Rethinking Implicatures

This paper advances the following criticisms against the received view of implicatures: (1) implicatures are relations of pragmatic implication and not attempts to convey particular speaker meanings; (2) conversational implicatures are non-cancellable; (3) generalised conversational implicatures and conventional implicatures are necessary to preserve the cooperative assumption by means of a conversational maxim of conveyability; (4) implicatures should be divided in utterance implicatures and assumption implicatures, not speaker implicatures and sentence implicatures; (5) trivial implicatures are genuine implicatures; (6) Grice’s theory of conversation cannot explain most of his own examples of particularised conversational implicatures; (7) the apparent attempts of explicit cancellation of implicatures are apologies, not attempts to avoid misunderstandings

"Implicature-Laden" Elicitations in Talk Radio Shows

Indirect elicitations in talk radio programmes on BBC Radio are not uncommon, notwithstanding, misunderstanding between the host and his conversational partner is not frequent. Investigating some of the reasons this paper focuses on how the socio-cultural and cognitive factors of the context interweave in discourse. The author suggests that valid interpretation and appropriate response to inferred elicitations can be best explained within the framework of Relevance Theory, and more specifically, with the presumption of accessibility of schemas obtained from the cognitive environment of the discourse partners. Through examples of empirical research the paper aims to reveal how the mutual knowledge of the participants controls discourse via the mental processes occurring in the interaction of two minds

Presupposition, perceptional relativity and translation theory

The intertwining of assertions and presuppositions in utterances affects the way a text is perceived in the source language (SL) and the target language (TL). Presuppositions can be thought of as shared assumptions that form the background of the asserted meaning. To translate presuppositions as assertions, or vice versa, can distort the thematic meaning of the SL text and produce a text with a different information structure. Since a good translation is not simply concerned with transferring the propositional content of the SL text, but also its other semantic and pragmatic components, including thematic meaning, a special attention should be accorded to the translation of presupposition. This article examines the intrinsic relation between presupposition and thematic meaning, why the concept is relevant to translation theory, and how presupposition can affect the structure and understanding of discourse. Unshared presuppositions are major obstacles in translation, as cultural concepts may be conveyed through expressions that yield presuppositions. To attain an optimal proximity to the SL text, presupposition needs to be singled out as a distinct aspect of meaning, and distinctions need to be made between definite and indefinite meaning, topic and comment, topic and focus, presupposition and entailment, and presupposition and implicature

Temporal Inferences in Conversation

Within this article, I explore how coproductions (expansions made by a second speaker upon a previous utterance) and questions regarding prior utterances work to verbalize inferences regarding the temporal information in spoken German conversation. While questions regarding prior utterances and coproductions are traditionally understood to have different communicative functions (signaling understanding/ misunderstanding; turn taking) to coproductions, empirical data shows how these expression types enable the speaker to gradually verbalize different strengths of assumption about details of the previous turn. These two expression types are not a dichotomy, but a continuum

An inferential articulation of metaphorical assertions

This paper argues for the view that metaphors are assertions by locating metaphor within our social discursive practices of asserting and inferring. The literal and the metaphorical differ not in the stating of facts nor in the representation of states of affairs but in the kind of inferential involvements they have and the normative score-keeping practices within which the inferential connections are articulated. This inferentialist based account of metaphor is supplemented by insights from accommodation theory. The account is significant for our understanding of both metaphor‟s figurativeness and cognitive content

‘Ought Implies Can’: Not So Pragmatic After All

Those who want to deny the ‘ought implies can’ principle often turn to weakened views to explain ‘ought implies can’ phenomena. The two most common versions of such views are that ‘ought’ presupposes ‘can’, and that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. This paper will reject both views, and in doing so, present a case against any pragmatic view of ‘ought implies can’. Unlike much of the literature, I won't rely on counterexamples, but instead will argue that each of these views fails on its own terms. ‘Ought’ and ‘can’ do not obey the negation test for presupposition, and they do not obey the calculability or the cancelability tests for conversational implicature. I diagnose these failures as partly a result of the importance of the contrapositive of ‘ought implies can’. I end with a final argument emphasizing the role the principle plays in moral thinking, and the fact that no pragmatic account can do it justice

Implied Information in Language: a case study

Traballo Fin de Grao en Lingua e Literatura inglesas. Curso 2018-2019O principal obxectivo deste estudo é analizar as influencias das inferencias, implicacións e presupostos no discurso e abordar o uso da linguaxe implícita en xeral e como os falantes da lingua inglesa en particular o usan. Para investigar sobre isto, é moi importante ter en conta o papel do contexto na interpretación dunha mensaxe e ademais de que hai moita máis información que se pode sacar do discurso que a mencionada de xeito explícito. En relación con isto, examinarei o papel da pragmática no discurso xa que a súa función é estudar a relación entre os usuarios dunha lingua e as circunstancias da comunicación. Este traballo estará organizado en dúas partes. En primeiro lugar, haberá unha breve explicación de termos teóricos, como discurso, referencia, presunción, implicación e inferencia. Un intento será explicar as diferenzas entre estas nocións e tamén ilustralas co uso de exemplos. En segundo lugar, este proxecto terá un lado práctico, no que vou aplicar todos eses conceptos teóricos en exemplos reais para amosar como o discurso, e máis especialmente a linguaxe implícita, pode desempeñar un papel na vida cotiá.The main objective os this study is to analyze the influences of inferences, implicatures and presuppositions in discourse and to reach on the use of implied language in general and how teh speakers of the English language in particular make use of it. to investigate on that, it is a highly important to take into account the role of context in the interpretation of a message and alsonthe fact that there is too much more information that can be taken from discourse than that which is mentioned explicitly. In connection with that, I will examine the role of pragmatics in discourse since its function to study the relationship between the users of a language and the circumstances of the communication. This work will be organized in two parts. Firstly , there is going to be a brief explanation of theorethical terms, such as discourse, reference, presupposition, implicature and inference. An attempt will be explain the differences among these notions and also to illustrate them with the use of examples. Secondly, this project will have a practical side, in which I am going to apply all those theoretical concepts in real examples so as to show how discourse, and more in particular, implied language, can play a role in everyday life

Assessing relevance

This paper advances an approach to relevance grounded on patterns of material inference called argumentation schemes, which can account for the reconstruction and the evaluation of relevance relations. In order to account for relevance in different types of dialogical contexts, pursuing also non-cognitive goals, and measuring the scalar strength of relevance, communicative acts are conceived as dialogue moves, whose coherence with the previous ones or the context is represented as the conclusion of steps of material inferences. Such inferences are described using argumentation schemes and are evaluated by considering 1) their defeasibility, and 2) the acceptability of the implicit premises on which they are based. The assessment of both the relevance of an utterance and the strength thereof depends on the evaluation of three interrelated factors: 1) number of inferential steps required; 2) the types of argumentation schemes involved; and 3) the implicit premises required