Pragmatics & Cognition - Volume 19, Issue 3, 2011

The paper investigates the ‘logical space of reasons’ as a social space in which rational agents operate and persons in an important sense come to be. Building from an investigation of argumentative agents in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, I discuss both interior and exterior criteria for personhood and propose that the latter shows how argumentation, as a principal activity of the space of reasons, results in the particular kinds of persons we recognize there as rational agents. The overall analysis is indebted to Robert Brandom’s centralizing of the practice of giving and receiving reasons and the suggestive ways this can be applied to the realm of argumentation.

Promising and warning are speech acts that have to be credible to be persuasive. The question is: When does a promise become incredible and a warning unpersuasive? Whereas credibility has been researched from a social persuasion perspective, this article answers that question empirically, from an adaptive heuristics perspective. First, we present a satisficing algorithm that discriminates conditional promises, threats, advices, and warnings by pragmatic cues. Then, we discuss an alternative model of this algorithm that further accounts for the credibility of these conditionals by formal principles, and also adds two hypotheses: (1) Threats but not promises are more credible with proportionate than disproportionate consequences, and (2) Both advices and warnings are more persuasive with bilateral than unilateral consequences. Finally, we present two experiments and their follow-ups that, consistent with the pragmatic algorithm, provide evidence against both hypotheses.

This article addresses the issue of non-verbal communication in the light of the Gricean conceptualisation of intentionally conveyed meanings. The first goal is to testify that non-verbal cues can be interpreted as nonnatural meanings and speaker meanings, which partake in intentional communication. Secondly, it is argued that non-verbal signals, exemplified by gestures, are similar to utterances which generate the communicator’s what is said and/or conversational implicatures, together with their different subtypes and manifestations. Both of these objectives necessitate a critical overview of Grice’s work on the focal aspects of meaning and communication, also on the strength of neo-Gricean research.

This paper presents an analysis of three Japanese words — ne, yone, and daroo. These three expressions are often interpreted as tag questions in English. Although these words are semantically closely related, they are not always interchangeable. The subtle differences between them are difficult to grasp, especially for language learners. Numerous studies have been undertaken in order to clarify the meanings of ne, yone, and daroo. However, opinions vary among different scholars, and definitions for these markers are not fully established. This paper applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. It proposes new explications in terms of semantic primes. The proposed semantic formulae clarify the differences between the three expressions and serve as practical tools: Tools which indicate criteria that can assist in choosing an appropriate word for a given situation.

In this paper I attempt to dissolve two confused ideas inherent in scientific studies of learning: That the locus of learning processes lies hidden inside the mind/brain, and also that this putatively hidden phenomenon causes learned actions. I attempt this dissolution through conceptual argument and data analysis, first by contrasting the use of the concept ‘learning’ in ordinary and scientific interaction, followed by a Wittgenstein-inspired conversation analysis of a micro-longitudinal case of learning interaction — a biochemist teaching lab techniques to a technician — in order to demonstrate that learning processes are inherently social. I conclude that the scientific view of learning processes as hidden is misconceived through its misuse of the concept “learning”. The empirical results demonstrate that learning processes are indeed public and manifest in an indefinite number of forms, and whatever may be found in the brain associated with learning are concomitant factors, not learning itself.

This article investigates the role of prosody in conversational humor in the HBO series Sex and the City (SATC) in an exploratory study. Specifically, we examine how pitch and pauses are part of the prosodic bundle that can be used to mark an utterance as humoristic. We find that the use of prosodic resources participates not only in the marking but also the creation of humor. In this regard, we view pitch variation and pauses as having communicative strategies and cognitive benefits. They are part of the performance of humor and participate in the characterization of the personage. The authors suggest the existence of a repertoire of prosodic devices associated to humor and to a particular discourse.

The goal of this paper is to propose a model that distinguishes between irony and humor in the context of literary texts. The comparative model was constructed based on existing models, and elaborated on them, substantiating the model through textual analysis focusing on cues for irony (Clark and Gerrig 1984; Grice 1975, 1978; Haverkate 1990; Sperber and Wilson 1981; Wilson and Sperber 1992;) and cues for humor (Alexander 1997; Jeffers 1995; Oring 1989; Raskin and Attardo 1994). 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.

Cognitive sciences have been interminably in search for a consistent philosophical framework for the description of perceptual phenomena. Most of the frameworks in usage today fall in-between the extremes of constructivism and objective realism. However, whereas constructivist cognitive theories face difficulties when attempting to explain the experiential commonality of different cognitive entities, objectivistic theories fail in explaining the active role of the subject in the formation of experiences. This paper undertakes to compare and eventually combine these two major approaches to describing cognitive phenomena. It is argued that constructivist explanations inevitably refer to a ‘hidden’ ontological source of experience, and that a compromise between the constructivist and realistic standpoints presents a natural basis for understanding cognitive phenomena. A view of all experiences as co-created through an interplay between a constructivist creativity and a realistic source of perceptual stimuli is proposed. A middle ground between the hardly compatible constructivist and objectivistic approaches to experiential realities is proposed from the standpoint of experiential co-creation. Traditionally divided, idealistic and realistic philosophical stances may thus become merged into a single consistent epistemological framework. Many favorable cognitive and psychosomatic consequences may arise from acknowledging the balance between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ creativity proposed by the co-creational thesis.