Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Language

Abstract

Many topics in the philosophy of language pertain to pragmatics and there are many to which pragmatics pertains. Ones of the first sort, in PHILOSOPHY OF PRAGMATICS, include performatives, speech acts, communication, conversational implicature, and the question of how to distinguish pragmatic from semantic matters. Topics of the second sort, in APPLIED PRAGMATICS, concern various terms, distinctions, and problems of philosophical interest. Our survey of them will illustrate how certain seemingly semantic problems can be resolved by enforcing a cogent semantic-pragmatic distinction, for in many cases apparent matters of meaning turn out to be matters of use. Brief BackgroundDuring the first half of the twentieth century, philosophy of language was generally concerned less with language use than with meanings of linguistic expressions. Indeed, meanings were abstracted from the linguistic items that have them, and (indicative) sentences were often equated with statements, which in turn were equated with propositions. Although Frege, the founder of modern philosophy of language, noted various respects in which there is more to the total signification of an utterance than the thought it expresses, he was mainly concerned with the latter. And it is no exaggeration to say that such philosophers as Russell and the early Wittgenstein paid only lip service to natural language, never mind its use, for they were more interested in deep and still daunting problems about representation, which they hoped to solve by studying the properties of ideal ("logically perfect") languages, in which forms of sentences mirror the forms of what sentences symbolize. Russell, with his logical atomism, and Wittgenstein, with his picture theory of meaning, neglected non-assertive uses of language, as did philosophers generally. As Austin complains at the beginning of How to Do Things with Words, it was assumed by philosophers (he had the logical positivists in mind, like Schlick, Carnap, and Ayer) that "the business of a [sentence] can only be to 'describe' some state of affairs, or to 'state some fact,' which it must do either truly or falsely" (1962, p.1).Austin and the later Wittgenstein changed all that. Austin observed that there are many uses of language which have the linguistic appearance of fact-stating but are really quite different. Philosophy of Pragmatics Speech acts and communicationThis section is intended to complement the Speech Acts and Implicature in Part I of this volume. From a philosophical point of view, the important questions concern three relationships: between explicit performatives and illocutionary acts generally, between illocutionary acts and communicative intentions, and between what a speaker says and what he thereby intends to communicate. A somewhat historical approach to these topics, through the work of Austin, Strawson, and Grice, will perhaps shed some conceptual light on the main issues they raise. Performatives and illocutionary forceParadoxical though it may seem, there are certain things one can do ju...

Conversational Impliciture

“…54ff. and89ff., andBach, 1993). Now to describe the general character of communication is not to explain how it succeeds.…”

The Term “Implication” and Its Analogues in Pragmatics

“…Имплицитура Бинарная оппозиция То, что сказано vs. То, что подразумевается, введенная Г. П. Грайсом, была под-вергнута критике со стороны К. Баха [4][5][6] ввиду того, что не вся имплицитная информация, содержащаяся в высказывании и не высказанная эксплицитно, может быть выведена при помощи Максим и Принципа Ко-операции. Например, в высказывании Я не завтракал помимо эксплицитной части пропозиции присутствует также имплицитная, так как подразумевается, что Я не завтракал сегодня.…”

“…Ср., например, высказывание Джон -англичанин и он храбр, в котором не содержится подобной конвенциональной импликатуры. Однако не все лингвисты разделяют данную трактовку, а также целесооб-разность выделения конвенциональных импликатур (см., в частности, работы К. Баха [4][5][6]). …”

Experimental Pragmatics

“…Comprehension is an on-line process, and hypotheses about explicatures, implicated premises and implicated conclusions are developed in parallel, against a background of expectations which may be revised or elaborated as the utterance 12 For discussion of the relevance-theoretic account of explicatures and alternative views on the explicit-implicit distinction, see Bach (1994Bach ( , 2004; Levinson (2000: 186-98); Horn (2004Horn ( , 2005; Stanley (2000Stanley ( , 2002; see also Carston (2002: chapter 2.5); Recanati (2004a). Bach introduces a notion of 'impliciture', distinct from implicature, to cover those aspects of what is said that are not linguistically encoded.…”

“…Important contributors to pragmatic theorising with original points of view include Anscombre & Ducrot (1983); Asher & Lascarides (1995; Bach (1987Bach ( , 1994Bach ( , 1999Bach ( , 2001Bach ( , 2004; Bach & Harnish (1979); Blutner & Zeevat (2003); Clark (1977Clark ( , 1993Clark ( , 1996; Dascal (1981);Ducrot (1984); Fauconnier (1975Fauconnier ( , 1985Fauconnier ( , 1997; Harnish (1976Harnish ( , 1994; Hobbs (1979Hobbs ( , 1985Hobbs ( , 2004; Hobbs et al (1993); Kasher (1976Kasher ( , 1982Kasher ( , 1984Katz (1977); Lewis (1979; Neale (1990Neale ( , 1992Neale ( , 2004; Recanati (1987Recanati ( , 1995Recanati ( , 2002Recanati ( , 2004a; Searle (1969Searle ( , 1975Searle ( , 1979; Stalnaker (1974; Sweetser (1990); Travis (1975Travis ( , 2001; van der Auwera (1981,1985,1997); van Rooy (1999); …”