1. Rethinking Being Gricean: New Challenges for Metapragmatics
Kasia M. Jaszczolt, University of Cambridge
The foundational influence of Paul Grice on contemporary pragmatic theory has its roots in the combination of focus on intentions in their role of explanantia for meaning in discourse with the rigidity of the truth-conditional approach upon which his theory of communication is built. However, forty years on, it has become necessary to ask how much, and on what identifiable dimensions, one can depart from his original program and still remain ‘post-Gricean’. The program has been subjected to critical scrutiny on several dimensions. First, communication has since been envisaged as mostly direct and non-inferential (e.g. Recanati 2004, 2016). Next, the grammatical origin of some implicatures has been proposed (e.g. Chierchia 2004; Chierchia et al. 2012), associated with the proposal to reinstate semantic ambiguities in lieu of meaning-underdetermination (e.g. Lepore & Stone 2015). The focus on cooperative interaction has been weakened through the attention to strategic communication (e.g. Asher & Lascarides 2013). Perhaps most importantly, the Gricean cline of meaning construction (sometimes called ‘the pipeline picture of meaning’) has been questioned, originally e.g. in Lewis 1979, and recently e.g. in Equilibrium Semantics (Parikh 2010) but also in post-Gricean Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005, 2016) where discourse meaning is not constructed following the steps from the output of syntactic processing, through modulation, to implicatures but rather follows the principles of situated interaction independently of the relation of the meaning to the uttered sentence. Finally, the modular approach to meaning has been questioned and replaced with general cognitive mechanisms that are allegedly responsible for implicatures (Goodman & Stuhlmüller 2013; Goodman & Lassiter 2015).
This meta-theoretic enquiry begins by introducing the main novel dimensions on which the Gricean program has recently been challenged and proceeds to arguing that none of the challenges constitutes a real threat to it. I develop two strands of argumentation showing how the approaches either (a) can be incorporated as its extensions or (b) are in pursuit of different goals and as such are not in competition with it. Argument (a) applies to automatic meaning assignment, the rejection of the ‘pipeline picture of meaning’, emphasis on conventions, strategic conversation and generalized cognition. Argument (b) applies to the revival of semantic ambiguity and the grammatical foundation of implicatures. It is therefore concluded that the Gricean program can be relaxed on the dimensions covered by (a) and co-exist with the approaches subscribing to (b).
References
Asher, N. & A. Lascarides. 2013. ‘Strategic conversation’. Semantics & Pragmatics 6. 1-62.
Chierchia, G. 2004. ‘Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena, and the syntax/pragmatics
interface’. In: A. Belletti (ed.). Structures and Beyond: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 39-103.
Chierchia, G., D. Fox & B Spector. 2012. ‘Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon’.
In: C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger & P. Portner (eds). Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, vol. 3. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. 2297-2331.
Goodman, N. D. & D. Lassiter. 2015. ‘Probabilistic semantics and pragmatics: Uncertainty in
language and thought’. In: S. Lappin & C. Fox (eds). The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. 655-686.
Goodman, N. & A. Stuhlmüller. 2013. ‘Knowledge and implicature: Modeling language
understanding as social cognition’. Topics in Cognitive Science 5. 173-184.
Jaszczolt, K. M. 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of
Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jaszczolt, K. M. 2016. Meaning in Linguistic Interaction: Semantics, Metasemantics,
Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lepore, E. & M. Stone. 2015. Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and
Inference in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. 1979. ‘Scorekeeping in a language game’. Journal of Philosophical Logic 8. 339-359.
Parikh, P. 2010. Language and Equilibrium. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Recanati, F. 2004. Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Recanati, F. 2016. ‘Indexical thought: The communication problem’. In: M. García-
Carpintero & S. Torre (eds). About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 141-178.
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2. Pragmatics and grammar as sources of temporal ordering in discourse
Kasia M. Jaszczolt, University of Cambridge & Roberto Sileo, University of Cambridge
Abstract
The principle that the order of sentences (s1, s2) describing events (e1, e2) in discourse mirrors the order in which these events occur, as exemplified in (1) and summarised in (2), has engendered a variety of explanations, the most influential of which appear to be (i) post-Gricean approaches originating in Grice’s (1975) sub-maxim of Manner, ‘Be orderly’; (ii) dynamic semantic approaches, in particular Segmented Discourse Representation Theory with its rhetorical structure rule of Narration (e.g. Lascarides and Asher 1993; Asher and Lascarides 2003); and more recently (iii) approaches that derive the temporal reference from grammar (most notably Lepore and Stone 2015).
(1a) Anna conducted an experiment. Bertie analysed the results.
(1b) Anna conducted an experiment. and Bertie analysed the results.
(2) s1 ˂ s2 e1 ˂ e2
Gricean solutions attribute the temporal ordering to the recovery of speaker’s intentions that leads to the recovery of the implicature or the pragmatically enriched truth-conditionally relevant content. SDRT proposes instead that narration is a speech-act type, so an explanation using inference can be short-circuited. It attributes the temporal meaning to implicit defaults – pragmatically preferred interpretations captured by the ‘logic of information packaging’. Next, Lepore and Stone’s rejection of Gricean accounts leads them to purport that the temporal meaning is encoded in the rules of language: the simple past tense in (1) leads the hearers towards the temporal succession interpretation.
We begin by demonstrating that the phenomenon is far more complex than the extant proposals are able to account for and provide theoretical arguments and empirical support for a comprehensive account that assigns the proper place to inferences (type (i) solutions), conventions (type (ii) solutions), as well the power of the language system (lexicon and grammar, type (iii) solutions). In other words, we propose that the more adequate picture may lie in-between. We briefly present such an account using Jaszczolt’s Default Semantics (e.g. 2005, 2010, 2016) where the temporal ordering arises on the level of conceptual structure as a result of processing information coming from linguistic and non-linguistic sources identified in the theory and is arrived at, in different contexts, either automatically or via conscious inference. In the final part we argue that the resulting proposal still counts as ‘Gricean’ in its essential characteristics but it points to the need for revisiting that label on a metapragramatic level of enquiry.
Selected references
Asher, N. and A. Lascarides. 2003. Logics of Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Grice, H. P. 1975. ‘Logic and conversation’. In: P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds).
Syntax and Semantics 3. New York: Academic Press. Reprinted in: H. P. Grice. 1989.
Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 22-40.
Jaszczolt, K. M. 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts
of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jaszczolt, K. M. 2010. ‘Default Semantics’. In Heine, B. and Narrog, H. (eds.) The Oxford
Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 193-221.
Jaszczolt, K.M. 2016. Meaning in Linguistic Interaction: Semantics,
Metasemantics, Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lascarides, A. and N. Asher 1993. ‘Temporal interpretation, discourse relations and
commonsense entailment’. Linguistics and Philosophy 16. 437-93.
Lepore, E. and M. Stone. 2015. Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and
Inference in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.