DOCSLIB.ORG

Linguistic Returns: the Currency of Sceptical-Rhetorical Theory and Its Stylistic Inscription in the Platonic and Derridian Text

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Linguistic Returns: the Currency of Sceptical-Rhetorical Theory and Its Stylistic Inscription in the Platonic and Derridian Text Linguistic Returns: the currency of sceptical-rhetorical theory and its stylistic inscription in the Platonic and Derridian text by Monina Wittfoth B.A., The University of Toronto, 2000 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2003 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2010 © Monina Wittfoth, 2010 ii Abstract Based on the premise that modernity’s understanding of the linguistic sign has a long history dating back to ancient Greece when the linguistic mediation of knowledge preoccupied thinkers like Parmenides and Plato, this dissertation synthesizes contemporary post-structuralist and rhetorical understandings of language with like-minded findings of other fields of language study. It sees post-structuralist and deconstructive understandings of language as being congruent with the long tradition of rhetorical theory and the infamous linguistic turn in philosophy, that was initiated by the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as a turn away from the actual phenomena of language towards an idealization of it. Nevertheless the thesis discovers recent findings by some of the beneficiaries of the “philosophy of language” that corroborate rhetorical theory’s insights. Inspired by both Derrida and Plato, this dissertation presents a rhetorical-deconstructive image of language that, recalling the root of the term skopevw (‘I look,’ ‘behold,’ ‘contemplate’), I characterize as sceptical. This study follows the theoretical matrix of de Man, Fish, Culler and Barbara Johnson, who are, of course, themselves following Derrida. It has a holistic attitude to language characteristic of the Bakhtin/Volsohinov approach, drawing insights from classical and contemporary rhetorical theory, post-structuralist theory, findings of systemic functional grammar, recent work in cognitive science and psychology on affect and language use, the scholarship of reported speech, and the ostensive-inferential theory of communication called Relevance. This cross border work in intellectual history, language theory and stylistics examines the interstices of theory and style in the work of figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Voloshinov, Bakhtin and Derrida. Sperber and Wilson, Scholars of Reported Speech and Halliday are central to its findings; the thinking of William James and Silvan Tomkins play supporting roles. It positions Plato as the founder of rhetorical theory and studies the voices of Plato and Derrida as language theorists. I examine both how Plato and Derrida talk about language and what theories of language underlie their styles, determining finally that their sceptical-rhetorical theories prompt their ironic-conversational stylistics. iii Table of Contents Abstract. ......................................................................i i Table of Contents. ............................................................. iii Acknowledgements. .............................................................v PART 1 1.1 paving the way............................................................2 1.2 pretexts: Bacon, resistance and the style myth .. 7 1.3 the road ahead. .........................................................1 6 1.4 Wittgenstein & linguistic complexity . .......................................1 9 1.5 the participants and other parts.............................................2 4 PART 2 2.1 adventures of signs in human communication . 2 8 2.2 Relevance Theory . ......................................................3 1 2.3 historical context: Bacon and the “plain style”. 3 8 2.4 epistemological quagmire: affective rationality . 4 2 2.5 epistemological quagmire: analogy & knowledge.. 5 2 2.6 fuzzy logic and the biochemical image of grammar. 5 7 2.7 epistemological quagmire: part-whole relations. 6 5 2.8 the inherent resistance to theory: de Man and rhetorical theory. 7 1 PART 3 3.1 conn-texts & citation. ....................................................7 7 3.2 legacies: code-communication and the written language bias. 8 6 3.3 legacies: performatives, seriousness & ordinary language.. 8 9 3.4 intersections: language theory and reported speech. 9 2 3.5 scholarship of reported speech.............................................9 7 3.6 verbatim’s fraudulent celebrity status. 101 3.7 involvement strategies & affective interests in speech. 102 3.8 from involvement to performativity.........................................106 3.9 Voloshinov’s sign: dancing in the caverns of our minds. 110 3.10 Nietzsche’s metaphorical turn.............................................114 3.11 language’s bewildering complexity..........................................121 PART 4 4.1 stylistic turns...........................................................124 4.2 the vicissitudes of “plain” style myths. ......................................129 4.3 Aristotle’s clarion call for clarity ...........................................137 4.4 good writing and difficult texts: clarity and opacity. 148 4.5 genre expectations......................................................152 PART 5 5.1 “Platonism’s” voice-overs.................................................157 5.2 genre and the style of “propositional knowledge”. 163 5.3 genre and social relations.................................................169 5.4 “Always with irony” (D 67). ..............................................175 5.5 themes, theses, and “the ability to follow the given thread” (D 63). 178 5.6 weaving, meaning, and le vouloir-dire. ......................................188 5.7 reading Derrida writing about Plato ........................................193 iv 5.8 Derrida’s reader and the addressee of “Plato’s Pharmacy”. 197 5.9 Poetry’s banishment re-visited.............................................202 5.10 some polemical mechanics of style .........................................210 5.11 self-referential text as discourse about discourse.. 213 5.12 linguistic cues, ‘how things are said’ & meta-rhetoric. 220 Post Script. ..................................................................237 Works Cited .................................................................239 v Acknowledgements I would like to extend my sincere thanks to a number of friends and colleagues without whom this dissertation would not have been completed. I thank Julian Patrick and Francis Sparshott who got me started on this project way back in 1983. I am grateful to Iain Higgins, who ‘gave me a chance,’ to Nan Johnson who had confidence in me, and to Adam Frank who challenged me. I owe very special thanks to my supervisor at UBC, Janet Giltrow, for her guidance, intellectual engagement and friendship on this great adventure. I would also like to thank Gregory Renault for his early support of my academic aspirations and the ‘social-theory crowd’ who guided my first steps. I am very grateful to my family and Yukon friends for their faith and unwavering support, and to Wayne and Evelyn for lending their eyes to the task of editing. 1 The notion that a theory might be extravagant is probably more controversial; but I have always seen this as a positive feature in the sense that there are more conceptual resources available than are necessitated for any particular task. This seems, perhaps, to go against the usual demand for parsimony, for “the simplest solution that is compatible with the facts”; and it is true that I see no great virtue in simplicity – I prefer the criterion of “the best tool for the job.” M.A.K. Halliday “Linguistics as Metaphor” (OL 265) Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussion . We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premises to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premises of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (W.D Ross 1094b). 2 PART 1 1.1 paving the way ~ Inspired by both Derrida and Plato, this literary-language theory dissertation presents a rhetorical-deconstructive image of language that follows the theoretical matrix of Paul de Man, Stanley Fish, Jonathan Culler and Barbara Johnson, who, of course, are themselves following Derrida. However, despite Derrida’s intimation that the question of the sign is “an unexpectedly historical one,”1 and despite Nietzsche’s Lectures on Classical Rhetoric,the long history of this supposedly contemporary and post-structuralist understanding of language is not fully appreciated. Plato’s treatment of language – which is especially attentive to the epistemologically problematic but nevertheless creatively productive power of tropes and affect in language use – indexes the linguistic consciousness of his audience. Michael Naas’ account of persuasion (in Turning: From Persuasion to Philosophy) and the dance between trevpw (I turn) and peivqw (I persuade), together with its suggestive middle voice (I obey), outlines a movement which signals not only the human-inter-subjective element of linguistic interactions, but also the tropological nature of language’s reality. The linguistic trope both displaces human experience and filters and shapes our account of it. The trovpoV, or ‘turn,’ is a way, path, or direction, and a manner, fashion, or custom. It is both form and content, style and meaning, both the mechanism
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Review of Relevance STEPHEN C
    J. Linguistics 25 (1989), 455-472. Printed in Great Britain REVIEW ARTICLE A review of Relevance STEPHEN C. LEVINSON Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge (Received 31 March 1989) Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Pp. viii + 279. In this bold and highly controversial book, Sperber and Wilson attempt to shift the whole centre of gravity of pragmatic theory by locating it firmly in a general theory of cognition. Outlining that general theory takes the bulk of the book, so those who have followed technical developments in pragmatics will not find those issues much advanced here. For the purpose of the book is otherwise, to outline a single cognitive principle which (it is held) will give us, along with a theory of attention, almost all we need in the way of a theory of communication, such a theory in turn having linguistic applications merely sketched here.1 The book is written in a fluid argumentative style; easy to read, it is not easy to understand, presuming much that the central thesis depends on. Perhaps because of the global and speculative aims, there is little or no reference to recent developments in the theory of meaning.2 This book has already aroused much passion for and much passion against. Cited by its authors as long ago as 1979, the ideas have been trailered in a series of articles, with both critics and protagonists taking up provocative positions (see for example the still useful exchange in Smith, 1982). Thus when the book finally appeared, extensive airings of these passions were inevitable (see the peer review in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) 10 (1987), or the exchange in Journal of Semantics 5 (1988)).3 The views have [1] A second and third volume on pragmatics and rhetoric were projected (vii-viii) and this reviewer had hoped for some glimpse of these applications before passing judgment on a disembodied principle, as it were.
    [Show full text]
  • 7 Relevance Theory and Shared Content Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore
    7 relevance theory and shared content herman cappelen and ernie lepore Speakers share content when they make the same assertion (claim, conjecture, proposal, etc). They also share content when they propose (entertain, discuss, etc.) the same hypothesis, theory, and thought. And again when they evaluate whether what each says (thinks, claims, suggests, etc.) is true, false, interesting, obscene, original or offensive. Content sharing, so understood, is the very foundation of communication. Relevance theory (RT), however, implies that content sharing is impossible; or at least, we will argue as much in what follows. This chapte is divided into three sections. In section 1, we amplify on what we mean by ‘shared content’ and its roles in how we think about language and communication; we discuss various strategies RT might invoke to account for shared content and why all these strategies fail. Section 2 is exegetical; there we show why RT must deny the possibility of shared content. The denial is a direct consequence of some of the most central tenets of RT. It is, however, a consequence downplayed by RT proponents. Our goal in section 2 is to show how central the denial of shared content is to RT. In section 3 we outline how we think a pragmatic theory should account for shared content. question: good enough? According to RT, interpreters follow ‘the least effort strategy’ (LES): (LES) Check interpretive hypotheses in order of their accessibility, that is, follow a path of least effort, until an interpretation which satisfi es the expectation of relevance is found; then stop. (Carston 2001, 6) In section 2 we elaborate on how exactly to interpret (LES) and its RT defence.
    [Show full text]
  • A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor
    A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics Markus Tendahl A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Taiwan eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-02 eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect Taiwan - licensed to www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9780230244313 - A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor, Markus Tendahl This page intentionally left blank Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Taiwan eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-02 eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect Taiwan - licensed to www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9780230244313 - A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor, Markus Tendahl A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics Markus Tendahl University of Dortmund, Germany Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Taiwan eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-02 eBook Consortium - PalgraveConnect Taiwan - licensed to www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9780230244313 - A Hybrid Theory of Metaphor, Markus Tendahl © Markus Tendahl 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • Relevance Theory and Metaphor. Linguagem Em (Dis)Curso – Lemd, Tubarão, SC, V
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1982-4017-140303-0314 RELEVANCE THEORY AND METAPHOR Esther Romero Belén Soria University of Granada Granada, Spain Abstract: In this article we show the evolution of the view of metaphor in relevance theory and challenge its deflationary account of metaphor, defended from its inception, as loosening in a continuum. In current relevance theory, loose uses not only convey implicatures but also explicatures in which ad hoc concepts appear (CARSTON, 2002, 2010a; SPERBER; WILSON, 2008). These, in the case of metaphor, cause the emergent property issue which, according to them, is solved taking into account that a loose use may be included in a loose use (WILSON; CARSTON, 2008). In addition, the most creative cases have to be explained considering an interpretation route different from ad hoc concept construction (CARSTON, 2010b). These moves generate new problems and thus we argue that metaphorical interpretation can be better explained resorting to metaphorical ad hoc concepts that result from a partial mapping from one conceptual domain into another (ROMERO; SORIA, 2005). Keywords: Relevance Theory. Metaphor. Ad Hoc Concept. Metaphorical Mechanism. Analogy. Pragmatic Derivation. 1 INTRODUCTION1 Relevance theory (henceforth RT) has defended from its inception a deflationary account of metaphor as a consequence of defending a continuity view, on which metaphor is interpreted in the same way as other loose uses (SPERBER; WILSON, 1986/1995, p. 233-237). As Sperber and Wilson (2008, p. 84) have recently stated, “„metaphor‟ is not a theoretically important notion in the study of verbal communication. […] there is no mechanism specific to metaphors, and no interesting generalization that applies only to them”.
    [Show full text]
  • Relevance Implicatures
    Relevance Implicatures Robert van Rooy∗ ILLC/University of Amsterdam [email protected] Abstract According to standard pragmatics, we should account for conversational implicatures in terms of Grice’s (1967) maxims of conversation. Neo-Griceans like Atlas & Levinson (1981) and Horn (1984) seek to reduce those maxims to the so-called Q and I-principles. In this paper I want to argue that (i) there are major problems for reducing Gricean pragmatics to these two principles, and (ii) in fact, we can better account for implicatures by means of an exhaustivity operator defined in terms of a relevance-based ordering relation. 1 Introduction In most circumstances we infer from the fact that the (a) sentences of the following examples are uttered that the (b) sentences are true: (1) a. John ate some of the cookies. b. John didn’t eat all of the cookies (2) a. John is coming or Mary is going. b. John is coming or Mary is going, but not both. (3) a. John is walking, if Mary is talking. b. John is walking if and only if Mary is talking. ∗This note reports on work in progress on the use of relevance for the semantic analysis of natural language. Parts of this paper was presented at the second workshop on Optimality Theoretic Semantics at OTS in Utrecht (2000) and at the Formal Pragmatics conference in Berlin (2001). I would like to thank the participants of those events for their comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Reinhard Blutner and expecially Katrin Schulz.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 RELEVANCE THEORY Deirdre Wilson to Appear in Y. Huang (Ed.)
    1 RELEVANCE THEORY Deirdre Wilson To appear in Y. Huang (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford University Press. Published online Jan 2016: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697960.013.25 Abstract This paper outlines the main assumptions of relevance theory (while attempting to clear up some common objections and misconceptions) and points out some new directions for research. After discussing the nature of relevance and its role in communication and cognition, it assesses two alternative ways of drawing the explicit–implicit distinction, compares relevance theory’s approach to lexical pragmatics with those of Grice and neo- Griceans, and discusses the rationale for relevance theory’s conceptual–procedural distinction, reassessing the notion of procedural meaning in the light of recent research. It ends by looking briefly at the relation between the capacity to understand a communicator’s meaning, on the one hand, and the capacity to assess her reliability and the reliability of the communicated content, on the other, and considers how these two capacities might interact. Keywords: Relevance, communication, explicatures, lexical pragmatics, procedural meaning 1. Introduction One of the most original features of Grice’s approach to communication was his view that meaning is primarily a psychological phenomenon and only secondarily a linguistic one: for him, speaker’s meanings are basic and sentence meanings are ultimately analysable in terms of what speakers mean (Grice 1957, 1967). Despite this reference to psychology, Grice’s goals were mainly philosophical or semantic: his analysis of speaker’s meaning was intended to shed light on traditional semantic notions such as sentence meaning and word meaning, and his accounts of the derivation of implicatures were rational reconstructions of how a speaker’s meaning might be inferred, rather than empirical hypotheses about what actually goes on in hearers’ minds.
    [Show full text]
  • Relevance Theory (Ms
    Relevance theory (ms. 313) Francisco Yus University of Alicante Department of English Studies Apartado 99 E-03080 Alicante (Spain) ABSTRACT Relevance theory is a cognition-centered pragmatic approach to human communication which is based on the hypothesis of a single evolved mental capacity of human beings: to search for the most relevant information from in-coming stimuli. In order to achieve an optimal level of relevance, the human mind engages in a cost/benefit procedure intended to select, among the range of possible interpretations of the same stimulus in a specific context, the one (possibly) intended by the communicator. Relevance is a property of stimuli resulting from a positive balance between, on the one hand, the eventual interest that the stimulus might provide and, on the other hand, the mental effort required to process the stimulus. 1. INTRODUCTION Relevance theory (henceforth RT), a cognitive theory of human communication by D. Sperber and D. Wilson (henceforth S&W), was fully described in their 1986 book (S&W, 1986, 2nd edition 1995), but it really emerged in the late seventies and early eighties as a cognition- centered alternative to Grice’s cooperation-ruled explanation of human communication (see W&S, 1981), and since then it has been a highly influential theory in pragmatics producing a good number of studies backing it up, criticizing it or applying it to different pragmatic research areas (see Yus, 1998; W&S, 2002a; and the bibliography on the theory available on the Internet: www.ua.es/dfing/rt.htm). The main assumption of the theory is that human beings are endowed with a biologically rooted ability to maximize the relevance of in-coming stimuli (linguistic utterances or nonverbal behavior).
    [Show full text]
  • Relevance Theory and the Semantics of Non-Declarative
    RELEVANCE THEORY AND THE SEMANTICS OF NON-DECLARATIVE WILLIAM CLARK Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD University College London 1991 ABSTRACT Wilson and Sperber (1988a; Sperber and Wilson 1986) have proposed semantic analyses of declaratives, imperatives and interrogatives which are based on the notion of "a direct semantic link between linguistic form and representations of propositional attitude". They claim, however, that the various syntactic structures encode "procedural" rather than "conceptual" information. Rather than encoding concepts which appear in representations of propositional attitude (or what Sperber and Wilson call "higher-level explicatures") they convey information about how to proceed in recovering such representations. This thesis is an attempt to extend this analysis to some constructions which have not been explicitly discussed by Wilson and Sperber, to consider the differences between this approach and some alternatives, and to question the status of the notion of a "sentence type", which has often been assumed in analysing the various syntactic structures. Some evidence is provided that certain lexical items also encode procedural information about propositional attitudes, and the role of intonation in utterance- interpretation is also discussed. This analysis is based on relevance-theoretic assumptions about semantics and pragmatics. Chapter one presents the general approach to semantics assumed by relevance theory and shows how Wilson and Sperber's proposal fits into this framework. Chapter two is concerned with the proposed semantic analysis of imperatives. This analysis is extended to some "pseudo-imperatives": forms consisting of the conjunction or disjunction of an imperative and a declarative clause, which have often -3— been treated as conditionals.
    [Show full text]
  • Outline of Relevance Theory'
    Links & Letters 1, 1994 85-106 Outline of relevance theory' Deirdre Wilson*, Dan Sperber** *Department of Linguistics University College London **CNRS and CREA Ecole Polytechnique, Paris ABSTRACT In this paper, we outline a relevance-based approach to pragmatics, the theory of utterance interpretation. The main aim of a pragmatic theory is to explain how the hearer recognises the intended interpretation of an utterance. We argue that this interpretation is not decoded but inferred, by a non-demonstrative inference process in which considerations of relevance play a central role. We offer a definition of relevance, and argue that every utterance creates an expectation of relevance in the hearer, with the preferred interpretation being the one that best satisfies that expectation of relevance. The theory is illustrated by applying it to a wide range of examples. 1. Introduction Pragmatics is the study of the general cognitive principles and abilities involved in utterance interpretation, and of their cognitive effects. In construct-ing an explanatory pragmatic theory, a variety of specific problems must be solved. Utterances may be ambiguous or referentiall~ambivalent, as in ( 1 ) : (1) The football team gathered round their coach. Pragmatic theory should explain how the hearer of caracter (1) decides which football tearn the speaker has in mind, and whether 'coach' was intended to mean bus or games teacher. Utterances have not only explicit content but implicit import, as in (2): (2) a. Peter: 1s George a good sailor? b. Mary: ALL the Te English are good sailors. Pragmatic theory should explain how (2b) is understood as implying that George is a good sailor.
    [Show full text]
  • Scalar Implicatures: a Gricean Vs. a Relevance Theory Approach
    Teresa Fernández Gaspar English Studies 2016/17 Scalar Implicatures: A Gricean vs. a Relevance Theory Approach Tutor: Eva Delgado Lavín Department of English and German Philology and Translation and Interpreting Abstract Griceans have always supported the idea that scalar implicatures are Quantity- based generalized conversational implicatures (GCI). With the purpose of explaining this phenomenon, they derived their own principles inspired in Grice’s Quantity maxims and concluded that whenever a speaker uses a weak linguistic item of a given scale, no matter the context she is in, she will be implying (a) that she is not in a position to be more informative and that therefore (b) a stronger item of the scale will not hold. For instance, if there is a scale such as <all, some> and the speaker chooses the weaker element some, she will automatically be implying not all. However, Relevance theorists believe that scalar implicatures are context-based. Thus, they claim that these implicatures do not depend on any Quantity maxim to arise but on a notion of relevance that considers the context in which sentences are uttered. So although the speaker chooses the linguistic term some from the previously mentioned scale, the context should be taken into account to infer that she is implicating not all. The present paper aims to compare both pragmatic theories’ approach to the scalar implicature case. Consequently, I will first explain the main features of each theory: how human verbal communication works, how implicatures are generated and how the information contained in such implicatures is recovered by hearers according to them.
    [Show full text]
  • From Speech Act Theory to Pragmatics Bruno Ambroise
    From Speech Act Theory to Pragmatics Bruno Ambroise To cite this version: Bruno Ambroise. From Speech Act Theory to Pragmatics: The loss of the illocutionary point. 2010. halshs-00514810 HAL Id: halshs-00514810 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00514810 Preprint submitted on 3 Sep 2010 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. From Speech Act Theory to Pragmatics : the loss of the illocutionary point. ( = “Pragmatics today”) First I would like to thank Irène and Costantino for having invited me to participate to this round-table. The aim of this presentation is to offer a very brief survey, both conceptual and historical, of the developments of Pragmatics during the last sixty years (of course many things will be missing and my development will be very schematic compared to what has already been exposed, but the idea is to offer a way of looking at this history). More precisely it will be the story of how Speech Act Theory has become « Pragmatics », and therefore has lost part of its conceptual interest, namely John L. Austin's discovery of the illocutionary aspect of speech – namely the fact that speaking is an action.
    [Show full text]
  • Relevance Theory Through Pragmatic Theories of Meaning
    Relevance Theory through Pragmatic Theories of Meaning Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (ahti-veikko.pietarinen@helsinki.fi) Department of Philosophy; P. O. Box 9 FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland Abstract is the sum total of its implications for possible observa- tions and actions. I argue that we may classify the Rele- A century ago, Peirce developed a pragmatic theory of vance Theory (RT) of (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) within meaning. The theory appeals to the Pragmatic Maxim. the framework of such pragmatic theory of meaning. It says that the meaning of a concept is the sum total The RT claims to provide a logical and cognitive ac- of its implications for possible observations and actions. The Relevance Theory of Sperber & Wilson is classified count of relevance. It attempts to capture the notion of according to that criteria to the category of pragmatic relevance in communicative situations through contex- theories of meaning. It is argued that relevance is an tual effects. Since it is impossible to know in advance instance of the application of the Pragmatic Maxim. which descriptions of circumstances or parts of the com- Keywords: Relevance theory, pragmatic theory of mon ground will actually be relevant to the dynamic, meaning, Peirce, pragmatic maxim, pragmatics, com- on-going processes of linguistic communication, Sperber positionality. & Wilson define the notion in terms of a context-change potential. In other words, relevant factors or properties of an Introduction expression are those which intrude into the context of discourse. This is an argument from cognitive economy: Peirce's Pragmatic Theory of Meaning the goal of communication is to maximise the relevance Charles Sanders Peirce (1839{1914), the noted American of the phenomena available to language users while min- philosopher and scientist, took pragmatic meaning as a imising the amount of mental or cognitive processing ef- rule of logic embodied in the Pragmatic Maxim (PM): fort.
    [Show full text]