Pragmatics & Cognition - Volume 4, Issue 2, 1996

Controlled elicitation of linguistic and psycholinguistic experimental data facilitate strong inferences about phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic structures and functions, yet neglect the ecological validity of responses. Ecological validity in this paper refers to whether data gathered under controlled conditions are commensurate with routine problem solving and language use in natural settings. All methods produce "white room" effects that compromise data gathering and analysis. Unexamined folk knowledge and experiences also guide the investigator s interpretation of data from field research, laboratories, testing sessions, and target sentences. Story recall data from children in a combined second-third grade classroom and their narrative responses to cartoons without sound are used to illustrate ecological validity issues. The child's spontaneous, imaginative narratives about the story and cartoons resemble adult folk theory, and their semantic content reveal sociocultural knowledge essential for understanding subjects ' reasoning and information processing skills.

A model of metaphor processing is suggested based on the application of pragmatic principles to the type of semantic information easy to access. It is argued that, with metaphor, higher-order categorical knowledge is given processing preference over instance-specific knowledge in an attempt to recover likely intended meaning. Instance-specific information is used more often when the higher-order knowledge is taken to violate conversational postulates. One such violation occurs when the categories implicated by metaphor topic and vehicle are similar, and thus unlikely to provide new or relevant information. It is argued further that these differences could, in part, explain at least one condition that produces the asymmetry observed in metaphor when topic and vehicle are reversed. Predictions supportive of the model were obtained in three studies, employing different methodologies: feature listing, recognition memory and a vehicle choice task.

The aim of this paper is to describe and characterize some structural features of natural reasoning by analyzing a number of conversations held by operators during shift changeovers. During this work phase the operators have to cooperate in order to carry out the same process. This need to cooperate leads to dialogues and joint elaboration of information, especially when involving the reporting of a malfunction. Three dialogues observed at this work phase on two study sites (a paper mill and a nuclear power plant) are analyzed. These analyses show that the step by step follow-up of the operators' collective reasoning is feasible. They highlight that these reasonings are complex experimental and hypothetico-deductive reasonings. They are reasonings for action, that are elaborated as the conversation unfolds, and for which the operators do not always have the means of testing their hypotheses.

This paper discusses issues relating to the normativity of prescriptive rules: what does it mean for a rule to be able to direct action, and what are the implications for the desirability of rule-based decision-making? It is argued that: (a) cognitively, one must allow for more than a single answer to the first question (the two interpretations of rules discussed here are based alternately on the concepts of exclusion and presumption); and (b) normatively, these different structures typically serve for different purposes in allocation of power and discretion. The next issue is the connection between rule-based decision-making and semantic theories of language. On a meta-discursive level, the paper makes a twofold claim: that normative discourse is possible only on the basis of a sound cognitive inquiry, while cognitive inquiry alone is not sufficient to explain social action and interaction, lacking tools to deal with the contingent normative demands from decision-making systems, such as adjudication. The discussion of prescriptive rules serves as a case-study for this claim. These and related topics have been dealt with by Frederick Schauer(1991a, 1991b). His model of rules as entrenched generalizations and mediators between "justifications " and action is the starting point of the present discussion, which, on most of the issues mentioned above, results in conclusions quite different from Schauer's.