On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text-Understanding

Abstract

The use of contextual Information in discourse understanding has been discussed from various angles: is there a context-free meaning? what are the interrelations between context and co-text? what are the types of contextual Information exploited by the Interpreters in their attempt to capture the meaning intended by the Speaker?With the aim of answering the last question, we have suggested, in our work to date (Dascal and Weizman, 1987, in press) a model of contextual Information required for the Interpretation of speaker's meaning in written texts. We have further differentiated between context when used for the determination of utterance meaning and speaker's meaning (-äs a clue) and for the detection of gaps and mismatch (-äs a cue). It is on this last differentiation that we wish to elaborate in this paper. For this purpose, we shall first summarize the model (section 1) and discuss the roles played by context in various stages of the Interpretation process (section 2). We shall then proceed to illustrate the notions cue and clue by applying them to the analysis of a highly indirect written text (section 3), show how 'shortcuts' in the Interpretation process may lead to biased Interpretation (section 4) and suggest some guidelines for further investigation of the Interpretation process (section 5). Types and levels of contextual Information.Essentially, the model proposes a parallelism between two types of contextual Information: extra-linguistic, i.e. Information related to knowledge of the world, and meta-linguistic, i.e. the speaker's untutored linguistic knowledge -their 'folk', intuitive 'feeling 1 for linguistic conventions. Within each type, the model further distinguishes three levels, ranging from the 'specific' (immediate, 'ad hoc') Information about the circumstances of utterance, through the Brought to you by |

Between irony and humor

“…The mention of these imagined snobbish opinions attributed to the inhabitants of California is considered here, following Dascal and Weizman (1987;Weizman and Dascal 1991), not only as a cue for the detection of irony, but also as a clue for its interpretation and for the recognition of an alternative speaker's meaning, since the originators of the assumed conception are the victims of the irony (Weizman 2001(Weizman , 2007. In this manner, the irony is aimed at the people of Southern California, criticizing them for the condescending conceptions attributed to them.…”

“…Following Dascal and Weizman's model of text-understanding (Dascal and Weizman 1987;Weizman and Dascal 1991, see Section 1.1), irony and humor are viewed as cases of indirect speaker's meaning, the interpretation of which presupposes both the detection of cues indicating that the computed utterance meaning is not a plausible candidate for being the speaker's meaning and a search for clues that contribute to the reconstruction of an alternative speaker's meaning. This process is based on the interrelations between textual patterns and contextual knowledge.…”

“…The second stage, in which the model draws on the theory of translation, primarily on the notions of explicitation (Dimitrova 2005;Vinay and Darbelnet 1958) and of obligatory-and non-obligatory shifts (Toury 1995), consists of a comparison between source and translation that enables to add another criterion for the distinction: translations of irony manifest more explicitations, whereas translations of humor yield more non-explicitating shifts. 1 Dascal and Weizman (1987;Weizman and Dascal 1991) suggested that contextual knowledge is activated at two different stages of the interpretation process, and for distinct purposes: one stage uses the context to detect an interpretation problem, the contextual information being then labeled "cue"; the other stage exploits the context to solve the interpretation problem, and the information is now labeled "clue". There are two types of contextual information: on the one hand, the context provides "extra-linguistic" knowledge that has to do with the addressee's beliefs about the world; on the other hand, it supplies "meta-linguistic" knowledge that has to do with his or her beliefs about the use of language.…”

“…The research was based on four conceptual paradigms: pragmatic studies of irony, pragmatic studies of humor, a pragmatic approach to the study of literary texts, and theories of text interpretation. The textual analysis was based on an existing model for the interpretation of indirect speaker's meanings (Dascal and Weizman 1987;Weizman and Dascal 1991;2005), and on the concepts "cues" and "clues" as employed in that model. …”

Positioning through Challenge: Role Negotiations in News Interviews

“…Au niveau de la forme ou du contenu, l'allocutaire reconnaît que l'énoncé ironique se fait l'écho implicite des propos (ou des pensées supposées) d'un tiers, par rapport auquel le locuteur se distancie (Sperber, Wilson, 1981 ;Wilson, Sperber, 1992), et qu'il veut disqualifier (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1986). Dans tous ces cas, les informations contextuelles qui sont à la disposition du destinataire déterminent si le potentiel ironique est identifié (Weizman, Dascal 1991). La valeur implicite de l'ironie conduit à parler du « potentiel ironique », à moins d'avoir des indications textuelles qui témoignent de son interprétation.…”