© University of Reading 2008 www.reading.ac.uk

Figurative Meaning and the Semantics/Pragmatics DivideEmma Borg‘Go figure’ workshop, June 2013.

Structure of the talk:Aim: to explore the models of meaning and communication in minimalism and pragmaticism, outlining how figurative language is handled in each model. To raise some questions for the pragmaticist approach.1. The Gricean Model2. The Minimalist Model3. The Pragmaticist Model4. How do we constrain free pragmatic effects?5. Do we really need explicatures?6. Minimalism and communication

The Gricean ModelTotal signification of an utterance

(a) What is said

- Compositional linguistic meaning- Plus: Disambiguation Reference assignment

- Propositional 

(a) = what is asserted (semantics)

(b) What is implicated

- various forms of implicature: conventional, generalised conversational, particularised conversational

- (a) & conversational maxims allow hearer to infer (b)

 (b) = what is merely implied (pragmatics)

Objections to the Gricean model:1. Fails to match on-line processing, e.g. ignores

‘direct access metaphors’, etc.

2. (a) doesn’t fit with intuitive judgements of what a speaker asserts: asserted content is often pragmatically enhanced content.

3. Problems with the maxims (e.g. doesn’t work for non-literal uses where speaker only ‘makes as if to say’, how many maxims?)

The Minimalist model

• (a) and (b) = different types of meaning, underpinned by different kinds of cognitive process.

Total signification of an utterance(a) What the sentence

meansCompositional linguistic meaning- Plus: Disambiguation Reference assignment

- Propositional (a) = what is literally expressed (semantics)

(b) What the speaker means- usually pragmatically

enhanced- includes both minor and

major alterations to (a)- often indeterminate- includes figurative

meaning  (b) = what is conveyed (pragmatics)

Objections to the Minimalist model

1. Words and structure alone always/often/sometimes fail to yield propositions

2. Model fails to fit with on-line processing

3. Ignores important divisions between different types of speaker meaning.

The Pragmaticist model

• FPEs = top-down pragmatic effects, e.g. modulation and unarticulated constituents.

Total signification of an utterance(a) Linguistically encoded content

 - Compositional linguistic meaningAlways/often/ sub-

propositional.

(a) = linguistic semantics

(b) explicit content of the utterance:

explicature- proposition the speaker directly communicates- an expansion or

development of (a), involving reference assignment and certain free pragmatic effects (FPEs)

(b) = what is asserted

(c) what is implicated

 further relevant

propositions hearers can

infer on basis of (b)

(c) = what is merely implied

What is an explicature?i. A pragmatically inferred development of

logical form (where implicatures are wholly pragmatically derived); S&W 1986: 182, Carston 2009: 41

ii. The content the speaker intends to communicate directly; S&W 1986: 183, Carston 2009: 36

iii. The first content hearers recover via relevance processing; S&W 1986:184-5

iv. The essential premise for inferring further (implicated) propositions; Carston 2009: 41

v. The proposition on which S’s utterance is judged true or false; Carston 2009: 36

ExampleA: ‘How was the party?’ B: ‘There was not enough drink and everyone left’

• Explicature: there was not enough alcoholic drink to satisfy the people at [the party]i and so everyone who came to [the party]i left [the party]i early.

• Implicature: the party was no good.(Carston 2009: 35)

Figurative uses• On the RT model there exists a continuum of

loose uses, with minor alterations at one end of the scale and metaphor at the other end (or perhaps involving a special, meta-representational process; Carston). Irony is off the scale.

• Example: “Robert is a computer”: • Explicature: Robert is a computer* (via

modulation)• Implicatures: Robert lacks feelings, processes

information well… (Wilson 2011: 180)

• Problem: How do we individuate explicature-relevant FPEs?

1) How many kinds of FPEs?

• Why do we need both modulation and UCs? E.g. why treat ‘in London’ as an added UC in “It’s raining” as opposed to allowing the meaning of ‘rain’ to be modulated (either narrowed or loosened)?

• Carston & Hall 2012 reject a modulation treatment for the locations in weather predicates, but I’m not quite clear why.

• Since it isn’t clear what the constraints on broadening/narrowing of senses are, it is unclear whether there remains any role for UCs.

• If it’s all modulation, is this occasionalism?• If it’s all modulation, how does this fit with idea of

‘developing LF’?

2) What constrains explicature

-relevant FPEs?• What stops ‘snow is white’ literally

expressing (on some occasion) the proposition ‘snow is white & 2+2=4’?

• Availability Principle, Scope Principle, appeal to Relevance?

• A recent suggestion (Hall 2008, Carston & Hall 2012) appeals to ‘the derivational distinction between local and global pragmatic inference’.

• An effect which modifies a part of the utterance content counts as part of its literal meaning, one which modifies a whole proposition does not.

Problems for locality?A: Do you want to have dinner?B: I’m going to the cinema.

• How should B’s utterance content be modulated?– Narrowed from GOING-TO-THE-CINEMA to

GOING-TO-THE-CINEMA-TONIGHT– Narrowed from GOING-TO-THE-CINEMA to

GOING-TO-THE-CINEMA-AT-A-TIME-THAT-MAKES-HAVING-DINNER-WITH-A-IMPOSSIBLE

• Both of these are local effects, but they give different accounts of what the speaker has literally asserted vs. only implied.

• Perhaps problems with isolating explicature-relevant effects are instructive.

Do we need the notion of an explicature? (1)i. Explicatures need not be what a speaker

intends to communicate directly as may not be psychologically real for her. Thoughts are just as underdetermined as utterances (if S utters ‘pass me the red pen’ she need not have internally specified that she wants the pen that writes in red, the one that contains red ink, the one that is red on the lid, the one that says ‘red’ on it, etc. Compare ‘I want to travel to London’.)

ii. Explicatures need not be psychologically real for the audience: all hearers may consciously entertain is ‘implicature’ content.

Do we need explicatures? (2)

• As theorists explicatures do play a role in a rational reconstruction of a route from literal meaning to conveyed content, but why should we think hearers must or even typically do follow this route, either explicitly or implicitly?

• Soliciting judgements of truth/falsity for utterance content is inappropriate, it influences the phenomena it is supposed to be uncovering (a kind of ‘quantum effect’):

Truth/Falsity Judgements

• Is B’s utterance true in a situation where there was more wine but it was held in a locked cabinet?– there wasn’t enough easily available alcoholic drink and

everyone at the party left after one hour• Is it true in a situation where there was plenty of

crème de menthe available at the party, or where those hosting the party didn’t leave?– there wasn’t enough available and attractive alcoholic

drink and everyone who came to the party as the result of an invitation left early.

• In asking these questions we prompt the audience to sharpen the original content of the utterance, but these are decisions about how to sharpen not an uncovering of material which is already somehow present.

Minimalism and communication (1)• Perhaps then we just need the standard

Kripkean distinction (adopted by minimalism) between what a sentence means and what a speaker says.

• Socio-linguistic structures allow a direct move from literal meaning to communicated content (it’s not understanding a language which requires understanding a way of life but understanding a speaker).

• Assertion can go either with what is literally expressed (e.g. legal discourse: ‘use a firearm’) or what is pragmatically conveyed.

Minimalism and communication (2)

• Speakers can demur from any content attributed on the non-literal side without contradiction, but they do not have final veto on what is communicated (consider libel cases).

• There is a threshold of tolerance within which differences between the propositional content assigned by speaker and hearers as communicated content can simply be ignored. The boundaries of tolerance are set in context, depending in part on the kind of conversational exchange in which agents are engaged.

Minimalism and communication (3)“[T]he process through which [speakers and hearers] determine which values to assign is not governed by a ‘uniform rule’ but is shaped by a common goal: successful communication…It is unsurprising that accommodation and negotiation should be central to this enterprise, and it is equally unsurprising that so many ‘factors’ should be involved…[T]here is in fact no limit to the information on which the speaker and her audience may draw as they attempt to converge.”

-- Heck, forthcoming, ‘Semantics and Context-dependence’, draft p.40

Minimalism and communication (4)• If a proposition risks falling outside the

contextually determined limits of tolerance, there are two options:

i. the speaker/hearer puts her interpretation on the record (‘are you saying…?’/‘did you mean…?’) and interlocutors negotiate over the content to be added to the conversational record.

ii. the potential divergence between speaker and hearers take on the communicated content goes unnoticed and communication fails.

Conclusion• It is in this sense that all communicated

content is ‘an expedition abroad’, no longer part of linguistic understanding per se but instead relying on a culturally entrenched network of beliefs and practices.

• Metaphor, etc, may be a rather more exotic trip but all non-literal content is a journey way beyond linguistic understanding.