучасному англомовному дискурсі. Ця тема актуальна в контексті підвищеної зацікавленості прагматичними аспектами емпатійного спілкування. Проаналізовано використання парадигми кооперації Грайса на матеріалі літературного та політичного дискурсів

Theory of mind in utterance interpretation: the case from clinical pragmatics

The cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is an area that continues to provoke intense theoretical debate among pragmatists. That utterance interpretation involves some type of mind-reading or theory of mind (ToM) is indisputable. However, theorists are divided on the exact nature of this ToM-based mechanism. In this paper, it is argued that the only type of ToM-based mechanism that can adequately represent the cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is one which reflects the rational, intentional, holistic character of interpretation. Such a ToM-based mechanism is supported on conceptual and empirical grounds. Empirical support for this view derives from the study of children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Specifically, three types of clinical case are considered. In the first case, evidence is advanced which indicates that individuals with pragmatic disorders exhibit deficits in reasoning and the use of inferences. These deficits compromise the ability of children and adults with pragmatic disorders to comply with the rational dimension of utterance interpretation

On the Philosophical Preconditions for Visual Arguments

The question is what are the preconditions for being able to rephrase visual objects in propositional form and consequently in argumentational terms. The idea is to identify the fundamentals of a linguistic-semiotic analysis of visual objects, which rest on philosophical notions in logic, linguistics and aesthetics