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Towards a Formal Pragmatics of Discourse

Towards a Formal Pragmatics of Discourse Could we enrich speech-act theory to deal with discourse? Wittgenstein and Searle pointed out difficulties. Most conversations lack a conversational purpose, they require collective intentionality, their background is indefinitely open, irrelevant and infelicitous utterances do not prevent conversations to continue, etc. Like Wittgenstein and Searle I am sceptic about the possibility of a general theory of all kinds of language-games. In my view, the single primary purpose of discourse pragmatics is to analyse the structure and dynamics of language-games whose type is provided with an internal conversational goal. Such games are indispensable to any kind of discourse. They have a descriptive, deliberative, declaratory or expressive conversational goal corresponding to a possible direction of fit between words and things. Logic can analyse felicity-conditions of such language-games because they are conducted according to systems of constitutive rules. Speakers often speak non-literally or non-seriously. The real units of conversation are therefore attempted illocutions whether literal, serious or not. I will show how to construct speaker-meaning from sentence-meaning, conversational background and conversational maxims. I agree with Montague that we need the resources of formalisms ( proof , model- and game-theories ) and of mathematical and philosophical logic in pragmatics. I will explain how to further develop propositional and illocutionary logics, the logic of attitudes and of action in order to characterize our ability to converse. I will also compare my approach to others (Austin, Belnap, Grice, Montague, Searle, Sperber and Wilson, Kamp, Wittgenstein) as regards hypotheses, methodology and other issues. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Review of Pragmatics Brill

Towards a Formal Pragmatics of Discourse

International Review of Pragmatics , Volume 5 (1): 34 – Jan 1, 2013

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References (29)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1877-3095
eISSN
1877-3109
DOI
10.1163/18773109-13050102
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Could we enrich speech-act theory to deal with discourse? Wittgenstein and Searle pointed out difficulties. Most conversations lack a conversational purpose, they require collective intentionality, their background is indefinitely open, irrelevant and infelicitous utterances do not prevent conversations to continue, etc. Like Wittgenstein and Searle I am sceptic about the possibility of a general theory of all kinds of language-games. In my view, the single primary purpose of discourse pragmatics is to analyse the structure and dynamics of language-games whose type is provided with an internal conversational goal. Such games are indispensable to any kind of discourse. They have a descriptive, deliberative, declaratory or expressive conversational goal corresponding to a possible direction of fit between words and things. Logic can analyse felicity-conditions of such language-games because they are conducted according to systems of constitutive rules. Speakers often speak non-literally or non-seriously. The real units of conversation are therefore attempted illocutions whether literal, serious or not. I will show how to construct speaker-meaning from sentence-meaning, conversational background and conversational maxims. I agree with Montague that we need the resources of formalisms ( proof , model- and game-theories ) and of mathematical and philosophical logic in pragmatics. I will explain how to further develop propositional and illocutionary logics, the logic of attitudes and of action in order to characterize our ability to converse. I will also compare my approach to others (Austin, Belnap, Grice, Montague, Searle, Sperber and Wilson, Kamp, Wittgenstein) as regards hypotheses, methodology and other issues.

Journal

International Review of PragmaticsBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2013

Keywords: speech-acts; discourse; illocutionary logic; formal pragmatics; speaker-meaning; hearer-understanding

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