Pragmatics & Cognition - Current Issue

A core area of pragmatics is conversational implicatures, where speakers imply a meaning that is not part of what is literally said. Not all people have the ability to easily understand such common (implicit) forms of communication. For these people, Easy Language has been developed, i.e. a form of barrier-free communication with substantially simplified syntax and lexis. Moreover, Easy Language is based on the principle of maximum explicitness. However, the heterogeneous target groups and the different types of implicature have not been systematically taken into account. Therefore, this article is the first to take an in-depth look at conversational implicatures in Easy Language. It shows that a universal principle of maximum explicitness for Easy Language is too short-sighted. Instead, the principle of explicitness must be considered in relation to the different target groups and the types of implicature. The article provides an impulse for further (empirical) research in this emerging field.

Self-enhancing statements can provide useful information. Why do we resent those who make them? We suggest that the resentment comes from a broader claim of superiority that self-enhancing statements can imply. In three experiments, we compared one condition, designed such that the self-enhancing claim would be perceived as a claim of superiority, to three conditions providing different contextual reasons for why the self-enhancing claim might not be a claim of superiority. In those conditions the self-enhancing claim is either called for, addressed to someone who performs better than the self-enhancer, or addressed to someone who doesn’t compete in the domain mentioned of the self-enhancing claim. The results show that participants disliked the self-enhancer more and were more likely to deem the self-enhancing claim to be a brag when the self-enhancing claim was manipulated to be a claim of superiority.

The gesture-as-simulated-action framework explains the occurrence of iconic gestures. Accordingly, simulated visual imagery gives rise to observer-viewpoint, whereas simulated motor imagery gives rise to character-viewpoint gestures. Because little is known about whether this relationship is either the product of becoming a competent speaker in different communicative tasks or exists from an early age, we investigated 4-year-olds. In the first session, 55 children performed three different communicative tasks. In the second session, we administered a SON-R non-verbal intelligence test to assess children’s cognitive abilities. Results revealed a strong association between the frequency with which children used observer-viewpoints gestures and their scores in visual processing abilities. Because the association between gestures and visuospatial cognitive abilities was found across three communicative tasks, we can propose that it is a general ability rather than a phenomenon of task-specific discourse competence. We discuss these findings in terms of gestural threshold and cognitive offloading.

Ironic criticisms in online interactions are very common, but have rarely been examined. Following the concept of (non)propositional irony, this study investigates how online ironic criticisms are produced and responded to. The findings were derived from a mixed-methods analysis of 200 comments and 1,140 responses collected from Weibo. The analysis offers a computer-mediated taxonomy and identifies four subtypes of ironic criticisms, with different realisation forms in each subtype. Responses to negative evaluations are more common in online ironic interactions. Possible motivations for the prevalence of online ironic criticisms are also discussed. The findings shed light on the creativity of ironic criticisms on social media, and suggest the need for an updated definition of ironic criticisms to account for their use in online interactions.

This paper addresses the unresolved question of whether demonstrative this/that and their accompanying gestures serve the same function. By utilizing Langacker’s notion of Current Discourse Space (CDS) and integrating gesture studies and frame semantics, this research models the entire process of demonstrative use and points to the distinct roles that demonstratives and gestures play in each usage event. The findings reveal that their functions are indeed different: the gesture (gazing) initially singles out an entity as a target, followed by the demonstratives encoding it phonetically. Subsequently, the demonstratives evoke the initiation of a targeting act by the hearer, and the gesture (pointing) specifically identifies the entity during the decoding process. Based on the notion of distinguishing role and value, this study proposes that the semantic content (‘target’) encoded by demonstratives is the role (‘element’) within the viewing (attention)-target event frame, rather than its value (‘entity’). This principle applies to both exophoric and anaphoric contexts, providing a unified conceptual foundation for the function of demonstratives. In the light of these findings, the article also offers novel perspectives on the function of demonstratives as grounding elements, contributing to a deeper understanding of their role in communication.

Previous studies have described a range of placeholder (PH) items. A PH fills in the grammatical slot of a target that a speaker is unable or unwilling to produce. This paper argues that Japanese unnun, an expression wholly underdescribed in the literature, serves as a PH and that it may also be used as a general extender (GE). Unlike previously known PHs, unnun is regarded as a ‘meta-discourse’ PH; it replaces a discourse segment, rather than a linguistic form. I develop a cognitive-pragmatic account in Relevance theory, arguing that unnun encodes procedural meaning and that the PH and GE functions emerge through interaction among encoded meaning, pragmatic principles, and contextual assumptions. Further, the account situates unnun in the broader picture of vague language in a theoretically coherent manner. I also suggest that some of the previously described PHs in other languages may be re-classified as meta-discourse PHs.

This study explores how syntactic and discourse-based parsing principles direct English relative clause attachment preferences. Forty-nine highly advanced L1-Persian L2-English and thirty-six English native speakers completed a self-paced reading task involving temporarily ambiguous relative clauses that were semantically associated with either the first or the second noun phrase (NP) in a complex NP (NP1–of–NP2) (The resident called the nurseNP1 of the patientNP2 who was injecting penicillin/coughing severely). We manipulated the definiteness of the antecedent (a/the nurse & a/the patient) to examine the extent to which a discourse-based definiteness principle — which motivates attachment to a definite NP — impacts attachment preferences. The results showed no L1/L2 differences, and both groups preferred an NP2 interpretation in relative clauses with a definite antecedent but no strong preference in relative clauses with an indefinite antecedent. The findings highlight the significance of definiteness and cast doubt on the hypothesis that L1 and L2 processing are fundamentally different.

Prior research shows mixed findings regarding individuals’ belief-revision strategies. The current research is aimed to test (a) whether individuals’ reasoning across abstract vs real-world content shows similarity, and (b) whether individuals’ syllogistic reasoning predicts their belief-revision strategies. Experiment 1, testing 76 participants (50 females), provides evidence for the similarity in reasoning across abstract and real-world content (p < .05). In Experiment 2, testing 84 participants (58 females), we find no significant effect of reasoning performance on belief-revision strategies (p > .05). Individuals seem to revise the conditional statement in the AC and DA inferences, especially when the content poses a threat. In contrast, individuals prefer to revise the categorical premise in the MT inferences, especially when the content poses a threat. These findings suggest that in the face of inconsistency individuals’ decision about which of their prior beliefs they should revise is influenced by the structure and content of the belief-contravening problem rather than their reasoning ability.

When processing political arguments, people are strongly affected by their prior ideological beliefs. Political cognition often relies on two types of ideological biases. Firstly, confirmation bias leads addressees of political communication to accept arguments that affirm their preferred ideological positions. Secondly, disconfirmation bias probes reasoners to reject arguments that provide attitudinally incongruent evidence. Here, we report the findings of an experiment aimed at investigating the role of biased reasoning on perceptions of argument soundness. We focused on the processing of the strawman fallacy to determine whether strawman effectiveness is contingent upon the activation of different ideological biases. We examined argument comprehension, argument evaluation and fallacy identification by means of a memory task, a rating task and an interview. Our data suggests that ideological biases and fallacy effect are associated with deliberative cognitive settings and marks a distinction between evaluative attitudes and the capacity to identify fallacies in political argumentation.